Portland Visit and a Pre-Birthday Party!

Bebe, Papa, Lily, and I made a quick trip to Portland this weekend to visit the family and have a little pre-birthday celebration for Miss Lillian!

Yay, Aunt Mary is here! Lily liked checking out Grandpa's bird and squirrel friends.

This window is the perfect height!

Lily has her Fred Meyer Rewards Card and her shopping cart, she is ready! "Hello Fred Meyer Shoppers!" Thanks Theresa, Paul and Elie!

We love this new toy, even if it is a duck! Thanks Chris, Chris, Sam and Noah!

Elie made an awesome polka dot cake. It was delicious!

"What do you think about this cake, Grandpa?"

We were so excited to meet our newest cousin, Bijou!

Thanks for taking some great photos, Aunt Mary! Thanks everyone for a great visit!

Sick Day

Lily wasn't feeling great, so we stayed home today. I feel like we've been slacking on the photos, but it has been so dark and we are hardly home in the light during the week! Since we were home during the day AND it was actually nice out, we scored some good light today. AND the great light happened to fall right on Lily's favorite place to hang out these days...the stairs!

Tooth #4 finally came through last weekend. Luckily we had a 3 day weekend because we needed Monday to recover!

We are getting ready for Lily's big #1 next weekend! Too bad we got so busy playing, giggling, and snapping photos that I let an entire batch overcook! Oh well!

Here are some pictures we took earlier in January. Lily is loving bath time now that we took out the baby tub! Daddy is bath man, and he has definitely had to up his game now that Lily figured out that she can climb around and stand up in the tub.

Other news: Lily's teacher often takes the kiddos to see the chickens (I didn't even know they had chickens on campus!), and told us that Lily loves to say "roo roo rooooo" when she sees them! Too funny. They have been having dance and shake parties (Lily's 2 favorite things), and Lily has learned a funny new trunk twisting dance move. It is too cute! It seems like she is taking more and more steps every day, and now it is usually her own idea! She can walk 5, 6, 7 or more steps when she is really motivated. She has a new trick where she seems to like to crawl under things...and then gets stuck and cries! Oops. We'll keep working on that one.

Busy, Busy Baby! - 11 Months

Lily is 11 months old today, and she has been SOO busy this week, we can barely keep up! She is cruising all over the house now looking for trouble to get into. These are from earlier this week. She is hanging out between our dresser (so many knobs it's like a baby climbing wall) and our bed, where she can hang out and cruise. Baby heaven!

Then, she discovered our stairs. I love the expression her face on this ascent. She is thinking, "DUDE, did you guys know we have stairs in our house?? This is awesome!!" It is too cute watching her little butt go up the stairs. Butt up, leg up, leg up, butt up....

Now that she has discovered climbing, she thinks she is going to climb everything. I caught her holding on to the baby gate and lifting her little knee like she was thinking she might try to scale it! She gets really, really pissed when we put the gate up at the bottom of the stairs. She just hangs on for dear life, shakes it, and wails. The injustice of the baby gate!

She is exploring new and previously undiscovered territory in our house, never before seen by baby-kind...and finding lots and lots of ways to slam her fingers into things.

We are certain that she has joined a Baby Fight Club, and that MUST explain the current condition of her face. She was just healing a cheek bruise from a mouse cart injury (I looked over and could only see her legs flailing out the top!), and then she encountered the activity cube (if you don't let go to the bead part on top when you start to fall, you can really ricochet your face into the corner really good) and slammed her forehead into the tile at the bottom of the stairs. Lily says, "Learning to walk hurts my face!"

Today she did some real walking! She is actually putting a few steps together on her own. Check out a video here (<--click this You Tube link!).

We can't believe we only have one more monthly photo session to go! We were also shocked that we were able to get her to sit still long enough to get any good shots. One month until the BIG DAY!

Friesen Christmas, and First Steps!

Kristin and Justin invited us over to their house on Sunday to celebrate Christmas, Friesen-style! Lily had a great time playing with her cousins. You can tell she wants to be able to run and play with them SO BAD! As a special treat, we all got to watch Lily accidentally take a couple of steps...her first 2!! Hooray!

Kristin made Lily this adorable block puzzle. Thank you Auntie Kristin!

Lily had a great 1st Christmas. We took down all our decorations today (just in time, Lily was really figuring out how the get those shiny balls off it!). Thank you to everyone who helped make her first so special!