Austin

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Austin with our dear friends. We have been on two vacations with the Edwards, to California 5 years ago and to Seattle 3 years ago. This was our first vacation together WITH kids. I must say, vacationing with kids is a totally different ball game. Gone are the relaxing dinners, long days of site seeing, leisurely shopping, quite evenings. Hello CHAOS! Our trip consisted of parks, frantically stuffing meals down, waking up tired because your child was up in the middle of the night, and making late night grocery runs so your child will have something to eat. Although it definitely changed the nature of our vacationing, it really was a lot of fun! Kids, chaos and all, I wouldn't change it for the world. Here are some photos to recap our trip.

We rented a house together...you know you're good friends when you all stay in the same house...with 3 kids 4 and under.

The boys made us breakfast every morning. Love it!

While the girls were shopping, the boys found a lizzard!! They were SUPER excited. Glad we came to Austin for the lizzard.

Gotta love morning bed head. E LOVED hanging out with the boys. Never a dull moment. She thought all their toys were pretty darn fun too.

Sweet moment reading a book...and they didn't try to put it in their mouth like Miss E does.

We went to Zilker Springs for a couple of hours one day.

This girl thought swinging was pretty fantastic. I love this picture...pure joy on her face.

We had a picnic lunch,

and went on a pretty cool train ride.

Austin is always a fun place to visit...fun music, great grocery stores (I'm serious), quirky people, eclectic restaurants. It was a perfect weekend, but we are looking forward to sleeping in our own beds and Elliott sleeping in her own room. Oh the simple pleasures in life.

9 month stats

Elliott went the doctor on Friday for her 9 month well child visit. Here are her stats:

Weight: 21 pounds 5 ounces (84%)

Length: 30 inches (98%)

Head Circumference: 18 3/4 inches (100%)

So she's still a long big girl, and apparently she has a large head. NO ONE has a bigger head than her. :) It's really not a surprise because her mommy and daddy both have big heads. Better to wear hats, right? We actually have to go back to the doctor in 6 weeks to have her head remeasured and if it has gotten much bigger, they will set her up for a CT scan. I'm not super concerned because she seems fine developmentally, but we'll see.

It definitely was the best well child visit so far...no shots! Yay! Also, they told us she just needs to be drinking 16 ounces of breast milk or formula daily. I was really expecting them to say she needed more, and she has just NOT been interested lately. Pressure lifted.

8 and 9 Month Update

The eventual post...like I've been planning on posting this for, oh, months now! If I wait much longer, I'm going to have to include Miss Elliott's 10 month. Wow! I'm sure I'll miss some things, but here are some highlights of our past 2 months:

• Wearing 12-18 month clothes. This girl is growing like a weed! I do think her growth is actually slowing down a little bit, but it still seems like we go through clothes pretty quickly. At least summer clothes are less likely to get too short like jeans and other pants.
• Wearing size 4 diapers. Blowouts are a thing of the past, but stinky diapers are now the thing. I'll take stinky over a blowout any day.
• She LOVES to eat these days...especially finger foods. She is becoming a real pro these days at picking food up, and everything she drops, Truman enjoys. Who needs a vacuum cleaner or a broom when you have a dog? SO much easier. She eats 3 solid meals a day with a combination of baby food and finger foods.
• Her favorite foods so far is cheese...a daughter after her daddy's heart. If we don't portion it out, she will shovel it all in her mouth. When she sees me get out the package, she gets excited. Pretty funny! She also loves watermelon.
• She is still nursing/taking a bottle four times a day. I'm actually only nursing once a day, soon to be none. More to come on this. She is totally not into nursing/bottles these days ever since she started real food.

She loved spending time with my cousins' kids several weekends ago. She LOVES kids!

• She has really started fighting bed times these days. Not my favorite thing. Before, she was ready to go to bed at 7 or 7:30. Now she goes to bed closer to 8, and she usually cries at least for a little bit when I lay her down.
• Still sleeping until 7am. I'm a morning girl so I'm not complaining.
• She is usually taking 2 naps, 2-3 hours in the morning and 1-2 hours in the afternoon. We love naptimes. :)
• She has become quite an active girl and she loves to stand...constantly. She wants to pull up on your hands all.day.long. Cute but kind of exhausting.
• She is no longer content just sitting and playing with toys in front of her. This entertains her for maybe 5 minutes, then she wants to be doing something else (preferable standing). Our sweet little laid back child is not quite as laid back as we thought.
• She is still not crawling but starting to scoot forward. I think it's only a matter of time before she's actually crawling. I think we're in the "frustrating" movement phase because she wants to move more but just can't quite figure it out.
• She had her first injury in these past two months. She fell off our bed. Broke.our.hearts. Thankfully she survived without any long term consequences, but we realized no more unattended bed time (Kev was in the room and looked away for one second).

Such a snuggler when she's tired. She loves her Mimi!

• She now has 3 teeth (2 on the bottom, 1 on the top), and another one coming in on the top. She can bite...HARD.
• She loves to be outside! She stays with my in-laws one day a week and I think she spends almost all day outside in their great backyard. Heaven.
• She does smile and laugh more, but she can still be a serious girl. Definitely not cheesy. Our daughter the thinker.

Hanging out with Aunt Anja. Had to show this picture of her big smile...they are caught few and far between on camera. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of Aunt Lacey and Elliott this weekend...so sad!

I know I'm forgetting SO many things, but this is what I can remember right now. Oh how we love our sweet little girl more and more each day and have loved to see her grow!

The zoo!

I have really been doing a terrible job at taking pictures lately, sad I know, but I never posted these pics from the zoo several weeks ago. This was actually Elliott's first trip to the zoo. This was her face the whole visit.

So not impressed mom. Truman's wilder than any of these cats.

I went with several other moms, and some of their kids were a little older to actually enjoy looking at the animals. Besides it being a little chilly, it was such a blast! Apparently we went on a great day because ALL the animals were out (or so my friends who were the "zoo experts" said). Unfortunately, the baby elephant was not out yet. We will definitely go back. Here's a few pics of the group.

The mommy brigade

The babies

My sweet friend Jen and her adorable little guy.

And last but certainly not least, my oh so serious child. So funny!

I also wanted to give a big thanks for everyone's words of advice/encouragement on the whole breast feeding issue. It was SO reassuring that I nor my child is disfunctional and others have gone through a similar situation. The good news is I am almost completely healed from our little biting episode, so we're just trucking along. I'm trying not to worry if she doesn't eat as much, and just trying to go with the flow. I think my big hang up with quitting is I hate to start her on formula when we're so close to a year. It just seems like a headache I don't know that I want to handle. I guess we'll see.