This is our silly baby! We snapped this picture the other night. I was getting Baby Girl ready for bed, and as I was taking her shirt off, it got stuck on her head. So, straightened it out a little, and made her look like a nun! Her fat rolls are slowing getting smaller. It makes me kind of sad! I love her fat rolls. Now that's she's scooting all over the place, she's getting a lot more exercise! As you can see from the picture, she still has plenty of fat on her, but she's getting a lot taller and leaner.

She's also rediscovered her tongue. She is always sticking her tongue out. She can almost touch her nose with her tongue! I hear slurping noises while she plays, and I see her stick her tongue in and out of her mouth. You can see her tongue poking out a little in this picture. Here is a video of Baby Girl showing us her tongue.

I thought this was an adorable picture! Baby Girl was having a rough night last night. She was ornery and fussy. It was very easy to make her cry! Morgan was trying to entertain her and distract her from crying with the camera. This was a cute picture that was taken. It doesn't look like taking pictures distracted her too much! But she did stop crying, when Morgan turned the camera around to show her the pictures that they just took. Morgan is really good with her!

Baby Girl is close enough to crawling. She can Army Crawl like a Ninja. She is so close to actually crawling. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth. She's taken a little crawling step, then she plops down on her belly, and army crawls to where she wants to go. Yesterday, Baby Girl was playing in her room while I was getting ready for swimming lessons. After I was ready, I went in her room, and this is what I found! I saw little baby toes sticking out of underneath of her crib. We store her carrier car seat underneath her crib. She had crawled under her crib, up onto her car seat, to play with the buckles. What a silly baby! She is officially getting into everything!

We went on a little one night trip over the weekend. We had a family reunion to go to. Going away for a couple of days with a baby is about 20 times the work. It's always fun, but never relaxing. It always seems to be more work for me. Whenever we are away from home, Baby Girl seems to be more difficult. We are always around new people, in a new place, and she usually doesn't nap as well, so that equals an ornery baby. However, our trip last weekend, went very well! Baby Girl did such a great job! She was such a trooper. Baby Girl was, by far, the best behaved on this trip, than any other trip she's been on.

We started out early Saturday morning. We had about a 3 1/2 - 4 hour drive. We stopped half way for a little pit stop. Baby Girl needed to eat and get changed. She needed to get out and wiggle a little bit. This is a cute picture of us on the side of the road. Baby Girl has a long weed that she's holding up. Morgan showed her how to chew on it. She thought this was the coolest thing! Babies are entertained by the simplest things! I love it!

We had a family reunion on Saturday. Morgan's uncle called the family together for a 'Farewell Reunion'. It was fun to get together with family. There were a lot of family members there that I've never met, and Morgan hasn't seen for many years. We had a potluck BBQ outside. The weather was really nice (as long as you stayed in the shade). We put Baby Girl on the grass. She never really likes the grass at first, but then she gets used to it. She spent most of the time shoving fist fulls of grass into her mouth. Therefore, I spent most of the time, fishing blades of grass out of her mouth. It was irresistible to her to pull the grass and shove it into her mouth! What a silly girl.

Then we went spent Saturday evening and Sunday at my mother's house. She had a lot of fun. My mother even got her a baby pool for the yard. So, Baby Girl got to go swimming. The water was kind of cool, but it felt really nice in the hot weather. Baby Girl liked to splash and play with some swim toys. We didn't bring her swimming suit, so she got to go skinny dipping. Baby Girl did SOOO well around other people. We've learned the trick - if you want to hold our daughter, you need to lure her away with food. All you have to do is give her a little bite of a cracker, or Cheerio, or bread, and she will be your friend! Even my brother, Skyler, who has ALWAYS made Baby Girl cry - befriended her and she was just fine playing with him. As long as he understands that when she clapped her hands together, that means she wants 'MORE'.

The other secret to having a happy baby while out of town, is to make sure she gets the proper sleep. She got all of her naps, and slept really well all night! And she was a happy baby! This is an adorable picture of Baby Girl sleeping in my arms. This RARELY happens. It hasn't happened in many, many months. She must have been really tired. She fell asleep while I was nursing her. It gave me a couple of moments to cuddle her without her arching her back and trying to crawl away from me. We put Baby Girl to bed by 6:30 Saturday night, then Morgan and I went on a date! It was fun to be able to leave her and do something together! We played some tennis. Actually, we didn't play a real game, we just hit the ball back and forth. Morgan was helping me with my swinging and back swing. It was a lot of fun. We went to Wingers and got some Asphalt Pie. It was fun to be together without our little one!

Overall, we had a fantastic weekend away. It wasn't as stressful as our previous outings. We are going on a vacation in a couple of weeks. We're going to be gone for several days and nights, hopefully, Baby Girl will be as well behaved as she was this weekend! When she's a happy baby, we are a happier family!

Baby Girl and I are taking swimming lessons this summer! One of our neighbors has a two year old boy, and they talked us into taking a parent/tot swimming lesson class with them through the city. Today was our first lesson! It was a lot of fun, and Baby Girl LOVED it! It only goes for 2 weeks (Mon-Thurs) for half an hour a day. Baby Girl was so excited! This is a picture of Baby Girl right before we went over to the pool. Our lessons are in an outdoor pool, and it's so nice when it's warm outside to be swimming. The Parent/Tot class is for babies from 6 months-2 years. Baby Girl looks like she's the youngest. We mostly just play games in the water, and it's so much fun! (I probably enjoyed it more than Baby Girl!) We sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and dripped water on the babies. We sang "Ring Around the Rosies", and instead of 'Ashes, Ashes' we sang "Splashes, Splashes". Then 'we all fall down', we were supposed to dunk the babies. I just put Baby Girl's chin in the water. I think she loved it, when we got to that part, she would open her mouth really wide to try and drink the water! Baby Girl's favorite part of the lesson was when we got rubber duckies and would chase after them. I would hold Baby Girl off to my side, so she was floating on her tummy on top of the water, and we would 'swim' to the rubber duckies! Then after she would grab it, and put it in her mouth, then I would throw it away again, so we could go swim to it again. We also sat Baby Girl on the side of the pool, and sang "Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great FALLLL", and I would lift her into the water. She liked this and started lunging toward the pool when we got to that part of the song! Baby Girl really loves the water and swimming!

I cannot believe that our Baby Girl is 10 months old. What happened? She's almost one? When did that happen? Pretty soon she's not going to be a baby anymore. She is absolutely adorable. She's growing and developing like crazy! All of the questions that the Doctor asked at her 9 month check up, I can now answer 'yes' to. That's good! She can clap two toys together. She can play Patty-Cake. She even starts playing Patty-Cake when you start singing the song. She can practically crawl. She has the army crawl down to a science. She moves from room to room within our little house without any trouble. She often times gets up on her hands and knees, but can't quite figure it out. It's only a matter of days before she'll figure it out! I can stand her next to a couch, or our love sac, and she can stand. She's getting better at 'walking' while we hold her fingers. She's also figured out how to sit up on her own - except she only does it in her crib. I think she uses the bars of her crib to help her sit up. (This is my least favorite new trick). The last two nights when I put her down to bed, I peek in her room and find her sitting up playing - and NOT sleeping. Silly girl needs to SLEEP, not play! In addition to learning the sign language for 'more', she is also gesturing a lot. Instead of pointing, she holds out an open hand, the palm of her hand pointing toward her. Like she's displaying something! She'll be a fantastic Visitor Center Missionary someday! She's getting better with her Separation Anxiety. She's still a major Mama's girl, but she is getting better about letting other people hold her and feed her and play with her. Someday she'll grow out of it (right?). What a beautiful baby that we LOVE so much! 

Several months ago, I bought a book about teaching your baby Sign Language. I've seen other babies who are amazing at sign language, so I thought I would give it a whirl. The main sign I started teaching Baby Girl was the sign for 'milk'. I showed her the sign every time she nursed. I did really good at the beginning. She knows what the sign means. Whenever she pulls away and looks at something else, I give her the sign for milk, and she latches immediately back on. She's never repeated it though. I've tried introducing other signs - but I haven't been all that consistent with it. I need to be more consistent, if she's going to learn it.

This week, I started teaching her the sign for 'more'. This is a picture of some random baby doing the sign for 'more'. That is what it should look like. Baby Girl has learned this sign! Not only does she understand it, but she can do the sign. It's not as defined as the picture of the other baby, but she brings her hands together when she wants another one. The first day she was doing it, I wasn't sure if she knew what she was doing. But now, I'm convinced that she understands what it means! What a smart baby. Enjoy the video of Baby Girl's new trick.

Our Baby Girl is a wild sleeper. She is all over her crib. She's on her tummy, side or back. Half the time her face is buried against the bumper. It's really adorable. Now, every time she wakes up from her nap or in the morning, her hair is all messed up! It's usually sticking up in a couple of different places. This is a silly picture that I took of Baby Girl after she woke up from her nap yesterday. Her hair is poking up. I noticed recently that her legs are getting tan. Her legs are tanner than mine! I lather her up with sun screen every time we go out doors. I rarely put sun screen on me. Somehow - she has more tan legs! Maybe she'll get Morgan's tan skin!

What a wonderful holiday weekend! Morgan had Friday off as a holiday, so we decided to go visit Morgan's parents. We did a bunch of fun things! Friday was absolutely exhausting! We drove straight to a canyon near his parents' house. His parents and siblings were already up there. After we met up with them, we went on a hike. We loaded Baby Girl in the hiking backpack that we have. She did really good for a lot of the hike. After a while, she started getting tired and fussy. So, we decided to turn around, and only finish half of the hike. On our way back down, Baby Girl fell asleep. If we would have known she would have fallen asleep, we would have finished the hike. Oh well. We'll have to finish the hike another time.

After the hike, we had a picnic. It was a beautiful day. After the picnic, we left Baby Girl with Morgan's parents and went rock climbing. This was my first time climbing in the wilderness! Morgan's taken me climbing at an indoor wall a couple of times. We found a climb that wasn't occupied. Morgan climbed it first and took the rope to the top. Then his sister, Ali, climbed it. Then I got to climb it. I didn't think I would make it very far! They said the first part was the hardest, so I didn't think I would get very far! But I got past the hard part! Baby Girl was getting impatient and tired. So, we packed up our stuff and headed back to Morgan's parents' house. We had a nice dinner of Sanpete Turkey, corn on the cob, watermelon. We had dutch oven peach cobbler for dessert. Baby Girl had a rough time falling asleep. She was overtired and was in a new place. She just cried and cried until she finally fell asleep. Once she was asleep, she slept fine the rest of the night. She did better the next day.

Morgan woke up early Saturday morning, and went fishing with his dad. He caught two good size trouts. We brought them home and had them for dinner on Sunday. We took it easy on Saturday. We were so tired and sore from our adventures the day before. Baby Girl got some really good naps in, which made her a little happier. It was fun to spend time with family. We played games and chatted. We drove home Saturday evening - absolutely exhausted. We put Baby Girl to bed around 7. We unpacked and ate dinner. I wanted to see if we could see the city firework show from our house, but we were too exhausted. I think we were in bed by 9:30! It's pretty pathetic, but that's okay! We'll see fireworks next year! It was a fantastic holiday weekend!

Baby Girl is such a stinking cutie! She is developing so much personality. She's playing games with us. She teases us and laughs about it!  Yesterday, during lunch time, Baby Girl had prunes (yummy). In between each bite, she grabbed her toes and shoved them in her mouth. I tried stopping her. I told her that she can have her toes for dessert, but not until she finished eating. I didn't want to keep cleaning prunes out of between her toes. She was so determined. After EVERY bite in went the toes. It was adorable, so I gave up, and let her suck on her toes in between bites. Of course, I grabbed the camera.