Welcome Back Wednesday!

Today for the most part was a stay at home day. Alison watched her baby video and took a few naps. We played as always and worked on grabbing things, sitting up, standing up, crawling and saying "hi"

Here is a double picture, a cute picture of Alison posing as a throw pillow and you can see the other three family picture I hung up (I promised I would post a picture! of them!). There is a "mommy and me" picture over my side of the bed and a "daddy and me" picture over the hubs side and in the middle a nice picture of the just the two of us.

Sitting up!

Big Smile!

Tummy time!

Alison was so focused on her baby video that I had to take a picture. She looks so small sitting there.

Ok here are close ups of the pictures over our bed so you can actually see them (I took them at an angle to reduce the glare)

Mommy and Me

Mommy and Daddy

Daddy and Me

There are also two pictures of the Mommy and Me and Daddy and Me in a white frame to go in Alison's room but we haven't decided where to hang them yet. I'll post a picture when we do.

This evening we got to go pick up daddy! I had to get Alison out of bed so she is in her pajamas. Daddy's plane was delayed two hours and didn't get in until 7pm.

Alison and I got there early so we went to the park across the street from the airport. I like parking there to wait becuase you can watch all the boats pulling in and out of the bay.

Alison at the park in her pajamas.

We spent most of the time in the car. Alison was so sleepy, luckily we had her singing bear for entertainment.

Who's that?

It's Chris! Welcome home honey!

Look Who's Seven (Seven Months!)

Alison is 7 months old!

Our little girl is 7 months old today! It seems like yesterday I was posting that she was 4 months old. How has she grown you might ask? What has changed since she was 4 months:

-Alison is 16.5 pounds! (Thats a lot more then the 7 pounds 13 oz she waas born with!)

-She can sit up on her own!

-She can grab things and put them in her mouth or just stare at them.

-Lucy (our elderly cat) has decided Alison isn't so bad and gave her an affectionate nudged her with her head.  

-She is laughing harder and more frequently

-Is still 'go go go!'

-Still finds strangers extremly interesting and doesn't mind being held by anyone.

-Has met all her cousins! (TJ, Salem, Jordan and Jude) As well as most of her aunts and uncles and extended family, great-grandparents in Florida, Kentucky and Oklahoma, grandparents, a whole mess of family really.   

-Alison likes to give kisses now, they are very wet and often she will shake her head side to side effectivly covering your entire cheek in baby spit. We love it.

-She can say 'da-da'

-She can say 'ma-ma'

-She babbles, a lot! She loves talking and squeeling and screaming and in general make noise.

-She has sucked on apple, cantaloupe, ate some ice cream (only a small little taste), has had a few little bowls of smooshed banana, baby rice cerial, and I let her suck on a girl scout shortbread cookie (she really liked it). Most of the time I will let her inspect and sometimes taste whatever I am eating. Most of the time she just gets to inspect whatever I am eating. She is very curious about food and loves eating with the spoon.

-She can drink out of a cup, with help from mom of course!

-She still wont take a bottle and has very little interest in pacifiers (she will chew on them).

-She still loves her monkey but now has a runner up for favorite toy in a brown bunny that smells like chocolate that her cousin TJ gave her.

-She is very adept at rolling over and pushing up while on her tummy.

Happy Seven Months Alison! 

  

Welcome Great Uncle Bill to my Followers List!

My great uncle and Alison's great-great uncle Bill is a follower! Thanks for reading my blog! I hope your eyes are doing well and I hope you are enjoying reading about our little family!

Miss You Monday

We got an early start this morning! Chris had another work trip and Alison and I drove daddy to the airport.

Chris getting out at the airport

Of course he couldn't say goodbye without one last "I love you" and kiss to our beautiful daughter.

"Bye Daddy"

We went home and Alison took a nice nap and when she woke up we had an hour before her play date with Mrs. Jessie and her son Grady. Alison has had play dates with Grady before, he is ten weeks younger than Alison and they really seem to like each other. He is Alison's only friend it will be sad when they move on Thursday.

I still can't get over how well Alison is sitting up. It really is amazing to see her progress. I feel so blessed to be there everyday and watch her grow and grow and grow!

playing on the floor with her blocks

sitting up!

Alison likes sitting up and playing

I put the boppy pillow around her becuase even though she is getting better at sitting up, I am still nervious about her tumbling over. Alison doesn't seem to mind having the pillow near.

Grady and his mommy Mrs. Jessie arrive in time for play time!

Alison loves her Grady and from the looks of it Grady seems to like her.

Just in case you didn't notice from the first picture, they are holding hands. They did this on their own and it was really cute to watch them sitting there holding hands.

Playing!

Grady is so mellow and calm, he is a great baby to have around (and so cute!)

Alison ended up taking her nap before Grady had to leave so she wasn't able to say good bye luckily we are planning on going out with them again before they leave.

When Alison woke up she was in a great mood and we were hanging out on the couch playing footsie. I thought it looked so funny my big feet and her little ones, so of course I took a picture.

little feet and tiny toes playing with mommy's much bigger feet. I do love playing with Alison.

First Time in the Nursery

Alison was good most of church but... she did get a little fussy right before the sermon so I took her to the nursery and for the first time left her with the nursery teacher.

Alison's first time being left in the church nursery

Bye Alison mommy loves you! (as you can see she was really upset to see me go....)

Alison and daddy stayed home while I was able to go to Michaels for a big 50% off picture frame sale, I also had a coupon for an extra 15% off my entire purchase and a 40% off coupon for one item. I was so happy and pleased to get picture frames for our beautiful family pictures. 

I already had the picture frame on the left but the one on the right is the new one for our living room

Family portrait (frame on the left)

The newly framed picture of Alison!

I will post pictures of the other framed pictures later, maybe tomorrow.

Before Alison was born I saw in a Pottery Barn Kids catalog a beautiful mobile of white butterflies but then I saw the price $80! Ouch now way were we spending $80 on a mobile. Instead I got those little wooden cut-outs at Michaels ($.25 each with my 15% off coupon!) and a tube of white paint I already had a home. I am going to make Alison the pretty PBK inspired mobile for about $8.

Wooden butterflies with a nice coat of white paint, a few more coats and get the hubs to help me hang them and Ali will have something soothing to look at while she is hanging out in her crib.

The inspiration:

These butterflies are made of paper and are smaller but I think the bigger wooden ones will look just as nice. I think we are just going to hang them individually from the ceiling instead of making it into a traditional mobile. I don't know, we will see how things turn out!

If anyone has any ideas on easy ways to hang these up, let us know. Has to be really sturdy since it will be right above the crib.

Pool Party

Chris' work buddy is moving to his new assingment in a few weeks so him and his family are saying their good bye's. Today they threw a pool party and we were invited!

We didn't swim at the pool party (the kids sure did though! and we got splashed a few times!) Alison enjoyed looking at everyone and had fun watching the other kids swim.

Alison isn't paying attention but Chris sure looks handsome ;)

Everyone liked Alison's visor

The kids swimming

Alison and Mommy

I let Alison eat some cantaloupe, she really seemed to enjoy it.

 Cute little thinker

Chris surprised me on the drive home. I was putting on my sunglasses (they are actually his old one's that were free) and he asked me if I wanted to get new ones. Of course! I have been wanting this specific pair for about a year now but it always seems there is something else we need. Anyways here are the glasses!

so pretty!

The Floss Box

Rummaging around on the internet looking for cute embroidery patterns (Chris is watching world cup soccer with Alison) I came across 'The Floss Box' with some super geeky embroidery and cross stitch patterns! You won't find anything inspired by Dr. Who (that would be too awesome) but you will find an embroidery pattern for mitosis and  photosynthesis! There is some normal stuff there too like flowers and butterfly's but the science geek stuff makes it dorktastic and adds it to the list of 'Links I Like'!

Meatballs

Alison and I watched 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' on Netflix today. Alison didn't make it through the entire thing but I did!

After watching most of it with her, it dawned on me that this was her first exposure to the story. I remember reading the book when I was in elementary school and thinking how cool it would be if food could fall from the sky. Here is the book cover:

The movie was good. The writers took a lot of liberty making an entire back story and adding interesting characters that were not in the book. They made it into an emotional story that the whole family will enjoy. 

Anyways, Alison is not likely to remember watching this movie. I suppsoe that kind of gives me a re-do. When she gets older we can get the book from the library, read it first and then watch the movie. 

Alison and I finished listening to Book One of the Harry Potter audio book today. During the reading I worked on my cross-stitch project that I am making for Chris and Alison, for the first time, grabbed the fish beads on her swings play tray! I of course took lots of pictures of her playing.  

lets move this orange one!

I did it!

So happy!

Alison took a nap shortly after story time. I think I might try and do some sort of story time with her everyday be it audiobook, ebook or actual book. I think she really enjoys listening to people speak. I read an article that said babies who are around someone who speaks to them frequently have a greater vocabulary and better social skills... I am not sure why they did a study on something that seems obvious but it was still interesting to read and it encourages me to continually read to Alison and have one sided conversations.

Daddy came home early enough that he was able to play with Ali for awhile.

Ali loves attention!

and her daddy!

"hi mom!"

Sitting Up!

Alison has been working on sitting up this past week and has gotten pretty good at it! She is able to sit up for about a minute before tumbling over to one side or the other.

When I put Alison in her Bumbo I usually put a few toys around her. This morning I put her freshly cooled teething ring on her lap and went to the kitchen to get some apple slices and when I came back she had picked it up and put it in her mouth!

I was so surprised and impressed. She has managed to get her Sophie teething toy in her mouth but its a lot bigger and she still has some trouble.

Good Job Alison!

She likes her teether!

She was really working hard to get the ring into her mouth!

This afternoon we practived sitting up. Here she is looking at her toys (the teether again and a rattle)

Working hard to pick up the teether! It really is neat seeing her learn how to pick things up, and very neat seeing her pick something up and sit up on her own at the same time!

We still loose our balance though, luckily mom and the couch are there to catch her.

Mommy pulls her back up into a sitting position and all is right in the world

Little Alison, learned to sit up all by herself this week.

Congratulations Ali!