Photo Challenge: Eyes

{Miss Lily at 7 months old. Love those baby blues... and the drool}

Wordless{ish} Wednesday: Good Day Sunshine

{A summertime walk with Nani and Papa}

Linking up for Wordless Wednesday with The Paper Mama, A Little King and I, 5 Minutes for Mom, Parenting By Dummies, Project Alicia, Supermom, And Then She Snapped, Live and Love Out Loud, and Jenni from the Blog.

An Island Wedding

{I'm guest posting today over at the ever lovely Mama and the Dudes. If you haven't already, check out her blog because she is hilarious and has TWO adorable babies. What more do you need? I'm giving my number one tip for traveling with a baby. It may not be what you think. Go! Read it! No wait, read this, then read that! Or read that then come back here! I'm confused.}

Get ready for another wedding photopalooza! This was wedding number 6 of the 7 weddings we are attending this summer. See weddings 3 (San Fran), 4 (McCall, ID), and 5 (Arlington, WA).

Each wedding has been beautiful and unique. This weekend was no exception.

Orcas Island, WA

A quick two hour drive north, drop the car, hop a ferry and pray one of your friends will pick you up on the other side.

Our trip was short, but packed with wonderful people and heartfelt celebrations.

The bride asked us to sing with her as part of her vows, which meant we needed to start the day with a little champagne. (It sounded great by the way... we were surprised too).

The evening ended with dancing until our shoes came off. Who says you can't rock out to Journey in your wedding dress?

 

  

Oh, you can't survive going another day without a picture of Lily? I thought you'd never ask!

 

{Love Monkey says Mama needs a new camera}

My Week in iPhone Pics: Tiny Toms!

 1. Fascinated by the ceiling fans at Red Robin 2. Chilling in Nani's Kitchen 3. "Folding" laundry 4. Ryan made me ride the bus home (that's not my bus)

5. Almost reached the sky 6. Just reading Yertle the Turtle 7. TINY TOMS!! From Auntie Em 8. Sometimes you fall in a basket

9. Stuck in the couch 10. Baby blindfold 11. Just another day at the office 12. Smiley windblown girl

Girls with Curls

Her hair is crazy. She gets that from me. It is the first thing people say about her: "I love her curls!"

I just hope she loves her curls a lot sooner than I loved mine.

Here is the issue...she has these two extra special curls. They hang down behind her ears a good two inches.

I know eventually I will have to cut them, but I just can't bring myself to do it. A haircut means she isn't a baby anymore and I am not ready for that!

What do you think? To cut or not to cut? I know I can keep them in her baby book (is that creepy?), but they are pretty hilariously adorable attached to her head.

Wordless{ish} Wednesday: Kissing Safari

{The elusive baby kiss has never been captured in the wild.}

Linking up for Wordless Wednesday with The Paper Mama, A Little King and I, 5 Minutes for Mom, Parenting By Dummies, Project Alicia, Supermom, And Then She Snapped, Live and Love Out Loud, and Jenni from the Blog.

15 Months Old

15 months! A year and a quarter!? How is this happening so quickly?? Here is what Miss Lillian is up to these days:

 

Walking everywhere. All she wants to do is walk walk walk. She still needs to pull up on things to get to standing before she can walk, but then she is off without looking back. Without looking down either, which causes a lot of tripping over toys.

She likes to carry things while she walk which probably isn’t the safest thing with so many tumbles. Usually her milk or water, or more recently, Daddy’s DVD he left sitting out (she likes terrible Kung-Fu apparently).

Outside is the place to be for this kid and luckily we have had some great weather this past week. Now that she is walking, she loves hanging around the older neighbor kids at the park. They just love her and all the attention makes her feel pretty important. 

Meal times are starting to go better. For awhile there she would pretty much throw all her food on the ground so we ended up just feeding it to her (rather than letting her feed herself) or letting her get out of the high chair and run around while we periodically popped bits of food in her mouth. Now she is more content to sit with us while we eat and feed herself. I am trying to get into the habit of just feeding her what we eat so she can try more things. That just means I need to step up my cooking (or lack thereof). Luckily we eat with my parents at least three nights a week and my mom is a great cook.

 

She is very chatty. If you ask her to say please before giving her something she wants she (usually) says it and then we melt into giant blobs of gooey baby love.

 

She is so snuggly! She never wanted to sit still before, but now she will climb into your lap, lay her head on your shoulder and give lots of good quality cuddles. And REAL hugs, like two arms over the shoulders, pulling in close to you kind of hugs!

She will also walk by and bend down to kiss you right on the lips. No more open mouth, just tiny pursed lips. Perfection.

She is transitioning from two naps down to one, which I am kind of happy about. It will be easier to go out during the day and it is also easier to get her down at night. Actually, the last two nights she has fallen asleep nursing (we are down to just nursing before bed). I love when she falls asleep nursing because then I can put her up on my shoulder and snuggle her heavy sleepy body before I put her in her crib. Last night she drooled on my shoulder while she slept and when I got downstairs I chased Ryan around the living room trying to wipe it on him. Are we really old enough to have children?

She has also learned to stick out her tongue (thanks Auntie Em) and has started doing these exaggerated slow blinks. We aren't sure what the blinks are about yet, but it is pretty cute.

There is just so much going on in her brain and I know it must be really frustrating to understand so much and not have the ability to fully communicate yet. It is kind of like dropping me in the middle of Paris. My 7 years of French would allow me to get the gist of what is happening around me, but my complete disregard for keeping it up over the past 10(!) years would make me virtually mute. Actually, why don't you drop me in Paris, just to see if it is the same. ;)     

                                                                

I love her so very very much and I am looking forward to all of the new and exciting things we have in store. It really is so fun to see her develop into this sweet, loving, opinionated little girl. I hope the next 15 months don't go by so quickly.