Eat!

Once Lily turned about 6 months old, we started doing some sign language with her. Ben and I had talked about it even before she was born and we both really liked the idea of her being able to communicate before she could talk. We'd read that it helps give babies confidence, plus it's just got to be nice for them to tell us (adults) what they want and for us to actually be able to understand them.

So when Lily started eating solid foods, we introduced the sign for "more" and and "all done" and a made up sign for "do you want to be picked up". After a little while we started to do "milk" too. She didn't do anything for a really long time, but a few weeks ago, maybe two or three, she started doing something with her hands that looked a lot like "more." We were really excited, and we started watching more closely for it, and I realized that she would do "more" whenever she wanted anything. Absolutely anything - if she wanted more food, or even if she hadn't started eating yet and she wanted to eat. She would do "more" when she was all done eating, and she wanted out. Sometimes she'd do more when she was just sitting in the shopping cart at the store and I wasn't sure what she wanted then.

So that was when we started doing "eat" on a regular basis. I think we'd already been doing it, just not consistently enough. Just a few days ago, we noticed her doing the eat sign! It was really awesome, and she was so proud of herself! She's doing it a lot now. She does the "eat" sign in the morning after she wakes up, so I'll do it back to her along with the "milk" sign, and she gets really excited that I understood her. Ben and I are really glad that she's understanding and trying to do the signs. I think she's been trying to do the sign we made up for "cheerios" lately too. She really likes cheerios, and I thought it was worthwhile to have a sign just for those since she seems to want them all the time. :) We're really proud of her.

Crawling Now!

So, yes, it's a little backwards, but Lily has recently started crawling! I know a lot of people have been worried about her walking before she crawls, because apparently there's all sorts of studies saying they really need to learn to crawl to help them develop right, and we definately tried to help her learn, but until now she just was not interested in crawling at all. Ben and I kind of thought that she would start crawling after she started walking and realized that she needed to crawl to get to someplace where she could pull herself back up, and that's basically how it happened. She started to understand that crawling got her to where she wanted to go just as well as walking does, so she's doing both now. She still doesn't do either on a regular basis, but it's really fun to watch her learn. She's doing so well, and it's so cute to see how proud of herself she is.

Going for the cheerios. She'd do almost anything for cheerios, so it's a good way to encourage her to crawl. :)

In other news, Lily is 8 months old as of yesterday! I was curious as to how big she's gotten, because she's really sprouted in the last few months, so accuracy is probably not as good as it would be at a doctors office, but Lily weighs between 17.0 and 17.4 pounds (our scale is finicky and rarely gives the same answer twice) and her height is now at 27.5 inches. I have no idea where that is on the percentage thing, but she seems a lot bigger than she used to be, so I figure she's doing pretty good. She has four teeth now, and her favorite foods are cheerios, bananas, and rice cereal with bananas. Carrots are usually receieved with much enthusiasm as well. She still loves being outside and I'm hoping the non-rainy weather sticks around for a while longer yet. Other favorites right now include my phone and keys, trying to get at the power button on the computer, and any and all computer cords. Combined with her newfound abilities of walking and crawling, the babyproofing is about to beging in earnest. Fun fun.

Our big girl!

Walking pics

We didn't have time to post pics of Lily's first steps in the last post, so here they are.

Lily proud of her new accomplishments

Leaping towards the camera

I wish we turned the camera on earlier, but we got a few good steps in.

Walking!

Lily has officially taken her first steps!! Her very first time was last night when we picked her up from the Adams' and we had her going back and forth between us and she definately took 2 steps on her own that weren't just the "about to fall on my face" kind of steps. Last week we were doing the same thing and she took a couple steps then too, but they were less on purpose then and much more purposeful now. And Ben and I have been playing walking games with her again tonight and she is so excited and at one point took 4 whole steps before she stumbled into my arms. IT'S SO CUTE!!! She's so excited about it, and it's helping her become more confident. She's been kind of scared to try things on her own and really liked holding on to our fingers (can't really blame her, of course) but now she realizes that she has more control and ability to direct herself than she previously thought. It's lots of fun. I can't believe how much older she has gotten in just the last few weeks. She has her third tooth now, by the way. I'll post pictures later.

Llama tongues and the Spit

Just to warn you, I'm feeling pretty detail-conscious right now, so this is gonna be a wordy post. Go ahead and skip to the end if all you really want are new pics. :)

So last weekend we went camping! It was tons of fun and something I have been really looking forward to for awhile. We knew we wanted to go, we just didn't know when it would work out. Well, Ben was able to take a Friday off and Sunday was Stake conference, so I had no church responsibilities that day, and we were able to do a three-night camping trip up in Sequim, WA.

We left about 3:45 Thursday afternoon, and experienced a long wait at the Ferry, but that was really our only delay and we got to our campgrounds about 7:45. We were a little worried about finding a site because it was first come/first served, and if we had arrived just a little bit later there wouldn't have been any left, but we got one and it was perfect. All we had time for was setting up the tent and making dinner (spaghetti, yum!), and then it was bedtime. Lily did NOT do well that first night. We accidentally had her on the downward sloping end, so throughout the night her little bed got smaller and smaller because we were sliding towards her, and she wasn't used to the outside noises, and she was probably colder than she was used to, plus sleeping on an unfamiliar and harder surface - well, she had to have woken up at least 15 times that night. We were not amused. Ben especially :).

Friday was fun because we visited the Olympic Game Farm. If you haven't ever gone there, you should if you're in the Sequim area. It's a lot of fun. It's a wild animal park where you drive your car through the animals that just wander around, though some of them are more contained, like the black bears, kodiak bears, prairie dogs and the rhinoceros. The animals that wander around your car are llamas, deer, peacocks, yaks, zebra, elk, and bison. The thing that makes it the most fun is you can buy bags of bread on your way in and feed it to the animals. Most of them just come straight to your window and their tongues are hanging out begging for bread. It's a little scary and kind of yucky, but fun all the same. (Warning: our car did get scratched a little, so if you do go, that's a big possibility - yak and deer and elk horns.) My favorite animals were the little European Fallow Deer. They were sooo sweet and angelic looking. Just makes you think of Bambi :). The Zebras were pretty cool too, but the yak was very insistent and a little scary. He was the one who scratched our car.

The Elk were also extremely persistent and determined to get as much bread from us as they could. In the park there are different areas for different animals so they stay somewhat separated, and some of the deer, the elk and the bison were all in one big area, with a big group of Elk being the first animals that we came too. They ate all our bread so that we ran out before we got to the bison. That was kind of sad, because I really wanted Ben to see the Bison's 18 inch long tongues (!!) but next time, I guess.

The bears would do little tricks for us if we showed them we had bread. The would stand on their hind legs, or clap, or wave. Mostly wave. They were really cute. Except there was one black bear that looked a little possessed. One part of the park had more caged up areas with lions, tigers, cougars and coyotes in them, and that was kind of fun too. We also took Lily into the petting zoo area, but she wasn't too impressed, though the goats did make her giggle.

That night we had steak and grilled potatoes and onions for dinner, and were able to put Lily down at a reasonable hour, and then stay up a little later and enjoy a fire and eat s'mores. That night Lily did a lot better, only waking up about 4-5 times. Oh well. It's not like it was the best nights sleep anyway, the ground was really hard (we were feeling kind of old for being so stiff after sleeping!).

Saturday we hiked the Dungeness Spit to the Lighthouse at the end. It's an 11 mile hike round trip, and we forgot the baby-carrier, so we carried Lily in our arms the whole way. We were pretty impressed with ourselves, because neither one of us has hiked that far in awhile. But it was actually very enjoyable, more so because of the sense of accomplishment we felt at the end. The Lighthouse was kind of cool, too.

That night we went into Sequim and got ice cream cones to treat ourselves for our stunning accomplishment (that is, the 11 mile hike). They had lots of weird flavors and almost half of them had lavender in them, which I wasn't too fond of. Other flavors included coffee and beer, so we were a little limited. A peanut butter fudge one was good though, so we went with that. We had fritos and chili for dinner, and more s'mores after Lily went to bed. It had been drizzling all day, and started raining again in the middle of the night, and it wasn't that bad but we still decided to go home as soon as we woke up. After the 2 1/2 hour drive we got home about 10:30 and immediately took showers and started cleaning up. The day you come home from camping is always not so much fun, especially when dealing with wet tarps and tents.

But we had a lot of fun, and it was a much appreciated little mini vacation away from home. Lily really liked being outside so much and despite not sleeping as well enjoyed herself too.

Ok, my novel is over, here are the pictures!

Nothing to do with camping, just enjoying her baby biter biscuit on the counter while mommy makes dinner.

 

First night, Ben cooking dinner. Still light out, not bad!

 

Lily all bundled up against the wind. She really enjoyed being outside so much and was constantly trying to get beyond the blanket to eat the dirt. She's not crawling yet, but still manages to roll around a lot.

 

Emily cooking breakfast in her PJ's. It was chilly in the mornings.

 

Prairie dog at the Olympic Game Farm- so little and cute!

 

Llama face!

 

 
Isn't he so pretty?

 

They were my favorite animals there.

 

  
The animals really got right in your face. The zebra was no exception. We didn't spend too much time with him because I remember from when I was little my mom telling me that they can be really mean and prone to bite.

 

The scary yak with his head in our car.

 

A better picture of his horns.

 

Cute bear smile! We didn't get a good picture of him waving, but he was very friendly.

 

These guys (elk) were really pushy. See, two of them in the window at the same time. Sheesh!

 

 
These deer weren't nearly as cute (in my opinion) as the fallow deer we had seen earlier. There were a lot more of them though.

 

 
The only bison we got relatively close to, but he didn't even try to approach our car. Honestly, we didn't mind. Those things are huge!

 

So I just realized that I have an extreme amount of animal pictures up... but I don't really care. It was a fun part of our trip, and they're pretty cute. More Lemmon family pics below. :)

Lily looks a little gangsta here, if you ignore the tiny piece of bread sticking to her chin. She likes bread.

When it got colder and started raining a little, I would stick Lily in my sweatshirt with just her feet and head sticking out. She eventually fell asleep like that. She did the same thing in Ben's hoodie too, only it was a little harder because his didn't have a zipper.

 
I wanted to put this picture on here, cuz I think I look pretty cute :)

 

 
Lily really liked being on Ben's shoulders. It was pretty adorable.

 

Ok, not the best picture of either of us, but it's the only one we have of us at the Lighthouse. Close to at it, anyway. We didn't want to take the picture right at it cuz it wouldn't fit into the screen with us. :) But we did make it, promise!

 

It was shortly after we finished the hike that I tried to take a good picture of the Spit so that we could see what we had walked, but alas, our cameras battery died. Anyway, it was a really fun camping trip and I'm already looking forward to our next one!

First Tooth!

So, Lily got her first tooth in a week ago! We actually weren't the first ones to see it. Lily was with my Mom for the weekend so Ben and I could celebrate our anniversary, and when we called to see how things were going, my Mom told us about it! So we were kind of disappointed that we missed the very first sighting of her tooth, but excited all the same. It's funny because it really makes her look older. Combined with her standing all the time (not unassisted yet) she really seems like she's growing up fast. She'll get another tooth in either today or tomorrow. We can see the very top of it about to come through. Of course the pain of teething is making her a little fussy, but she's really doing pretty good, considering. Unfortunately, she doesn't exactly pose with her mouth wide open for a picture, so we haven't caught her cute little tooth on camera. Soon, I hope!

She's starting to sleep a lot better at night, which is AWESOME! About 10 days before she was going to stay the night with my Mom, Ben and I decided that she really needed to start sleeping through the night and have a more predictable routine, to make things easier for when my Mom was watching her, and to make things easier on us always. :) So now Lily always has her bottle, reads a few books, and then gets set in her crib still awake. Most of the time we have to pat her back a little bit to help her calm down, but she does  fall asleep on her own, and only wakes up maybe two or three times at the most. But I don't feed her in the middle of the night anymore, and she falls right back asleep when she does wake up. And it's getting more and more common for her to sleep for 7 hour stretches. She even slept for 8 hours once! (Happy, happy Emily!) She seems much happier too, really, and actually takes longer more predictable naps now too. It's great.

Lily has discovered that there are some foods worth eating (unlike avocados) and she's very into feeding time now. She really likes her squash, sweet potatoes, and I think she's ok with oatmeal too. And as for non-pureed foods, she LOVES cucumbers, and really likes watermelon and cantaloupe, and is ok with carrots too. We tried rice krispies the other day, but she still can't pick those up yet. It's weird for me to get used to the fact that I'm not her only source of food now (me and the nightly bottle, that is). I know I'm still her main source of nutrition, but it's weird to think that she has other food now. Makes me feel slightly less needed. Silly, I know!

 
Not so much liking the peas. They came right back out!

 

Lily with her cucumber sticks. She scrapes all the seeds off and into her mouth and then puts the whole thing in her mouth and sucks it dry!

 
Very excited about her sweet potatoes!

Yesterday was the Microsoft Picnic, and it was a lot of fun. We went to it on the busses they provided, and Lily took a nap on Ben's chest on the way there (on the way back, too). It was cute. When we got there we first did the bouncy rope thing and the mechanical bull. I stayed on the bull for longer than Ben! (Though in all honesty, they probably went easier on me at first, just cuz I'm a girl. Lame!) Then we went and ate the lunch provided, opting for ribs, corn on the cob, fresh fruit and pot-stickers. It was yummy, but the corn wasn't that impressive. We watched the BMX show, and the Drummers on the big drums, and we went and listened to these Jamaican singers. I think that was my favorite part. Ben or I would hold Lily and dance to the music and she really liked that. It was cute. We stayed for a few hours, and it was very enjoyable.

 
Sleeping on her daddy's chest in the bus.

 
Dancing with Mommy to Jamaican music!

 
Whee!

 

Avacado Face

So we've been feeding Lily some different vegetables and fruits in the last few weeks, and it's been a lot of fun. Lily really likes trying new food and is very enthusiastic about it. But her reaction to avacado had us laughing so hard. The funniest thing about it was that even though she acted like she hated it, she kept going back for more!