Another word!

Just a quick note. Meredith said 'dada' last night. Chris was pretty excited :)
But remember, 'mama' was first!! HA!

Almost 8 months!

These are some of Meredith's favorite things lately:
-Newspapers or magazines...really paper of any sort that she can crumple & tear.
-measuring cups ..just gave her some from the cabinet one day and she loves them because they are connected by a ring and make lots of noise when she bangs them on her tray.
-her new bath toys that are perfect to chew on...still lots of chewing...still no teeth.
-the little springy door stop thing that goes 'boing'... she tries to chew on this too!
-not so fond of the exersaucer anymore because it confines her too much! She pulls up her legs when you try to put her in!
-the stairs have quickly entered her radar...she heads that way and stops and turns around to look at us and kinda giggles and turns back around and crawls faster!
-the sippy cup mostly gets thrown on the floor, but she likes to chew on the spout
-she loved prunes the other day!
-cords of any sort....we may have to move the floor lamp out of our living room!
-small animals like Allison's chihuahua, Stella & mom's cats....they just have to get over her getting so excited and screaming at them!!
-just being on the move all the time. She plays so hard and barely wants to stop long enough to eat, but the bottle is still an absolute favorite...the whining starts as soon as she sees it.
-she also gets excited when she gets in her highchair now because she loves to eat. (I'm very excited because she doesn't even flinch when I give her new foods. She seems to like them all!)
- Almost forgot about her toes....she can sit in her carseat and pull her toes up and chew on them!!

Pictures from August

Cousins at the beach!

Yumm! Celery!

What a big girl!

Meredith is becoming more and more of a little person every day. Her sweet, funny personality is just overflowing! She is babbling all the time and I must admit that she sounds like a little chinese baby!! She has been saying something along the lines of 'deng deng deng' and it just cracks me up! It is like she is really talking to us now. By the way, her favorite word is still mamamama :) When I got home from class last night she actually looked at me and said mama, which made me extremely happy, but it may have just been the first thing that popped out of her mouth too.
Meredith is also standing up in her crib now. My mom was over on Saturday and she had just asked me if she was standing in her crib yet and I said no, but I know it's soon. About 10 minutes later I went to get her up from her nap and there she was, standing up and chewing (well, gumming) the railing (now I understand why those plastic covers are on the railing!). When she saw me, she just grinned from ear to ear and seemed quite proud of herself. Overall, she is just a really happy baby. Just that one night a week at school is making me miss her. I wish I could be there for every minute these days.
We had a bridal shower for my sister Hillary on Saturday, which was a lot of fun. Meredith actually spent the night at Mom's house on Friday night (only the 2nd time!), which made it a lot easier to get everything ready for the shower. Her wedding is right at 2 months away, so it's sneaking up quickly, which also means I need to get serious about this bridesmaid dress if I don't want to look like a giant blob...ugh. At this point, I know I will be a blob, it just how big of a blob.

I am really bad about uploading pictures, so some of these are a month old.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for all of the kind words about Beezer. We are still struggling with it, but are able to think back to all of the happy memories of our sweet boy.

On a happier note, Meredith is just the apple of my eye :) She is crawling like crazy and everything is a new adventure these days. She is very much pulling up on things now and along with that she is bumping into all kinds of things in the process. I can quickly see that our coffee table is going to be a problem because of the corners, so we will either have to move it or pad up the corners! She also loves our bar stools, which aren't all that heavy, so I can see her pulling one over on top of herself....may be losing those for awhile too! I really understand what they say about seeing the wonder in the eyes of a baby. She could be looking at her rubber duckie and the look in her eyes is just the coolest thing ever. Speaking of her rubber duckie, she loved her first one so much that we got her a second one and last night in the bathtub she was just so amazed that there were two. She didn't know which one to grab first and once she got that one she would let go of the first and so on....not to mention we also got a spout cover that is a duck as well now that she is sitting up and oh lord, she saw that thing and just wanted to grab at it. I think all the ducks had her overstimulated!! It was pretty funny for me though :)
She is still sleeping through the night very well (with the exception of Sunday night when she woke up screeeaaaming at 12:30. Thought she might finally be cutting a tooth, but that wasn't the case...still not sure what that was all about!). She is so active during the day that she is just exhausted by the end of the day now.
I am trying to make most of her baby food now and I think I have the hang of it. It took me a few tries to get the consistency right, but I'm at least doing the basics of sweet potatoes, squash, beans, peas....I made her asparagus the other night and she loved it! I'm a firm believer that picky eaters are made that way since they don't know any better, so I'm trying lots of things that will expand her palate! Next is spinach and broccoli! Chris says he is going to start eating more vegetables with her, but I haven't seen any results from that yet!
We just bought her a big girl carseat. We thought it was about time since her legs are hanging off the edge of her baby one. It will still be fine for a secondary seat, but she really seems to like being able to sit up more now and acted all proud when she sat in it!
Oh yeah, she is definitely saying mama now. No doubt. I think she is actually starting to understand what it means, but not quite.

Our Sweet Beezer

It has taken me awhile to write anything or tell anyone about it, but our sweet Beezer passed away on August 21st. He had been staying with Chris' grandparents in High Point for most of the summer because of our different trips. Chris was able to make it in time and be with him until the very end. He still got a little sparkle in his eye when Chris brought him a golf ball and I think he was really hanging on just for Chris.
Just this past Tuesday we took his ashes to Lake Lynn where he spent a lot of time swimming and playing as a puppy and Chris has a lot of wonderful memories of him there. Meredith was there with us and it was obviously very emotional, but exactly how it needed to be for our boy.
He was 16 and a half years old and had a wonderful life. We knew it would come one day, but nevertheless, it has been incredibly difficult on us. Even though Meredith will never remember him, we are thankful that their paths could cross for even a short time. He knew she was 'one of us' and had completely accepted her, which makes us both happy :)
Here is a picture of our two kids!

I feel like everything is going a mile a minute lately...although this work week has been miserable. My boss is on vacation all week, so it's been double duty for me and I am totally worn out! We are heading to Tennessee for the Labor Day weekend so that Meredith can see her grandparents, aunt & uncle....I don't think it matters if Chris and I come anymore. We are just the transportation at this point!
Let's see, what has been going on with Miss Meredith. She has been back at the babysitter's for two weeks now and has gotten into a better routine. It is still hard because she is sound asleep in the morning and Chris has to wake her up to take her next door and then she doesn't ever really get back to sleep. She has been eating her food well. I tried making my own babyfood the other day..green beans in the food processor! She kinda made a funny face when she first ate it because the texture and taste was a little different, but she ate it up! She has been spitting up a lot though. I can't seem to figure out what the deal is. It really wasn't this bad until she started eating more solid foods, but I'm being really careful about not overfeeding her..in fact, I'm giving her quite a bit less than the doctor recommended (I think he told me total bs because there is no way that little body could eat as much as he said!) She is definitely growing & thriving, so she is getting plenty. The only connection I see is that she seems to spit up more with orange veggies than green ones. She seems ok with fruit & cereal, but then again it could be total coincidence too. Similac changed their formula and I thought it was that, so we tried a different kind, which helped a bit, but not a huge amount, so I have no clue. I just know that my clothes have been very colorful lately with the array of carrots, sweet potatoes, peas and formula!! Yumm!
Otherwise, Meredith is just a doll. She is crawling like a mad woman and get so excited over the funniest things. She is obsessed with the cord to this floor lamp we have and she sees it across the room, locks in and off she goes. She breaths really heavy too and makes all of these funny noises like she can hardly stand it. She is really fast too!
She loves her excersaucer and we even had to extend it up to the higher level since she is so long. Oh, the funniest thing in the past week is that I got her a yellow rubber duckie for her bath since she is doing such a good job sitting up and wanting to play in the tub. Well, she thinks this duck is the coolest thing ever.....she sticks it's head in her mouth and just chews on it. She'll just sit there with this duck hanging out of her mouth and it is just hilarious! I think the key is that it feels good on her gums and it fits just right in her mouth. She is so funny!

I am posting some kinda old pictures, but still wanted to put some up...
Crawling with daddy, First food, reading the paper, the pool & happy girl :)