Hilton Head ~ 2012

This summer, Anna took her first trip to the beach!  Our family went to Hilton Head in July and had a wonderful time.  Ben was crazy about the pool more so than the ocean...every day, he kept asking to go back to the condo so we could get in the pool, ha!! 

Anna was excited to be on the beach, and crawled right toward the water.  After about five minutes of being sandy, though, she had enough and whined a lot.  So, each day, I would hold her and carry her around as long as possible ~ all the while with her fussing to get down ~ until I would let her down and then she'd play for a few minutes and get annoyed because she was all sandy and wet.  Ha!!  Usually in the morning, I'd stroll her on the beach at nap time and she'd take a snooze in her stroller.

 Ben had a ball with Daddy...here he is in his custom built Lightning McQueen sand car. 



Helping Dad build a sand car!

Anna sat in the shade with Mama a lot so she wouldn't get too sunned or sandy :)

 Ben and his favorite toy of all time:  a watering can.  We brought at least four from home for him to play with!

Ben and Mason

 Fun times with Daddy...

Anna did a cute "crab crawl" on the beach...usually she does this at home when she's wearing a dress so she can go faster, but I think she was just trying to stay out of the sand as much as possible!

Hmm...Sand = Not yummy.

 Ben and Anna both LOVED playing with their big brothers :)  Here's everybody!!

Part Two: A Perfect 10 :)

Miss Anna's been so busy the past two months, it was too much goodness for one post!  So, to pick up where we left off...she's been crawling like crazy!  And all day long, she is constantly picking stuff up off the floor and eating it.  CONSTANTLY.  We've even taken to calling her the "Crumb Bum" and have all but given up fishing each thing out of her mouth, poor baby!

Anna usually crawls on her knees, but she likes to crab crawl like this when she's wearing a dress so it doesn't get tangled in her knees!

Anna's Surprised Face!

She absolutely adores Ben, and wants to be near him all the time.  He is really good at making her laugh by saying something silly like, "Shookie!!" or just jumping up and down or twirling around.  She belly laughs!

Adores big brother!

Anna has really been practicing pulling up and is getting stronger by the day.  She hasn't tried to do any furniture cruising, yet, but I bet it will be any day now!

We've had fun times at the pool in this 100° weather ~ whew!  All smiles with Mama, lounging in a piece of shade...

....an hour later - all tuckered out!

Mimi came to visit and Anna loved seeing her!

And finally, Anna has started babbling a bit.  Her favorite thing to say is ma ma ma ma.  We're not really sure if she's saying "more" or "mama", but either way, I love to hear it!

Our Pretty Girl! Love her!

A Perfect 10 :)

Our Anna is ten months old today!  So much has been happening and changing in her little world lately, and she loves it all, every day :)  At her nine month check-up, Anna weighed 17.5 pounds.  She got one shot, but it wasn't bad at all.  We're still struggling with sleeping through the night - as usual, any strides made towards it get lost in a week or so when she goes back to her old ways of popping awake around 3 or 4:00 each night.  *Sigh* says the tired mama....but this, too, shall pass.  She is doing GREAT nursing (still!), and I'm so proud that we've made it 10 months!  Anna's also still great about eating her baby food...gladly eating MANY varieties that Ben would never touch.

She's been a busy little lady these since our last update...back in April, here she is with Daddy on his birthday!

Before it got so hot, we took lots of rides in the red car...

...and lots of rides in "the pouch"!

Yay!  Mama can cook AND hold Anna at the same time!

Poor baby got another cold, probably from big brother Ben.  Most of the time when she gets a cold, she needs the nebulizer - a.k.a. "penguin medicine".  Here she is with her buddy :)

Whew!  All this wears a girl out!  She did great at Chandler's 5th Grade graduation:

Anna and Grandmama

Conked out!

...but just couldn't hang in there any longer at the end!  And that's just part of it!  "A Perfect Ten" to be continued...

Baby's First Haircut

Sadly, last week it was finally time for Ben to get his first haircut. "Cut" really isn't the best word, since the Ziplock of "locks" the girl gave me when she was finished appeared EMPTY until I squinted a saw a few fine baby hairs! Trim better describes it, and he needed it because he kept pawing at his ears (making us think over and over he was getting an ear infection), and just looking scraggily in general. Especially in the wind. Case in point:So, in we went with a happy baby....

Sitting on Mama's lap, wondering Who Is This Chick?! (She does Mark's hair and is super sweet!)

Not bad...still distractable by Daddy with a bag full of toys! He's sitting on my lap, so I have a bird's eye view and unfortunately I can see that he's being SUCH a wiggleworn, VERY little hair is being trimmed at this point (in the interest of keeping his ears intact ~ ha!)Now this is starting to get a bit worrisome, apparently. The wad of lunchtime banana dried in his hair behind the ears isn't helping matters, either. I could sense a meltdown coming soon......so, out comes the paci. You know it's getting bad when the paci makes an appearance midday!Whew! All done! Whether you can really tell or not, his hair did look much more polished, especially in the back and neck area. Good job, Ben! (I hope it's a looooooong time before we need to do that again ;)

Back to the Grind....

Well, my 9.5 months of stay-at-home-mommy-bliss was up a few weeks ago. Since going back to work full time, things tend to be a little more crazy around here lately! We're starting to get in a groove, though, and Ben's doing great at Grandmama's during the day. Here's how his day goes:

up at 6:30 (or earlier some days...Ben, why such an early bird?!)

bottle 7:00 (6 oz)

breakfast 8:15

nap 9:30 for 1.5 hrs

bottle 11:00

lunch 12:00

nap 1:30 or 2:00 for 1 hr

bottle 3:00

dinner 5:00

bath

bottle 7:00

bed

So what else have we been up to? We celebrated Mama's birthday - not surprisingly, Ben managed to thwart and impress us with his lightning-speed hands and grabbed a handful of icing when no one was looking!

We've been to baseball games,

"Lake Day"...

Lots of playing with with big brother Mason...

and big brother Chandler!

Ben's learning a TON here lately, too....just in the past few weeks, he's started babbling "la la", "ga ga", and "da da"!! He's got the sweetest little voice that I love hearing, and although he doesn't talk ALL the time, when he does, you can tell he's enjoying himself!

He's also learned the meaning of lots of words: in, out, on - with these he can put things IN, like in a trash can, or help me put little pieces of laundry in the dryer (so cute!). At this point, he knows that "No" isn't something he wants to hear, but hasn't quite grasped yet that we mean business when we say it. He's pushing his little push toys everywhere, clapping occasionally, and can stand on his own for a second or two when he wants to (or in most cases, when it happens by accident). My baby will be walking in no time ~ I can't believe it!!

Ben's favorite thing to do at Lake Day: play in the dog bowls. Add leftover slobbery dog water = BONUS!