All In Five Minutes

Yesterday afternoon Hannah and I were hanging out waiting on her Daddy to get home and she crawled into the dining room so I followed her to see what she getting into.  All of these pictures were taken within five minutes.  She's a busy girl!

Hi Mommy!  Playing with the drapes is FUN!

So is banging on the window... 

You don't want me to bang on the window?  Ok, I'll play with the drapes again! 

Hmmm.....how can I reach those blinds??? 

Think Hannah, think! 

Ok, I can't figure that out so I'll move on to the drapes again!  Woo hoo!!  This is FUN! 

Oh, I just noticed that there is more to look at outside! 

30 seconds later....moving on to the cooking magazines.  Pulling them out one by one.  F-U-N!

Oh, I forgot about the brass vase!  Now, THAT'S fun to bang! 

I can see under the dining room table!  Mommy?!  What are YOU doing under here TOO?! 

And that my friends, is just five minutes of a day in the life with our baby girl.  I sleep good at night for sure.  Ha!

Nine Months Old!

This month has been full of new things for our big girl!  She is growing like a weed and becoming more like a toddler every single day.  It's so hard to believe that she will be ONE in just a few short months!  Makes this Mommy sad. :(

Hannah, here is what you've been up to in your ninth month!

Sleep: You are still a great sleeper and sleep in a sleep sack every night. You are going to bed around 7:30 and sleep until 5-6am during the week and usually between 6-7am on the weekends. In the mornings if you wake up on your own you will sometimes just sit in your bed and play with the aquarium or you will go to the railing, stand up and cry out for us to come get you.  During naptime you are still swaddled.  I don't know why you like that during naps when you sleep great at night without it but I guess it's just your security blanket because without it you don't take nearly as long of a nap so we're sticking with it until daycare wants to change it up.  You are taking one or two naps for a total of 2-3 hours each day.

Daily Routine: Your daily routine consists of playing all day with your friends and eating/napping. You are usually the first one to your class at 6:30am and I pick you up before 5pm. You have two bottles a day at daycare, eat breakfast and lunch that I send with you and usually take one-two naps. At the end of the day we head home and you play with one of your many toys! You eat dinner and then it's bath time (your favorite!) and you take another bottle and you're out for the night. You spend a lot of time in the evenings crawling all over the house trying to get into whatever you can find!

Feed: This has changed this month.  I'm sad to say that you have officially stopped nursing this past week.  You took the change like a champ but Mommy is a little sad.  I'm so happy that we made it this far, it was one of the joys of my day and I loved spending that special time with you.  That may sound odd to some of you but if you are/were a nursing mother you understand.  It is such a special bond and just warms your heart.  I do NOT however miss pumping.  Not one bit.  You now get bottles all day while I'm at work and at night and you take those great.  For your meals you eat a fruit with oatmeal mixed in every morning and a fruit and veggie and chicken/turkey every night, sometimes I mix rice cereal into your veggies. You get really excited when I put you in your chair and you watch me prepare your dinner and kick your legs around. You LOVE your organic puffs and Mum Mums for a snack too.  Brody loves them too since he gets to eat half of them that fall on the ground.

Eating some yummy apples outside like a big girl

Weight: 18 lbs 7 oz (exactly 10 lbs more than your birthday 9 months ago!) (44%)

Length: 28.25" (76%)

Head: 18" (91%)

Diaper Size: You wear size 3 Pampers during the day and you wear night time diapers at bed time.

Clothes Size: You're in some 6 month sizes but mostly 6-9/9 month outfits.

Hair Color: What little hair that you have looks light brown/blondish and your eyebrows are very light.  Your hair seems to have grown some this month!  Mommy is pretty excited about this. :)

Eye color: It looks like you're going to be our little brown eyed girl!

Funniest moment: You had your Daddy and me cracking up one day when I took you back into the laundry room so I could put your clothes from the washer to the dryer.  You were resting on my legs while I was kneeling down and you thought it was SOOOO funny that I was throwing the clothes into the dryer.  It was hilarious!  We laugh every time we watch the video.  You are just the sweetest thing EVER!!

Milestone: You are now an assisted walker!  You crawl (super fast I might add) over to anything that is taller than you and pull yourself up and start walking while holding on.  You love it when we help you walk between our feet, you act like such a big girl and are so proud of yourself!

Coming to get me!


Big girl walking!

Here is just one example of how you are into everything these days.  We got some new living room furniture a few weeks ago and they delivered the wrong coffee table so while we waited for the right one to arrive that evening you had fun with the wrong one.  Glad the one we actually bought doesn't have a big opening in the middle like this one!  I love you face in this pic, you know you got busted!

Your favorite toy: Well, I think your all time favorite thing is The Wheels on the Bus, it's not a toy but that song keeps you more entertained than anything else.  If you are upset and I start singing it you immediately stop.  So cute.  You have too many toys to count that you love right now!  You are bouncing less this month than last which is surprising since you loved it so much.  I guess you want to be on the move more now so you don't have much time for your bouncy toys.  I'd say your favorite unofficial toy would be Mommy and Daddy's shoes and Brody's toys.  You see those toys on the ground and you take off crawling!  I call it "crawling with a purpose".  You now crawl around carrying your toys around in your mouth because you see Brody does that.  I've even caught you in the act more than a few times with his toys in your mouth.  Yuck.  But funny at the same time.  ;)

Pick a toy, any toy!

Since we got new furniture we're moving some things around and you've discovered the mirror that was on the wall is now on the floor against the dining room table.  You LOVE it!

Mirror mirror on the wall....

who's the cutest girl of all?

It's me!

Some of your firsts this month were:

First night away from Mommy.  You stayed the night with Lainey and Pops and did great!
First shoes!

First time walking assisted
First time to show signs of separation anxiety with Mommy.  It's not bad at all but sometimes you get upset when I put you down or walk out of the room.  Don't you worry baby girl, I'm always going to come back!
Shaking your head "no" and actually meaning it.  I really think you know what it means!  Sometimes I think you do it just because it's fun to shake your head though....
Signing to us!  We work on sign language every day with you and so far you've signed back to us no (you see that one a lot.  Ha!) and yes.  You are so smart!
You now wave and give high fives.  You also know how to turn off the lights to your room when we hold you up to it. 

First time in a pool

First class (Mommy & Me swim class)

First encounter with a monkey (at the furniture store, you LOVED the monkeys!  You can see in even in the side view of your eye how excited you were to see the monkey.  You actually kept looking at their toys like you were going to get to play with them.  Sorry, no monkey toys for you!)

Here are some outtakes from your nine month photo shoot.  It's getting harder every month!

Giving Mr Lamb some love

Trying to climb over Mr Lamb....

Sweet face

You can't keep me in this chair Daddy!

Hannah Lee, you are the sweetest thing I've ever seen!  Your Daddy and I love you soooo much and are so excited to wake up to your sweet face every morning. 

Shoes!

Hannah has some exciting things coming up for her soon.  She's transitioning to the "big kid" class (10-18 months) at school and she needs some shoes for when they play outside.  Why would a 9 month old need shoes to play outside??  Because she's thisclose to walking on her own!  She's mastered both the walking next to furniture and walking behind a toy acts and she's attempting to walk on her own everyday when she just lets go of something, holds her arms out, and falls down.  I can't believe my little baby is already trying to walk.  Sniff sniff.  The days of relaxing on the couch while Hannah is awake are OVER!  So, with walking comes shoes and let me just tell you, this girl is OBSESSED with shoes!  She sees Mommy and Daddy's shoes on the floor and goes into her determined crawl and tries to get them into her mouth FAST!  We no longer take our shoes off in the common areas of the house.  The closet is the only place they go if we aren't wearing them!

Lainey wanted to treat Hannah to some shoes so last week she and I took Hannah to get fitted for her first pair!  So excited to try on some shoes! 

She was such a good girl while they were measuring her feet.  She was very interested in what was going on.

She's got herself some nice chubby feet at a size 3w! 

Showing off her new shoes! 

She wanted to make sure the boys Sperry's didn't come in pink for her.   

Shoe shopping success! 

Told you....shoes go immediately into the mouth! 

We did a little shopping for a big day that she has coming up soon and it wore her out! 

Once we got home the naps continued.

I love snuggling up with this sweet girl 

You think she was tired??  Passed out with mouth open, sitting up indian style!   

Such a sweet girl.  :)

SUYL: New Moms

If you're joining from Kelly's Korner, welcome!  I love this weeks topic in her Show Us Your Life series, New Moms!  Here's a bit of our story; we were blessed with the sweetest baby girl nine months ago today!  She is the most precious little thing I have ever laid my eyes on and my husband and I couldn't be more in love with her!  After struggling with infertility (you can read our story here) Hannah Lee entered the world on August 11, 2011 as 8lbs 7oz of pure cuteness.  :)  I'm so excited to read other new mom's stories and maybe meet a few that are in the Houston area.  Blogging is such a great way to find others who are in the same stage of life as you are so if you want me to check out your blog then just leave a comment saying hi! 

Becoming a mom was everything I hoped for and more.  I was warned by so many people about how tired I would be so I knew to expect that of course (they weren't lying either, ha!), I flipped through a few books, looked on the internet, had changed plenty of diapers, had a little dog that I was just obsessed with so I thought I was prepared.  Wrong!  When people say you never understand a mother's love until you become one they are SO right, it is the best feeling in the world!  I look at our sweet Hannah sometimes and just think "she'll never understand how much I love her until she has her own baby girl". 

Now that Hannah is nine months old I feel like we're really in a great rhythm and the whole "am I doing this totally wrong??" feeling has passed.  Those sleepy newborn days seem so long ago yet I can't believe I have a baby who isn't a baby for much longer.  I wish time would just slow down a little!  Anyways, I hope to meet some other new moms today and maybe swap some funny stories about the crazy first year in parenthood!  I'll leave you with my Top 10 list of being a new mommy. :)

Top 10 things about being a first time mom (not necessarily the best things but the things that came to mind while writing this list. :))

1. You gain X amount of lbs while pregnant and then in the weeks after you give birth you feel like you're the skinniest you've ever been.  Ha!  I guess when you get rid of that watermelon you've been carrying around and you suddenly lose it you automatically feel good about yourself. :)
2. Remember back when you were engaged and when you saw other friends who were engaged all you did was talk about your wedding plans?  Yeah, that's how I feel it goes with new moms and nursing.  I have never in my life talked about a part of the body as much as I have this year.  Ha!  "Are you nursing?"  "How often does your baby nurse?"  "Did they latch on right away?"  "Do they have teeth yet?  Ouch."  ;)
3. Sleeping through the night is completely under rated your entire life.  Before you have a baby you have no idea how awesome it is to get a full nights sleep, you just expect it.  I have a feeling it will take many years for new moms to forget those first few months of exhaustion.
4. No matter how tired you are, when your baby smiles, coo's, looks you in the eyes you forget how sleepy you ever were. 
5. You never realized how much people talk about dirty diapers.....or how interesting you would find those conversations to be. 
6. Manicures/Pedicures.  Oh wait, wrong list.  That was BEFORE I was a new mom.  I don't know what mani/pedis are anymore.  ;)
7. Smart Phones are the greatest invention ever!  When it's the middle of the night and you're nursing your infant in bed while your husband is sleeping you need to be quiet so pulling out the trusty iPhone to entertain you and let you catch up on what the rest of the world is doing rocks.  Same goes for text messaging.  I rarely talk on the phone when I'm around Hannah.  Also, half of Hannah's pictures seem to be from my phone. 
8. It takes a minimum of 1.5 hours to get out of the house now.  In the beginning it was a minimum of 2 hours so I'm happy with the improvement.  
9. You realize even more that you made the best decision by choosing the man you married.
10. Your heart grows bigger than you ever knew possible for your sweet baby. 

Have a great weekend!

Little Fishy

Last Monday Hannah started her first Mommy & Me swim class!  I was so excited about her getting into the pool and having fun splashing and kicking around in the pool.  She LOVED it!!!  And yes, we are those parents who both show up to every class and take pictures and videos the entire time.  Ha!

Little cutie

I just can't handle the cuteness!

Kicking like a big girl!

You think she loved getting pool water poured over her head??

Happiness

SO cute.

Listening intently to the instructor

Getting dunked for the first time!  This picture makes me laugh, who do you think was more entertained by that??  Ha!

Swimming wears our sweet girl out!

The next class it was Daddy's turn in the water!  Hannah was super excited :)

So sweet.

Fun times

Later that night Hannah and her Daddy were sleepy from all the fun they had

LOVE!