9 Months

Amelie had her 9-month well-baby visit today.

Here are those vital statistics:
Weight: 16 pounds, 14 ounces (between the 10th and 25th percentiles)
Length: 26 1/4 inches (around the 10th percentile)
Head Circumference: 44 1/2 centimeters

And the best part was, no shots!

All Fall Down

Hello!


I like to stand up!



I took this video hoping to catch Amelie taking a few steps while holding on to the couch or coffee table (she's done it before, but never on camera). Instead, I got her falling down.

Bathtime

Amelie loves the bath. It's probably her favorite activity.

Sam keeps calling the orange bath toy a pineapple, but clearly it's a hermit crab. (Thanks Cousin Kendra for the fun bath toys!)

This doesn't seem like a very nice way to rinse off to me, but Amelie doesn't seem to mind.

She's maybe a little surprised.

Here's a video (Sam's arm is in the way for part of the video, but then again, he is the one giving the bath)


Drying off is fun, too.


All clean!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Amelie enjoyed the flowers, even though she's still a little too young for chocolates.


So serious.


And this is why we had to stop taking pictures.


Yum.


Happy Valentine's Day, all!

Pictures with Mom

Well, we wanted to get a good picture of Amelie with her Mama, but we just couldn't seem to get on the same page.

This one is close, but no cigar:


Here, we don't seem to be equally happy about having our picture taken:


And then finally we gave up and let the baby play with the video game remote:



These are a tiny bit blurry, but baby sure does love the remote:






Not so much:

Army Crawling

So, Amelie is still not really crawling-crawling, but for the last couple of weeks, she's been army crawling. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to snag a great video yet, but here's one that shows her pretty well:



She's also taken to peeking her head around the corner and scooting right into our room from her nursery next door.

Exersaucer, take 2

I might have done a little more editing to this video, but Sam said it was getting "annoying." Now, who on Earth would claim that listening to a video of "ppppppttthhht" over and over again could possibly be annoying?

This is what Amelie was doing tonight around 8:00pm, after she refused to go to sleep. (You should have the volume on to fully appreciate this one.)


She's in her crib now, she just was not ready when I first attempted to put her to bed at 7:30. 8:30 is apparently more like it for such a sophisticated baby.

Ppppppppthhhhht.

For comparison purposes, here is the video of Amelie in the exersaucer from 2.5 months ago.

Also, Sam would like those reading the blog to know that he doesn't find the video annoying, just my re-playing of it several times to edit.

Snow Snow Snow Snow

According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, the official snow accumulation from the blizzard of 2011 was 17.7 inches.

This is what our deck looked like at noon yesterday.


And here is what it looked like at 8:00pm.


There was no snow today, but a little more is expected this weekend.

Snow Day!

The weather channel is predicting up to 15 inches of snow by noon tomorrow, so we're all stocked up on groceries and snow melt and other necessities. We also figured it was high time that Amelie got to experience the snow, since we'd never taken her outside when it was snowing before. I thought that we'd bundle her all up then snap a quick picture and be done, but she seemed to be really interested, so I took a few more (still pretty darn quick) pictures.

Sam and Amelie brave the elements.


Silly faces.


Trying to taste the snow.


This is fun!


It is pretty wonderful.

Adventures in Baby-led Weaning, take 2

Or, "Amelie Has an Impressive, Impressive Cowlick."

Amelie's eating some turkey here. (If you look closely, you can see it in her hand.)The rest of the things on her plate are bananas and sugar snap peas.


Yum.


And a video (this is from a few weeks ago, but if you compare it to the earlier video of her eating, I'd say she's downright eating with gusto).


So far, Amelie's eating a lot of different foods -- and she seems excited to try a few bites and chew, but she's not eating a whole lot of any of them (except sometimes banana. She can eat a half a banana in one sitting).

Here's a list of what she's eating now: avocado, broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, squash, peas, sugar snap peas, green & red bell pepper, cucumber, sweet potato, regular potato, blueberries, apple slices, apple sauce, pear, banana, oatmeal, brown rice, chicken, turkey, ham, sausage, ground beef, beef & barley stew, hummus, lentils, refried beans, pasta noodles, baby mum-mums (a rice cracker), cheerios, crust of baguette, tortilla, Ritz cracker*, and that's all I can think of right now.

*We think she might have just a little bit of sensitivity to wheat. Though she'd taken a bite of bread and pasta on occasion, a day after she ate an entire Ritz cracker** she broke out in a little bit of a bumpy rash on her chest, so we've stopped giving her anything with wheat in it, since some of the baby books say to hold off on that until 9 months anyway.

** When I do dishes, I usually put Amelie on the counter in her bumbo chair. Well, just watching me is not all that interesting, so she likes to explore the counter around her. This time, she grabbed the box, took the sleeve of crackers out, took the cracker out of the sleeve, and shoved the entire thing in her mouth. Then she chewed it up and ate it all. Now that's determination.

Right now, she's eating two meals a day, usually with two or three foods at each meal, and her diapers have started to get quite a bit stinkier!

The Princess and the Peas

Amelie enjoying a tasty lunch of peas and potatoes.



Aunt Holly took this picture while babysitting. Amelie looks quizzically at her frog prince plush book and then at her froggy PJs.


*Thank you to Sally Deckard for the pajamas, and to Shauna Baker for the frog book, and to Grandma Buffaloe for the pacifier. Oh yes, and to Aunt Holly for babysitting!

Little Swimmers

Amelie's been going to Little Swimmers at the area pool. She's not quite swimming yet, but she does have a grand old time.

Aunt Holly doesn't get her hair wet, either.


Mama loves the water, too.

Long Video

Or, "In Which Amelie Amuses Herself for 12 Minutes."

Or, "Amelie Has Entirely Too Many Toys."

Or, "I Meant to Get a Video of Amelie Sliding Backwards, but She Decided Not to Cooperate."

As you can see, there are several alternate titles to this blog post, but mostly it consists of a video of Amelie moving around in a 2-foot circle of toys for 12 minutes. Yes, I posted a 12-minute video of my daughter doing nothing new or essentially interesting. I don't really expect many other people to be interested in all of it, but it would be even longer if the camera battery hadn't died. You've been warned.


I like how she takes a little rest at the 6-minute mark.

If your volume is turned up super-loud and you can hear Schroeder whining at 9 minutes, it's because Sam comes home.

If you want to skip the video, here are some regular photos I took, too. Overkill? I think not.

Crazy Einstein hair baby!


She did eventually get all of the pop-ups down.


Thank you to Grandma Mary Beth for the pop-up toy and the stacking rings, to Aunt Juli for the Violet nighttime dog, to Shauna for the sock monkey, and to our insurance agent for the "Good Neigh Bear."

Also, we put the CD player up on the dresser so it (and its cord) would be out of reach. I'm not sure what to do about the lamp cord, though, besides watch her when she's on the floor.

Remote Control

Amelie loves all things electronic, especially those she probably shouldn't have, like the laptop or the GPS. Here she has some fun trying to get the remote control away from her dad.

First, Dad has possesion of the remote.


Next, they are in negotiations.


Finally, baby wrests control of the remote away.


And we have a happy baby.

Hodgepodge Post

No real theme here; it's just been a while since I've updated.

I tend to delete most pictures of me, but I think I should be making more of an effort to take ones with the baby.


Amelie says, "For crying out loud, why must you post a picture of me in the tub?" But look at those knees! They're red from all of the almost-crawling scooting around Amelie's been doing.


Cousins


Happy baby.

Sam's Post

Here are the last pictures that we took while out in New Mexico. Our GPS navigated us off of I-40 to New Mexico highway 129 (it was just a little bit out of the way) in between Santa Rosa and Tucumcari. It was a neat highway with a lot of curves and nice scenery. We found a nice spot to stop and take pictures to prove that Amelie was actually in New Mexico.



In this next picture (featuring Amelie and Crystal), Amelie is quite happy about the 50 degree weather. This was the first time in a week that we could let her outside, and we unfortunately haven't really been able to take her out since then (nearly two weeks ago).



Here's a rare picture of all three of us. You can tell that Amelie enjoys getting to see new places. In fact, she's been to eight different states since she was born in May (Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Kansas).