Walking, etc.

On July 14, at exactly 10 months old, Lily took her first steps! We were at our friend Shauna's house and she took 4 steps. This week she has finally been trying to really walk. I forgot how cute it is to watch a little baby learn how to walk!! I love watching her little marching steps! She loves to walk over to me, put her hands up, and just fall onto me. Sorry about the lack of picture updates, Shane and I got new phones mid-month and I've been taking pictures and videos on there. It is blue tooth enabled, so Shane just has to set it up. What this means is that I don't have to plug the phone into the computer to get the images/videos off of it, the computer just senses that teh phone is near and loads them on it automatically! Anyway, I've had trouble getting on the big computer with the phone meeting all my needs, so the blog has been abandoned for a bit.
Lily has also said her first and second words (other than mama and dada). She's super obsessed with dogs, so she can say "dog." She gets VERY excited whenever she sees one. She flails her arms, bounces up and down and says "dog! dog! dog! Dog!" Super cute!
Last night I was holding her and she pointed to the picture of Jesus that we have in the living room and said "Jesus!" (well, more like "jee-jus", but close enough!) I'm excited for her growing vocabulary! A week ago she weighed 23 lbs 11 oz.
She has also finally figured out the food tastes good! We introduced solids at 8 months and have had a tough time getting her to eat anything other than cheerios and blueberries. In the past week, she finally figured it out! She's eaten lentils and rice, sweet potatoes and chicken, and pears and rice cereal! All things she would tantrum about a month ago! She also likes to feed herself. When we were at the Laconia Ward RS pool party she downed probably 1.5 cups of wagon wheel pasta. Thank you, Erin F. for bringing that!! She also ate a whole meatball on Wednesday night!!
Oliver continues to be the cutest boy in all the land. He comes up with new phrases daily. He loves to repeat our oft repeated phrases "that sounds like a good idea!" "thats a good deal!" "dad missed us sooooo much!" "oh COME ONE" "this is fun/great!" "my FRIENDS!" "stop this RIGHT NOW!" the last one is his favorite. He says it over and over when he gets his diaper changed. He's also gotten in trouble a few times for saying "shut up" and "crap". Obviously he's heard them somewhere (ME) so when I catch myself saying them in front of him, I put myself in timeout so he knows its not acceptable. I am glad that those are the worst words that come out of his mouth, that we have clean enough language we don't have to worry about worse issues.

Reminder

Did anyone else need to hear this today? Or just me?

Bad drivers?

Something else Oliver seems to be picking up on is our driving habits, and what we say to eachother in the car. He's always telling Shane "slow down Dada!" and for some reason he's always telling me to crash into the other cars (does he know I'm tailgateing!?) Yesterday he was in the car with Gaga following me in my car. A car got in between the two of us and Oliver started yelling "Follow her, Gaga! Follow her! Hurry up! Drive faster! Beep your horn! Beep it louder!"

Do you think we need to work on our aggressive driving? :)

Exclamations

Lately Shane and I have been very grateful that we don't swear. Oliver has been picking up on our exclamations. He doesn't always repeat them, but stores them away and uses them later. We were driving by a big truck the other day and Oliver exclaims "That's a big big GIANT truck! OH. MY. GRACIOUS!" It was too funny! Other exclamations he likes to use. "Oh Come ON!" "Dang it!" "Oh boy, oh man!" It's so fun each day to find out what he is going to talk about and to just see his little imagination develop!

Busy Times at GaGaPopPop's

We had a vacation at GaGa's house last week, doing all of the things in the summer growing up. It was so much fun to do it all with my kiddos! And thank you so much to GaGaPopPop for all of their help and patience with the kiddos!

Monday- Shopping day finished off by a dip in the pool!

(I was washing Oliver's jammies, so he wore PopPop's shirt that night, love it!)


Tuesday- Leavitt Beach with my childhood friend, Amy and the children she nannies, Laura and Sammy. Laura, 4, and Oliver got along so well! She would tell him "Now we're going fill up the bucket with rocks!" and he would diligently follow. What can I say? He likes a girl who takes charge:) Lily, who usually HATES strollers, sat in the stroller for about 3/4 of the time, happy as a clam! It was such a great day with a great friend.

Wednesday- We went through a hike through Chamberlain Reynolds Experimental Forest. Its such a great walk for a 2 year old. Wide trails, mostly flat land, and not we only encountered probably 5 people on the trails!

(On the way back, both babies wanted to be carried by Mama! What a work out!)

Thursday- In the morning we visited my friend Courtney and her sons Xander and Nolan (Nolan just turned 1 month!). Oliver had a great time with all of Xander's great toys (lots of cars and tractors, he even has a bouncy house!) Lily enjoyed switching between the dummies that Nolan gave her (he only likes Nuk) In the afternoon we went the the Squam Lakes Science Center. What a cool place! It is like a zoo but with all local animals. They have great interactive exhibits, too. It's all about understanding the life cycles of the animals and plants around us and how we can affect them for better or worse. Pretty much , Oliver just liked the slides and the waterfalls...

(notice the sleeping blackbear behind Oliver's head!)

Friday- Our final morning we went to Heritage Farm Pancake House. Some friends of ours from church own it. They serve hearty, delicious breakfast platters using all local foods. They also have a petting zoo behind the house. Oliver liked the piggies and the bunny. The geese were terrifying, honking and hissing at us! Laura May, the owners daughter, even let Oliver ride her pony, Black Beauty! Shane came up for dinner (he'd been at work all week) and took us out for ice cream after. What a joyous reunion!