Lily's 51st Week (2/15/10 – 2/21/10)

After work on Monday we went grocery shopping at our local Kroger. This is one of Lily’s favorite places on earth. They have a ‘claw’ machine right where you get your cart. Lily always squeals and kicks her feet with excitement as soon as she sees it. She loves to point at all of the stuffed animals inside. We are not looking forward to the day she learns that if you waste enough time and money, you can get one of the stuffed animals out of the machine! She loves to look around at everything in the store, especially all of the balloons. Her favorite aisle is the holiday aisle. On Monday, it was full of clearance Valentine’s stuff. To her delight, there were a ton of stuffed animals. She made us hand her each one of them to hug then hand back. She is such a little sweetie. On a return trip later in the week, they had replaced the clearance Valentine’s items with Easter items. She then had to hug all of the Easter-themed stuffed animals. I bought her an adorable giant stuffed chick as a prop for her Easter pictures. She absolutely loves it and spent most of the week carrying it around with her. This is quite impressive as it is awkwardly big and heavy for a little girl like her. She is so darn strong. She kept throwing it down and body slamming it like she does to her stuffed kitty but it is so big that she would end up bouncing right off of it. It was a ton of fun for her but is an accident waiting to happen. I don’t want her getting injured at all but especially not before her one year portraits!

When we picked Lily up from Kirsten’s on Tuesday, she didn’t want to put her coat on or get in her carseat to leave so she started vigorously shaking her head ‘no’ for the first time. I’ve heard from a lot of people that they loved every new word that their children said until they learned the word ‘no’. Lily isn’t saying the word yet but she definitely started using head shaking to get her point across- refusing food that she doesn’t want, diaper changes, bed time, etc. Sometimes it is helpful but sometimes it is a pain in the butt. Tuesday was also Rachel’s 12th birthday! We tried to call her home and cell phone multiple times and left a few messages but never heard back from her.

Lily was not quite herself for Kirsten on Wednesday and was very clingy. She was fine for us at home, though. When we give Lily her bath, Paul always gets the bath ready while I strip her down on the changing table. I then put her down on the floor and Paul calls her name. She then takes off crawling as fast as lightning to the bathroom, her naked little butt shaking like crazy. I finally got some pictures of the event on Wednesday evening but won’t post them here as there are too many sickos out in cyberspace. The gate at the bottom of the stairs hadn’t closed properly when we went upstairs so Amber came up and was meowing at the gate at the top of the stairs. Lily stopped at the gate to stand up and say hi to her and while I was taking pictures of Lily petting Amber through the gate, Lily peed all over the carpet. Nice! We laughed about it, though. Before bed, we were finally able to get a hold of Rachel on the phone to wish her a happy belated birthday and make sure that she got our present in the mail. Lily slept horribly that night. She kept waking up every 15 minutes crying. Therefore, Paul and I didn’t get much sleep either. We were all exhausted on Thursday morning. Her restless night combined with her off behavior during the day had me worried that she was getting sick again but she didn't display any other symptoms for the rest of the week.

We went to Lapeer for Ally’s 4th birthday party on Saturday. It was fun. Lily didn’t get overwhelmed by all of the little kids running around but didn’t want to play with them at first. Instead, she was very interested in playing by herself with all the new wonderful toys in Ally’s room. After the pandemonium of present time, when the kids were all playing on the floor, Lily decided that she wanted to join them which was very cute. After the party, we stopped at my parents’ house to visit with my mom. My dad was out of town for the weekend at an American Legion conference. We stayed fairly late and had a nice visit.

Lily is such an expert walker now. She can stop and stand still for long periods of time. She can even throw her head back to have a long drink from her sippy cup while still maintaining her balance. She bends over to pick up toys and can squat down for extended periods of time.

Lily is really into books now. Before, she really liked to use them as chew toys. Now she loves to look at the pages. Her favorite books are touch and feel board books. She likes to turn the pages and does so when I ask her to. In her very favorite book, Puppy Dog’s Special Friends, she likes to pet the bunny’s soft fur and always hugs the page with the kitty on it after she feels its rough tongue. This is the same book that I posted a picture of my mom reading to her last week. I also posted a picture of me reading it to her below.

Here are some pictures from this week.

This Tootsie Roll would taste a lot better if mommy would take off the wrapper for me:

Passed out on the couch on Monday evening:

Lily playing with Tad’s Counting Farm on Tuesday. She loves this interactive electronic book:

Lily and I reading her favorite book:

My happy, splashy bathing beauty. Lily loves to toss all of her bath toys out of the tub then collects them to do it all over again:

Brushing Lily’s teeth. I love this hooded towel:

I want to do it:

Get this hood off of me:

Crazy post-bath hair:

AAH! It dried that way:

Lily playing with her two favorite stuffed animals- chick and kitty:

She kept carrying them around the living room which is no small feat as the chick is quite awkward and heavy for her:

My gorgeous little girl sleeping in the car on the way to Ally’s birthday party on Saturday:

Lily loved the toys in Ally’s room:

The following picture of Lily with Ally’s rocking horse in the sunbeam reminds me of an old photo of myself from when I was approximately 16 months old:

Ally getting the candles ready on her Dora cake. Funny, I always thought that I would have a daughter that looked like Dora. Boy, was I wrong:

She started to blow out the candles while we were still singing ‘Happy Birthday’ so Grant had to block her:

Make a wish, Ally:

Lily playing with Carol, Ally, Carol’s friend, and her daughter:

Lily showing off her walking skills for my mom at my parent’s house Saturday evening. She always has to have something in both hands so it’s a good thing that she rarely falls down anymore: