Part 2: Holidays

When I found out Lily's due date was in October I immediately started thinking about what I wanted her to be for Halloween. After a lot of searching through all the food and animal costumes, I finally found a cute ghost outfit for her! (Don't you love that face?)

Naturally, Barrett and I decided to be ghostbusters for our ward Halloween party.

This was her outfit during the day. Barrett's mom made a cute bow to go with it

Christmas was a really crazy day; running around seeing all the family we could, putting Lily in and taking her out of the carseat, giving and receiving presents. We were all very tired by the time we got home. But it was a wonderful day and we got to share Lily with everyone!

 We made this ornament as a Christmas gift for our parents and grandparents. Barrett and I are also carrying on his parents' tradition of giving an ornament to our children every year, so this is Lily's first ornament for her tree.

 Stockings! If you look to the right you can see the snowshoes Barrett bought for us! We loved using them during the winter.

 It was a little crazy how many gifts Lily got, but it was fun buying and opening them for her.

 Barrett made these picture blocks for a collage in Lily's room. I started crying when I opened them. They are amazing! I'll show them on the wall when I post pictures of the nursery.

You can't really see it, but we bought our first regular sized Christmas tree!

 Opening presents at the Yates

 Christmas with the Penrods

 I LOVE this picture of my siblings and me!

One of Lily's many Christmas outfits. I didn't want to bore with showing all of them, but this was my favorite. The bells on her tights would jingle when she kicked.

Lily's first 6 months-Part 1

Wow! Time goes by SO fast! While I was pregnant I was determined to stay on top of keeping track of Lily's development so we could remember, but life happens and the more time went on the more I avoided doing my blog or even reading others' blogs. However, now that we are living in Baltimore and I am no longer working I told myself I had to catch up and then stay updated with our new life. I'm not sure how many posts it will take me to get through Lily's first 6 months, but I decided to organize it by some attributes that we will always want to remember and that was uniquely Lily. Here goes Part 1.

First and foremost we will always remember that Lily was a "sucker" from the first day. Here is an adorable video we have from the day she was born.

The funny thing about her constantly trying to suck at the beginning, is that she never became a thumb sucker. These pictures make it look like it, but she really would just suck any body part that got near her mouth: her whole fist, my collar bone, Barrett's finger. But she has been a binky baby, so I guess that replaced the thumb.

Second, Lily has acquired quite a few nicknames. We used to call her Lilosaurus a lot because she always made the funniest noises; and they made her sound like a dinosaur. Lilypad became a fast nickname with my niece and nephews. We still call her Lilybug quite a bit. And the one we love most, and use all the time because it applies so frequently, is Silly Lily. This can only be demonstrated by these pictures:

 When I was looking through pictures I found this picture and remembered the "O" face.

Another funny face Lily used to do was the frowny face. I loved it and I wish she still did it, ha ha.      (I'm not sure why it's squishing the picture, but I don't want to spend the time figuring it out)

When Lily was first born we swaddled her in the "pod" and we were always surprised how much she could maneuver without having arms.

Then she would start to escape out of the pod a little at a time.

One attribute that has stayed with Lily is how calm and easy-going she is. She has been a very flexible baby. It would have been hard to take her to work with me if she hadn't been so easy-going. One example of this attribute was when her bows would fall over her eyes, but she didn't yet have the coordination to grab them yet. We might hear some fussing and then look at her and start laughing because she was just moving her body around trying to see.

Lily has cheeks. We will always remember her chubby cheeks.

The last quality about Lily that we love is how happy and social she is. She smiles at almost everyone she sees and is constantly kicking her legs with excitement when people talk to her. We love our Lilybug!