The Lunch Lady

Lunchtime is one of my favorite things about my days at home with Amity. I have fond memories of eating lunch with my mom in our house on Moneta. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, looking out our bay window, and occasionally watching the noonday news on the TV in the living room. Of course, as soon as the first few notes of "Nadia's Theme" came on to initate the start of The Young and the Restless, the TV was promptly turned off!

At eleven months, Amity's lunchtime routine consists of getting up from her nap around 11 and drinking her bottle in her crib. Don't worry! I still take advantage of those soon-to-be disappearing bottle feedings before bedtime at night! Notice that "Puppy" is still in the picture and his nose is quite wet from lots of cuddling during naptime.

Amity's lunch is typically a grilled cheese sandwich (on whole wheat bread!), Just Veggies dried vegetables, and strawberries or banana.

She loves eating and Paco loves when she eats! He is always careful to be at the ready when any food drops to the floor.

Once she finishes, she likes looking at books while I finish eating and cleaning up the dishes. This SuperGrover book from the Deans is one of our favorites!

Of course, almost all of our mealtimes typically end with some lessons in gravity!

Now that she can pull up, she can enjoy a snack of leftovers a little later AND we don't have to clean out the high chair! :) Just kidding, KK!

Chillin' with the Cousins

Amity's cousins came over to play on Saturday night.
She did some clapping for big cousin Eli.

She shared her exersaucer with Eiley and had quite the stare-down over this little apple.

These little girls look like they could really be up to something in a few short months!

Thanks for playing, cousins!

Amity is 11 months old!

A year ago, these were NOT very happy feet!

But, these little eleven month old feet made those humongous feet completely worth it!

While they have plenty of pudge to them, these little feet are surprising short relative to Amity's overall size. Her size 3 shoes (for average 6-9 month olds) still have plenty of toe room in them! We are still amazed that she can manage to do this with such little feet.

But, she does...and does it again...

...and again!

All the while, she makes us smile as she is exploring her world...

and making us feel like we are the funniest people on the face of the planet...

and appreciating her very own happy, little feet!

Happy 11 months, Miss Amity!

And I gladly STAND UP...

I can't write the title of this post without laughing. Unfortunately, only my brother and sister-in-law, and maybe my parents, will even remember why! We will have to ask Uncle Brent to give Amity a lesson in choreography at cousins' camp this summer!

Well, back to our post title...Amity is standing up on her own! This morning, she was playing at her Leapfrog music table and I was eating my lunch at the kitchen table. All of the sudden, I realized that she was standing up while playing her piano and I had not left her in the standing position! I cheered like crazy and texted the news to her Da-duh. As the day progressed, she pulled to standing at my chair, on her toy box, and in her crib. Of course, we are still working to help her understand what to do when she gets tired of standing! I am trying to show her that there are other options besides crying until Mom or Dad comes to the rescue!

Tales of the Cheesy Grin

Last Tuesday night, Amity woke up once in the night and Dennis went in to hold her for a few minutes before she fell back to sleep. She was especially excited about her bottle the next morning so we thought maybe she was going through a growth spurt. On Wednesday evening at supper time, we loaded her up on homemade pizza, broccoli, blueberries, and a bottle to try to combat any remaining growth spurt.
Well, I don't think I will be making pizza for awhile! In the middle of the night, we heard her cry out. I thought maybe she was hot and went to turn the AC on. By the time, I was coming back down the hallway, she had stopped crying. I decided to get back in bed and wait to see if she cried anymore but we didn't hear a peep out of her until almost seven the next morning.
Just before seven, I entered her room, turned on her lamp, and realized that my little one and her bed looked very different from the night before and smelled strangely of pizza...dried regurgitated pizza!
The good news is that after a morning of combing pizza out of her hair in the bathtub, stripping the bed, doing laundry, and giving LOTS and LOTS of "Mommy-is-so-so-so-sorry-hugs", Amity was playing music and giving lots of smiles, including her newly learned "cheesy grin"! Ugh! We may have to think of a new name for this smile! Cheesy makes me think of pizza!

Cha-ching!

The Grovers hosted our first garage sale this morning! Of course, we would choose the coldest morning in the past several weeks to spend three hours outdoors. When I placed our ad on craigslist last week, the weather forecasters were predicting mid-50s for the low. Instead, we started out the morning in the blustery 30s! We feared no one would see our lone sign at the end of the street. We were trying to obey the strict permit laws! Our fears were alleviated when, in the first hour, we had cleared out most of our inventory and made about $140 (thanks especially to a few very effective shoppers)! After a total of three hours, we had reduced EVERYTHING to five cents and were left with just enough to fit into a couple of boxes to donate to the neighborhood garage sale in March. All in all, we made about $190 and have much less clutter in Groverland! What more could we ask for? Plus, we met lots of nice neighbors and die-hard garage salers!

Da-duh

Amity has been saying "da-da" for months now and "ma-ma" for the past few weeks. However, we sadly came to the realization that she had no idea of the magnitude of those words. Well, all of that changed tonight...at least for one of us! Amity started saying "Dad" with a heavy emphasis on the final consonant! Of course, this happened after hearing her Daduh say the word only about 100 times tonight between dinner and bath and a bottle. As you can see, he is just a little bit thrilled! Let's see what Momuh can accomplish tomorrow!