First Steps

Lila took a step all by herself today. She 'll be 9 months on Sunday. She is pretty good at balancing, but usually she'll just stand there for a minute and then sit down and crawl. I guess because she knows it is faster. Today I was helping her walk by holding one hand and I let go and she stood there for a minute and then took one step forward before she fell. I tried again and she did it one more time. Yea! She has been walking holding onto furniture for awhile now, but I don't think she says any benefit in walking alone yet. She still thinks crawling is much faster. Either way she is really cute, but a terror!

-An old but cute picture-
(Funny how much longer her hair has gotten. I think this was in Sept.)

Sunday Mornings in December --Dec. 7th

I've decided to take a family picture in front of the tree each Sunday morning in December. Just because, no special reason. (Assuming we are ready early enough to have time to take a picture. So far , so good.)

This is the picture I wanted to use, but it turned out blurry. I have no idea why. We set the camera up and turned on the timer, just like with the other picture and this is how it turned out. Oh well, I just liked how we were sitting better and how it was a little closer.

So, here we are in focus, and just slightly off center. That's what you get with the camera on the piano bench, and 2 minutes to get a picture of 5 people.

Nana

We've had Nana over for dinner a couple of times in the past month. (She's redoing her kitchen and adding a family room on to her house, and it is a huge project with a lot of mess involved). Anyway, the kids have been so excited. They love spending time with her. My kids are 3 of 13 1/2 grand kids on Ryan's side of the family, and it can be hard to get alone time with her with that many cousins around. They love having her over b/c they get her all to themselves.

Playing swords with swords and geo-trax tracks.

Ring Around the Rosie (the extra super fast version)

Sunny and Nana Blair

Christmas Decorating

These are their "excited" faces!

Funny story about our tree. We bought it when we lived in a small duplex. It seemed so huge back then. When we pulled it out last year we were amazed at how small it was in our living room. We jokingly called it our Charlie Brown tree. Well, amazingly enough, it has managed to shrink yet again. It still looks really small in our bay window underneath the vaulted ceilings, but what's even more disturbing is that Jackson can almost reach the top.

The kids busy decorating.

Because they love to pose.

Jackson was in charge of setting up the decorations on the table. He did a great job. The snowman is the kids favorite decoration. He dances and sings songs. Aunt Terry gave him to us a couple years ago.

Can you see how all the ornaments are on the bottom third of the tree? Too cute. I told them they could spread them out and they wanted it like this. Looks good to me!

Bonding Over The Playstation

Jackson and Lila started out Thanksgiving Day with a good ole' game of PlayStation football. They were both so into it. Jax was in a NO PICTURE mode , if you couldn't tell.

I know I'm biased, but she is so darn cute. Love my feet in the picture :(

Look at the Mohawk on that kid. He's usually not allowed to wear it like that since it is so long, but since it was a holiday we let him.

"Do I want to play with it, or eat it???"

More Turkey Day pics to come. They are on my Dad's computer and I haven't gotten them yet, but we had the best day. We played Thanksgiving Bingo, complete with awesome prizes (thanks Mimi), and then we learned how to jump rope with our own ropes made by Bear. Finally we played some hopscotch and drew a giant caterpillar on the sidewalk. So fun.

Serious Bragging Ahead!!!

Okay, since you've been warned, here it goes...


Jackson got his first report card today. I expected it would be great, and it is.

Here is the way they grade them:

Y= Yes, mastery

P= Partial mastery

N= Needs Support

The categories are: Reading, Learning Habits, Math, Writing, & Content. There are 31 different areas in these categories. Jackson got a Y in every one!!!

Mrs. Chapman wrote "Jackson is such a hard worker! He has made great improvements in both reading and writing since the beginning of the year. He is working on becoming a confident reader! I am so happy to have him in my class."

We are so proud of our big boy. I think especially b/c he didn't even begin talking until he was three, and up until recently it was very hard to understand his speech. He has come so far in such a short time. He loves school and his friends and teachers so much. It has been such a wonderful experience for him.

p.s. Some of you might remember that I did not get a perfect kindergarten report card, and I still remember it to this day. I got a "U" (meaning, unsatisfactory) in cutting, and I'm still a bad cutter to this day! I think it has something to do with lack of patience :)

It Finally Happened

Long story short: My baby fell down the stairs.


Long story: I knew I was going to have problems with Lila and these stupid stairs. She's been going up them really well for about 2 weeks (we don't usually let her though), but has no concept of down yet. So today I was in her room changing her diaper and I needed to take it downstairs and rinse it out. Sunny was in there with her and was feeding her a bottle, so I pushed the door mostly shut and told Sunny to watch her and I'd be right back.

Next thing I hear is Lila yelling, not like she was hurt, just talking, but it sounded way to close for comfort. I ran out of the laundry room and up the first flight of stairs and there Lila is on the stairs. She had come down 5 of the 8 and was on her belly with her head facing down. I grabbed her and she was fine, actually she was happy because she likes to think she is such a big girl with those stairs.

I came up to find Sunny and she was in the kitchen. She just started crying and said she was sorry that she let Lila out. I told her it wasn't her fault. She isn't in charge of Lila, Mommy is, and I should have put a gate up in the hallway. It took her a minute to calm down, but she did b/c she could see Lila was fine.

In conclusion, I disliked the stairs yesterday, today I detest them. I've asked a couple people what to do, and it seems like most people don't use gates. I just can't figure this out. I feel like I can't leave her down stairs b/c she'll come up, and even if I do put the gate up on the first stair, she climbs up the gate and gets stuck. If I'm upstairs I have to put a gate in the hallway and shut all the doors of the rooms I don't want her in, and then she gets bored and cries after 5 minutes. Please tell me it gets easier soon. I'm afraid we're in for a long few months of this before she is able to go down safely.