A little update

Here is Lily updating her Facebook status:
"I am SO into The Fray's Heartless cover right now!"



There is so much to write about Lily, I don't know where to start! Each day she continues to amaze me with how much she has grown!

We are still successfully nursing, but we also started introducing more solids into her diet after her nine month "birthday". For breakfast she eats fruit and Multi-grain Cheerios or scrambled eggs. At dinner she eats vegetables and she really enjoys chicken! We love having dinner together as a family! We pull Lily's highchair over to the dinner table so she can participate in our conversation and she does a great job of feeding herself! She also takes water in a sippy cup and a bottle, which is interesting because she never liked bottles before!

Her interest in music continues to grow and she does her little booty shake move even when slow music plays. Her most listened to CD is a Worship CD from Grandma Christy, but she even recognizes me banging on a pot as "music" and does her little baby dance. Recently she started waving her arms to Black Eyed Peas, Boom Boom Pow. I'm not a huge fan of the band, but now I love the song because Lily likes it! I wonder if she will play an instrument when she gets older? Or if she will want to take dance lessons? Or maybe she will become a DJ?!

Her special talents at the moment include removing clothes from her little hamper, her dresser, and from the dryer. She just learned how to close bedroom doors and open the tape deck on the stereo in our living room. She's an old pro at removing the cd from her own cd player so we had to move it out of her reach, but she's replacing that interest with removing stuffed animals from the cubby where her cd player used to be.

Surprisingly, Lily is comfortable navigating the layout of our house to search for me. A month ago she didn't really leave whatever area we were playing in, but now she knows where she's going! Yesterday, she and Eric were in the living room and I left to use the restroom. A few seconds later I heard her coming down the hall and then a pounding on the door. After washing my hands I opened the door, and she was just sitting there outside the guest bathroom...waiting for me. It was so sweet!

A few weeks ago Lily learned how a mirror works and would look at the mirror, then turn around and look at the same object behind her over and over. Now if she's near a mirror, she knows exactly how objects are oriented behind her. What still fascinates her is shadows! She watches our shadows as I rock her to sleep and she plays with her own shadow when she can find it on the ground. Its so funny to watch her try to pick up her own shadow...she sort of pinches at it for a while before moving on.

Perhaps the best of her latest special talents is that she is starting to call for Eric and me by "dada" and "mama". I know she doesn't completely understand how it works yet, but curiously, she never calls us by the "wrong" name. When she sees Eric she always says "dada" and when she's getting sleepy at night, even if Eric is rocking her, she calls for "mama" and looks around until I come. Oh, its a wonderful feeling, being wanted by her! I do look forward to the days when we start to have little conversations together!

Before I was pregnant, my friend Eva described motherhood in a way that I couldn't appreciate at the time: She said if she could give one gift to the people she loved most, it would be the gift of being a mother because it is so beautiful and special! Now I know exactly what she meant and why she feels that way: Parenthood changes us and allows us to become better than we were before! Children make our lives more meaningful and more lovely!

I thank God daily for Eric and Lily because He entrusted me with such precious treasures!