Hen & Chicks: March 2010

26 March 2010

scrunchy-nosed grin and finger foods

A few weeks ago Lelia started sharing a new smile with us. A scrunchy-nosed, head-thrown-back, eyes-squinted kinda smile. It was hysterical and we constantly encouraged her to repeat it over and over again. I guess we encouraged her A LOT, because she's started doing it more and more frequently. Actually, all the time. Now it's to the point where she just can't help herself! She scrunchy-nose smiles at EVERYONE. Talk about hammin' it up!

scrunchy-nosed smile

a gummy, scrunchy-nosed smile

happy little foodie

the scrunch-nosed smile returns

she's not a happy baby. AT. ALL. :)

This past Wednesday we introduced Lelia to melt-aways. She was quite uncoordinated about getting the tiny morsels into her mouth the first day but was pretty skilled and efficient just a few days later. Amazing what she can learn in a couple days...wish I was that adept!

We're hoping the introduction of these new snacks will come in handy when we fly to Vegas in 12 days to visit friends. It'll be our first flight with kiddo. I'm extremely anxious. I don't want to be THOSE people...you know...the ones with the screaming banshee of a child! Hopefully she'll be so enthralled with her melt-aways and sharing her scrunchy-nosed smile with everyone she'll be unaware that we're rocketing through air at 700 miles per hour!

On that note: any tricks, comments or words of wisdom on plane rides with baby are MOST welcome...

Chillaxin' in her highchair

Ah, melt-aways. Edible and time consuming!

A friend to share treats with...

Ah, yes! They will become best friends, indeed!

12 March 2010

the water monkey

Remember me talking about Lelia starting swim class awhile back?

Well, she's almost done with her first session of swim lessons and has enjoyed it so much she'll be starting the second session next month!

Everytime we get into the pool area, she starts flapping her arms, squealing and barely puts up with getting into her swimsuit, she's so happy to be there. She's a natural in the water...does her dives/swims underwater with ease and splashes and plays when not underwater. It's been great to watch her become more aware of the water and her space in it, as well as interacting with other parents, kids and her swim instructor.

There was an open-swim photography session a few weeks back and I jumped at the chance to get some underwater pictures of Lelia swimming. The photographer, John Carleton has previously worked with the DolFUN Swim Academy so he's quite familiar with 'young merfolk', as he calls them. You can check out his website here. And his Flikr account here. His photos are pretty cool! Check out his 365 project on his Flikr account...amazing!

And why is her swimsuit so low cut, you ask? Yeah, that would be because I put her swimming suit on backwards! Lame! But the pics are good anyway, even if I can't dress my own child!

We're so excited our little monkey likes the water and loves swim classes! Yeah!

And my all time favorite....

book babies & beach bums

One of Lelia's BFF's is Claire, who's now 13 1/2 months to Lelia's almost 8 months. It's been fun to watch Claire grow up and watch her interact more and more with Lelia (and educational as we can now anticipate some of the new things coming our way in the near future) .

Claire is a walker/sometimes crawler while Lelia is still scoots/rolls/dead-fish flops to get around. I can see that Lelia is really taking in all that Claire does and seems quite frustrated that she's not as mobile as Claire. These two girls play so sweetly together and Lelia just adores her BFF!

When Claire was over the other day, the girls decided to read books over playing with any of the other toys strewn about our living room. Claire flipped through the pages and listened intently as I read to her, whereas Lelia just put the books in her mouth and sogged up the corners. But I think they had fun!

I love these series of pics...you can almost HEAR the conversation the girls are having! Love it!

Last weekend, Lelia and I travelled to the Oregon Coast with my two dear friends Carrie and Michelle and Lelia's little boyfriend, John. Michelle was my 'bump buddy' as we were both pregnant at the same time and her little boy, John, was born just 11 days before Lelia!

We had fabulous weather, ate amazing food (and lots of it!) and got to spend some time reconnecting with each other! The last time we went away on a girls weekend like this was in '07...Before we graduated from nursing school, got jobs, had kids....got busy with day-to-day life.

John and Lelia had fun playing together. It's nice that they're the same age and are basically at the same milestones. We could just sit them on a blanket with their toys and they'd play, roll around, try to grab each other and then squeal with delight when they were successful. Hilarious!