9 months old

It's that time of the month again! We've hit the 9 month mark today and, as someone reminded me, Logan is now a whole pregnancy old. :) Those 9 months seemed a heck of a lot longer that these 9 months--it seems like time is just flying. Once we got past those first pesky months where she was only sleeping a few hours a night things started to go much quicker.

Logan is a very happy baby today.

Once again, her photo shoot proved to be difficult. We couldn't quite capture her face on without her doing something else.

She says, "Mommy made my outfit today, from the bow to the onesie." I learned to applique this month and have been going to town with it! It's so relaxing for me and I have so much fun creating clothing for her that costs way too much money if bought directly from someone else.

Here she is flapping her "wings" excitedly.

ANYWAY! Logan, you are NINE months old today! What have you been up to this month?!?!

- You got not one but TWO teeth this month! After months of agony, your first tooth finally popped through and then the second one (right next to it) popped in about two days later. No more toothless, gummy grinning.

- You have started to eat some table foods this month. So far you've tried spaghetti, pancakes, a little bit of chicken, and some bread. Your favorite BY FAR is pancakes. Whenever I eat them for breakfast you make all kinds of noise until you get to taste.

- You started officially crawling. You are no longer just scooting along, you're full blown crawling around now. You can get places pretty quickly, too! I'll leave you in the living room for a minute or two to go get something from the kitchen and before I know it you're right behind me. You especially love it when people get down on the floor and crawl with you.

- You haven't really taken to any new toys this month. Instead, you're full blown crazy about books! I have all of your books on the bottom shelf of daddy's bookcase and your favorite thing to do is crawl over there and pull out all of the books. Then you like to look through the books at their pictures. You also love being read to, you really will sit still in mommy or daddy's lap for as long as we'll read to you.

- You're using your sign language a little more this month to get what you want. You know how to sign for more, you've signed once or twice for thank you, you point to some of the things you want and you can shake your head no if you don't want something...or if you do....or for anything pretty much.

- You haven't learned any new words this month but are getting really good at imitating the different sounds that you hear. When we say "bye bye" to you, you respond with a loud "b", when we talk about your rubber duck you say "d" when we say something is yummy you say "mmm" and so on.

- You love to laugh at yourself! If you do something that we think is funny, you'll proceed to do it 50,000 more times and laugh harder and harder at yourself each time you do it.

- You think daddy lives in the phone. When he calls from work or on his way home from school I'll put him on speaker phone so that you can hear him and now any time my phone rings you say "dada." It's very sweet.

- You have started to really pull up on things lately. I think you enjoy the challenge of it because you'll work really hard to get up and the reward just isn't enough for you because you get a look of satisfaction and then disappointment and you sit down. You find more entertainment with getting yourself into tight spaces and then finding a way out. For example, today you crawled UNDER your walker and it took you a few minutes to figure out how to duck your head under so you could get back out but as soon as you were out you laughed and did it again.

- You started to clap this month! Out of nowhere you just started to put your hands together and you clap when anything makes you happy now.

- You went to your first football game and LOVED it this month! You yelled and cheered when everyone else did and watched the game very intently.

And that's about all I can think of right now. We love having you in our lives and can't wait to watch you grow more and more! Here's your comparison shots:

And your 1 month vs. 9 month shot:

I "said" no!

Logan has learned to say "no." Though, she doesn't really know the difference between how to answer for no and how to answer for yes, it's pretty entertaining to watch.

Everybody Clap Your Hands

Logan surprised us last night when she, out of nowhere, started to clap her hands in response to us doing something she liked. At first, I thought that maybe she had done it on accident, but she kept doing it over and over. I know it seems like something so little, but to see developments like this is so much fun as her parents. She also learned how to give high fives, but she's still a little hesitant to do that (as you'll see in the video).

Now, she's clapping her hands all the time. She claps them when she's happy, she claps them when someone else claps, she claps things together, she claps when she sees people on tv clapping and, most importantly, now she's able to clap along with the Little Einsteins to help Rocket fly! (it's her favorite tv show and to get the rocket they fly to go the characters clap their hands)

Reunited!

Ana and Patty are my best friends from high school. We did everything together when we all lived in Miami. We played in the orchestra together, took all of our trips together and even got up at 5:30am every Thursday to go to breakfast together before we headed to our first class of the morning (which was also together). Patty went off to Furman for college and Ana and I stayed together at Florida State where we did everything short of rooming together. Now I live 5 minutes away from Patty but we're missing Ana (who we keep trying to convince to move here but we haven't gotten very far with that one). They were both in my wedding, Ana and I drove up together to good old South Carolina for Patty's wedding and now we're waiting for Ana to get married in February! We haven't all been together since Patty's wedding, but Ana drove up this weekend so we could all hang out. It's been so much fun to be all together, again!

This picture is so fun on so many levels but mostly because it shows us all in our different life stages: Patty being pregnant with baby girl Tolbert, Ana engaged and getting married in February and me, the new mommy!

This is a better picture of Logan (though the quality is poor because we had to use the iphone):

We went out to dinner last night with Patty and then headed to Chapel Hill for the UNC vs. FSU game. What a GREAT game! We actually considered leaving after the first quarter because we felt like it was going to be a blowout and we didn't want to keep Logan up so far past her bedtime to get crushed to death. We are SO glad that we ended up staying, though, and getting to see the Seminoles bring such a great comeback.

Logan had such a great time at the game. She screamed along with everyone when they screamed and looked around confusedly when everyone stopped yelling. Though this caused her to cheer for the wrong team, it was still a lot of fun to watch. We had a hard time getting a good picture with her because she was so intrigued by everything going on around us.

Finally got one of all of us looking at the camera, again, poor quality because it was on the iphone instead of our normal camera (our batteries died on our way to the game).
Logan spent the entire second half in the moby cuddled up to me. It was the best! She is such a sweet little baby.

Let me out!

This afternoon I was out on the deck working on a project while Logan sat inside with Mike. After a couple of seconds, she realized where I was and wanted to join me! What she didn't realize was that I was not within reach, that there actually was a glass door separating us.

Hey mom, let me out of here!

I'm making you laugh, this is fun.

Enough, already! Let me OUT!

Logan has been doing some very fun things lately. One of our favorite new developments is her ability to "drink" out of her teacups. She makes a fun slurping noise when she puts it to her mouth. We're not quite sure where she learned that as neither Mike or I slurp when we drink, but it's adorable! I'd also like to mention that the shirt she's wearing is my first attempt at doing applique work and I love the way it turned out, I can't wait to do more projects like that in the future!

Lazy Saturdays

We are having a very lazy Saturday today. Logan and I woke up and it was 46 degrees outside so we decided we'd stay in and let daddy go play football without us. We don't use the heat at night yet so when we got up it was FREEZING! Luckily, Logan was wearing her cute thermal jammies from Target and we threw on her little ugg boots to keep her feeties warm. I thought the combo was too cute so I did a little photo shoot with her! I've been playing around with some photo editing software and the last two pictures are a product of that :) we're hoping that I'll get good enough with it that we won't need to get too many professional photos taken. (also, please pardon the mess in the background, we've been working all day to get that sorted out)

Miss Mischevious

And here's what the little missy was doing while I wrote out the last blog post. She crawled (yes, she's actually crawling now--no more gimpy scoot--I'll get a video of it when she's not quite as cranky) under her bouncer and pulled out all of her books from the bookshelf to create a little fort for herself. At least she's interested in reading, right?

Just When You Think It's Better....

...and you start to think, man, I think I could have another one (because the first few months with all of the sleep deprivation you can't imagine ever doing it again), WHAM! You get hit again. (no, I'm not pregnant, nor are we planning to have another one in the very near future for those of you who read too much into the first sentence ;) )

Before Logan got her everlasting cold three weeks ago she had FINALLY started to sleep consistently through the night and had FINALLY started taking good, consistent naps during the day (two, two hour naps) and then she was hit. And since then we've been lucky if we get one good one hour nap and we're lucky if we sleep halfway through the night. It's not been too horrible (other than being dead during the day) but last night was a beast! Tuesday night Logan slept straight through the night (mind you, she couldn't get to sleep due to the barking cough until after midnight, but once she was asleep, she slept) and she had a great nap day yesterday where we were almost back on track with our two long naps and she went to bed at 8pm.

We got hit again at 3:45am with the teething and the coughing and our sweetie was not back down until almost 6am. I tell you what, those nights are way worse when you have a teaser night like Tuesday night in your back burner. Of course, she doesn't ever sleep in, either, she's like an alarm clock promptly at 9am no matter how late or how much she was up. So, she's been awake for a awhile now and is a bit of a grump because of her lack of sleep. Oh, well. Such is life, right? I STILL love being a mom and wouldn't trade this new job for anything in the world (especially now when she has these crazy nights--I don't know how I'd get up for school after that)!

Anyway, this little creation is what has kept me sane the last few days when all Logan wants is to be held for several hours at a time:

At 20lbs, she's no tiny tomato anymore. The person who invented this is absolutely genius--I mean, cut 5 yards of jersey fabric, stick a tag with the name moby on it and a booklet of directions on different holds, price it at around $60 (I got mine at the consignment fair for 10) and you're rolling in dough ! It's one of those, "If only I had thought of that..." products. Now that I've got one, I won't go back to the sling or the bjorn. I can hold her like this, I can hold her facing in, I can hold her on my hip, and I can hold her on my back and the weight distribution it provides makes it feel like I don't have anything on me at all. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

Here are a few more pictures of Logan in her big girl jammies! I found some really cute leopard print thermals at Walmart yesterday for a great price, and since we've been hitting the low 40's at night it was a great night to try them out...the only problem was they only had 18 month pj's in that pattern- they didn't dwarf her, that's for sure!



Here's hoping for a better day and night!

Almost forgot!

I almost forgot to give an honorable blog mention to Logan's Uncle John! It's his 23 birthday today and Logan is SO excited! Happy Birthday!

Whew!

Oh my stars, we have had quite a day here today! Logan was up about every 30 minutes last night with her croupy cough so we decided to take her in to the dr. this morning to make sure that it wasn't affecting her lungs. It isn't. Which is great, but gives me no solution for the coughing, wheezing, and phlegmy vomiting (other than the humidifier, nose aspirator, tylenol, steamy shower, head in freezer stuff that I'm already doing). Needless to say I am absolutely and utterly exhausted and am praying to get a little more than an hour at a time tonight...but if not, it's ok, I know God will give me the strength I need to get through every trying moment--He hasn't failed me yet!

As if to compound the fact that she's got this nasty cold that isn't giving her much sleep and is leaving her severely uncomfortable, Logan's first tooth is finally popping through! I know, I've posted several times about her teething but through all of the fussing, the drool, the runny nose and the swollen gums, it has taken MONTHS for this one to pop. Yesterday Logan was doing really funny things with her tongue inside her mouth and I mentioned to Mike that her tooth must be coming through because I had never see her do anything quite like that and sure enough as I was feeling around in her mouth after she had a crying fit and was pulling at her gums, there it was. I promptly LOOKED in her mouth because I've felt sharp stuff in there before only to realize that it wasn't the tooth--and it is a little tooth bud in there. I told Mike that it's just in time for Halloween and that we have a ready made costume- we'll just paint her face orange, get her to smile and call her a jack-o-logan. :)

So, keep us in your prayers. She's been as grumpy and fussy as she's ever been in her life and it's tiring. In fact, she and I are going to bed right now. That's right. It's 7:30. Yes, we're going to bed for the night and I'm looking forward to it.

This is what we've been doing for the last few days trying to get rid of the yuckies:

Watching Little Einsteins and snuggling with mommy is the cure for anything, isn't it?

Sweet Little Pumpkin

It is a beautiful fall day here in North Carolina. 65 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze. An absolutely perfect day for going to the pumpkin patch! So we packed up our stuff and headed on over there. Logan had a great time playing in the pumpkins and was such a trooper as we snapped a billion pictures of her! She's sleeping it off now. We couldn't pick our favorite pictures so we posted most of the ones we took.

Let's Go Seminoles!

It's another lonely Saturday night here in our household as Mike headed off to work at 7:30pm (he'll be off around 12am) so Logan and I are hanging out here getting ready for the Florida State game. Logan will be sleeping through most of it so she's in her FSU jammies hoping that they give us some luck against Georgia Tech.

We've been working on teaching her the war chant and the chop and she's starting to get the chop--though, right now it's looking lack spastic arm movements! As for the war chant, we'll hum it and she'll just do a long straight hum/scream through it. :) Once she gets them down I'll get a good video and post it.

Right now Logan says: F-L-O-R-I-D-A S-T-A-T-E, Florida State, Florida State, Florida State WOOOO!

This is the face she made after I told her what they've been doing to her friend Bobby Bowden all week. She says, "I love Bobby, leave him alone or I'll come and get you!"
Let's go Seminoles!