Abby - 9 months

Dearest Abigail,

Well, little girl, it's been nine months!  It's crazy to think that now you have been alive for longer than you were in my belly.  And you are only going to get bigger. You have grown so much these past nine months and it amazes me every day to see you and your smiles and adorable personality and think that less than a year ago you weren't in our lives yet!

Overall this has been such a fun month. You can officially crawl now which we are both so happy about. I've decided I don't know why people say they don't look forward to having a mobile baby.  It's so great! You are much much happier being able to move on your own and I will take a happier baby any day.  You don't have to scream when I move away, you can just follow (though I admit, sometimes you follow and scream). You don't seem to ever get bored crawling around and exploring every corner of the house over and over again. It seems like it is new to you each time with how excited you get.  Even more than crawling you love walking along furniture, walls, toys, or whatever you can get to work for you. You still very frequently ask for Mommy's hands so you can walk around the room.

Along with becoming more mobile, you have perfected your ability to pull yourself up to standing on pretty much anything and hardly fall down. You can purposefully go from standing down to crawling, you can go from crawling to sitting, and you very easily change directions while crawling.  It's so fun to watch you.

You love pulling yourself up on the bookcase where all your books are and then pulling them all down. You absolutely love playing peek-a-boo and riding on Dad's shoulders. You do not like your door jumper. At all. Good thing we got it for free. You think the vacuum cleaner is fascinating.  You are so bouncy when you get happy and excited. You do cute little dances with the music at your little activity table. You have the most adorable toothy smile. You are just too cute.

You are finally starting to get some hair too! And it is coming in blonde. You still have the dark little tail in the back of your head that is the last remnant of your newborn hair, but the rest is all blonde. Your eyes have turned into such a pretty color, not brown, maybe hazel-ish?

You still love to talk and jabber away.  And it is still da-da-da-da constantly.  When you are cruising around you talk softly to yourself as though you were chanting. It is adorable.

You love meal-times, though you make the funniest noises the whole time. You are getting so much better at picking up foods of all sizes and have tried pretty much everything. Today at lunch we had some millet and you surprised me with how well you were able to pick it up. We are teaching you to drink from a cup (hoping to skip the sippy cup), which is going really well.  Though sometimes you decide the cup is just a place to rinse your hands off. 

This month has also brought the more unwelcome increase of your separation anxiety. It amazes me how little it takes for you to get so upset, me turning my back sometimes sets you off. And I think it is the reason your sleep has become worse. That and your new ability in the past couple of weeks of standing up in your crib. I leave, you get super upset, you stand yourself up and it just seems to make you even more awake and you cry even more. You used to go down so easily for naps, but this past week you've had more than one day that you never did fall asleep, even with me leaving you in there for a while.  In fact, right now you are crying instead of taking your morning nap. Baby girl, why do you have to do this? Your sleep at night has also gotten more difficult. You have still been waking up twice per night, but always go right back to sleep after me feeding you. But you have started doing the same thing that you are doing at nap time when I put you back down. We've got to figure something out! You and us both need our sleep!  Maybe you just need some more loving at nap times and night time.

And we sure do love you. So very much. Thank you for the added joy and happiness you have brought into our lives.

I love you.

Your Mamma

And because we have too many cute pictures to choose from, here are some more from this past month!

Abby kissing her twin in the mirror. 

Crawling!

Abby has been very close to crawling for a few weeks now, moving herself around with a determination that doesn't always match her speed. It wasn't full out crawling, though.  In the past few days, however, she has got it down!

Here she comes!

It might be about time for some baby proofing...

Our Little Valentine

I love this girl.

Apparently Abby told Eric she would be his valentine, but I'll claim her too. :) 

We had a great Valentine's day.  I completely spaced taking any pictures though.  Eric tried to surprise me by coming home early, but there was traffic so he came right on schedule.  But he came with a flower, so it was okay. We put Abby to bed and enjoyed our Valentine's dinner without baby. So nice! I made a variation on this yummy lasagna recipe (I never make lasagna so it was a treat) with a nice big salad. Good food, amazing company. It was great. And then Abby stayed asleep without a peep for longer than usual, so we were able to enjoy a quiet evening just the two of us.

I love my little family. I am so blessed to be so happy.

Abby - 8 months

Dearest Abby,

Well, pretty girl, you are another month older! 8 months! This has been a really fun month for you. It had a not so fun start though, with you getting sick. Thankfully, you got a very mild case of the cold that hit all of us but it was still heartbreaking to see how hard it was for you to nurse because you had to keep gasping for breath due to your stuffed up nose. That was the first time we have had to deal with that and I am so glad it only lasted a couple days. I had to keep after you with a tissue for a few days though, which you absolutely hated.

You have gotten so much more mobile this month. You still aren't quite full-out crawling but you have been oh so close for a couple weeks now.  You can go a step or too but then just resort to lunging yourself forward and then going back up on your hands and knees to move around. Sometimes you go from hands and knees to straight legs with your cute little bum high in the air which looks awfully funny. You really just want to be walking though.  Most of the time you move around by holding your hand up to me and when I offer you my finger, you pull yourself up to standing and then proceed to take some steps, balancing on my finger to wherever it is you want to go. And you want to do this constantly it seems. Or just be standing, you absolutely love this too.

You can stand for a few seconds on your own now! (Sometimes)

I think you have officially developed separation anxiety. I can't even leave the room for a second without you breaking down in tears. This even happens a lot when Daddy is home too. It seems almost impossible for me to get anything done when you are awake now. Because you do this even when I just leave your side (still in same room! - though I think part of this is due to the fact that you are constantly wanting my finger to stand up).  I am trying to still give you independent play time but it is sure hard to do!

Even with this anxiety, we still left you with a non-family member baby-sitter for this first time this month. It was extremely stressful for me because I was so worried as to how you would react. Surprisingly, and thankfully, you did really well!! I think it helped that it was almost bed time so really you were sleeping most of the time.

One change this month was in how we are feeding you. After doing lots of reading on it, we completely switched over to baby-led-weaning. I had heard it mentioned a couple times before but never got around to looking into it before we started solids - wish I had!  It definitely makes so much sense to me and fits right into my huge belief of intuitive eating. I was a little worried that you would have gotten too used to eating purees and from a spoon after 4 weeks of it, and that it would be frustrating since you would not be actually eating as much right away.  But you transitioned really well! I had been really trying to follow your lead with the spoon feeding and you always took the spoon and put in your own mouth which I think helped with the transition. So now you are completely self-feeding and eating regular foods! Love it.

You are still quite the happy, vocal little girl.  Da-da-da is still your sound of choice, but you also make a ba-ba sound, and a tza (something like that) sound. When you are crying a ma-ma sound also comes out. And lots of other random, babbling noises.

You have finally become interested in mirrors and have fun looking at your twin. You love to play peek-a-boo, almost always guaranteed to get a laugh that way. When you are excited or happy you wave you hands back and forth or bounce up and down if you are standing.  We have discovered a love of (or at least interest in) animals. Whenever we come across our neighbors cat you get so excited. I took you to a dog park yesterday in Balboa Park and you absolutely love watching those dogs. A couple even came by to visit you and you got to pet a dog for the first time! Maybe you will start being more interested in the animals at the zoo now.

Abby, I love you so much! You are a beautiful little girl and I thank our Heavenly Father every day that I get to be your mamma.







I love you.

Love, Your Mamma



And some more cute Abby pictures...

  

Back to where it all began

For the first time since we were married there three and a half years ago, Eric and I visited the Los Angeles Temple. We have been wanting to go back ever since we moved to San Diego, but it is just far enough that it isn't a super easy trip to make (and with horrible city traffic added in makes it no fun).  But last weekend, we made it!

It was so great going and thinking back to our wedding day and what an amazing, special, wonderful day it was. We took Abby all around and took lots of pictures of her in all the spots we took wedding pictures. :)

She is already looking to the temple!

The reason we were able to go was this cute little guy.  Our nephew, Mark, was blessed on Sunday and my sister Tamara and her family conveniently live only 20 minutes away from the LA temple.  Worked out great.  

Abby thought Mark was pretty fun.  They are just 6 months apart so they will be great friends!  Here she is attacking his face.  He can't quite fight back yet. 

What a fun day!  Wish we could go more often! 

Our almost mover

Our baby girl is getting so close to crawling!  It is fun to see her get so excited that she can see something she wants and actually get it herself. She is just so cute! Though, on a not so cute note, the same little girl bit her mamma while nursing for the first time yesterday.  Definitely not nice.  And she just gave me the biggest smile and thought she was so funny as I told her no. Oh dear, hopefully that doesn't last long!

Here is a video of her new moves.  The best thing to entice her to come towards us is to tempt her with a cell phone.  She thinks those are the coolest ever.

A trip to the border

Eric had Martin Luther King Day off which was so nice. After a morning of watching inauguration ceremonies, we headed off to spend some time in the amazingly beautiful 70+ degree weather we are having.  We went to Border Field State Park, which we hadn't been to before.  It is right on the California-Mexico border and is a stretch of protected marsh lands and beach. So pretty!  And completely deserted.  Apparently it is not a place too many people know about or go to.

At the border

This was Abby's first time playing in the sand - we are usually holding her hands when we are at the beach. But we let her on her own this time, mostly so we could get some pictures, and she sure got some mouthfuls of sand. She didn't like that too much! She also didn't like it when the water came up faster than we expected and got her quite wet, oops!

Such a nice day!  And except for the part where she got wet, Abby loved it. Got to love summery days in January!