First Birthday

We recently celebrated Elizabeth's first birthday. Grammy and Papaw Cline were here for Thanksgiving and we had a little "party" for Elizabeth. Some how it seems that she knew that she should get excited when opening her gifts!

Elizabeth continues to amaze and entertain us. We just can't get over how smart she is. She pretty much understands everything that you say. Her verbal vocabulary consists of: hi, kitty, Mama, Dada, hello (when she's pretending to answer a phone), tree, and thank you. (I think that's it!)

She plays very well by herself. One of her most recent favorite things to do is to put ornaments on the Christmas tree. We have soft/plush/non-breakable ornaments toward the bottom of the tree. She takes them off and then puts them back on by setting them on a branch and hoping they stick. She also likes to get the real telephone and press the numbers. We're waiting for a phone bill that says that she's called Brazil or something. Elizabeth likes to give the kitty hugs (sometimes the kitty doesn't mind). She also likes to throw objects through the cat door that leads to the basement. Whenever I go to the basement where our washer and dryer are, she will sit and look through the cat door at me...it's so funny!

Our little piggy eats anything (and everything). She seems to have a hollow leg these days. She no longer gets bottles during the day--only one bottle at night. She's not the best sleeper in the world, but she's better than she was at one time.

She goes around saying "hi" over and over when she sees you. She puckers up when she gives kisses now, but she's a little stingy with the kisses at times! If you hand her a tissue and tell her to blow her nose, she puts it up to her nose and makes a blowing noise through her mouth. It's pretty funny!

At this moment, she's got the TV remote and is pressing the buttons and pointing it at the ceiling fan! I'm not sure where she got that idea from, but it didn't work. I just asked her if she was hungry and she went running to her high chair! Got to go!!

Fall Fun

Sorry it's been so long since we've posted anything. I've been quite busy with work and my administration internship. Elizabeth is growing up fast! She makes us laugh all the time with the things she does. We've done many fun things with her this fall. We took her to the county fair where she got to see all the animals and even pet a couple. She just finished swim lessons at the indoor pool. Mommy and Daddy really liked swim lessons because they wore her out and she slept very well those nights! She does not like her face to go underwater and she lets you know that she's angry if you put her under! We hope to go to the pumpkin patch sometime this weekend.

Elizabeth eats just about anything. She walks/runs around everywhere and it seems that she would rather play with anything she's not supposed to play with than her toys! In fact, just now I was uploading some photos from the camera and she pulled the camera off the desk, interrupting the process. She's also chewing some address labels (everybody can use a little extra fiber, I guess).

Elizabeth is going to be a pumpkin for Halloween. We'll probably make our rounds to a few neighbor friends and grandma's house. New pictures are here!

Walking!

We knew she'd be an early walker--Jason walked at 8 1/2 months and she's always been very strong. Yesterday, she took about 4 steps. Today, she took about 7 or 8 steps at a time. Unfortunately, along with this new milestone, she has also learned to climb. She's been climbing up Grandma and Papa's fireplace step. However, she has no concept of the step going down, so we have to be right on top of her all the time.

As always, she's a lot of fun! We'll post pictures when we can!

A Summer of Fun

Although my goal was to update our blog more frequently this summer, it didn't seem to happen! We did have quite a busy summer and it went very fast. Elizabeth and I joined Grandma and Papa Updegrave and Grandmama for a vacation in VA Beach at the end of July. Elizabeth especially loved swimming in the pool at the hotel. She kicks her legs and paddles her arms when you say "kick, kick, kick". She had fun relaxing and getting into everything. Less than a week later, we met up with Grammy and Papaw Cline in Myrtle Beach. Elizabeth's cousins, Olivia and Lauren, were there too. The three of them had a good time together. Olivia and Lauren enjoyed "helping" with Elizabeth, including feeding her, changing her diapers (well they didn't exactly change them, but they watched), and helping her "walk". When cousin Lauren (4 yrs. old) fed her, she tended to shove the spoon all the way back in Elizabeth's throat! She also liked to hold Elizabeth. Unfortunately, Elizabeth is quite squirmy most of the time and "holding" her meant holding her down (as you'll see in some of their pictures).

Elizabeth says "hi", "daddy", "kitty", and we think she actually said "organic" in the grocery store last week! Sometimes she just "talks" and we're not sure if she's preaching or cussing us out (arms and hands go flying and she tends to get a serious look on her face).

She'll be walking soon, but we're not encouraging it too much! More to come....

What were we thinking???

We wanted her to crawl? We encouraged her to crawl? What were we thinking? Imagine this: There's a cute little baby sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by lots of cool toys--some that sing, some that light up, some that are made of wood, and all with lots of colors. You would think that this cute little baby would be entertained by all these neat, expensive toys, right? What does she actually want to play with? The gum wrapper that fell out of daddy's pocket.

She's keeping us busy! We had her pictures taken this week at Picture People.
go to http://smilestore.picturepeople.com

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Enjoy!

Lots of New Tricks!

New tricks in the past couple of weeks include:

* waving bye-bye (grandma-ma taught her)
* clapping (favorite song is “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”
* singing in the car
* kicking while she’s swinging
* eating finger food
* writing her first name (just kidding)
* blowing raspberries with a mouth full of food

We're glad to have daddy back home (he was out of town for work last week). Mommy already knows what she wants for Christmas--a full night's sleep, coupled with sleeping in until about 7:30. Keep an eye out for that in the stores, I hear it can be hard to come by!

A Summer of Firsts

The past few weeks have been full of firsts for Elizabeth. We’ve found that, unlike some babies, she seems to just take in any new experiences and does not let new things scare her. Our neighborhood has a beach and playground close to our house. Elizabeth sat in the sand in her bathing suit for the first time. As she sat in the sand and felt around a little, mommy started “burying” her legs. Several other kids were around and one little girl asked if she could help me. Before we knew it there were 4 or 5 other kids helping to “bury” Elizabeth up to her waist. She ate it up! (Unfortunately, I mean that literally and figuratively—there were several mouthfuls of sand ingested that day.) She also sat in the water and enjoyed it. She enjoys the baby swing at the playground, too.

Friday night, we all went to a minor league baseball game in Waldorf. Elizabeth wasn’t too interested in the baseball game, but had fun listening to Uncle Cody’s iPod and eating a snowcone (we held the syrup—just shaved ice). After the game, there were fireworks. We were curious as to how she’d react to them—she did fine.

Elizabeth has also recently begun to eat Cheerios. Her favorite thing to do with them is to have Mommy throw them at Luther (grandma and grandpa’s dog). She cracks up laughing every time Luther catches a Cheerio in his mouth! She has developed a sudden interest in Luther as she stands at the door of his kennel and talks to him. He’s not sure what to think about her, but he’s just keeping a low profile.

Finally, our little busy-body is crawling—well, kind of. I guess you could call it crawling. She gets up on her hands and knees and ends up moving forward, somehow. I have a feeling that in the next couple of days I’ll be regretting ever trying to get her to crawl.