9 months

It's hard to believe my baby girl has turned 9 months. 9 MONTHS! She's been crawling for awhile (and standing up on just about everything) but I thought I'd share this video of her first crawling anyway. And of course you'll notice that big brother had to show her how it's done.

And M isn't the only one growing up. I took my little man to his first dentist visit. He did great and the staff was fabulous. N was rewarded with a token to get a bouncy ball at the end of the visit. Wish I got a token at the end of my dentist visits.

As if we didn't have enough things going on lately, we decided to add cloth diapering to the mix. We've been at it for a good month now and I have to say, I love it. I love the thought of it saving money, being good for the environment and good for M. I found a great trial program that allows you to try a variety of styles for 21 days and if you don't like them, you can return them for a refund. We figured we'll continue it as long as it continues to work for us.

This little "thing" ended up in our house this week. It's the second one that I've found and it gives me the creeps. Don't worry, I trapped it under a bowl, shrieked a little, put our thin cutting board under it and carried it outside to freedom.

The hot summer days seem like they're going on forever lately. We've been having to find lots of interesting things to do inside. How much longer does summer last again???

My monthly update

I'm calling this post my monthly update because, quite frankly, that seems to be how it's going this summer and I figured I might as well own it.

At the end of June, Nana came for a visit. In the beginning of her visit N went around calling her "Bones." It was pretty hilarious (to every one other than Nana). I'm actually chuckling even as I write this. We have no idea where the name came from but if you pointed to her and asked him who she was, he'd proudly smile and say, "Bones!" Well, Nana came up with the "Nana, Nana bo-Nana" rhyming song to help remedy the situation. It seems he's straightened out for now...

While my mom was here we made a visit to Ikea to pick up an elephant she knew was there. We adopted two of them. And what better way to welcome a new friend into your home then to read the story of Babar about hunters killing his mother. Nice.

With the help of pure smarts and a youtube video, we made M a little tutu. Well, really my mom made the tutu while I sat and watched reruns of Gilmore Girls.

She has the ballerina pose down already.

I don't even know what to say? I think my first reaction was to pull him out of there and tell him it is for babies and not big boys. My actual reaction was to laugh and go grab my camera to take a picture.

This was M's reaction when I finally caught her crawling. I knew she had been doing it for a day or so because she would be several feet from where I had last sat her.

I'm actually glad that she has started crawling. Before she would just fuss trying to move to where she wanted to go. Now all she wants to do is stand up and walk so it will be interesting to see how soon she reaches the next stage.

Have I mentioned that the littlest one has no interest in infant toys. None. She wants to play with everything her big brother is playing with, which means lots of fun for mama. In a not very well thought out effort, I attempted to help the situation by picking up one of the Early Engineer trains from Thomas & Friends because they're a little bigger for little ones. I made sure to get a girl train of course. This solution worked for about 5 minutes, and she was after his toys again. Sigh.

For the Fourth of July we spent a nice day at home outside. Since the neighborhood pool was filled with party goers, we decided to bring out the backyard pool to help stay cool.

At this point I was wishing we had an adult slide to go splashing in to the pool on. Thankfully we don't have a photo of myself trying to go down this slide to show N how much fun it was. Let's just say my hips were a little wider than this kiddie slide was.

Now that M has started crawling, N has decided she is fair game to pick on. I'm thankful they still do play nicely together most of the time.

Awww...sibling love.

Is this too big to put in my mouth?

This year I made what will be our traditional Fourth of July cake. Don't look closely as it is far from accurate. I kept wondering why the photos of other people's flag cakes didn't have the blueberries going way past the halfway mark on the cake, but mine did. And I wondered why I couldn't get the correct number on stripes without running out of room for the strawberries. Then I counted the stars and stripes in the photo for the recipe and realized...they didn't try to be accurate. They just tried to make it cute. Next year, I might do the same.

We call her "The destroyer." N just cries.

Our little drool bug. She now has 4 teeth, and is 8.5 months old.

I am excited to have finally carved out some time (even if it was late at night) to get some sewing in and make my first apron knot dress for M. I tried it on her this morning and it fit perfectly! I am hoping to use it for her 9 month photos that we'll take at the end of the month.

I learned many, many lessons while making this. One is to take the photo of the dress BEFORE you try it on and get drool all over it. And on my wish list for future sewing projects will be a buttonhole foot and a ruffler foot for my machine. Although I was proud of myself to make do with what I had. I just think they may make my work easier and cleaner the next time around.

Wow, is anyone else on picture overload???