girlfriend loves her some books.

This is from Mil's phone, so sorry for the poor quality . . . it's worth it though.

Pleeze

hey mama...


pleeze,


pleeze


let me at that camera!

I love maggie...

...and maggie loves me.

she gives me lots of kisses


teaches me how to walk on all fours


looks me in the eye when i talk to her


and lets me "pat pat" her on the head and play with her "necklace" (collar)

New Tricks

Weekend at Riverbank

Grayson has been to the lake before, but somehow we didn't manage to get out on the boat last time (gasp!). She didn't mind the life jacket at all, but she sure looked funny in it. When she sat, it was so high up on her neck that she must have felt like she couldn't move, hence the funny, stiff pictures.


Ready for a nap.

Weekend at Riverbank continued...

Swimming with maymay and daddy. She had this perplexed look almost the whole time in the float, very skeptical.




Looking at pictures on the laptop with peeps.


Reading with daddy; books are always a hit these days.

Happy 10 Months!

Oh my, how you've grown!

Friends for Lunch Yesterday...

Grayson was fascinated with baby John. She kept "pat-patting" him on the head.


Charlie reading to Grayson.


Charlie, Grayson & Anna chasing each other (sort of). Grayson was doing her best to keep up!

Careful Calculations

The last few mornings, Grayson has been waking up about thirty minutes to an hour early. No fussing, just a little chatting here and there, laying in her bed sucking her thumb, eyes wide open. Apparently she was staring up at her crib bars, carefully calculating her plan for this...

I put her in her crib with some toys this morning for a few minutes so I could get dressed without chasing after her. Almost immediately, I heard the crib lightly shaking. I ran to get the camera, peeped in, and there she was...pulled up to standing. Watching her figure out to get down was hysterical. She'd let go with one hand, swing backwards, and then quickly hold on again. Finally, after I momentarily wondered if we were going to have to go to the hospital for a busted head, she just let go and sat with a thud.

I thought she might try it again come morning nap time, but she was asleep in less than five minutes, record time. I guess she was worn out from her new found skill.

As a side note, I'd like to give a shout out to Aunt Ali for painting the letters above the crib. Cute. Cute. Cute. I've been meaning to post on the transformation of this itty bitty "bedroom" in our house to becoming a nursery, but more on that later.

Can you clap?

If you ask Grayson, "can you clap?", she says "sure I can!". Kidding. But she will put her hands together and give you a clap or two with a big giant "I'm so pleased with myself" grin. Did we teach her this? I don't remember consciously teaching her to clap. She's been mimicking sounds and gestures for a while now, but this is the first one that's associated only with a phrase. It's amazing how quickly they pick up on things! "Words" of the week to mimic include...necklace "ne--ssssss"...lights "li---sss"...lima "li---mm" (as in lima bean, decent hit last night at dinner, go vegetables!)




Crazy mama put her in these crazy pigtails. None of us were too sure about it.

The Little Things

It's the little things that entertain the best...


Up close and personal with the camera (sorry for the bright flash, still cute though).


She discovered the woobi folded neatly under the side table, dragged it out, conquered the mountain, then proceeded to drag it on her expedition to the other rooms in the house. What can I say, the girl loves a good woobi.


A red plastic shovel, a yogurt container taped up with cheerios inside, a butter container taped up with rice inside, and three cute little people (Anna and Mac came for dinner!).

My Grandparents Sure Love Me

grammashu and great mamaw can't take their eyes off of me, even for a photograph. did i mention that grammashu came last weekend and played with me the whole weekend so mama and daddy could go back and forth to a wedding event in chapel hill? more on that later..


peeps was introducing me to ccr on his ipod. i got really still at first, and then i started bobbing to the music.

maymay babysat for me a couple of times this week too. and i heard my grandpa jon is trying to get down here to see me soon. i also miss my dampa george. he's working this summer so he can't tag along with grammashu!

June Update (part 5, last part, promise)

(warning: this series of posts goes drastically against our usual blogging "rules" for readdaddyread. This post has way too much text, and five parts is way past the allotted frequency. I just wanted to note that I know I'm breaking the rules :) )

As I’m typing this, I checked the video monitor and saw Grayson sitting up in her bed instead of lying down to take a nap. She finally figured it out. She’s been doing the army crawl scoot for weeks now, and has been sitting up on her own for long time, but she hadn’t quite mastered how to sit back up from her belly until late yesterday afternoon. It’s crazy to me how one day these little ones don’t know a skill, and the next day, they have it mastered. It’s such a testimony to our Creator. Here’s the (trying to be short but not really working) recount of what she was up to in June...

• She laughs when we laugh.
• If we click our tongues, she clicks her tongue back.
• She used her first sign (and now uses it consistently), “all done” when she’s finished with her food.
• She’s said “mama” a time or two when I’ve woken her up in the morning and she’s hungry. It’s not consistent, but I’ll take it anyways!
• She says “dadadada”, but not quite aimed consistently at Justin yet.
• If she’s in the right mood, she’ll mimic a few words we say. It all started at meal time. Justin said “amen” after praying, and she looked at us and said “a-mn”, two syllables. We looked at each other, but thought it was a fluke. But then when she did it at the next meal, we cheered like she had made the winning basket for the state championship game. She got tickled, and proceeded to say it for the following five or so meals. I also told Justin jokingly to ‘be nice”, and she followed with “niccccccce”. Funny babe. “Nana” also appears sometimes when we break out a banana.
• Speaking of meals, her new favorites are cottage cheese, yogurt and deli turkey. She’s not huge on finger foods, but she’ll taste chunks from a spoon or from our fingers. Prunes, applesauce, and the occasional banana slice are still the favorite fruits but veggies are a challenge.
• She outgrew her infant car seat at her 9 month check up since she was in the 95th percentile for height. Still in the 50th for weight. She loves her new big girl car seat where she can really see out the side windows.
• The army crawl is hilarious. She can move fast too on our hardwood floors. And she picks up every stray dog hair in site, no matter how many times I vacuum or swiffer. I think I’m going to sew a swiffer cloth onesie for her to wear around the house. She pulls mostly with her left arm (hence the scratches and occasional rug burn there) and pushes mostly with her right big toe (hence the blister forming there, note picture below). Neither ailment seems to slow her down.
• She loves to stand, but hasn’t mastered pulling up yet. She also hasn’t figured out that she’ll fall if she lets go, so we still have to be there as backup.
• Favorite toys to play with include: buckets in the kitchen full of spatulas and Tupperware, sand bucket with sand toys, and baskets of books. She will pull out books from the baskets in her room for over thirty minutes. If she is in the kitchen and remembers them, she will make a beeline for her room in seconds.
• She squeals when she sees pictures of babies or real-life babies.
• If we hold her hands, she takes steps and walks.
• She had her first fever and was pitiful (yes, I know, it’s amazing that this was her first at 9 months plus).
• Her hair keeps growing.
• She loves to chew on shoes, even when they are attached to feet.
• She loves the water. She has a new inflatable tub that sits in our big tub, she loves the baby pool, the big pool, and the ocean. She still hasn’t swum at the lake yet, but it’s next on the list.
• She loves to sleep with her pink blanket (“woobi” in our house), and she likes to snuggle and suck her thumb (mostly with me though, she thinks daddy is more for play time and fun).
• June was also filled with lots of fun family time. She got to meet her aunt Libba with new-baby-girl-cousin-on-the-way for the first time. Avery, Jackson, and aunt Ali came for a visit, and we had fun times at MayMay and Peeps house. Grammashu is on summer break, so she’s been over for lots of playtime. Even great Mamaw came for a day in June too.
  

This turned into a novel length post. I’ll try to keep more updated for the rest of the summer! Pictures below from June…

June Update (part 4)

(note: avery loves her "bunnet" (aka bellybutton). She was showing it to me here for the shot. Pictures with Libba are on another camera, so those will be posted later!)

June Update (part 3)