9 months

A visit from Grandpop (my dad) marked the end of a busy couple of weeks at the LeCuyers. The painters have almost finished a complete repaint of the exterior of our house, and some new trim work makes it look great! Hannah is an accomplished crawler and puller-upper, and cut her first top tooth yesterday - with no noticeable crankiness! I'm expecting a delayed reaction any minute now. (Or maybe this will make up for 3 colds in a month.)

It's amazing to me that I've now known Hannah for as long as took to wait to meet her. This has been a wonderful age. It's such a joy to watch her discover her world and grow into her own little person. I've been wondering lately how I can possibly stand to see her grow up! I can't imagine not getting to hold her cuddly baby self and not being the recipient of so many gorgeous gummy smiles.

Fun Hannah things...

She laughs often, even snorting like her mama sometimes. She protests little at meals (though she mysteriously dislikes sweet potatoes right now, which is discouraging when you see how much orange there is in our freezer!), and has for the first time ever not been draining every ounce of every bottle. She pulls up on everything and is usually quite content to play at the coffee table or playing kissy-face with her reflection in the oven door. Speaking of... slobbery baby kisses have become a regular occurrence around here. If you're lucky, she'll stick out her tongue, yell, or chew a bit while she kisses you!

Favorite toy - the coffee table and whatever's on it.

Note the snotty nose. A much-too-common occurrence! From pumpkin pants to playing in the pumpkins.
So much to discover in her world!

The apple of her grammy's eye

On the swing mugging for Grammy.

Grammy Doggett was in town last week, and she was nice enough to make Hannah a Halloween costume while teaching me some sewing basics. Andy's Princeton friend, Sarah, had knitted Hannah an adorable apple hat, so we made a costume to go with it! I realize that it's not actually Halloween yet, but we got some really cute photos that I couldn't wait to share.

We've also had a great get-away to Austin a couple of weekends ago and are looking forward to a visit from Grandpop Doggett next week. Fall has finally arrived in Dallas, so we're making the most of the great weather with family bike rides on the weekends and lots of walks. I'm excited about jeans weather, since I can finally fit into my pre-pregnancy pair. I've been wearing clothes I haven't seen since spring of '06! Good thing I'm not a very trendy person.

Sleep sitting

I edited out the part where I layed her down and she screamed, very much not going back to sleep. Well, they don't say "Let sleeping dogs sit". Mom mistake number 5,493,987.

She crawls!

For so long, we could put Hannah down to play, walk away, and return to find her sitting happily in the same spot. Or maybe not always too happily, but at least in the same spot. Now the spot moves! It's really fun, though, and we're always looking for new objects to tempt her to move - usually a cell phone.

Before I ran to get the camera, she was sticking out from under the console.

There are fun, colorful toys nearby!

Note the addition of the gate, which also covers the fire place, which she discovered shortly after the stereo find!

Hannah's also getting better about eating food. Her favorites are fruits, yogurt, and cereal-like puffs, but I'm managing to convince her that she likes some veggies, too. My parents have got to be enjoying this. I was so sure that I could keep Hannah from being a picky eater like her mama. Hah!

Moraine Park in Rocky Mountain National Park. Fabulous!

We spent last weekend in Denver visiting Andy's sister (and Hannah's middle name-sake) Claire. We enjoyed a little hike in the Rockies and Hannah got to meet her Great-Grandma LeCuyer. It was really nice to be in the mountains and have some family time. Plus Hannah really likes her Aunt Claire, and we always appreciate and extra set of hands to help with the baby wrangling!

Happy hikers and sleeping baby. She was in the cool backpack carrier that our friends loaned us, but she got really cold. Thank goodness for that sling!


Just for fun. In case you can't figure out where all of her limbs are,
her left leg is under her and her right leg is completely out of the crib.
She barely stirred when I pulled her leg out. Oh, to sleep that soundly!

Food, fabulous, food!

Morning play.

For nearly 2 months, I've been trying to get Hannah to actually eat a meal of actual food. For about 3 weeks, the longest nap she's taken has been an hour, and that's on a really good day. By the middle of last week, I was desperate for one of the two issues to resolve itself and was having major mommy guilt over feeling like all I do is complain about my daughter.

Empty dishes. Woo hoo!

Sure enough, the next day baby girl ate enough food to be considered a meal for a small person such as her self!! We're still working on finding the magic timing to get this to be a regular occurrence, but it's definitely improving. My dreams of an open-minded eater who will try anything are fading, but who needs to eat anything besides yogurt and sweet potatoes? My feelings are hurt by the fact that she seems to prefer the organic jarred stuff to my home made, but at least she's eating something!

To top things off, Hannah napped for nearly an hour and a half this afternoon. That means Andy and I got to eat lunch and sneak in a cat nap on the couch - golden.

Our fun recent baby/kid purchase is a bike trailer. Andy's knees really don't allow him to run much, so this means we can finally get out as a family for our weekend exercise. Hannah seems to enjoy the ride and even smiles at Momma riding alongside. In personal exercise news, I'm a bit disappointed that I won't have lost all of the baby weight in 9 months, but I have worked back up to running my 9-mile loop around the lake on the weekend. It takes a lot longer with diaper and bottle breaks, but it is fun to have a buddy along. My goal is to be ready for the Half Marathon in November, and it's going to feel great to run it without the stroller!

We're off to Denver this weekend to visit Andy's sister, Claire. Nothing like a hike in the Rockies to get Autumn off to a good start!

Favorite way to be - standing up! She's getting quite adept at manipulating our hands to a position that allows her to pull up. Key word, manipulate!
Daddy's little girl.

A tale of 2 babies

It's been a week of contrasts at the LeCuyer home this week. Hannah's had an allergy/teething runny nose for a while now. I think the photos speak for themselves.

Luckily, she was in a good enough mood to play with her papa and knock over the fun block towers he made. She's also been giving "kisses" lately. Okay, she's learned to put her drooly open mouth on your cheek, nose, chin, whatever, and maybe even chew on you a little if you're lucky. She was holding out, but finally kissed her daddy this weekend! She also seems to be starting to connecting the syllable ma with her loving mama. As often as not, there's a few too many "ma's" to make it a real word, but she's good at rattling them off when she wants something!

Hannah would like to take advantage of Mama's blog to do a little teaching. When you spend your nap time doing this...

You spend your play time doing this!

Speaking of teaching, I'm starting the first session of the Hannah and Friends Baby Music Class next month. I'm excited to try something new, but also nervous about adapting my elementary skills to this format. Wish me luck!

Water baby

Hannah and I are starting swim classes tomorrow, but she got some practice in hanging out at her running buddy Lukas' pool yesterday. (Lukas' mom, Cynthia, and I keep hoping that the babies will do the running, but it hasn't worked out that way yet.) She loved chilling in the baby-lounger, until she figured out how to lap up and drink the pool water! Apparently other babies do this, too. The kid can't drink out of cup, but she has no problem with a pool! Our other recent development is Hannah's ability to sit and stand up in her crib! Yippee... The day she figured it out, she took one 30 minute nap. No crawling yet, but she's definitely making all of the moves that show it won't be long.
I haven't managed to catch it on film yet, but our little angel is showing herself to be quite the drama queen. She giggles more often now, but she's also prone to sudden crying episodes over things like mom blowing her nose or someone laughing when she's tired (or apparently when she doesn't think it's funny anymore.) I think she's hurt some folks' feelings! The problem is, she starts with the most pitiful pout and quickly disintegrates into full sobs, which I usually find to be hilarious. I'm no help at all.