Hen & Chicks

25 April 2010

les dents

Lelia has gotten her first tooth...her upper right tooth. I can see the left one on its way down and her bottom gums have started to get puffy which seems to precede actual eruption.

I'm sad she's losing her gummy smile but it's exciting to see her growing up and experience this 'first' with her.

Welcome scrunchy-nosed toothy smile!

12 April 2010

We spent 4 lovely days in Las Vegas with our friends, Ben and Jen, and their new little girl Madalynn (4 months). It was our first time meeting sweet Madalynn and their first time meeting our little Monkeygirl. Lelia was completely enthralled with Madalynn and shrieked with glee whenever they were in close proximity!

Lelia did great on the flight. No problems taking off or landing. She did get a bit fussy from being tired but went down very easily and napped for the majority of both flights. Phew. I'm glad that went well. I'd been stressing about it for weeks. I do have to say that going through security does require a few more steps and is a little more chaotic than without kiddo, but overall, once we got a system established it was fairly breezy.

The highlights of our Vegas trip:

* supper at Lawry's....without a doubt Tre's favorite place!

* two trips to In n Out burger...without a doubt Tre's favorite burger joint!

* a picnic and hiking in Red Rock

* some much needed down time to relax

* sunny warm shorts wearin' weather

On Friday we went out to Red Rock to do some hiking/geocaching and have a picnic. The weather was amazing and it was fun to hike in the desert...so very different than the forests of Oregon/Washington. We had a couple run-ins with catci (man, are they nasty) but also reveled in the beauty of the landscape. It had rained about a week prior to our arrival, so the desert was alive with colorful little flowers and lots of green! Beautiful!

It was so nice to be with friends and enjoy the beautiful 80 degree desert weather. It was quite a shock to come back to lush/green/rainy Oregon! Some picture highlights of our Vegas trip:

Red Rock

Madalynn, Jen, Lelia and me

Sweet little Madalynn

Lelia hammin' it up

Madalynn, Jen, Lelia and a sun-stroked me

06 April 2010

the crawler, 33 and Easter

Lelia hit a milestone about 10 days ago when she started crawling. She's been on the verge of crawling for quite some time but has never actually committed to mobilizing in that way. I was eating a popsicle (by far her favorite thing) and I guess she decided it was time to take what she wanted...she crawled right over to me chirping like a little bird for some of my popsicle. And she hasn't stopped crawling since. She's definitely a gal on the move...

Some of my favorite pics of the past couple weeks:

Happy girl!

Assuming the crawling position...

I was cleaning around the house and found the two girls sitting like this...

So this is where she gets her scrunchy nose!!!

My birthday was on Easter Sunday this year. I think the last time it happened like that was about 11 years ago when I was living in Tennessee. Seems like just yesterday...

Saturday night, Tre and I went out to one of my favorite little restaurants Echo for happy hour and some retro cocktails to celebrate my birthday. Our friends Andy, Paige and Carrie joined us. It was intimate, fun and a really special memory for me! Some pics from the night:

Andy & Paige

Carrie, Lelia, Tre and me

Andy and his cheeseburger...I just thought this shot was funny!

Auntie Paige and Lelia

On Easter Sunday, Lelia and I headed over to my parent's house to celebrate (Tre had to work)! My Grandparents, my Aunt and Uncle, Cousins and my friend Jen joined us. We ate lots of good food, watched Lelia's antics and shared stories. Unfortunately, I didn't pull my camera out until everyone had already left so the pictures I have are from the house after our actual celebration. Lelia is wearing her new Easter dress my Mom made. So cute!

Lelia clapping...her newest "skill"

With Koko

Scrunchy-nosed smile for Koko

Happy girl in her Easter dress

We're off to Vegas tomorrow to visit friends! More stories to follow!

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!