Lily as of late

Lily's first time in the Chariot without the infant sling. My baby's growing up (sniff, sniff)

Getting ready for biking season

Playing in the park on a gorgeous spring day in Calgary

Pulling Lily with our new bike attachment

I try not to take it personally...

Wanted to take a picture of Lily with my big fancy cake

Clearly, I should have known that it wasn't a good idea!

Just looking cute!

(but is supposed to be sleeping instead of playing with the white noise machine)

Lily's favorite new sleeping position

Mountain princess

Standing for her supper

Having a nice snooze in the crib

Time (mis)management

I've never been particularly good at being on time. I'm usually pretty close but it's rare that I'm actually somewhere exactly when I'm supposed to be. Add a baby to the mix and now I'm always running late! It seems that I have yet to figure out how to integrate having a baby into my lifestyle as I just can't seem to get out of the house in a timely manner. I never remember how long it actually takes to get myself and Lily organized and I'm constantly surprised by the number of tasks that need to be completed before I can leave the house. This is particularly concerning given that I return to work in one month and have yet to get out of the house in less than 1 1/2 hours from the time I wake up. I don't want to sacrifice myself in order to get to work on time because I'm sick of wearing baggy clothes and having my hair in a ponytail. I'm a little nervous about how early I'm going to need to get up in order to feel presentable but I can only hope that I'll get this next stage of motherhood figured out in a way that makes me feel ok about myself and doesn't get me fired for tardiness.

How quickly you forget...

The heartburn while pregnant

The pain of labour

The endless feedings

The witching hour

The sleepless nights

Your newborn's constant need to held

The diaper blowouts

The number of times you were up in the night

The two hour window of "me time"

The resolution to only have one...

Fast and furious

Lily has been developing at an alarming rate over the past month. As mentioned in my previous posts, she's learned to crawl. She also knows how to pull herself up on furniture and cruises around while holding onto the couch. It did take her awhile to figure out that there is a whole house to explore but now she motors all over the place. She's obsessed with trying to get into the bathroom, trying to get into the compost bin, and trying to eat the dog food. Most annoyingly, she finally figured out how to roll over and she's started to roll over and pull herself up in the crib whenever I put her down for a nap or at bedtime. It's taken over an hour to get her down for today's nap and two hours to get her to bed last night, all because she just wants to keep practicing standing up in her crib. She looks as pleased as punch whenever I come in the room to sit her back down and giggles away to herself when she sees me. On the bright side, she still hasn't expressed much interest yet in our stairs which is a darn good thing considering our lack of a baby gate!

Parenting right of passage

I've tried really hard to not be the stereotypical first time mom who worries about every little sneeze or sniffle. I think that this has served me well because I'm quite calm about most things related to Lily. Fast forward to Monday night, one week ago, and I became quite the little worrier. Lily woke up crying and coughing at about 11pm. I didn't think too much of it and in fact, I ignored her crying for awhile in the hopes that she would go back to sleep. Both the crying and the coughing intensified and I went to check on her. I picked her up out of the crib and she promptly threw up all over me! Not a little bit of milk spit-up but big messy throw-up...all the stuff that she had eaten that day (am always surprised at how long it takes for food to digest!). It wasn't pretty and she wasn't happy. She continued to puke for another couple of hours, was listless and tired but most concerning of all, wouldn't nurse. I called Health Link and they told me to take her to the hospital if she started vomiting bile but otherwise suggested that she would be fine. We did manage to get her to sleep for a couple of hours in our bed but she woke up at 5am and started vomiting bile. I figured that she did just have the stomach flu but it was quite scary to see her be so out of sorts. I knew that I wouldn't feel ok until we had her checked out so off to the Children's Hospital we went. We were in and out within an hour with a diagnosis of probable stomach flu. We were to return the next day if she got worse but luckily, she improved remarkably over the next 12 hours. In the end, I'm glad that we did go to the hospital for two reasons. One, I felt reassured that my little love was going to be ok. And two, it was good to get the first trip to the hospital over with. I knew that it would happen sometime and it might as well have been on a night when we were seen quickly and when little Lily wasn't really too sick at all.

Lily's first bike ride

It was a glorious March day here yesterday - 14C and nary a cloud in the sky. We had just bought the Chariot bike attachment with my Spin Sisters discount card and we were keen to try it out. While biking along the busy river pathway in Calgary isn't quite as fun as ripping down some sweet DH trails at one of the ski hills, we had a fantastic day as a family and we were feeling very blessed to have such a fun time together. Lily just gets better and better by the day and we couldn't be happier to have her as our daughter.

All for the love of a little plastic duck...

Rubber ducky, you're the one...

It's only true if you capture on video...

March 7th, 2010 - Video footage of Lily's crawling (this attempt was much better than the first one. She's obviously a very quick learner!)

Finally!

Lily crawled today. Ok, so it was only for a second and she only managed to move a few feet but she did move forward! I'll try to get some video of her doing it and will post it asap.

P.S. She also took two steps while standing and holding onto Scott's hands. It's shaping up to be a big week for my little girl :)

Better late than never

Here are some of the photos from Christmas 2009. These are the ones from Scott's camera - the ones from my camera are still on the old computer.

Getting closer

Lily is SO close to crawling. However, it seems like she's been so close for months and I'm not sure exactly what it will take for her to learn to move her hips and hands forward. None the less, she has now learned to get herself into a sitting position from a prone position on the floor. I'm not exactly sure how she does that because I keep missing it but she's done it a few times this week so I know that I'm not imagining things! It does make me laugh because I've turned around to send an email or type a blog post and when I next look up, boom, she's just sitting up and smiling away at me.

P.S. Her other fun new skill this week? Shaking her head back and forth in a "no" motion. It looks too cute.

Just who's blankie is it anyways?

Canadian Cutie

Express yourself

I've been trying to teach Lily various bits of sign language for the past few months. I've been doing "milk", "more", "all done", "hungry", and "sleepy". I haven't really been sure that she understands what I'm trying to teach her but she did do the sign for milk the other day (March 2nd). I even had friends over at the time and they were also totally convinced that that is what she was doing. However, I do have to admit now that I'm not completely sure that she is actually doing the sign for milk - I think that she may just have figured out how to make a fist with her hand. None the less, I'm going to go with my theory that she's learning sign language and clearly is the smartest baby ever!

P.S. I'm also pretty sure that she said "Momma" for the first time today (March 4th). Even if she didn't say it, she smiles like crazy when I say it back to her which makes me think that she at least knows who her momma is!

The Lily-pilli

Blowing raspberries

Oh the things we do as parents...

Jan. 25th, 2010 - trying to entice Lily to crawl

Go Canada Go!