Boyles Family Blog

Tuesday is Veggie and Fruit Day

2008-06-22T22:33:00.005-05:00

Like the title says Tuesday is our delivery day for our fruits and veggies. We just signed up with a Farm Co-op called BlueStar CSA. They are a group of farms that grow organic fruits and vegetables and then deliver them to families in and around Houston. It is a pretty neat setup - we leave a cooler out the night before on our front door, then some time that night they drop off our share of fruits and veggies of the season. That following morning, as Katie puts it, it is like waking up Christmas morning to see what gifts have been left. This past Tuesday was our first delivery and here is a picture of what is left. Keep in mind we have already eaten cantaloupe, tomatoes, lima beans, and okra. Not shown was a watermelon.

We are already enjoying this whole Co-op thing. It has already made a positive impact on our lives. We have eaten all of our meals at home for the past 2 days. We feel that since we have made this commitment to have this great food delivered we have to make the commitment to use it and not waste all the hard work that went into getting it to our front door. Another positive is that we are getting stuff that we would not normally buy so it is fun trying out new recipes. Tonight's dinner was grilled Garlic and Lime Chicken with lima beans drizzled with olive oil and Italian seasonings, and baked Okra. Tomorrow I'm planning on making stuffed Ortega chilies, grilled squash, and corn.

Lily goes to the Little Gym!!!!

2008-06-21T11:14:00.009-05:00

This morning we took Lily to her first Little Gym class. It was sooo much fun and Lily did really really well. On a few of the activity's the instructor used Lily as the example . One of them being "Over the Top" kind of difficult to describe but here goes. The Over the Top is where you sit on the floor with Lily laying on your shins then you reach under their arms and lean back bring Lily into a flip over your shoulders to a standing position then reverse it back to the shins. A few of the other activities were somersaults, Jungle the bells, parachute go around, Log Roll, just to name a few.

Lily and Mommy just before we entered the Little Gym area

Lily doing some Jiggling of the bells and slobering on them.

Here is Mommy assisting Lily in a Somersault

Now were singing in the Parachute go Around

Ok Mommy you can let go now! I'm about to do my HUGE dismount
I guess I have to work on that landing thing

Mommy and Lily saying Good Bye

Auntie visits Texas!

2008-06-02T02:27:00.002-05:00

Ok, time for Auntie Kelly to actually do the wonderful Houston update. I had the extreme joy of spending a week in Texas; first half was a mini-college reunion in Austin, and the the second leg of my Texas journey involved way less tourist time and way more baby time. I flew to Houston on Sunday afternoon and had a great few days relaxing, playing with Lily, and even jet skiing over ridiculously scary waves (thank you Fred). I even left Texas with...drumroll please...a Teva tan (gasp!). I know, the horror. But it was worth it.

Here we are when I arrived, slightly delirious and frizzy-haired, but so excited to see my niece. And who cares if she's more interested in measuring spoons than her auntie! That would all change.

She does this hilarious Frankenstein-arm thing where she thrusts her hands out, arms and fingers very straight, and lunges for your face. It's more charming than I made that sound.

SOMEBODY has a clean diaper!

Everything is way more fun with an 8-month old baby around, including random car rides.

Just chillaxin at lunch. Not a care in the world.

Katie and I went to Bath Junkie, aka heaven on earth where you can create your own bath/beauty products with amazing scents. However, it is not a good place for the indecisive.

Those are my large containers that would force me to check my bags on the way home (as they are over 3 oz. or whatever the terrorists can't use to smuggle in explosives).

Katie experiences so much joy at Bath Junkie; she knows each employee intimately (no joke, we walk in and it's immediately, "oh did your sister-in-law have the baby?? omg!"). Literal Bath Junkie junkie.

I made an almond/peach/buttercream concoction that is SO amazing. Though one of my friends here smelled it, coughed a couple times and was like...you put that on your SKIN? Dude, at least I don't smell like frankincense & myrrh. For reals.

I want to open one of these in San Francisco. Who's with me? Financing, anyone?

...ok, so 80% of this post has become about lotion. Back to the real stuff. So, Fred took me jet skiing through some of the coolest areas...bayous, lakes, and eventually ridiculous crashing waves that made me scream "I feel like I am riding a mechanical bull!". Here we are in a calm moment, after we met Katie and Lily for lunch off the water.

After our adventures we all calmed down and went to dinner in Kemah on the boardwalk. LOOK AT THIS CHILD. Holy cow, I love her.

The parents, looking remarkably well-rested.

The boardwalk is really pretty.

...and in conclusion, this is me and a shark. Who knows, really.

So anyway, best Texas trip ever. I compiled a few really cute Lily videos, but youtube is taking its sweet time to process them. In the meantime, here is a short clip as a placeholder. Enjoy!

Raspberries!

2008-04-15T22:00:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately I turned the camera to take this video and don't have the software yet to be able to shift it back, so you'll have to turn your head (or laptop!) to watch this one. It was too cute not to post though! :)

Fun weekend!

2008-04-13T23:15:00.007-05:00

This will be a quick little update since it's late (11:00 pm!) - I just wanted to get a few pics up here! We had a fun weekend that consisted of:

... Lily eating her first "meal" of banana's (which she LOVED!):

... meeting up for dinner at Cracker Barrel with our good friends Valarie & Andy and their little cutie Sara (who's almost 3 months old). We stood the babies up next to each other so we could compare their heights and as soon as Lily got next to Sara, she reached over and grabbed her hand! She did this a BUNCH of times and then finally brought Sara's hand to her mouth and started licking it. We all had a good laugh over this whole thing! I just love the pics... the expression on Sara's face is priceless! :)

Lily decided she needed a little something to suck on while we walked around the Cracker Barrel store after dinner.

... Lily sitting in the grocery store cart for the first time (and loving it)!!!

She blew raspberries at people throughout most of our shopping!

Hope you guys all had a nice weekend!

6 month photos!

2008-04-06T21:58:00.011-05:00

We had 6-month "spring" photos taken of Lily this morning! Here are some of our favorite shots of our little cutie:

You can check out all of the photos from the photo shoot in the "Portrait Innovations" folder here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fboyles

Also, I uploaded a TON of new photos to our Picasa photo website. To get to them, click on the photos at the top left of the blog (or you can go directly to the folder: http://picasaweb.google.com/fboyles/BoylesFamilyBlog). Stay tuned for more photos... I am determined to organize ALL of our "Lily" photos (since birth) and put a lot of them up on our Picasa site.

Hope everyone had a nice weekend! :)

A lot to write about!!!

2008-04-03T22:50:00.024-05:00

There is so much to tell... I don't know where to begin! Lily turned 6 months old on March 14th and the world of "solid foods" has been opened up to her. She's been eating rice cereal since she was 4 1/2 months and oatmeal since around 5 months old, but I'd wanted to wait until she was officially 6 months old to introduce fruits & veggies. So, a few days after she turned 6 months old, we gave her avocado. After some gagging during her first try at it (which was Mom and Dad's fault... the avocado wasn't as ripe as it should have been so it was a bit too clumpy for her), we bought a food mill from Babies R Us and tried giving her avocado again, this time a much more pureed consistency. She really liked it! Since then, she's had: squash, sweet potatoes, applesauce, carrots, and green beans. She's seemed to really like everything she's eaten, so I'm hoping this means she'll be a good eater (and not picky). This was taken after her first bites of avocado:

She then moved on to messier meals:

... and now she's an 'ol pro at eating!

We took Lily in for her 6 month appointment and she is certainly a big girl now! She weighed 18 pounds (which put her above the 75th percentile for weight) and also, in Jacikas family fashion, she has a very large head (95th percentile)! The doctor started to tell us "She doesn't look like she has an unusually large head" and we were laughing... she looks perfect to us! She did so great getting her shots this time and to Fred's and my amazement, didn't really even cry after getting them. She started to cry, but we distracted her quickly and I picked her up right after she'd gotten them... within a few moments, she was back to being her smiley self. :) She also didn't seem to be affected by the shots in the days following them this time.

Just this past weekend, she has started moving - if you put her on the floor on her tummy, she scoots backwards slowly. The first time I really noticed this, she scooted from the area in front of our fireplace all the way over towards our fish tank (which is a good ~10 feet). She eventually got herself turned around and started to go under the couch, which is when she could finally go no farther. She also loves to put weight on her legs (which is another reason why I think she loves the Exersaucer and her Bouncy seat) so she likes to practice standing up without us holding her (though our hands are right there to catch her the moment she starts to tip). She is so strong!!! The pediatrician even remarked to us how strong and stable she looked sitting up on the exam table. I think it helps that she's been sitting up since she was 4 1/2 months old... she's had a lot of time to strengthen her muscles!

Lily is still as drooley as ever, but no teeth have shown up yet. She still enjoys "talking" to us and testing out her vocal range. If she's awake when I'm talking to Fred on the phone, I can pretty much always hear her in the background. The sound that she makes a lot when she's on the verge of being upset is an "Eeeehhh, Eeehhhh" sound - it's actually pretty cute. We can also read her like a book now - when she's tired, she very obviously starts to rub her eyes and pull on her hair or ears. It's at that point that we know it's off to bed! She's been doing really well with her nap schedule and goes down to sleep very easily most nights. After a rough patch a few weeks ago (around the 6 month mark), she is now sleeping pretty well at night. Last night, she went 7 1/2 hours between feedings which we can't complain about!

Fred thought it would be funny to put Lily in an old diaper box and take some pics. She really didn't mind it that much... I think she was just intrigued with the whole thing:

Grandma and Grandpa (my mom and dad) came to visit a few weeks ago and we had a GREAT time with them!!! The moment they arrived, Fred put Lily in my mom's arms and she gave them one of her HUGE smiles that just melts your heart. We can't wait to get them out here once they retire! Lily sure loved spending time with them!

We did a bunch of fun things while they were here (and I took most of the week off from work which was a nice little break)! We went to an Easter playdate, the wild animal park (where my Dad touched the horns of a Texas Longhorn and my Mom exclaimed "I've never been this close to a camel in my life!"), and Fred and I went jet-skiing while my folks watched Lily. Jet-skiing was so much fun - I can't wait to go out again! We took the jet ski out on Clear Lake and back through some of the bayou waterways that run through some neighborhoods and parks in the area. We even rode it up to one of our favorite pubs, docked it, and had lunch before heading back out on the lake. There were a couple times where Fred really scared me (one time he meant to move us one way but went the other and one side of me got totally sprayed with water!) and I think he enjoyed hearing me yelling "Oh my God!!!" while we were whipping over choppy waves and I was holding onto the back of his life jacket for dear life)! Overall, we had a great time and it was so neat to get a new perspective of the beautiful area that we live in.

Here's a few pics of Lily at the Easter playdate. She went on the baby swing at the park for the first time and loved it!

In other fun news, we also celebrated the births of two of our very close friends' babies. Hannah Laine was born to Darby & Hilary on Thursday 3/27 and Jackson Hugh was born to Missy & Chuck the following day at the same hospital. They ended up being 2 doors down from each other on the postpartum/recovery floor so it was fun to visit both of them in the hospital last Friday! Last Saturday, Fred and I got to have a "date night", thanks to our great friends' Kevin & Jess (& their 3-year-old Peyton) who watched Lily for us. We went to an awesome Italian restaurant (Nino's) where we had chianti, yummy bread and olive oil, a buffalo mozzarella & basil & tomato salad, cannelloni, mezzaluna pasta, and tiramisu and coffee for dessert. Yummm!!! The food and ambiance were amazing and it was nice to get out just the two of us and reminisce about our fun trips to Europe (and of course we still talked about Lily!). After dinner, we saw the musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" and it was really funny!

Well, I'd better post this before it gets TOO long. We've just been having so much fun lately and there's been so much going on that I felt like capturing some of it in our blog. On tap for this weekend... we're getting professional 6-month photos taken of Lily so hopefully I'll be posting some of them here on Sunday night. Before I sign off, here's a few pics: a great pic of Bella (and a not-so-great one of me in my PJ's!) and a great family pic taken while we were walking around with my folks and aunt (Donna) and cousin (Sarah) at the Kemah Boardwalk. We all loved that hat on Lily!

Fun times!

2008-03-11T22:11:00.011-05:00

This past weekend, we went to the Alvin Wild Animal Park for Peyton's (our friends' daughter) 3rd birthday party and we had so much fun! Here are Lily and I during the party:

Lily's "baby blues" are sensitive like Fred's and my eyes so she wore her super-cool shades while in the front-pack with Fred. Surprisingly, she kept them on!

The tram ride around the park was SO neat! There are all sorts of exotic/wild animals (zebras, longhorns, camels, etc) that come right up to the tram to eat food from the bucket you're holding out for them. It was funny to witness the camels running perfectly alongside the tram, hoping to get more food! The ostriches kind of scared me - they are a little aggressive when diving their heads down to take food from the bucket. Fred was very amused by my fear of them (especially when our friend Marty put his food bucket right by the side of my head!) and I liked this picture he took of me and one of my ostrich "friends"! :) Is that the longest neck ever???

Although the tram ride was really loud and bumpy, Lily still managed to drift off to dreamland about 10 minutes into the ride. We'll have to take her back when she gets a little older so she can actually see all of the animals!

A few Saturdays ago, we also took a family trip down to the Butterfly Exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science. Lily was all set to go in her stroller (no more infant carseat - she's a Big Girl now!) and she was all wiggles and smiles in the front-pack carrier:

After going through the Butterfly Exhibit, we walked through Hermann Park (it was such a beautiful day!) over to the Houston Zoo. By this time, Lily was napping in the stroller so she missed the primates exhibit. She did wake up while we were walking through the birds exhibit and she was looking at us with this expression like "what are those chirping sounds???". After the bird exhibit, we walked through the indoor aquarium and Lily LOVED it! I took her out of the stroller and help her up to the glass tanks and she was reaching for the fish and pressing her hands against the tank. It was so neat to see her so interactive and intrigued by the fish. Here I am holding her at the aquarium:

I can't believe that she will be 6 months old on Friday! She has been so much fun lately and is so alert and expressive. I love to just watch her taking everything in. Sometimes I catch her watching Bella and smiling at her - it's so cute! She's also learned her name, I think. We play a game where I say "Lily... Lily..." when her head is turned away from me and after I say her name once or twice she'll whip her head around to look at me and give me a huge smile and sometimes a little giggle too. It's times like that that I just melt and can't believe I get to be the mother of this sweet, fun, wonderful little person! :)

Our little Valentine

2008-02-18T22:20:00.007-06:00

Happy belated Valentine's Day everyone!!!

And, in other news, Lily thinks her toes are tasty!!!

Look at this big girl!

2008-02-04T20:12:00.000-06:00

Lily is growing up so fast! We've enjoyed watching this little infant with "chicken legs" emerge into this cute smiley chubby little baby. She is getting so strong these days and tonight, she was sitting up by herself for an extended period of time. It was so neat to watch her steading herself when she started to lean one way or the other. I think she is really enjoying this new "sitting up" vantage point. It's a lot easier to watch everything around her!

Dressed to go to Grandma's (or Nana's) house!

2008-02-03T22:32:00.000-06:00

Lily's Pigtails

2008-01-29T21:45:00.001-06:00

While I was cleaning, Lily was watching her new fav cartoon Word World (really it's my fav. cartoon). While watching Sheep, Bear, and Duck building words she was sucking on her hands, then playing with her hair to the point that her hair was soaked with slobber. I couldn't resist giving her a new Doo.

Lily's Pigtails

Lily after cruising around the block with her shades

Lily playing in her Exersaucer

2008-01-29T08:58:00.000-06:00

Hey guys here is Lily playing in her Exersaucer. It is truly amazing, Katie and I went through a bunch of videos and pics last night and by doing so we could really appreciate how quickly she is growing. Just last week we had to stuff a blanket around her in the Exersaucer so she wouldn't fall over and this week she is standing and jumping in it. We will just have to wait and see what she will do next week.

She's growing up!

2008-01-28T23:53:00.001-06:00

Our little sweet pea!

Ready to eat her first rice cereal!

Hanging with Daddy in the laundry room!

Auntie Kelly checks in, Boyles fam checks out!

2007-12-30T14:14:00.000-06:00

Katie, Fred, and Lily are now safely on their plane heading back home to Texas. This is Auntie Kelly (Katie's sister) checking in...I somehow finagled "author" status for myself on their blog. What a coup!

Our visit with the Boyles was wonderful as always, but tinged by a semi-disaster. Every year our Auntie Vicki hosts a huge Christmas party in San Jose with tons of family, friends and food. Here we are, innocently on our way:

And without fail, every year this party is hit with some sort of "incident". There was the year that the Christmas tree fell over mid-party, shattering the ornaments; the year when a fart machine made its way to the bean dip bowl, delighting some and horrifying others; and the list goes on. This year was no different when 2 days post-party (Christmas Eve), 80% of the guests were put out of commission by the stomach flu.

Fred went first, and while we were all offering our sympathies/silently giving thanks that WE were not the ones on the bathroom floor, it picked us off one by one like the evil Christmas sniper. As we all took turns expelling the contents of our breakfast, our biggest reason to be thankful is that my parents have four bathrooms. Lucky.

Despite Grandma, Grandpa, Mommy, Daddy, and Auntie all being walking germ incubators, Lily proved she has the Immune System of Steel and just giggled and cooed her way through the week, never getting sick. Bionic Baby, perhaps.

Another fun part about their visit was the never-ending parade of fashionable baby wear that Lily sports. The girl likes a theme, I'll tell you that much. In addition to the kicky phrase tee above, we had the Santa suit:

The reindeer suit:
The Christmas pajamas:

And of course, the Christmas dress (while watching Tom Brady...good girl, Lily):

Katie and Fred were very good about giving us babysitting opportunities, and we loved every moment. There is nothing like seeing her look up into your eyes, give you huge smile, and then spit up all over you. Must be love.

We will miss the Boyles so much, but can't wait to see what Lily will be doing next time we see her. With her genius status already (to quote Grandma x 1000: "She's so ALERT!"), I'm thinking it will involve Shakespeare and/or Stephen Hawking. Happy New Year!

Beautiful Baby

2007-12-13T23:31:00.000-06:00

I know, I know - we've been so bad about posting lately. Here are a few recent pics of Lily! She'll be 3 months old tomorrow! :)

She likes to sleep with her hands over/near her face - funny!

So much to be thankful for

2007-11-22T12:32:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving from Fred, Lily, Bella, and I!

2 months old!

2007-11-14T22:50:00.000-06:00

It's been a week since our last post and I've got a lot to say! Lily is officially 2 months old today and she had her 2-month checkup yesterday and got her first round of shots. The shots ended up going better than we'd thought they would - the nurse was really fast and blurted out "Miss Stacey is sorry honey" before giving her the 3 shots in her legs. After maybe a minute or so of crying, we were able to calm her down. She had some fussy moments yesterday where she looked like she wasn't feeling good (we think the 2 doses of infant tylenol helped) and today she seemed like herself, though she does have a little bruise near one of the injection sites. Poor baby! At her appointment, they took her weight and height measurements - she weighs 10 pounds, 10 ounces (50th percentile) and measured 22 1/2 inches in length (which I think is somewhere between 50 and 75th percentile). It's amazing to us how fast she is growing and changing! Even though we see her every day, we'll notice little things like she's fitting in her swing better or she feels longer when we hold her now. It's pretty neat! She loves to lay on her activity mat and look around at the toys, watch the plastic ball above her move when her hand hits it, and look in the mirror at herself when we hold it up for her. All that playtime is pretty tiring:

Last night, Lily slept in her crib in the nursery for the first time and she did great. She slept over 7 1/2 hours between feedings which is AWESOME!!! I hope she keeps this up... I had to look twice at the clock when I woke up to feed her. Before last night, the longest she had gone between feedings was about 6 hours. When we laid her down last night in her crib at bedtime, we started up the musical mobile (it plays lullabies and there are birds that fly around in a circle and a lit up sun in the middle). She LOVED watching it - she couldn't take her eyes off of it. We're so glad we have that mobile now! She's smiling and cooing ("talking to us") all the time now and we even catch her smiling and cooing at her toys too which is pretty cute.

The other day it was a little bit cooler outside and we all had a lazy morning:

On another topic, one of my best friends (Karen) came to visit us last weekend and we had a great time with her! She and I met in college and she's married with 3 adorable kiddos and lives in St. Louis. While she was here, Fred encouraged us to go out and do things we normally wouldn't get to do so we went and got pedicures one day and saw a movie another day while he and Lily hung out together. It was so nice to see a movie in the theater again - Fred and I probably went to the theater about once a week right before Lily was born and I hadn't been since then. Karen is a professional photographer (http://www.fireflyimagesonline.com) so she also took a TON of photos of Lily and I can't wait to see them! Below are a few pics from her trip - we miss her already!

Our girls

2007-11-07T22:42:00.000-06:00

Here's a pic I snapped of Bella and Lily taking a snooze on the couch this morning. Lily commonly sleeps with her arms above her head!

We had a great time at the Moody Gardens Aquarium today! Our favorite exhibits were the penguins and the seals. They can sure fly through the water and are so fun to watch!

Boo!

2007-10-31T21:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry it's been so long since we've posted! We've been busy! We had a great time with Fred's grandma visiting (pics and videos will be uploaded soon from her visit) and we've been busy with appointments and running around enjoying time together as a family. From now on though, we're going to try to post at least once a week (if not more)!

Happy Halloween to everyone!!! Here are a few pics of our little pumpkin!

We carved pumpkins at Val & Andy's last Saturday- Fred did the Egor (Frankenstein's mad chemist) and I did a bat (which Fred pointed out just as I'd finished that I've carved it sideways on the pumpkin...oops!).

We took some photos of Lily in front of the hay bales and pumpkins that Val had set up in their backyard. The outfit she's wearing is from my mom and it says "Baby's 1st Boo" on the sleeve... so cute!

Tonight, Fred pulled out the flower costume that we'd gotten as a hand-me-down from our friends and we had a lot of fun taking pics of our cutie.

Mommy and her little Lily :)

How could you not love this face???

Pooped out after a walk around the neighborhood!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!!! Tomorrow is November and (I think) the return of the gingerbread lattes at Starbucks. Yum!!! The holiday season is definitely here!

Baby Smiles!

2007-10-16T12:09:00.000-05:00

Lily has started giving us some smiles and I was able to capture one of them yesterday. There is nothing better than seeing her sweet little face smiling back at us! :)

$29 E-Z Up Sportster Instant Shelter

2007-10-14T22:06:00.000-05:00

Katie, Lily, and I went out shopping today and found a few good deals. The deal that I want to share with everyone is the E-Z Up Sportster Instant Shelter that we bought at Academy for $29.99. The last marked price was $39.99 and list is $79.99.
I have been wanting some sort of instant shelter type tent for a while, but as always I am not willing to pay full dollar so when I stumbled across an E-Z Up brand shelter for under $30 I thought how could you go wrong.
Once at home I opened it and the first time you open it you have to attach the top, after that it collapses around the frame, thereafter you just pull the legs out and up it goes. It is 8'X8'X8' and has a steel frame and total weight is 17lbs. As you can see in the pictures it has a nice looking blue and yellow top. There are two adjustments that you can make by telescoping the legs in or out. In the lower position it would be great for the times that you want to get out of the sun while at the beach. The other is to extend the legs out so you can walk around under the canopy.

Happy Day!

2007-10-13T21:29:00.001-05:00

Today is Fred's and my 5th wedding anniversary! It's hard to believe it's been that long since our wedding (the memories are still so vivid in my mind), yet as Fred and I were talking about earlier, it feels like we've always known each other. I can't imagine my life without him as my hubby! Here's a picture of the beautiful bouquet he surprised me with tonight. The berries in the bouquet remind me of our wedding flowers...

Since we couldn't go out to dinner (we're not ready to leave little miss Lily yet though we had offers to babysit by both Moms - if only they lived closer!), to celebrate Fred picked up takeout from a great Italian restaurant (we split two entrees - lasagna and mezzaluna pasta) and we had the pumpkin pie Fred made last night for dessert. Although the pie was good, we decided that it wasn't worth all the cooking time and we'll be picking up a store-bought pie the next time we have a craving for one. :) After dinner, we took a walk around the neighborhood with Bella and once again, the weather was amazing - cool and crisp. Fred tried out our baby carrier and he and Lily looked so cute! I think she really liked it... she spent a lot of time looking around and looking up at Fred and by the end of the walk she was sound asleep!

4 weeks old!

2007-10-12T15:08:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it's been 4 weeks since Lily was born! The days have seemed to fly by so fast and she has changed so much in such a short period of time. Everyone told Fred and I that the depth of love we would feel for our child would be indescribable and it's completely true. The new love of Fred's and my life is this little brown-haired, blue-eyed baby girl... my heart sings every time I look at her, hold her, and hear her little noises.

We had a great day yesterday - a quick trip onsite at JSC, lunch with Amy at our favorite Mediterranean restaurant, and stops by Babies R Us and Sam's Club. Lily did great and wore this cute little outfit (unfortunately, her time in the outfit was short-lived due to a major diaper blowout which Daddy was nice enough to clean up!):

This morning we gave Lily a bath and then Fred took her outside to air out in our beautiful fall weather while Bella sniffed around for a bit.

After all that excitement, it was nap time!

We just got back from a walk around the neighborhood and it is a beautiful night tonight. Fred is about to make a pumpkin pie... now it really feels like fall!

4 1/2 hours!

2007-10-05T17:11:00.000-05:00

Last night was a great night! Lily slept for her longest extended period between feedings (4 1/2 hours) and then went back down in her cradle pretty easy and slept for an additional 3 1/2 hours. Whoo-hoo! It doesn't sound like much but those extra few hours of uninterrupted sleep have made a huge difference in how I felt during the night and my level of tiredness today. Hope she can keep this up!

Yesterday was my birthday (last year in my 20's) and we took Lily into the office to meet my co-workers and have birthday cake (carrot cake... mmm!) that Hilary made for me. I was a little nervous beforehand about how Lily would do at her first "social function" outside of the house but she ended up doing really well. She even let Amy hold her for a long time - I'm thinking she probably recognized her voice from hearing it every day while in the womb (since Amy sits right next to me). It was really nice to get out of the house and see everyone at work and catch up on what's been going on there. After our office visit, we took Lily on her first trip to Target and Starbucks! She pretty much slept the entire time we were there but I think she enjoyed the trip... :)

My sister Kelly took this picture of Fred holding Lily and I love it!