8 months old

brennan grace, you are EIGHT months old. it has gone by in a blink and you get more and more fun each day.

* you LOVE to move around. you crawl everywhere you can and are a wiggle worm in our arms because you now know the fun that can be had as you explore your world

* you are now pulling yourself up on tables and look like such a LITTLE GIRL when i see you standing all by yourself without me around

* you love to eat and my unofficial weighing on the bathroom scale said you are 19 pounds. to be confirmed by the doc, but still. 19 pounds.

* you make friends everywhere we go. strangers comment on my 'beautiful, happy baby.' you are all smiles

* i think that your favorite food might be sweet potatoes. you also like avocados. and yogurt and pears. i'm trying to hold out as long as i can before i introduce sweets or processed foods of any kind to you. you'll thank me later, though we'll see how long that lasts when you spend the week with mimi & nana. ;)

* you've discovered the fun, unexplored worlds that exist behind cabinet doors and are constantly trying to open everything you can

* you have a feisty streak in you that i am interested to see play out through the years.

* you are FUNNY. we are beginning to see your outgoing little personality come out. you love to laugh and make us laugh. our favorite sound of the moment is your squeals of joy when you are too excited to even get a laugh out and it comes out as a high pitched squeal. so cute

* you HATE to have your nose/face wiped. it causes such a disproportional reaction of screams, flailing arms, and arching back that i wonder if we are causing some deep trauma that might manifest itself in future years

happy saturday

let the christmas festivities begin!

a record of firsts

what firsts should a mother know about?

these are the ones i can remember...

umbilical cord fell off at 10 days old; first bath

first smiled at 6 weeks

first solid food- 5 months (bananas)

first crawled- 7 1/2 months! 12.5.11

we were even able to capture it on video!

turkey day, PA & DC excursion

we spent a wonderful thanksgiving with lane's family, complete with my first turkey trot thanksgiving morning. proud to say that this whole crew completed the race, old and young alike. ;) i also love that brennan and brett are reaching out to each other over sydney.

then, EARLY friday morning, the three of us caught a plane out to the east coast for lane's 10 year high school reunion. brennan did great both ways on the plane, except for about 15 minutes per flight where she was THAT screaming baby. thankfully, she fell asleep and i just did not move for the rest of the flight for fear of waking the beast.

military gets free tv on frontier, so i absolutely played that card for our flight. technically, it's only supposed to be for those in uniform, but it's always worth asking, and they always says yes. we had the whole row to ourselves on the way out which was a godsend, considering how much room we required for the babe. at least my stress over keeping brennan occupied took my mind off of the plane crashing during take off.

brennan about to ride on her first metro. she's very excited.

one of my very favorite cities. we were about to walk into the library of congress for a tour and i'm sad i didn't get a picture of the building; it's beautiful. we did get to see the guttenberg bible though which is so cool.

our second day in d.c.- we made it into arlington and lane was able to visit his buddy ben. seemed fitting that it was a rainy day. super sad.

oh, thomas jefferson. i do love you. what an amazing memorial.

after walking about 14 miles around the mall and the tidal basin we made it to the new mlk monument. can't really tell, but it's a really neat stone sculpture of him.

all in all, it was a FUN fun trip. it was really good to get away, just the three of us, and take a breather before finishing the semester. brennan was a champ and it was a well rounded trip of seeing good friends, being together as a family, and enjoying the east coast!