10 months!

This month just zipped by. I’m a little late posting again, but eh. That means this post is a full month from last months late post. It fits my life trend. Libby is for sure showing her own little personality & preferences more & more, which is making Mommy brace herself more & more for toddler-dom.

The big news this month is Libby is officially a crawler!

All over the place. She can do the all fours thing, but her preferred method is the Quasimodo-style with her right leg up on her foot & just dragging along her left leg. Poor little left leg is always rug-burnt, I’ve started putting aloe on it! She’s funny though, in new places she still is hesitant to just start crawling, she likes to sit & scope out the place, then decide.

She also likes Mommy to come with her on her first adventure to new territory, which she indicates by pointing to me, then pointing to where she wants to go, crawling a little towards the place, stopping pointing to me & then place again… etc. If after a few of these little communications I get up & go to the place, she’ll crawl the rest of the way there. If I don’t, she crawls back to me, or picks a different already-explored place to crawl to. She’s also been experimenting a lot with getting up on her feet on her own – lots of “down dog” poses.

This month we also took little swim lessons at the YMCA, which was fun, and definitely got her more used to the big swimming pool, but not super useful as far as getting her to do much. Well, hey, she does kick & splash more now & seems to connect kicking with going places in the water. Eh, really it was just something to do – I think we’ll probably have to take the exact same class next year.

Solid food eating is coming right along – Mommy needs to probably start just giving her finger foods at meals to encourage it more.

It’s funny, her hand-eye coordination to get the food in her mouth seems so much more effective at lunch than at breakfast, but then again so is mine. Oh my gosh, and we’ve started liking puffs. I heard a long time ago from one mommy or another that puffs are “like baby crack” and that is no joke. I don’t really understand how apple juice sweetened rice cereal puffs are so seemingly addictive. I’m not talking sugar cereal sweetened, that I could get – these things taste like tiny bits of plain rice cake that someone broke into a bowl which at some point held some apple slices. They come in different flavors, but seriously, they all taste practically the same. She loves them though. Now that she’s got the hang of the whole from-fingers-to-mouth action, she stuffs them in her face like a little chubby bunny.

She still speaks “da” as our cousin Pat Goodwin put it (one year old Olive is his & Marie’s daughter who also speaks the “da” language), which means most things are dat, dis, da, di, die, do… Not to say we don’t ever hear other consonants – calling for Mommy is “nanana” and every now & again she’ll pop out with other sounds, but mostly she’s digging the “d.” Most of my day consists of naming things she has pointed at and inquired “dis?” or trying to figure out what it is she wants when she insists “dat!” over and over again while pointing.

In line with her affection for the letter “d” sound and her new Down Dog yoga position skill, she is a little obsessed with dogs at the moment. Our Dolly Parton book this month was “Dog Wants to Play” and she LOVES it. Brian & I have read it so many times we can recite it from memory. She gets super excited every time we meet a dog out, and last time we were over at the Kraski’s she chased their little chihuahua around the living room. I am not really what most people would consider a “dog person” but it’s so cute it has even me thinking “awww we should get her a puppy!” Luckily, what’s left of my practical side knows this is a terrible idea, so we have not brought home any puppies.

Also this month, we attended few parties!

Lochlan’s first birthday party…

…a pool party in Casandra & Everly’s neighborhood…

…and the July 4th celebration at Kirsty & Gary’s on the farm in Iowa!

Libby is still a pretty good road-tripper, although driving Thursday & Friday to get to Omaha, then driving 45min to a party in Iowa on Saturday, getting back to Omaha at 11:30p, then getting up & driving Sunday & Monday to get Brian back to work by Tuesday was hard on her. And us. Plus all the fireworks. Sleep schedule is completely shot. But we had a really great time seeing family!! Next year we just need to plan better so we can take more days, it would have been more satisfying to have been able to have a longer visit.

(I know you’re thinking: Why don’t you ever just fly to Omaha? Nobody has a direct from Nashville to Omaha, so by the time you do the airport thing with a layover and either rent or borrow a car because gotta have a car in Omaha… ug, may as well have driven. And honestly, either option is going to mess up the sleep schedule & I love a good road trip & generally dislike airports. Chances of discovering something cool on a road trip are so much higher. Which we did – we found this small town froyo/coffee shop & a delicious food truckish place in KC… But all this blah blah belongs in a travel lifestyle blog, which I am not writing… so back to the baby stuff…)

I have continued to go to yoga & wrappers meet-ups and I even was invited to lunch with a group of yoga moms awhile back! Then I got invited to hike & now I have a new group of stay-at-home mommy friends!

It’s really nice to have women to meet up with for play-date stuff. Our 1500sq. ft. house gets pretty claustrophobia-inducing and Libby gets bored, and I get bored, and it’s nice to have people to talk to who relate to framing your whole life around a nap schedule (or lack of one! ug).

And last but not least… Lisa & Ben Wank moved back to Nashville with their son Bryson!! Yay!

Lisa is one of my best friends from high school and we are excited for Libby & Bryson to be buddies! Audrey, another best friend from high school who lives in Nashville, just had her second baby girl, so Bryson will be quite the ladies man in our little crew 😉

This slideshow requires JavaScript.