Bend it Like Beckham

Brooks is having a blast playing all sorts of sports with his Daddy. But lately it's been too hot to play outside, so we've been creative inside the house. The other day Chad and Brooks spent about an hour playing soccer. Chad would roll the ball to Brooks and he would kick it back. Literally...an hour.

We would "label" Brooks' kicks: AWESOME or LAME. So, eventually he caught on and whenever he missed or didn't kick it hard enough he would say, "Oh, that was lame."
LAME:

AWESOME:

I think Brooks pretty much has the same form as Beckham, right?!

Check out his intense face with every kick!


And then Chad started making all kinds of funny noises and yelling, "STRIKE" in his loudest umpire voice. Brooks thought it was hilarious and spent a good amount of time cracking up.

Laney just spent the hour crawling around the intense soccer game. She had a good time too.

I love that we can have so much fun without even leaving our house.
I love my family:)

9 Months Old

My 9 month old baby girl would not sit still in the chair for a picture. Instead she thought it would be a good idea to wiggle around, eat her toes, and climb on the chair. I tried.




At the doctor's office...

...and the results are in...
Height:29 inches, 90%
Weight:16lbs 9oz, 10%
The funny thing about these stats are that they are identical to Brooks'. At 9 months Brooks was 16lbs 7oz and 29 inches. Laney still looks so petite because she's so long and skinny, but really she's a pretty big girl. When they compare her stats on the "growth curve" she's being compared to full-term babies. The doctor said that if we adjusted that according to her actual due date she would be off the charts for her height and 25% for her weight. Point being said, she's growing and developing unlike a preemie. Awesome.

Current Menu: Laney is currently enjoying broccoli bites, bread, Cheerios (a staple in her menu really), peas, any sort of fresh fruit pieces, applesauce, yogurt, black beans, and we're trying to give her other little pieces of food. She's eating a pretty equal mix of pureed food and small pieces that she feeds herself. She's doing really great picking up her food, so hopefully she'll start to eat more by herself because I"m not that big on feeding her all the pureed food.

Daily Summer Schedule: Laney is up between 7:00-8:00, but she usually finds her paci and calms down enough so that I wait and go in around 8:00, or sometimes later if I fall back asleep. She nurses and then plays with Brooks while I make them breakfast. Then she's down again, sleeping from 10:00-11:30 or 12:00. She nurses again and then eats lunch and plays with Brooks. Both kids are down around 2:00 and Laney sleeps for another 1.5-2 hours. She nurses again and then it's play time until bedtime. She gets a bottle around 6:00 or 6:30 followed by dinner, playtime, bath, and bed.

Her Personality: She is a ham. She dances all the time when there's music playing. She does the little head shake move, but she has also started rocking her body back and forth when she's crawling to show her moves. She smiles at everyone and is happy 90% of the time. She is happiest with her family, especially Brooks. They play together most of the day. I think Brooks will be sad when they go back to school and Laney goes to her own school. She can really stick out her bottom lip. When I tell her no or when a "toy" that's not really a toy is taken away she spends the next 5-10 seconds contorting her face and really showing off her pouty face. It makes me laugh every time.

Something New:
Two teeth. I told you those would come in this month. They are so adorable. She bit me once while nursing. I flicked her lightly on the forehead. She cried and it never happened again. I tried to get an adorable picture of her new teeth and I got this picture instead...

The girl pulls up on everything. The only problem is she doesn't always know how to get down. The other day she started crying and I looked to see what was wrong and this is what I saw...

Like a good mom, I took a picture first and then rescued her. Moments later I looked up and saw her climbing on Brooks' chair. So again, I took a picture. Brooks thought he needed to be in the picture, too.

*I realize this makes me look like a bad mom because I'm never "watching" my children. These instances happened when I was cooking. I swear I keep an eye on my kids...most of the time.

Time with Brooks:
Laney and Brooks love to cuddle before bed time. It's so sweet.

They love to play together. I keep telling Brooks to go play with his toys and he always says, "No mom. I just want to play with Laney." Recently they have been playing in the tent a lot. Look closely at the picture and you can see Laney with a big smile on her face. They love each other so much!


Laney gets one bottle for dinner, and Brooks is good at helping.

Time with Mommy:
Laney and I have a special bond (obviously), mainly because we've always spent that intimate time together while she nurses. Going back to work makes me so sad because we're going to lose that. At night is my favorite because she falls asleep in my arms afterwards and we just cuddle for a few minutes. I know that isn't going to last forever so I'm really taking the time to enjoy that for now. I don't know if Laney is really saying "mama" for sure, but when she's looking for me she crawls around saying, "mamamama" until she reaches me and starts climbing up my legs to get my attention or until I pick her up and comfort her. That counts, right?

Time with Daddy:
This time usually involves lots of laughing. Daddy can always make Laney laugh with lots of rough kisses from his beard.

So Many Changes

She can crawl...all around the house and get into everything! This video was right when she first started. She's actually gotten a lot faster.

She can dance. She was pushing these buttons earlier in the week and I started shaking my head and moving my hips and I said, "Laney, can you dance?" I was honestly just playing around but then she copied me. Of course I flipped out and clapped for joy like any mother! So now whenever she hears music she shakes her head and "dances" along. Too cute.

She can get into trouble. Like I said, she can crawl everywhere and get into everything (especially things she's not supposed to play with).

She can stand up. She now loves to pull herself up on everything. The only problem is she doesn't know how to get down. Sometimes Brooks knocks her over, only because he tries to hug her and doesn't realize how unstable she is. Sometimes she just falls over and cries. But most of the time she'll just cry when she has had enough standing time and wait for someone to come and rescue her.


She can eat. This girl can throw back tons of food. She's still breastfed and thriving (which just warms my soul), and she's a champ at eating baby food, but now she's trying to feed herself and she just LOVES it. She eats banana, zucchini, peas, and graham crackers. In this picture she's eating banana pancakes that I found on my favorite baby food website. I need to start making her some more treats to eat with her little fingers because she just thinks it's the coolest thing to do. She does finally have one tooth down there and the second one is on its way, but mainly she just gums the food and swallows. Yummy!

30 years have gone by

That's right...I reached the big 3-0! Chad and I celebrated by taking a little mini vaca all the way to downtown Austin! Actually, it was a combination Birthday/Anniversary celebration...but mainly just birthday. Chad planned everything and it was just perfect. We checked into The Driskell on Sixth Street. It's the oldest hotel in Austin. It's an absolutely beautiful hotel!

After we checked in we walked through downtown to grab some lunch on our way to Lady Bird Lake to do some stand-up paddle boarding. It was so much fun and I totally recommend it to anyone visiting downtown Austin. After our adventure on the lake we went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. Turns out that The Driskell has one of the best restaurants in downtown, so we just stayed there and ate a super fancy meal.


Here is a picture of our desserts. Chad's dessert is the one on the left. In "fancy words" the description was something like milkshake and candy bar...and this is what it really was. It took him one sip and one bite to finish it all up.

After dinner we went to Congress Bridge and watched the bats. There were thousands of them!

I was really excited!

We got back to our hotel room and Chad had ordered a turn down service.
This is what it looks like at The Driskell Hotel. So sweet!

The next day we slept in...ahhh. I think it was 10:00 when we finally got out of bed. It was glorious! We left shortly after and met up with my parents and the kids at Z-Tejas.


It was a perfect birthday!

The Fourth

These are the matching outfits that I bought for the kids last year before The Peanut was even born. I tried really hard to get a good picture of the two them, but this was the best I could do.

We went to Georgetown for their Fourth of July Festival. It was so ridiculously hot, but it was still great. Brooks' favorite part was the petting zoo.

This sheep just popped his head over the fence to eat some of our food. Gammy and Brooks thought it was pretty funny...just check out their faces!

This petting zoo was so cool because they had so many baby animals that they let you pick up. I loved this little goat!

It's really hard to get a good picture with our family. This is as good as it gets.

Brooks and Daddy leaving the festival. We finally had enough of the heat.

Just Because...

...those big blue eyes just melt my heart.

Beach Beauty

The Peanut had a great time at the beach...her first time in fact. I was so anxious to put her on the sand and see her reaction. I like to think that I know exactly what she was thinking of her first beach experience:
"This is so much fun, Mom!"


"What's this yummy stuff?!"

"Hey Daddy!"

"Hey...I like eating that!"

"See, Daddy...this sand is so yummy!"

"Eating sand was NOT a good idea!"

"Mom to the rescue!"

"Playing in the water with Birdie is so much fun!"

"1...2...3...JUMP!"

"Don't you just love my new flip-flops?!"

"Thanks for the fun day, Mom."


P.S. I just to assure everyone that we didn't just sit back and watch Laney eat all that sand but that we constantly tried to stop her - she just kept shoveling it in her mouth. I am also happy to report the nice "sparkly" diaper that followed.