Little Bit of Lenzi

We really are still alive!

2011-11-14T11:44:00.001-05:00

I am SO sorry for the lack of posts lately! I had to go to Oklahoma for a business trip the first week in November, and have been crazy busy at work since then.
Here are a few Halloween pictures and some other recent pics of Miss Lenzi:

Here she is checking out the freshly carved jack o'lantern. She loved looking at it!

Checking it out in the dark

Showing Nana!

Posing with the jack o'lantern on the porch!

Cinderella trick-or-treating!

Once it got dark, we headed back to the house. Lenzi loved sitting on the porch watching Daddy and Papaw give candy out to the trick-or-treaters!

We were visited by our neighbors' girls! Another Cinderella (Hannah) and Snow White (Wendy)!

All in all, Lenzi had a great time on Halloween! She now wears her costume to dress up.

Here are a few more recent pictures:

Here she is helping me cook dinner one week night. She absolutely loves cooking!

She liked what she cooked so much that she ate three helpings! I told Scott she needs to help me cook every night if she eats it that well!

Feeding her baby, Bella

Here we are playing a princess game on my iPhone

Remember how I said that she loves playing dress up with her Halloween costume? Proof right here!

Well, that's the latest with us! Hopefully I will be able to update a bit more regularly!

Newest Pictures!

2011-10-24T15:54:00.001-04:00

I already typed this entire post out once, and Blogger lost it, so here we go again.

Here are the latest pictures of the Peanut.

Here she is saying "cheese!" for the camera:

Here she is with a chocolate goatee. This picture makes me laugh:

In that same vein, here she is with chocolate cookie in her teeth:

Scott snapped this picture of her getting caught up on all the latest hunting trends:

Here she is loving on Duke:

Here she is reading a book to her rocking horse (also known as Horsie):

And finally, here she is playing with her very first Barbie doll. Lenzi absolutely loves Barbie. She wants Barbie to sleep with her and eat dinner with her, and go everywhere Lenzi goes:

Scott's parents are coming down for a visit this weekend, and Monday night is Halloween, so I am sure I will take lots of pictures! Stay tuned to see Cinderella in costume and trick-or-treating!

Pumpkin Patch!

2011-10-17T10:11:00.000-04:00

We decided to take Lenzi to a local pumpkin patch called Corn Dawgs in Loganville. We actually went when Lenzi was an infant a couple of years ago, and had a miserable time. It was cold, and Lenzi was way too little to do anything.But this year, we had a great time! Lenzi loved it! Here's a picture we snapped of Lenzi with a pumpkin as we were walking in. She loved the pumpkins!

There were all kinds of activities for kids to do. There was even a little kids section for kids aged 6 and under, so we headed there first.There was a little kids zip line that we let Lenzi ride (and she loved it). Scott snapped a quick video of her enjoying the ride:There were also horse swings made from tires that Lenzi rode. Of course she loved it. This kid has not met a swing she didn't like!We walked around a bit more and Lenzi played on a toy boat, and in a huge corn pit (a big sandbox-like thing with raw corn kernals in it). Finally we sat down for some water and a snack. As we were heading to take Lenzi to the bathroom, we saw this trampoline-looking thing that a bunch of kids were jumping on. Lenzi wanted to jump, so we let her. Here's a little videos of her having a blast jumping on the Jumping Pillow. She is in the orange T-shirt and jeans:We had a great time at the pumpkin patch! I hope we can go back at least one more time before they close for the season!

Updates

2011-10-11T16:11:00.000-04:00

We spent a fairly relaxing weekend at home this past weekend. Scott got Lenzi's swingset put together, as you saw in the video in the last post, and Lenzi has LOVED walking out the back door and being able to swing and slide.

Scott and I got Lenzi some playdoh to play with, and she absolutely loves it! We let her play with it on Sunday, and she played for close to an hour. Here's a little video I shot of her playing. I made her a little "pool" and she loved demolishing it and her facial expressions were cracking me up, as you can hear in the video:

Lenzi woke up with a stomach bug yesterday morning. Poor thing was pale and threw up a couple of times. Here she is looking pitiful:

She took a long nap and when she woke up, she was back to her old self. She even ate two helpings of her dinner!

Scott will be hunting all weekend, so Lenzi and I will be on our own from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. No real plans for the weekend, but I am sure I will take some pictures or a video of the Peanut!

Lenzi and Bear sliding!

2011-10-04T08:22:00.001-04:00

Scott took this little video of Lenzi and her Bear sliding down on Lenzi's new swingset!

Sick baby and fun weekend

2011-10-03T12:57:00.006-04:00

Poor Lenzi started running a 101 degree fever completely out of the blue on Wednesday. Scott picked her up from daycare early, and took her to the pediatrician to get checked out. Poor thing has an ear infection in her left ear. The pediatrician prescribed an antibiotic and we have to bring her back in to be checked out in 10 days. I really thought getting tubes put in would stop the ear infections, but that does not seem to be the case. She was pretty pitiful on Wednesday evening, as evidenced in this picture Scott snapped of her:

But by Saturday she seemed to be back to her old self. Our town had a little festival on Saturday, and we invited our good friends the Tylers to go with us. They have a little boy named Will about 4.5 months older than Lenzi, and they are in the same class at daycare. Here is a little video I shot of Lenzi and Will having a blast in the moonwalk at the festival:

It was pretty chilly and windy outside on Saturday, and on Sunday, Lenzi woke up with a cough and runny nose. Children's Zyrtec has seemed to help a bit, so we are hoping that it is just allergies or something brought on by the change in the weather. Lenzi also decided not to nap on Sunday, despite repeated attempts to get her to. By 4:00 she was a meltdown mess. It was a rough afternoon, needless to say! But she seemed to be feeling a little better this morning, so hopefully she has had a good day today at school.

That is the latest in our world!

Update, new pictures, and a video!

2011-09-27T11:09:00.014-04:00

I apologize for my lack of posts recently! My mom had surgery two weeks ago and suffered complications, so I have been going up to the hospital and helping out at the house when she got released. And of course when I have to miss work, it gets super busy. But Mom is doing a lot better now, so hopefully I'll be able to post a bit more regularly!

Lenzi is doing great! I am amazed everyday how she is growing. She is really starting to speak in full sentences now, which is so neat to see and hear. We had a little potty regression the last couple of weeks, but now she seems to be getting back on track. I bought her some "real" panties, but I am scared to put her in them. I need to just bite the bullet and do it. The thing is, we'd basically have to give up a weekend and stay at the house so she could go potty as needed and cleaning up accidents would be much easier than on the go. Trying to plan out a weekend to do it has been a bit difficult.

So here are a couple of recent pictures and a little video of Lenzi chatting with me.

Here is Lenzi at the park in her "pretty dress". She is all about dresses right now.

Here are her new shoes (they are Toms shoes) that she calls her "glass slippers"

Close up of the shoes

And here is the little video:

Walking up the wall

2011-09-15T16:24:00.002-04:00

Lenzi and Daddy started doing this before bed one night, so I had to grab my phone and snap a video. It has now become a nightly ritual.

A few new pics

2011-09-12T14:52:00.004-04:00

Here are a couple of pictures of the Peanut that I snapped over the weekend:

Her crazy hair courtesy of Daddy:

And here she is doing her favorite thing in the world, swinging at the park!

The Fair!

2011-09-09T14:21:00.013-04:00

There is a little fair that comes to our town in the fall every year. The rides are typical pop-up roadside carnival rides, and it is set up behind the high school in a big field. Scott and I considered taking Lenzi last year, but decided against it because she was too little. So we definitely wanted to take her this year!

Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. I know I have mentioned before that she has developed random fears lately, so I was sort of expecting her to be a little afraid of the rides and the atmosphere. But she LOVED it. At different points throughout the night we had to literally PRY her off of some of the rides. She had an absolute ball. Here are a few pictures of the little girl thoroughly enjoying herself at the fair.

The first stop was the merry-go-round. This was probably Lenzi's favorite ride. Scott had to pry her off the horse when the ride was over.

Lenzi and Scott rode the merry-go-round 3 times!

Next up was the little choo choo train. Lenzi has a book about a little train that she loves right now, so this little train ride was perfect. She loved it! She rode this one twice.

The next ride she went on were these little cars. They spin around and also lift up. Lenzi wasn't sure about it at first, but she ended up loving it!

There was also a little boat ride. It had all these mini boats that went around a little track. Lenzi loved it too.

And finally she and Scott went down a huge slide together. I couldn't get a really good picture of them with Scott's camera phone, but here it is:

Of course we ate fair food, including cotton candy. There was also a bluegrass band playing that we stopped and listened too (Lenzi enjoyed that as well). It was a great night. We are probably going to go back tonight since Lenzi enjoyed it so much!

New Lenzi Videos!

2011-09-06T15:22:00.002-04:00

What a better way to end a lazy holiday weekend with some videos of Lenzi! We had a very relaxed weekend with just me, Scott, and Lenzi. We mainly just hung around the house and vegged out.

So this first video is of Lenzi dancing to a song in the Disney movie The Princess and the Frog. The Disney princess movies have been a HUGE hit with Lenzi. She loves Tiana (from The Princess and the Frog), Ariel (from The Little Mermaid), and Cinderella. I'd love to get her Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Peter Pan next!

This video is of her trying to sing like Ariel from The Little Mermaid. It's not a great video because she was distracted by the pizza she was eating. But sometimes (and she did it right before I turned on the camera to record her) she will break out into song (more like wailing) "like Ariel" as she says, with her eyes closed and her arms raised up dramatically. It is hilarious!! I am hoping to capture it on video soon!

Lenzi and Talking Tom

2011-08-31T21:48:00.007-04:00

I have an app on my iPhone called Talking Tom.

It is a cartoon cat that "listens" to what you say and repeats it back in a high pitch voice. Lenzi absolutely LOVES Talking Tom. Here is a video I shot of her playing with Tom. She was showing Tom all of her toys, and she even gave him some of her water. It was adorable, so I thought I would share:

Lenzi spends the night with Grandma

2011-08-29T10:16:00.003-04:00

This past Saturday, Lenzi and I headed to Grandma's house (my mom). Scott was at his hunting property all day, and my mom was dying to see Lenzi, so we headed out to spend the day in Atlanta.

We got to my mom's house around 10:00, and we waited on my sister Ginger and my Nana to come over so we could all head to the park. But I realized we'd forgotten Lenzi's sunglasses and hat at home, so we made a quick pit stop at Target on the way. Lenzi got a new hat and a new pair of sunglasses, as well as two new shirts and two new pairs of shorts, a potty seat and Pull Ups for Grandma's house, and some new barrettes. Can you tell this child is spoiled?

After Target, we realized it was lunch time, so we swung by Chick-Fil-A and grabbed lunch and took it with us to the park. We ate lunch as soon as we got there, then I took Lenzi to the potty before playing. Lenzi pooped on the potty!!! She has never done that before (at least not in front of me), so I was very excited about that.

We let her swing for a little bit, but after about 15-20 minutes we had to leave because it was so hot and Lenzi's face was starting to get red. But I did shoot this little video of her swinging with Grandma:

Unfortunately you can't hear all that well, but Lenzi is squealing and having a great time on the swing.

After the park, we headed back to Grandma's house to let Lenzi take a nap. Ginger stayed at the house with the monitor, while me, my mom, and Nana went to Babies R Us to get a car seat for my mom. My mom really wanted to have Lenzi spend the night, so a car seat was needed. We'd actually wanted to get one for awhile, but never got around to it (we would just put one of ours in her car). So we picked up a seat and headed back.

Lenzi got up from her nap shortly after, and I got her dressed and ready to go to church with the grandparents. Since Lenzi has been a little fearful lately, I was a little nervous that she would get upset without me there. So when I kissed her goodbye, I prepared myself for tears. But she was fine! She said "see you tomorrow!" just as cheerful as you please. So I was relieved and I headed home to spend a child-less night with Scott. We went out to dinner and had a nice, relaxing night to ourselves, so that was nice!

Lenzi and Grandma got to our house around lunch time, and they brought lunch, so that was nice. Grandma said Lenzi was so well behaved at church, and that she had such a good time with her! So it was a nice weekend all around!

For the long holiday weekend, we don't really have a lot planned. We are just planning to spend time together as a family before hunting season kicks off. There is a little annual town fair that weekend, right across the street from our subdivision, so we will be checking that out, now that Lenzi is a little older. So stay tuned for pictures!

New Lenzi Pictures!

2011-08-23T14:03:00.012-04:00

Here she is in her Cinderella dress up outfit:

And here she is posing. I love these!

And here are some of her deconstructing her peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

In other news, we are slowly making progress with getting Lenzi to sleep at night. We have started using this night light:

It's a turtle that projects stars and moons on the celing. We have had it for awhile now (got it for a gift) but never used it because Lenzi never had any issues with sleeping until now. It works great, and Lenzi is now sleeping through the night with no problems. But she still wants me to lie down on the floor next to her bed until she is asleep. I don't mind lying down with her, but at the same time, I don't want to create a bad habit either. For the last week or so I've been doing it, because we had no sleep the two weeks before, and I was desperate for sleep. But I think we may need to stop doing it so she doesn't rely on it.

Lenzi is still doing pretty well with potty training, but is still having accidents. I don't want to push her too hard, because she won't want to continue with it. I need to be better about taking her to the potty on a more consistent schedule in the evenings and weekends, like her teachers do at school. It is a learning process for both of us!

Well, that is the latest with us!

Updates and a Video

2011-08-16T08:50:00.003-04:00

First, here's the video of Lenzi playing at the park in our town. She was such a big girl, climbing up to the slides and sliding down all by herself!

In other news, Lenzi seems to have developed a fear of going to sleep in her room by herself. We decided this past weekend to convert Lenzi's crib to a toddler bed since she started potty training. The first night (Saturday night), there were no problems at all. She slept totally soundly, and didn't wake up until morning. I was relieved that the transition was going much better than I'd anticipated. But on Sunday night, the poor thing rolled out of the bed around 10:30 or so and was jolted awake. I got her calmed down and put her back in her bed. An hour later she woke up crying again. She didn't fall out of bed this time, but Scott and I thought that maybe she had a dream she was falling and it scared her. When I picked her up, she clung to me like a barnacle and refused to let me put her back down in her bed.

I went to our room and told Scott, and he put the travel bed rail on her bed to close the gap. He took her and was able to get her back to sleep by laying on the floor next to her bed until she fell asleep, and she slept the rest of the night with no problems.

Last night was more of the same. When it was bedtime, she cried and clung to me and didn't want to have anything to do with getting in her bed. Scott had to again lay on the floor next to her bed until she fell asleep. But like clockwork, she woke up again around 10:30 or so, freaking out. I tried to go in there and comfort her, and even tried Scott's trick about laying on the floor next to her bed until she fell asleep (or so I thought). She woke back up about 10 minutes after I left her room, and Scott worked his magic getting her back to sleep. She did sleep through the rest of the night with no problems.

I am not sure why she is suddenly so afraid to go to sleep. I have noticed that she is generally more afraid of things lately than she ever has been before, so Scott and I are just hoping that this is a developemental phase and it passes soon. Poor little girl!

In other news, we think we have decided on Lenzi's Halloween costume this year! Miss L has been OBSESSED with princesses lately (especially the Disney princesses), and she has a particular fondness for Cinderella. So we think she is going to be Cinderella this year! I am so excited to get her dressed up and take her Trick-or-Treating this year, since last year she was too sick, and the year before she was still an infant. Now I am on the hunt for the perfect Cinderella costume!

Well, that is the latest with us!

New Lenzi Pictures!

2011-08-11T10:41:00.009-04:00

Here are some recent pictures of the Peanut:

She got this ride-on toy for her first birthday. We put it up when she was around 18 months old because she wasn't playing with it regularly. She found it in her closet a couple of weeks ago and she has been playing with it non-stop! It's like a brand new toy!

Cute little smile!

Her new "hat" (which is actually the plastic tub that her blocks go in...notice the smooshed nose as well)

This was after she helped me make some instant chocolate pudding. I let her lick the whisk and she loved it!

New Video!

2011-08-01T11:55:00.002-04:00

Here is just a taste of the endless energy this child has:

If I had even half of this energy I could get so much done!

Potty training...sort of

2011-07-29T09:20:00.003-04:00

Lenzi officially moved up to the 2 year old room at daycare this past Monday. It was kind of bittersweet for me. Bitter because I can't believe my baby is old enough to be in the 2 year old room. Sweet because she is ready to be in a room with older kids. And the tuition decrease of $7 a week is really nice too.

So the 2 year old room is the beginning of potty training. I know I mentioned that Lenzi has had an interest in using the potty for awhile now, and she has used it several times at school already. Her class uses Pull Ups instead of diapers, so it's easier for the kids (and teachers) to help them go to the potty during the day, but if there are accidents, it's easier to clean up than if they were wearing regular underwear. Lenzi loves her "panties" as she calls them, because the ones we got her have Disney princesses on them, which she is obsessed with right now.

So she is not really going to the potty consistently right now. I think that's ok for now, because she is just now getting used to sort of recognizing when she needs to go.

Unfortunately, she refuses to go to the potty at home. She goes at least twice a day at school, but won't go at home. Her school has one of those potties that are real, flushing potties that are really short and small, so a perfect size for a child learning to go. At home, we have a little potty chair like this:

But I don't think she really sees this as a "potty". She sits on it all the time, like it's a chair, but has never actually gone on it. And the big potty kind of intimidates her, and she feels like she is going to fall in. So I think we may need to get some kind of ring seat to put on the big potty to make her feel more secure and that she is actually going on a "real" potty.

So that's where we are in terms of potty training. The good news is that Lenzi seems to be ready and open to potty training, so that is good. We just need to get her on more of a schedule and buy some sort of ring seat for the potty at home so we can be consistent with her going at school.

Our lake weekend!

2011-07-21T11:00:00.003-04:00

Of course I am late getting our lake weekend pictures up! Never fails!

Anyway, I was really busy chasing after an insane 2 year old most of the weekend to get a lot of pictures, but here are the ones I managed to take:

We stopped to eat dinner Friday night in Milledgeville at a Mexican restaurant. Lenzi was serious about coloring on her placemat and about the chips and salsa. She definitely takes after me with her love of chips!

The only other pictures I managed to snap were of Lenzi and Scott swimming in the lake. The weather was kind of rainy and overcast until about 4:00 Saturday afternoon, so we were cooped up in the house.

(Scott was trying to get her to wave to the camera, but no luck)

All in all, we had a nice family weekend at the lake! We are actually going back down on Saturday to help my parents pack up. So Lenzi will have one more chance to swim in the lake!

In other news, Lenzi has been using the potty at school every day this week!! When I picked her up from school on Monday, her little daily report looked like this:

Notice at 11:00 and 2:00 it says "potty"! Yesterday she went to the potty all day and only went in her diaper once! Lenzi is super excited about using the potty so we are going with it. Hard to believe she just turned two and is interested this early, but I'll take it! I can't wait until we won't have to buy diapers anymore! Go Lenzi!

A Couple New Pictures

2011-07-13T15:31:00.013-04:00

Here are a few new Lenzi pictures:

She begged me to put a ponytail in her hair, but since she still doesn't really have enough for a legit ponytail, this was the best I could come up with.

Another shot. She's actually saying "Cheese!" and not yelling at me as it appears in the picture.

This little girl is too smart for her own good sometimes...she figured out she could push her ride on toy in front of her kitchen and stand on it to reach the top shelf.

Here she is modeling socks with sandals (she put these on herself). Only Lenzi can make this look cute!

And finally, here she is wearing a "hat" as she calls it (otherwise known as my dorky shower cap).

Ha ha!
In other news, my parents are selling their lake house (unfortunately! ), and close on it on August 1st. They are going to the beach this coming weekend and following week, so they suggested we spend one last weekend at the lake house. Lenzi's only been there a handful of times, but she loves it, and we thought it would be nice to have a little getaway that is close to home and inexpensive, especially since we can't afford a family vacation this year. So that's where we'll be! We'll take plenty of pictures of Lenzi having fun, so stay tuned!

Birthday Party Videos

2011-07-09T15:49:00.003-04:00

Here they are! Lenzi's birthday party videos. The first one is of Lenzi (well, really me) opening presents, and the second one is of Lenzi devouring her birthday cupcake. Hope you enjoy them!

Videos!

2011-07-08T11:58:00.003-04:00

Sorry, these are not the birthday party videos. I really am going to post those, but for some reason, they take forever to download from our camcorder to You Tube. But I'll try to get those posted ASAP!

Here are a couple of short little videos I shot of Lenzi playing with her Daddy on her actual birthday on Wednesday. We have a patio set on our back patio that has cushions on the chairs, and we'd brought them inside because we had a huge rainstorm. Lenzi LOVES to spread the cushions all over the living room floor and roll around on them.

And here's another really short one of Lenzi doing a somersault all by herself! We need to get her in gymnastics classes!

2 years.

2011-07-06T10:21:00.012-04:00

Today is Lenzi's 2nd birthday! It seems like just yesterday I was posting about her first birthday. It is amazing and sad how fast time goes by. I never really noticed it until I had her.

We had her birthday party this past Saturday. We ended up doing a Sesame Street-themed brunch, which was a lot of fun. Lenzi got some wonderful presents and it was so good to see all the family and friends who could make it out. I have a couple of videos of Lenzi (well really me) opening gifts and eating her cupcake, and I will try to get those posted tonight.

So now I'm going to be all sappy and nostalgic and take a trip down memory lane:

The last picture of me pregnant with Lenzi. This was less than a week before she was born!

Minutes old

1 day old

First birthday...tearing into her cake!

This morning on her second birthday

Happy birthday to my sweetheart! Mommy and Daddy love you more than you will ever know!

Fashion Show

2011-06-29T10:20:00.010-04:00

My sweet friend Rhonda got Lenzi a couple of dresses and a new pair of shoes for her birthday! Lenzi was so excited that she wanted to try everything on. Naturally I had to take pictures!

These are her new shoes...they are little cork wedges, so they have a small heel. Lenzi kept walking around in them saying she was a "gown up" (grown up).

Close up of the shoes! They are adorable!

The first new dress (with the shoes of course!)

We had to pause the fashion show so Lenzi could watch the rest of The Backyardagains on TV.

Dress #2...so cute!

She was showing me the yellow flower on her dress.

It's so cute how she is beginning to be interested in clothes! She has always been a big fan of shoes. She will tell me every morning which shoes she wants to wear that day! She is really getting to be a little diva!

Tippy Toes

2011-06-24T10:23:00.003-04:00

Sorry this is so grainy...not sure what happened when I uploaded it to You Tube. But cute nonetheless!

New Pictures!

2011-06-15T14:19:00.005-04:00

Here are a couple of recent pictures I took of Lenzi:

Playing with her Little People dollhouse

Wearing Mommy's flip flops around the living room

Little feet in big shoes

Cutie!

23 Months!

2011-06-07T10:11:00.012-04:00

Sorry we have been missing in action lately...the holiday and my boss being out of the country for two weeks have really put a damper on the blogging!

Hard to believe, but it is less than a month away from Miss Lenzi's 2nd birthday! I really can't believe how quickly this year has gone by. It seems like yesterday we were making plans for her first birthday party!

Speaking of birthday parties, we are definitely keeping it low key this year. Although the big party last year was fun, Lenzi is still too young to really understand the whole birthday concept. We are thinking of just having family and very close friends over for cake, and maybe taking Lenzi to the zoo or something like that. The unfortunate part of Lenzi's birthday being 2 days after a holiday, is that a lot of people go on vacation and most of the activities (such as the zoo, aquarium, etc) are super crowded with out of towners and locals who have an extra day off to check that stuff out. So we haven't totally decided what we will do yet. We need to get on the ball and decide!

So Lenzi is 23 months old. Here are some milestones that she has reached:

She is a talking maniac. I seriously can't believe all the words she knows and how well she is talking for her age. Scott and I guessed that she knows at least 500 words if not more. She is starting to make multiple word sentences now, which totally blows me away.

She has started singing! She knows almost all the words to "Ring Around the Rosie", and loves to attempt to sing "Twinkle Twinkle" and the ABC song. It is insanely cute!

She recently started jumping/hopping and it is so funny! She is still trying to get the hang of it without losing her balance.

This child is part fish, I swear! We went to Dylan's birthday pool party, and she stayed in the pool for almost 3 hours straight! I had to take her out to change her swim diaper once and put more sunscreen on her, but she LOVES the water. By the time we went home, her fingers and toes were totally shriveled up from being in the water so long!

She is finally beginning to outgrow some of her 18 month size clothes. I was beginning to think she was going to be in 18 month size forever! But some 24 month stuff is still a bit big. I am hoping by the end of the summer she will be in all 24 month/2T sizes.

Lenzi is becoming super independent. She wants to walk everywhere, and luckily she is really good about holding our hands when we walk. She rarely wants to be carried, unless she is somewhere unfamilliar with new people. But once she warms up a bit, she's good to go. My back is grateful for this milestone! :)

So those are the main milestones for now. I am sure I am forgetting some. Here are a couple of pictures of Lenzi and two of the neighbor kids, Harlie and Drake playing on a slip and slide on Memorial Day:

Pigtails

2011-05-25T10:23:00.002-04:00

Lenzi came home from school yesterday with these adorable pigtails:

I think they make her look so grown up!

Ice Cream!

2011-05-24T16:21:00.004-04:00

Lenzi has a new love...chocolate coated ice cream bars! She will clean her plate at dinner knowing that if she does, she and Mama get to share an ice cream bar.

Croup

2011-05-23T10:48:00.011-04:00

So Lenzi ended up getting the croup. Again. I think this is the third time she has had it. On Tuesday, Lenzi made it until about 2:00 in the afternoon before her fever came back, and Scott had to pick her up. By Wednesday morning, the fever was pretty much gone, so we thought she was getting better and took her to daycare. She made it throught the whole day fever-free, but she was coughing pretty much non-stop, and didn't sleep for her nap at all because she was coughing so much. That evening her fever came back too, and Scott and I knew she needed to go back to the doctor.

I had a meeting at work on Thursday that I had to set up for and pick up lunch, so there was no way I could miss work to take her. So Scott stayed home that morning and was able to get her seen at the pediatrician's office. I'd suspected that Lenzi had croup based on her barky-sounding cough (one of the taletell signs is a cough that sounds like a seal barking). Sure enough, it was croup. The doctor prescribed Predisone, which is an oral steriod that gets rid of the croup. One of her ears was also a little red/inflamed, and we got a sample of antibiotic ear drops to help clear that up.

I ended up being able to come home and stay with Lenzi after lunch Thursday, so Scott could at least get a few hours of work in. Poor Lenzi did not nap well that afternoon, nor did she sleep well that night due to the coughing. But after a few doses of the steriod, her coughing was much, much better. She is almost done with the steriod now, and even though she is still coughing some, it sounds like it is breaking up and getting better. Unfortunately, both Scott and I are getting the adult version of croup, which is cold-like symptoms and chest congestion. I am actually feeling a little better, but Scott started feeling bad last night. I can't wait until we are all healthy!

Lenzi was feeling pretty good over the weekend! We had some really hot, sunny weather with temperatures in the 90's, so on Saturday we bought Lenzi a sprinkler toy she could play with in the yard. It was a huge beach ball that had water coming out of it (you hook it up to a hose). She was a little bit unsure about it at first, but when we turned down the water pressure, she ended up loving it! Here's a couple of pictures of her enjoying her new toy!

On Sunday, we drove to Macon to visit one of our old friends and to go to Bass Pro Shop so Scott could get a few things. Bass Pro Shop has a big aquarium with fish in their fishing department, and Lenzi loved checking out all the fish:

Well, that is really the latest with us!

Anniversary Trip!

2011-05-17T11:10:00.003-04:00

Scott and I got back on Sunday from our anniversary trip up to the mountains in Helen, GA. We had a great time, and it was so nice to go out to dinner and just spend some time together alone.

Lenzi did very well with her Nana and Papaw taking care of her. Nana and Papaw said she was very well-behaved and they had a great time with her over the weekend. They even took her to church with them on Saturday night, and she was quiet and sat still through the service. That shocked me, because she is usually going 100 miles a minute! So we were very proud of her for being such a good girl!

Yesterday morning, she woke up crying and burning up with fever. She was fine the day before, but she was not feeling good at all yesterday. Nana and Papaw had planned on driving home to Memphis yesterday, but graciously offered to stay an extra day and stay home with Lenzi so Scott and I could go to work. By yesterday afternoon, however, her fever spiked to 103 degrees, so I left work around 3:00 and came home. I'd tried to get her an appointment at her pediatrician's office, but one of the doctors was out on jury duty, so they were completely booked up. The first available appointment they had was at 2:15 the next afternoon! I asked them if there was an urgent care facility in the area we could take her to, and they said that a CVS pharmacy in Covington had one of those Minute Clinics. I got home and Nana and I took her there to be seen.

Lenzi was so well-behaved! She let the nurse practitioner examine her ears, nose, and throat without complaint. She even let the nurse practitioner swab her throat for the strep test! Luckily the strep test came back negative, and her ears checked out ok, so the nurse practitioner determined she had an upper respiratory virus. She said it has been going around, and since it's a virus, there was no prescription medication we could give her. It basically just had to run its course. We could give her Tylenol or Motrin for the fever, and we needed to give her plenty of fluids so she doesn't get dehydrated. Other than that, we have to just wait it out.

Lenzi didn't feel nearly as hot this morning, although she was pretty cranky. We gave her some Tylenol and took her to daycare. Scott said he was going to get as much work as he could done before lunch today, and then pick her up early so she could relax at home this afternoon. I hope she gets better soon!!

Well, that is the latest with us!

New Pics

2011-05-09T12:40:00.006-04:00

Here are a couple pictures of Lenzi from over the weekend:

Here she is completely passed out in the car on the way home from my parents' lake house. The flash from the camera on my cell phone didn't even wake her up. She had been going 100 miles a minute the whole time we were there!

Playing in the backyard after we got home from dinner last night.

Lenzi noticed our cat Marley sitting by the back door inside and started talking to her through the door.

She kept saying, "hi Marley! What's up?" It was adorable of course.

In other news, Scott and I have our 5 year wedding anniversary on Friday May 13th. We decided to rent a cabin in the little North Georgia mountain town of Helen for a weekend away. Scott's parents are driving down from Memphis to stay with Lenzi while we are gone, which is great! I know Lenzi is very excited to see her Nana and Papaw, and Scott and I are really looking forward to a weekend away, just the two of us!

Lenzi and Daddy

2011-05-03T11:06:00.005-04:00

Lenzi and Daddy watched TV together on Sunday morning, and I was able to snap a few pictures of them cuddling:

So cute! It's rare that she actually sits still long enough to watch something on TV nowadays! As you can tell from the video in the last post, this little girl is BUSY!

A few new pictures and a video

2011-05-02T11:22:00.008-04:00

We had a good weekend! Scott and I went to the Braves game on Saturday with my sister Ginger and her friend Natalie (Ginger's boyfriend John couldn't make it). Here was the view of the game from our seats:

Our seats were 14 rows behind the Braves dugout, so we had a great view of the game. Here are me and Scott enjoying the game:

We had a great time and it was nice to hang out with adults for a change!

My parents kept Lenzi for us while we were at the game. They all had a good time at the park and playing around their house. So a good day was had by all!

Sunday we just hung around the house and did chores/errands. Lenzi helped me grocery shop, then we came home and she took a nap. When she got up, she had a great time playing with one of her baby dolls. I was able to snap a video of her and it's pretty cute:

There are a couple more pictures I want to add, but Blogger is not letting me, so I'll have to add them later.

Wild weather!

2011-04-28T13:50:00.003-04:00

We had some crazy storms roll through Georgia last night. There were several tornados that came from the storms and caused a lot of destruction all over the state. There was actually one tornado that hit the southern part of Social Circle (where we live) but very fortunately for us, we made it through without any damages. We did get some of the wind and some hail, but luckily it was nothing major where we are.

Lenzi slept through the entire thing. Even when the wind was rattling the windows and rain and hail were slamming the walls of the house, she didn't make a peep. Scott, who normally sleeps through anything was woken up by it last night. Lenzi had no clue that anything even happened last night!

So on Saturday, Scott and I are going to have a "date day" and go with my sister Ginger and her boyfriend John to the Braves game. Lenzi is going to spend the day with my parents. My mom is so excited to spend some time with her, and I think we are all looking forward to a fun day!

Well, that is all the exciting stuff going on with us!

Easter 2011 (Part 2)

2011-04-25T15:31:00.025-04:00

So when I left off on my last post, we were about to go to our neighborhood Easter egg hunt. Luckily, Lenzi was able to get her nap in before it started, so she wasn't cranky or tired. It was a little slow going at first. Lenzi was still a little sleepy from her nap, and all the kids and adults kind of overwhelmed her a little. She clung to me, but eventually she saw what the other kids were doing and joined in. Oh, and she would NOT put down her sippy of water the entire hunt.

Here's some pictures from the hunt:

Just before the hunt, when she was still clingy

Lining up with the other kids right before the start of the hunt (look how little she looks compared to everyone else!)

Finding her first egg!

Getting the hang of it!

Carrying her bucket like a purse! She kept calling it a purse all day!

Holding her arm up so her "purse" won't fall off.

After the hunt, all the kids sat around and went through their loot:

Mmmmm!

After eating a little candy, Lenzi decided to swing on Dylan's swing set for a good hour and a half. We are now considering getting Lenzi her own swing set!

She absolutely LOVED this swing! She figured out how to pull and push the handles to pump herself.

On Easter morning, the Easter Bunny left a basket for Lenzi!

Later in the day, we went to my parents' house for Easter dinner. Lenzi especially enjoyed the ice cream cake for dessert:

We had a wonderful Easter this year! Hope you had a great Easter too!

Easter 2011 (Part 1)

2011-04-23T13:19:00.021-04:00

It has been an eventful weekend so far and it's only Saturday afternoon!

Unfortunately Lenzi had to miss her school's Easter egg hunt yesterday because she has pink eye. They wouldn't let her come back to school until she has been on the antibiotic eye drops for a couple of days. So she had to miss school and her party yesterday. Apparently pink eye is going around her school, so it was only a matter of time before she got it. I had already planned to take a vacation day from work yesterday, so it worked out that she could stay home with me. We went to the pediatrician's office to get her pink eye checked out and to get the prescription for her eye drops, then met Scott over at his office to give him a visit. He had a hair cut appointment scheduled, so we went over to our salon so our hair stylists could see Lenzi. We asked Michele, our stylist if she could trim Lenzi's hair since it was starting to look really scraggly and raggedy, and she did! Here are a couple of pictures of Lenzi's first hair cut:

Lenzi did so well! She sat perfectly still, and Michelle was able to get her hair all trimmed up in about 5 minutes. Michele, and the other stylist, Bree said they couldn't believe how well she did, and that they have 6 year olds who don't sit as still or behave as well. Yay Lenzi!

After Lenzi's haircut, we got lunch at McDonald's, then came home. We hung out at the house the rest of the day. After dinner, Daddy and Lenzi dyed Easter eggs! Lenzi had a great time. Here are a few pictures:

She said "cheese!" and made this face when she noticed me taking her picture, ha ha!

The finished product!

Today, we had to go to Target to get a few things and decided to get Lenzi a potty in preparation for potty training. A few kids in her class are potty training and Lenzi has shown some interest, so we figured we'd go ahead and get a potty.

Lenzi was playing with it on our way home. Silly girl was wearing part of it as a hat:

We have a neighborhood Easter egg hunt this afternoon, then a dinner with all the neighbors. Tomorrow we are going to my parents' house for Easter dinner. I'll be sure to post more pictures of it all later!

Scare on Monday

2011-04-20T08:59:00.002-04:00

I meant to write up this post right after it happened, but work has just been crazy this week. We are having our annual board meeting with all of the company partners, and I have been running around like crazy getting ready for it!

So Monday afternoon seemed like every other day. I was working on my boss's PowerPoint presentation for the board meeting when I got a call from Lenzi's daycare. It was the director calling to tell me she thought Lenzi might have dislocated her arm or shoulder somehow and that I needed to come pick her up and take her to the doctor. She said she wasn't exactly sure what happened or how it happened, but Lenzi started crying and refusing to lift or move her arm. I could hear Lenzi crying in the background. I hung up with her and immediately called her pediatrician's office to get her seen. They had an opening in less than an hour, so I left work and called Scott on the way to tell him what happened, and he agreed to meet me at the doctor's office.

When I got to Lenzi's school, she was sitting in the director's lap in her office. She had just eaten some goldfish crackers and milk for a snack, so I thought that was a good sign that she was able to eat something. But she held her little right arm up against her body and refused to move it. Of course as soon as she saw me she started crying. I picked her up and held her while the director of the daycare apologized profusely for not really knowing what happened or how it happened.

She said that Lenzi took her nap just fine, and after nap time she got into a little bit of trouble and had to sit in time out. When it was time for her to come out of time out, her teacher held out two fingers for Lenzi to hold to help her up from the floor. She got up and her teacher put her in a booster seat for snack time. When she tried to lift her right arm to drink her cup of milk, she started screaming and wouldn't move her arm. So there wasn't an issue of her falling on her arm or another kid pushing her or anything like that. I thanked her for calling me, put Lenzi in the car and headed over to the pediatrician's office.

Poor Lenzi cried the whole way to the pediatrician's office. I had scenarios running through my head of spending hours at the hospital getting x-rays and Lenzi's arm in a cast. We got to the doctor's office a little bit before Scott, so we waited in the waiting room for him to get there. He brought her favorite bear, and she calmed down after that, but still wouldn't move her arm.

We were brought back to an exam room to see the nurse practitioner. She checked Lenzi's elbow first, because there is a common condition called Nursemaid's Elbow that little kids are prone to getting, which the elbow slips out of joint and can be very painful. But her elbow was fine. She then checked her shoulder and collar bone, but they were fine too. She got Lenzi to move her arm above her head and wiggle her fingers and all was good. So it appeared nothing was wrong with her arm. The nurse practitioner said she could have slept on it wrong during her nap and pinched a nerve, or she could have bumped her funny bone on the table at snack time and was scared by the sensation. Regardless, Lenzi's arm was fine and that was good news!

By the time we got home, she was running around and playing and moving her arm like nothing was wrong. We gave her a little Motrin before bed to help with any inflammation, but she was completely fine the next morning.

I'm so glad it ended up being nothing, but that child gave me 10 more gray hairs after that experience!

Here comes Peter Cottontail

2011-04-13T20:38:00.008-04:00

The Easter Bunny made a visit to Lenzi's school! Lenzi adored him and was one of the only kids in her class to sit on his lap (without screaming/crying) for a picture: We put this picture up on the refrigerator and she runs up to it and says "Easter Bunny!". She LOVED him!

Spring is here! Let's break out the...pool?!

2011-04-11T09:20:00.008-04:00

So even though it is officially spring here in Georgia, we got a little taste of summer this past weekend! We had sunny skies and temperatures in the mid 80's. It was a beautiful weekend. Since Lenzi is such a little water bug, we decided to pull out her little kiddie pool from last year and let her have some fun splashing around on the back patio. Here's a little video I shot of her having a blast:

And here are a couple of pictures of the bathing beauty:

(I love this one!)

We also put the sprinkler out in the yard and let her check it out:

She wasn't too sure about it though.

Pictures.

2011-04-01T11:25:00.005-04:00

Here are just a few recent Lenzi pictures:

Lenzi enjoying her first ice cream sandwich! She LOVES them!

Me and my precious girl!

Snagging a kiss

The cutest pigtails you ever saw! Her teachers at daycare put them in for her and they look adorable!!

Lenzi and Mommy's solo weekend (with pictures!)

2011-03-28T11:52:00.016-04:00

Scott got drawn for a turkey hunt on public land in south Georgia this past weekend, so Lenzi and I had a weekend to ourselves. Here is what we did!

Friday night, we ate dinner, then we had some fun playing before bathtime/bedtime:

Lenzi is just now sort of getting into playing with her Little People dollhouse.

On Saturday morning, we got up and dressed and headed to the grocery store to get the weekly shopping done. Lenzi got to drive the little plastic car that was attached to the shopping cart and she loved it! I am so mad at myself for not snapping a picture of it. Next time I will! She had so much fun that she was pretty tuckered out in the car on the way home:

We hung out at the house for most of the day. It was a pretty nasty weekend weather-wise, so we were pretty limited to indoor activities. For dinner, we went to Chick-Fil-A for Lenzi's favorite chicken nuggets and french fries, and so Lenzi could burn off some energy on the indoor playground:

On Sunday, we mainly hung around the house again due to the cold and rainy weather.

Here's Lenzi "calling" her Daddy on her play cell phone to tell him about her weekend.

Feeding and rocking her baby doll in her very own rocking chair

Hope you enjoyed our weekend in pictures!

New pictures and video

2011-03-23T12:03:00.008-04:00

Here are a couple of pictures and a little video I took of Lenzi last night:

She was eating apple slices that she dipped in peanut butter after dinner and she REALLY liked the peanut butter!

Mmmm!

And here are a couple of her eating a Samoa Girl Scout cookie. Ironically when I was pregnant with her, the first time I ever felt her kick was when I was eating Samoa Girl Scout cookies!

Finally, here's a little video I shot of her last night on my cell phone. She was playing her little keyboard and singing in her microphone. It's pretty cute!

Tubes update and a few recent pictures

2011-03-18T11:11:00.008-04:00

Well, we took Lenzi in for her tubes post-op check up and everything looks great. Her ears have healed up just fine and there is no fluid or anything in her ears, so good news all around. She absolutely hated the doctor looking in her ears, but she always hates it, so nothing new there. She has to go back in 6 months to have her tubes checked again, to make sure they are still in place and working. HOPEFULLY, we have turned the corner on her recurrent ear infections!

As promised, here are several pictures I took of Lenzi yesterday.

Enjoying a cupcake after dinner!

Mmmmm!

After bathtime with Daddy

Caught mid-giggle!

Silly girl!

Hopefully feeling better?

2011-03-14T16:20:00.010-04:00

So it appears that the flu was relatively short lived, fortunately! It's a good thing that I took Lenzi to the doctor when she first started feeling bad, because we were able to get her on the Tamiflu right away and it knocked it out. She was feeling much better by the following weekend, so it seemed like Lenzi was on the mend.

Until last Wednesday or so. She started getting the runny nose again, and got a little cough that started out as a dry tickle, then morphed into a congested chest cough. The cough didn't seem to bother Lenzi much during the day, but when she would lie down for naps or bedtime, it really bothered her. It kept her up at night, and the poor baby was not getting good rest. She wasn't running a fever, though, and her the runny nose stayed clear and not colored, so we chalked it up to allergies. With the warmer weather we've been having lately, things are blooming like crazy. My own nose has been itchy and runny, which usually happens this time of year. So we've been giving her a little Benedryl at night, and using her nebulizer in the mornings and at night, and it has seemed to help quite a bit. Please oh please let Lenzi stay healthy for a little while now!!

In other news, I am taking Lenzi back to the ENT for a follow up visit for her tubes surgery on Friday. She did have the one ear infection when she was sick with the flu. I called the ENT's office then to see if we needed to bring her in, but they said that if she doesn't show signs of feeling better when her antibiotic is completed, then to bring her in and get checked. Otherwise, she didn't need to be seen until her follow up visit. Luckily the antibiotic seemed to clear it up, so the doctor just wants to take a look and make sure the tubes healed up and that they are doing their job. So hopefully it should be a pretty quick visit.

Other than that, not too much else is going on in our world! Here's a few somewhat recent pictures of the princess:

Eating yogurt without a spoon

Coloring a picture while out to eat with Mommy and Daddy

Trying to color all of the paper towels on the table, LOL!

Helping Daddy vacuum on a Saturday morning

What a big girl doing it all by herself!

Mad when Daddy took the vacuum away!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures! More to come!

The Flu.

2011-03-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

So we thought we were finally getting to the point where Lenzi was going to stay healthy. The cold weather is leaving, Lenzi has been at daycare for over 7 months now, and we had tubes put in her ears to help with her chronic ear infections.

Lenzi was great this week. You'd never be able to tell that she had tubes surgery. She was eating well, sleeping well, and in a good mood.

Saturday morning rolled around. Scott went to his hunting property for the day to get some work done. Lenzi was sleeping unusually late. She is normally up by 7:00 or 7:30 at the latest, but this morning, it was almost 8:30 before I heard a peep on the monitor. When she did wake up, she was screaming crying. I ran into her room and picked her up. She was burning up and had a really runny nose. Poor thing was just not herself and my mommy instinct was telling me something was wrong.

Our pediatrician's office partners with another pediatrician's office in Covington and one of the offices is always open on Saturdays. It was the other office, and they were doing walk-ins only, so I bundled up Lenzi and took her down there.

We had to wait for a little while, and when we were taken back to an exam room, the first thing the nurse did was swab her nose to test for the flu. Apparently it's running rampant out here, despite the vaccine. The nurse said it would be about 15 minutes for the test results to be ready.

15 minutes later, the physician's assistant came in and told us that Lenzi had not one, but TWO strains of the flu! One of the strains is the one that you can get the vaccine for, and the other one does not have a vaccine. And Lenzi has them both. Lenzi also has an ear infection in her left ear (so much for the tubes curing ear infections!). So we got prescriptions for Tamiflu for Lenzi, as well as Tamiflu for me and Scott (we take it to hopefully keep us from coming down with the flu), as well as another antibiotic for Lenzi's ear infection. All said and done, we spent $115 for prescriptions. CVS loved us that day!

Since she is contagious, Lenzi is supposed to stay home from daycare this week. I stayed home with her all day yesterday, and Scott and I are splitting the days the rest of the week. I'll go to work in the morning until lunchtime, then come home to stay with Lenzi while Scott goes to work in the afternoon. It sucks, but it is the only way to keep her home and for us each not to miss so much work. What really sucks is we still have to pay for daycare for the week even though she is not allowed to go!

She was feeling better yesterday and Scott said she is running him ragged this morning playing and keeping busy, so she seems to be feeling better. Hopefully this is the last time she will be sick for awhile!

Ginger Rogers, eat your heart out!

2011-02-21T19:58:00.005-05:00

When Scott's parents were visiting last week, there happened to be a presentation of Riverdance on Ice on TV. Lenzi loved watching the dancers and we caught this great little video of her trying to dance like them. She was really proud of herself!

Surgery is over!

2011-02-17T15:15:00.007-05:00

Everything went well at Lenzi's surgery yesterday! Hooray!

We had to be at the hospital at 6:00 in the morning. Lenzi wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight the night before, so I was a little worried that she would be super cranky because she was hungry. But surprisingly, she never mentioned food or drink once! My guess is that it was still too early for her to be hungry.

When we got to the hospital, we had to register and they needed all of our insurance information. After that, they brought us back to a pre-op room. The nurse took Lenzi's weight (she's 21 pounds), tested her oxygen level, and listened to her heart. We got her changed into her little hospital gown and waited for about 30 minutes. I snapped a couple of pictures of her on my cell phone:

She was not too happy about being woken up early as you can see by the expression on her face.

Then the nurse came back in and gave Lenzi a dose of a drug called Versed. It's a tranquilizer that helps to relax kids before surgery. The nurse warned us that Lenzi would be loopy and kind of out of it. Boy was she right! It was almost like Lenzi was drunk! She was wobbly and laughing and her eyes were sort of glazed over.

After they gave her the Versed, we went up a floor to the OR. That is where we met with our ENT doctor and the anesthesia nurse. They explained the procedure and the anesthesia to us. Luckily they gave the anesthesia in a gas form, so Lenzi wouldn't have to be hooked up to an IV or anything like that. Then they wheeled her little crib back to the operating room and we sat and waited. Literally 5 minutes later the doctor came out and said the surgery was over and that it went very well. They had Lenzi in a recovery room to let the anesthesia wear off some before they brought her out to us. The doctor said that she did have fluid in her ears that looked like it had been there for awhile, but they got it all cleaned out and put the tubes in without any problems.

The Versed that they gave Lenzi before the surgery was wearing off, and irritability was one of the side effects. When they brought Lenzi out to us after she came out of the anesthesia, we heard her before we saw her. She was screaming at the top of her lungs! We had to go back downstairs to the pre-op room we were in before for about 30 minutes so they could make sure Lenzi didn't have a reaction to the anesthesia. The poor baby screamed the whole time. She didn't stop crying until we were halfway home. Once we got back to the house, I put her down in her crib and she slept for 3 hours. She was cranky and clingy for the rest of the day, but otherwise fine.

So we made it through the surgery! Here's hoping that the tubes help Lenzi from getting any more ear infections!

Tubes

2011-02-15T12:16:00.003-05:00

I have really been terrible about maintaining this blog! I am really sorry about that!

We went in for Lenzi's tubes consultation with the ENT doctor on 2/1. Sure enough, her right ear (the one she consistently gets ear infections in) was 100% full of fluid. So she is an excellent candidate for tubes. We scheduled her surgery for tomorrow morning. We have to be at the hospital at 5:30 AM, because she is the first surgery of the day. The way the schedule them, the youngest patients have the earliest surgeries, since the kids aren't allowed to eat or drink anything after midnight the day before the surgery. So they get the little kids out of the way early so they don't have to go so long without eating and drinking. So it will not be fun to get up super early, I am glad we will only have to deal with a moderately cranky toddler versus a super hungry, insanely cranky toddler.

Scott's parents are driving down from Memphis right now to come stay with us and help out with Lenzi. The ENT doctor said most kids bounce right back from the surgery by that afternoon or the next day, but since every kid is different and we won't know how Lenzi will be feeling, it is great that they will be here to stay with her if she needs to miss daycare. Plus it will be nice for them to come visit! Lenzi has not seen Nana and Papaw since Christmas, so she is looking forward to spending time with them!

Several of my friends' children have had tubes put in, and they have raved about the difference it has made. Plus they said the surgery is super quick, like 5 or 10 minutes and then it's over. So that is somewhat comforting. But I am still a little nervous. I can't help it. This is my little baby! But in the long run, I know it will make her feel better, so it is worth it.

For Valentine's Day, Lenzi's daycare had little parties in all of the classes. She got a little goody bag with some candy and stickers from her teachers, and all the parents sent in a snack for the class. It was really cute! Lenzi has a little cold, so she was pretty cranky and tired last night, but she did manage to eat a red velvet cupcake after her dinner for Valentine's Day!

Well, that is the latest with us. I'll post as soon as I can how her surgery went! Fingers crossed that it all goes well!

Just a swingin'

2011-01-31T18:44:00.002-05:00

With the recent spell of beautiful weather Lenzi and Daddy went to the local park where she loves to swing.

Lenzi tries king cake for the first time!

2011-01-26T21:31:00.005-05:00

It has been a tradition in my family to get a king cake every year during Mardi Gras season. When I was 7 years old, my family moved from Atlanta to New Orleans for 3 years before moving back to Atlanta. We loved participating in the Mardi Gras traditions, especially eating king cake!

The past several years, Scott and I have continued the king cake tradition in our family as well and have ordered a king cake from a bakery in New Orleans and had it shipped to us. This year was no exception, and I was so excited for Lenzi to be able to try her first piece of king cake and take part in a tradition that I loved so much growing up.

Lenzi LOVED king cake! I figured she'd probably like it, since it's sweet and she honestly hasn't met a sweet she hasn't liked. But she gobbled up her piece and asked for more "kie cake". Here's a couple of pictures we snapped of her enjoying her piece of cake.

"What is this, Mommy?"

"Is it good, Daddy?"

"Yummy!"

"Mmmm!"

"Okay, Mommy, no more pictures so I can finish my cake in peace!"

What is new with us?

2011-01-18T13:55:00.002-05:00

Sorry it has been awhile since my last post. The snow we had last week turned to ice, and basically crippled the city of Atlanta and the surrounding suburbs. I think I heard on the news that Atlanta only has like 8 snow plows, so many areas of town were not passable at all, and several major interstates had to be shut down. All the schools were closed for the entire week last week, so it was pretty crazy!

Lenzi had her 18 month check up last Thursday. Scott took her, because that was the first day I could get in to work after being snowed in. Scott said she is almost 21 pounds, and I think 31 inches long. The doctor said Lenzi is in the low to average range, meaning most likely she will be petite. She does seem to be above average for her verbal skills though! She had a word explosion right around Christmas, and she is talking up a storm. She is really starting to use two word phrases quite a bit too. Scott was telling me that her daycare teacher was saying she is the only kid her age in class that is talking as much as she is. So we're happy to hear that!

At Lenzi's check up, the doctor looked at her ears and said that the right one was still infected, and put her on yet another antibiotic to try and get rid of it, but she said that Lenzi will most likely need tubes in her ears. We have the name and number of an ENT, so we need to call and make an appointment to have her checked out to see if tubes are needed. While the thought of Lenzi having surgery done is scary, if it is needed, it needs to be done. Poor thing has been miserable with ear infections lately, and we have noticed they are getting harder and harder to get rid of. So we'll call and make an appointment with the ENT and see where we need to go from there.

Other than that, nothing too exciting has been going on with us. Lenzi is at a really fun age right now, and we are really enjoying playing and spending time with her. I'll try to update the blog with another video or at least some recent pictures of her soon!

SNOW!!

2011-01-10T11:08:00.004-05:00

We had a winter storm that hit the Atlanta area overnight, and as a result, we're snowed in! Here's a little video Scott took of Lenzi experiencing the snow:

She wasn't sure about walking in it at first, but once she saw she could make footprints, she loved it! But after we turned off the video camera, she tripped and fell in the snow and did not like that one bit! She especially did not like it on her hands.

Hopefully after her nap and some lunch, she'll let us take her out in it again!

Christmas, New Year, and 18 months old!

2011-01-06T11:46:00.003-05:00

We had a wonderful time for Christmas in Memphis this year! Lenzi got to meet her cousins (who she absolutely LOVED), and it was great for us to see everyone and spend some time together. Lenzi also did very well with her Christmas gifts from family and Santa Claus as well! She is loving having a bunch of new toys to play with!

We got home from Memphis on Sunday the 26th to SNOW on the ground! There has not been a white Christmas in Atlanta in like 40 years, and I have never experienced a white Christmas before. So that was pretty neat!

For New Year's Eve, Lenzi's old sitter Gabby offered to keep her at her house overnight so we could go out to dinner and enjoy a kid-free night. We took her up on it, and it was wonderful. This was the first time Lenzi has ever spent a night away from either me or Scott, so it was a little strange to be at home without her. But she had a great time with Gabby, and it was nice for us to have a little break too. Scott and I went out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant, then rang in the new year at our neighbors' house with several other neighbors. We actually stayed awake long enough to do the countdown to midnight, but went to bed shortly after. We are old!

In other news, today Lenzi is 18 months old!! I can't believe in 6 short months we will have a two year old! Time is going by so fast. In the last several weeks, Lenzi has really started talking more, and now she uses two word phrases, like "I go". She has also added a ton of new words to her vocabulary lately (including telling us when she is hungry, or "hungee" as she says). We are also trying to make her aware of when she goes to the bathroom, in preparation of potty training. She doesn't seem too interested in potty training yet, but we figure it can't hurt to start small things like that.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday season! I hope to get some recent pictures/videos up on the blog soon!

Christmas Photo!

2010-12-17T09:45:00.002-05:00

I sent out Christmas cards this week, so hopefully most everyone has gotten them by now. Here is the photo we used for our card:

I think it came out pretty well! We took this picture after dinner before Lenzi's bedtime, so we were lucky that she wasn't screaming or upset. It's kind of hard to tell in the picture, but she's wearing a frou frou little dress, and her little Mary Jane shoes have little red flowers on them. She looked adorable. We took a few more pictures of her in her Christmas outfit, so I'll try to post those later at home (I don't have them here at work).

We are leaving for Memphis next week! We are all excited to see Nana and Papaw and the rest of the clan. It should be a lot of fun, and we're looking forward to it! Hopefully the 8 hour car ride won't be too bad!

I am so sorry that I have been so bad at keeping the blog updated regularly lately. Work has kept me pretty busy. Unlike my previous jobs, it hasn't slowed down at all with Christmas approaching, so I've been really tired by the time I get home. And after being on a computer all day at work, the last thing I feel like doing is getting back on the computer at home. But I will really try to post some sort of update more regularly!

Lenzi Bathtime Video

2010-12-01T19:31:00.003-05:00

Here is an adorable video we shot of Lenzi in the tub. She was so cute, naming off her family members left and right.

Updates

2010-11-30T11:53:00.008-05:00

I'm so sorry it has been so long since my last post! Work has just been crazy, then Thanksgiving came and went, and Scott went hunting for a few days after Thanksgiving, so I had my hands full with Lenzi!

So, some good news. Lenzi is finally over her RSV! No more breathing treatments, and you can just tell she is back to her old self. Some bad news, I think she might have yet another ear infection. She has been pulling on her right ear quite a bit, and her appetite has definitely decreased. She also has been waking up several times a night crying, so I think that might be what it is. Poor thing just can NOT stay healthy! Scott is taking her to the doctor tomorrow, so we will see if that is what it is, or if it's something else. She is STILL cutting her top two incisors, so there is a chance it could be teething-related. I guess we'll see tomorrow!

We had a great Thanksgiving! My parents graciously hosted the dinner at their house, so it was great to just show up and eat some great food! We had turkey, stuffing, green beans, sweet potatoes, squash, and pumpkin cheesecake bars for dessert. Everything was delicious, and it was fun to see Lenzi enjoy her first real Thanksgiving dinner. She absolutely loved the turkey and sweet potatoes!

We will be heading up to Memphis to spend Christmas with Scott's family in just a few weeks! We are all excited to go and see everyone and enjoy the holiday together!

That is really all the latest with us. Here are a few recent pictures I took of Lenzi over the Thanksgiving weekend. Sorry they are with my phone, so they are a little grainy. But still cute!

I snapped this picture mid-tantrum. All I tried to do was clip her fingernails and she completely lost her mind. I know this is only the beginning!

A cute picture of her in her adorable outfit her Nana bought for her. She is chewing on a plastic pineapple from her play food.

And finally, the only picture I got of her on Thanksgiving, in the car on the way home! It was a balmy 70 degrees here on Thanksgiving; that explains the short sleeves and dress!

Hopefully turning a corner?

2010-11-16T15:10:00.003-05:00

So after a week of dealing with RSV and using the nebulizer pretty faithfully, we may be finally turning a corner on this whole being sick thing! Lenzi's breathing seems better, but she is still wheezing a bit. We're going to keep doing the breathing treatments until it's gone. I don't want it to be almost gone only to come back worse. So while it's been kind of a pain to do, we're going to keep them up until her breathing sounds clear.

Even though Lenzi seems to be feeling better physically, she has had these crying, melting down fits almost every night for the past few nights. She refuses to eat dinner, and when we try to offer her something to eat, she completely flips out and starts hysterically crying and screaming. Sometimes she gets so worked up that she doesn't stop crying until she is in her crib to go to sleep. I am thinking she is not napping very well at school (maybe because she is still getting over the RSV), and she is so tired that she just loses it by dinner time. She has been going to bed a bit earlier these last few nights, so I'm almost certain that is what it is.

Last night was particularly brutal. Scott had to work late last night, so I was dealing with it on my own. Lenzi started fussing when we pulled in the driveway, and it just kept escalating into a full-blown meltdown. She screamed all through "dinner" (if you can call it that. She didn't eat a bite), and through bath time and while I was getting her ready for bed. It was rough. I will be very glad when she is over all this! I miss my happy, smiling baby!

In other news, it is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is less than 2 weeks away! This will be Lenzi's first "real" Thanksgiving, since she was only 4 months old last year and was on formula then. So it will be fun to see her eat real Thanksgiving food this year! And a month after that, we are traveling up to Memphis to spend Christmas with Scott's family this year! We are definitely looking forward to that as well. We have not been to Memphis since Lenzi was born, and there is a lot of extended family who has not met Lenzi yet. So it will be great to see everyone and spend some time together.

Well, that is all the exciting stuff going on with us. Hope you are having a good week!

Sick baby again.

2010-11-10T14:50:00.003-05:00

Poor Lenzi has been sick constantly it seems like. First we dealt with roseola, then croup and an ear infection, then a second round of croup and ear infection. Poor kid has been sick pretty much the entire month of October and all of November so far.

Last weekend she seemed so much better. We went to visit Grandma (my mom) and she was happy, smiling, and playful all day. We thought that she was finally getting better.

Monday night, she was SUPER fussy and irritable. She refused to eat dinner and literally cried non-stop until she was in bed. The daily note from daycare said she refused to nap there as well.
Tuesday morning I went into her room to get her up and ready, and she was whimpering in her crib. I picked her up and she was burning up! I got Scott to help me take her temperature and it was 103.8! Poor thing was so miserable. We called the nurses line that our pediatrician uses and they told us to give her Tylenol to help lower her fever and said that we needed to get her seen by a doctor as soon as we could. Our pediatrician's office opened 30 minutes later, and we were able to get the first appointment of the morning.

The nurse took her temperature and luckily the Tylenol had lowered it to 100.8, so that was good. The doctor came in and we explained what was going on. The doctor suggested we have a test for RSV done, since her symptoms fit. The test results came back 10 minutes later, and it was positive for RSV. Since RSV is a virus, there is no antibiotic that can be given to get rid of it. It pretty much has to run its course. We were given a nebulizer and a prescription for Albuterol which Lenzi would need to breathe in with the nebulizer. We were also sent to the hospital to have a chest x-ray done on Lenzi to rule out pneumonia (luckily the chest x-ray came back negative).

Lenzi was pretty pitiful for most of the day yesterday. She was pretty lethargic and didn't really want to do much. Her appetite was pretty much non-existent too.

Scott stayed home with her today since she woke up with a little fever this morning. But she seemed to be much more perky and more like herself. So hopefully she will get over it quickly!

I hate that Lenzi has been so sick lately! Her immune system should be really strong after all of these illnesses!

Pictures of Lenzi in her Halloween costume...finally!

2010-11-08T09:12:00.009-05:00

Sorry it took me so long to get these up. Scott has been out of town hunting since Tuesday, so I've been taking care of Lenzi by myself last week. By the time I got her in bed, I was too tired to do anything!

Here are the only two pictures we got of the little deer before she melted down:

And the meltdown begins in 3, 2, 1...

She didn't mind the suit, but she absolutely HATED the hat part. She can't stand anything on her head, so it shouldn't have been a surprise. Oh well, maybe next year!

Here are also a few pictures of her eating fried chicken drumsticks. She LOVES fried chicken!

This look just says, "Enough pictures already! I just want to eat my chicken in peace!"

Sick baby...again!

2010-11-01T13:48:00.003-04:00

So just when it seemed like Lenzi was getting over her ear infection and croup from a few weeks ago, they both came back. With a vengeance.

This past week we'd noticed her coughing, especially at bedtime. She's had a runny nose (presumably from teething), so at first we thought it was drainage irritating her throat when she would lie down at bedtime. But after a couple of days, it started to get that distinctive "croup cough". Scott also noticed Lenzi pulling on her ear when he drove her home from daycare last Thursday. We decided it was probably best to take her to the pediatrician, so I took Friday off of work and took her in.

The doctor looked at Lenzi's ears, and sure enough, she had an infection in her right ear (the same ear she had an infection in two weeks ago). So we got another round of antibiotics for that. We were also given another prescription for the steroid Prednisone, for her croup. This time she's taking a higher dose for a longer period of time to try to knock it out.

Poor Lenzi was just miserable on Saturday. She cried and fussed almost non-stop. She didn't want to eat. Didn't want to be held, but didn't want to be put down. Didn't want to play. Didn't want to sleep. It was a very, very long day for all three of us. Saturday was also Scott's birthday, but unfortunately it was not a very good one.

Yesterday, she seemed a little better. She had more of an appetite, and she and Scott played outside for an hour or so while I went to the grocery store. But as the afternoon wore on, she started getting unhappy. My mom came out to see Lenzi in her Halloween costume and to go Trick or Treating with us. But by 5:00, Lenzi was having a complete meltdown. It was like Saturday all over again. Finally, I put her down in her crib to see if a little nap would make her feel better. She slept for about an hour, then woke up screaming again. She did eat some dinner, but there was no way she was going to tolerate wearing a costume for pictures, let alone going Trick or Treating. So Scott and I gave her a bath and put her down for the night. She was fast asleep by 7:15.

So unfortunately, no Trick or Treating for Lenzi this year. Scott and I did take a couple of pictures of her in her costume last week, so I'll try to post those tonight or tomorrow. Lenzi seems to be feeling a bit better today, so she went to school. Hopefully she will be 100% soon!

Nana and Papaw's visit!

2010-10-26T08:34:00.024-04:00

Lenzi's Nana and Papaw (Scott's parents) came down for a visit this past weekend. Here are a few pictures of their trip!

They brought her a little shopping cart with some plastic food to play with. She loves it!

Mmmm! Bananas!

Having a serious talk with her teddy bear

On Saturday, we went to Lenzi's friend Jack's Halloween themed first birthday party! Here she is in her little Halloween shirt and skirt.

Hanging out with the birthday boy Jack in the bounce house.

She loved the bounce house once she got the hang of it!

She had an absolute blast in the ball pit at the party!

The next morning she read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Duke.

Cutting the yard for Daddy on her John Deere lawn tractor.

Eating some shrimp for a snack with her Papaw

Yum!

Enjoying her Nana's homemade ravioli. She LOVED it!

That expression is priceless!!

We had such a great time with Nana and Papaw this weekend. It was so nice to spend a few days together. We are headed up to their house for Christmas this year, so it won't be long before we get to see them again!

New Lenzi Pics!

2010-10-20T19:45:00.011-04:00

Here are a few pictures we took of Lenzi this evening:

Having fun on Daddy's lawnmower

Walking around in the driveway

Playing in the bed of Daddy's truck

We are still alive...sort of

2010-10-13T11:20:00.004-04:00

I can't believe I haven't posted since September 30th! Shame on me!

But I actually do have a good excuse. Me, Scott, and Lenzi have all been really sick for weeks!

Around the time that Lenzi was getting over the roseola/ear infection stuff, I started feeling bad. At first I just attributed it to allergies. Runny nose, itchy sore throat, little cough. Nothing major. I was uncomfortable, but not miserable. Then as the days went on, it just kept getting worse and worse. My sinuses got more and more congested, the cough got worse, etc. After almost 2 weeks of "toughing it out", I finally gave in and went to the doctor. I had a sinus infection, so the doctor gave me an antibiotic and some cough syrup that contained an antihistamine and decongestant. After 4 or 5 days on the medicine, I was feeling much better. But meanwhile, Scott was getting sick. He'd actually been feeling bad longer than I had, but was being macho and "toughing it out".

Finally he went to the doctor on Monday, and he had sinusitis, bronchitis, and rhinitis (and I have no idea if those are spelled correctly). He got a strong antibiotic and the same cough medicine I had. After feeling better for a few days, I started getting the runny nose, sore throat and cough again. I called the doctor and told them what was going on. They said it was probably a virus and needed to run its course, and there was nothing I could do but take over the counter medicine to treat the symptoms. So I am going on 3 weeks of not feeling well. Scott is just now starting to feel a bit better.

Meanwhile, Lenzi has had a runny nose and has also started coughing. The cough started at night at first, then has become more and more frequent. Her teacher at daycare has said that all the kids have runny noses and that it is probably due to the season change. Lenzi had her 15 month check up today anyway, so we just waited to take her in to the doctor then. Scott took her this morning, and it turns out she has another ear infection in her right ear, and also has mild croup. I guess that explains all the coughing! Poor baby! So she has two prescriptions; an antibiotic for the ear infection, and a steroid for the croup.

I also cleaned and disinfected the house from top to bottom on Monday, so if nothing else, hopefully I killed all the germs that have been hanging around. I can't wait until we are all feeling better!

Speaking of Lenzi's 15 month check up, she is completely average for her height and weight. She is 19.5 pounds and 30 inches long. I was a little concerned that she hasn't gained much (if any) weight since her 12 month check up, but Scott told me the doctor said that since they are so active at this age, that there is not much weight gain. The doctor said that everything looks good! Lenzi did have to get some shots at this appointment. She got her flu shot, and she was supposed to get a MMR shot, but since she has to be on a steroid for her croup, it would interfere with the MMR. So she will get that one at her 18 month visit.

I think that is all the updates. If you made it through, way to go! Hopefully once we are all feeling better, I'll be able to update more often.

Lenzi walking from her nightly bath

2010-09-30T20:05:00.002-04:00

Cutest little butt!

We officially have a walker!!

2010-09-29T19:45:00.002-04:00

Here is a video we shot this afternoon of Lenzi walking across the living room all by herself!

She has been so close to walking for at least a month or two, but never seemed interested in doing it by herself. But Scott said that she took her first real steps today at daycare. Her daycare got new baby dolls and when they brought them out, Lenzi walked right over to get one! Her teacher was so excited to tell Scott about it when he picked her up this afternoon. She even walked over to him when he got to her classroom!

It's about time at almost 15 months old! We were worried she was going to be crawling forever! But better late than never!

Feeling Better!

2010-09-28T10:03:00.005-04:00

I have been trying to post an update a couple of different times, but Blogger seems to be having intermittent issues. So sorry about the delay!

Lenzi is feeling much better now. She seems to be back to normal. Her rash is completely gone and her fun little personality has come back! She's a little sniffly, but then again so are Scott and I. There must be something blooming right now that is irritating our allergies. We've had a humidifier running in Lenzi's room the past few nights, and that has really seemed to help her.

As evidence of her feeling better, here are a couple of pictures I snapped of her on Saturday after she finished eating her dinner:

This has to be one of my favorite pictures! I snapped this mid-laugh, and if you look closely you can see a little bit of milk dribbling down her chin. Too funny!

Sorry this one is so blurry! But I still like that you can see her little smile peeking from behind her sippy cup.

Well, that is all that is new with us! Hope everyone is doing well!

Sick baby and crazy week

2010-09-23T11:24:00.002-04:00

It has been pretty crazy in our house lately! Poor Lenzi has been pretty sick, and it's been hard on Scott and I.

Lenzi started running a fever mid-day this past Saturday. She was more lethargic than usual, but still pretty much her cheerful self. Her nose wasn't running and she wasn't coughing or anything like that. And the fever was low grade, only 100.2. I just chalked it up to teething (since she's STILL cutting her incisors. They are taking forever to break through!). I gave her Motrin and it seemed to help bring her fever down and make her more comfortable.

On Sunday, she woke up with a fever again. She was more irritable than she'd been the day before, and she was also pulling on one of her ears. I again thought it was probably teething, because she does that a lot when she's teething. Again her fever was low grade, but she was much more cranky and lethargic than she'd been the day before. Scott and I would try to get her to play and she would just push the toys and books away and cuddle up to us. She took two long naps that day, which was kind of unusual for her. Scott and I told each other that if she was still like this the next day (Monday), that we would take her in to the pediatrician to make sure there wasn't something else besides teething going on.

Monday, she was still running the low grade fever, and I actually had to wake her up, which is very unusual for Lenzi. She is almost always already awake by the time I go into her room to get her ready. She started crying when I picked her up, and I told Scott we needed to take her to the doctor. I'd taken the previous Monday off to stay home with Lenzi, so I hated to miss any more work than I had to. Scott had a late meeting that night, so we worked out a compromise. He took Lenzi to the doctor and stayed home with her until lunchtime, and I went in and worked in the morning and left at lunchtime and stayed home so Scott could go to work and his meeting.

Scott called me after her doctor's appointment. The doctor said that she had an ear infection and an upper respiratory "situation" (it wasn't an infection). The doctor said that her upper respiratory drainage probably collected in her ear and caused the infection. She prescribed an antibiotic (amoxicillin) and sent them on their way. I picked up the prescription on my way home and we gave Lenzi a dose right away, and another dose before bedtime.

The next day her fever was gone, so we sent her to daycare. She seemed a bit perkier that morning, so we figured she was on the mend. Later that afternoon, I got a call from the daycare saying Lenzi had broken out in a rash, and the teacher thought it may have been an allergic reaction to her antibiotic. I thought that was strange, since she'd taken that antibiotic before with no problems. The daycare wanted me to pick her up in case it was something else that was contagious. I called Lenzi's pediatrician and had to leave a message for the nurse before I left my office to pick her up, but I never got a call back. Since Lenzi's doctor's office is in Covington not too far away from her daycare, I stopped in to see if a nurse or someone could look at her rash and to tell me what to do about it. The office was able to get us seen by the nurse practitioner.

The nurse practitioner looked at Lenzi's rash, which was only on her chest, stomach, back, neck, and hairline. I remember thinking it was odd that she didn't have any bumps on her arms and legs. The nurse practitioner said that it looked like Lenzi had a virus called Roseola, since Lenzi had a fever for a few days that went away pretty suddenly, then had the rash that was only on her trunk. The nurse practitioner said it was most likely Roseola, but for us to stop her antibiotic just in case it was an allergic reaction. She checked Lenzi's ears and said they really didn't look bad, but if they seemed to be bothering her after a few days to call. She said to give Lenzi Motrin for teething pain, but since Roseola is a virus, there is nothing to do but let it run its course.

Lenzi has been extra cranky and fussy, and her appetite is gone, but those are all symptoms of the Roseola. Her rash looked like it was almost gone this morning, so hopefully she will be feeling better soon.

So that is the craziness that has been going on with us! We're hoping that Lenzi can stay healthy for awhile!

Time for an update!

2010-09-17T14:02:00.003-04:00

Sorry it's been a little while since I last posted. It's been a crazy week this week!

Sunday afternoon, Lenzi started running a fever out of the blue. All she wanted to do was be held and sleep. I have no idea what brought it on. She woke up at 3:30 that night feeling really hot. So as a precaution, I stayed home with her on Monday. She was kind of pitiful that morning, but no fever. By that afternoon, she was back to her old self. I don't know if it was teething or a little bug, but luckily whatever it was, it was gone soon! She went back to school on Tuesday.

Speaking of "school" (aka daycare), I think I mentioned in a previous post that Lenzi was visiting the toddler room awhile back. The director of the daycare decided to move Lenzi up officially last week. She is a big girl now, eating in the cafeteria with the big kids and sleeping on a mat for her nap instead of a crib. According to her teachers, the transition went very well, which really surprised me! She seems to be doing well in her new class!

Scott and I also think that Lenzi will be walking on her own very soon! She loves pushing her little ride-on toys everywhere, and she can now stand up by herself without holding on to anything. Her teachers at school say that it will probably be very soon now, especially since she is in the toddler room where almost all of the kids can walk. Here's a quick little video of her pushing one of her toys around the house last weekend. She is still learning how to turn the toys around when she hits a dead end, and she got a little frustrated in this video when she couldn't do it. But you can see she is getting pretty fast!

Sorry for the grainy video. I shot this one with my cell phone since our camera's battery died. We've since gotten a new battery, so I'll be able to take better quality pictures and videos now.

Oh, and we ended up not going to the little fair in town. We decided that Lenzi was still a little bit young for it this year. But we definitely want to take her next year!

Well, that is pretty much all that's been going on with us! Hope you have a great weekend!

14 months old

2010-09-09T14:11:00.004-04:00

I can't believe I neglected to mention in the last post that Lenzi turned 14 months old on Monday! She hasn't been to the pediatrician since her 12 month appointment, so I don't know her height and weight or that kind of stuff. But she is getting heavy, so she must be gaining weight!

Lenzi still is not walking yet. I honestly think it is not because she doesn't know how. She can walk if you hold her hands and she walks behind her little ride on toys all the time. So she gets the concept. But she knows she can get where she wants to go faster by crawling. And she is a speed demon in the crawling department. However, her daycare has been letting her "visit" the toddler room this week and 95% of the kids in there can walk. So maybe by being around other walking kids, she will want to start walking too.

Another reason I think she hasn't cared much about walking is because she is so busy learning to talk! She's really had a verbal explosion these last few weeks. Her most recent words are dolly (which still comes out a little jumbled), socks, Elmo (but this comes out sounding more like Melmo), Ernie (our neighbor across the street's name is Ernie, but she calls him Nernie), DD (the nickname of Ernie's 3 year-old son Dylan, who Lenzi absolutely adores). Those are the most consistent new words, but she will try to say most anything you say. She is also starting to put words together to make little phrases, like "Hi Daddy!", "No Duke", etc.

Unfortunately for Scott and I, the temper tantrums have also started. If Lenzi doesn't get her way, she has started throwing herself backwards and screaming. NOT fun! But so far she has gotten over her tantrums pretty quickly, except when she is really, really tired.

Well, that is the latest and greatest with the Peanut! Hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend last weekend and the short week!

Labor Day weekend fun!

2010-09-07T09:51:00.015-04:00

We had a very relaxing, fun Labor Day weekend. Scott was down in south Georgia on his annual alligator hunt from Friday until Sunday evening, so Lenzi and I flew solo for the majority of the weekend.

Gabby, Lenzi's former sitter, came home from school to visit over the long weekend, and wanted to keep Lenzi on Friday instead of her going to daycare. Of course we agreed to let Gabby keep her! She had so much fun at Gabby's! When Gabby dropped her off at the house Friday evening, she kept giving Gabby hugs. She'd missed Gabby!

Gabby must have worn her out on Friday, because Saturday morning she slept until 8:30! That's pretty unusual for Lenzi. Usually she's up by 7:00 no matter what day it is. Unfortunately I was up long before that, because Duke and Marley (our dog and cat) demanded to be fed by 6:45 and would not leave me alone until I got up and fed them. So I had a little quiet time to myself before the munchkin got up, which was nice!

My mom and step dad invited Lenzi and I to spend the afternoon with them and my sisters at their lake house, so Lenzi and I headed over there around 1:00. When we got there, we decided to take a little swim in the lake, so we did. Lenzi loved splashing around in her little float in the lake. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of her (our camera needs a new battery and I didn't think to bring my cell phone down to the dock to take pictures). After our swim, we got dressed and went to downtown Milledgeville for dinner. We went to a little local restaurant called The Brick. Lenzi was very well-behaved for the most part, and she scarfed down her chicken fingers and french fries like a champ. After dinner, Lenzi and I headed back home.

On Sunday, we got up and dressed and headed to the grocery store to do the weekly shopping. We got home and Lenzi was super tired, so I put her down for a nap. When she woke up, I gave her lunch and we decided to go check out the new little park/playground in Social Circle. It was such a nice day that I thought it would be fun to walk to it (it's about a mile and a half from our house to the park). We got up there, and I put Lenzi in one of the swings. She was a little unsure about it at first, but ended up LOVING it! Our next door neighbors Steven, Reagan, and Luke happened to come up to the park too, and Reagan pushed Lenzi in her swing for a little bit (which she loved!). Here are a couple of pictures I was able to snap with my cell phone:

Lenzi was not happy about leaving, but we had a long walk ahead of us. Scott got home not too long after we got home. Lenzi was SO excited to see her daddy. When he walked in, she crawled over to him as fast as she could, saying "Daddy! Daddy!" It was so cute!

Monday we lounged around the house. We decided to go back to the park, but didn't end up staying long because it was really hot out. We came back home and put Lenzi in her little pool on the back patio so we could enjoy the nice weather. I snapped a few pictures of her. Her swimsuit she is wearing was a gift from her Nana (Scott's mom) and she looks SO cute in it!

She had a great time splashing around and playing!

Well, that is all the exciting stuff from over the weekend. We have a little annual fair that comes at the beginning of September to our town, so we plan on taking Lenzi because there are some little kiddie rides she can go on. So stay tuned for pictures of that!

Yellow River Game Ranch

2010-08-29T19:41:00.008-04:00

Scott, my mom, and I took Lenzi to the Yellow River Game Ranch in Stone Mountain. As I mentioned before, Lenzi loves looking at deer, so we thought this would be the perfect place to take her. She had a great time, and loved looking at all the animals. Here are a few pictures of our trip.

The rest of the pictures can be found on my Facebook page here.

And here is a little video that I shot of when got there and saw a deer. He was so tame that Scott could feed him out of his hand. Lenzi loved him!

New Pictures!

2010-08-23T21:21:00.014-04:00

As promised, here are some new pictures of Lenzi from this past weekend.

Playing with Daddy!

She's eating blackberries for the first time.

Mmmm!

More please!

I'm ready for some blackberry cobbler now!

And here's a little video we shot of her. Her new obsession is deer. She loves going upstairs to Daddy's man room to pet the deer heads on the wall. So here she is watching a hunting show with Daddy and showing him the deer and just being adorable!

We may have a walking baby...

2010-08-16T09:08:00.003-04:00

Lenzi has been more interested in walking in the last couple of weeks. She has been cruising like crazy, and has gotten much better at walking while pushing her Little Mermaid ride on toy, but has not really shown much interest in walking solo (or even holding on to our hands).

Until this weekend!

Scott and I have been coaxing her to walk by holding on to our fingers. She resisted it at first. She would get mad and immediately sit down, or crawl over to her ride on toy and push it around. But yesterday afternoon, while I was cooking dinner, Lenzi was trying to climb on the fireplace. Scott guided her off the fireplace by holding her hands and walking her away from it. She didn't mind at all! So he kept walking with her like that, and they walked around the whole house! Then they went back in the living room and Scott let go for a second, and she took 3 steps all on her own! She immediately sat down as soon as she realized Scott wasn't holding on to her. But that is huge for Lenzi! We were very excited!

Lenzi has had a "word explosion" this past weekend also! She is really associating words with objects now, and it's really cute to see. We were up in Scott's "man room", and Lenzi pointed to the deer heads on the wall and said "deer" plain as day. She loves looking at and petting the deer heads. Then when we went back downstairs, we showed her the deer in her nursery (we chose a deer theme for her nursery). She would point to the deer and say "deer" all by herself!

Other new words she can say are duck, bottle, shoe, ear, eye, book, Elmo (although this sounds like Eyo), night night, toe, and Papaw! She and Scott were looking at an old army picture of Papaw, and Scott told her who he was. She pointed to the picture and said, "Papaw!" It was adorable!

She also will put her baby doll "night night". She started doing this last weekend and it took me a little while to figure out what she was doing. She will crawl with her baby over to the end table in between our recliners and put the baby on the table. She will pat the baby's tummy and say "night night". I think in daycare, when the teachers put the kids down for a nap, they will pat their tummies and tell them "night night". So she was doing the same thing to her baby! It is so cute. We've been trying to get a video of her doing it, but once she realizes she is being videoed, she tries to grab the camera away and abandons what she was doing.

I did get a really short video of her yesterday with my cell phone. She was in her high chair and Scott was blowing into a glass bottle making a noise. She couldn't figure out how he was doing it. But of course as soon as she saw me videotaping her, she grabbed for my cell. Enjoy!

Well, I think that is the latest with us. I will do my best to try to get a video (or at least a picture) of the little walker soon!

Date Night!

2010-08-09T10:38:00.003-04:00

My sisters Ginger and Becky offered to keep Lenzi for us on Saturday night so Scott and I could go out to dinner and see a movie! Scott and I hadn't had a night to ourselves in months, so of course we took them up on it.

I was a little apprehensive about going at first. Becky and Ginger would be feeding Lenzi dinner, giving her a bath, and putting her to bed. No one but Scott and/or I had done this routine with her in her entire life! But Becky and Ginger said she was wonderful! She ate all of her dinner, she was adorable and had a great time in the bath (and Becky got this photo of her with her cell phone--so cute!)

and was a breeze to put down for bed. Scott and I were very glad to hear that!

Scott and I went to dinner at Olive Garden and then to see the movie Inception. The movie was great and it was nice to just spend time alone and have the night off! Big thanks to my sisters for giving up their Saturday night to drive out and spend time with Lenzi!

What's new with us?

2010-08-04T13:39:00.003-04:00

Well, not a whole lot actually. But it's been awhile since I last posted so I thought I'd try to give some kind of update!

Lenzi definitely seems to be doing better about sleeping at daycare! In fact, she took a 2 and a half hour nap there yesterday! So that definitely makes our lives easier. It's really tough for Scott and I when she doesn't nap. She is super cranky when she gets home, and it is a fight to get her to eat dinner and to get her ready for bed. I only get to spend maybe 2 hours a day with her on the weekdays, and it is so hard to see her so unhappy and miserable. So it has been great that she's been napping!

Lenzi is also eating more and more of what we are eating for meals as well. I think we have daycare to thank for that too! Before daycare, she was picky and really only liked to eat chicken nuggets, grilled cheese sandwiches, yogurt, oatmeal for breakfast, and snacks (puffs, Goldfish crackers, etc). But now she is eating all kinds of things! I made an Indian chicken dish with rice for dinner Monday night, and she scarfed it all up! I didn't think she would even want to try it, let alone eat it. But she loved it! It has been nice to only have to fix one dinner instead of two!

Lenzi is also beginning the grueling process of cutting her first incisor tooth (her bottom left). People really were not kidding when they say these are the worst teeth to cut. Lenzi has been really uncomfortable, and she chews on her fingers and anything else she can get into her mouth constantly!

Lenzi has also gotten a nasty case of diaper rash along with cutting this tooth. We have been very lucky so far to never have to deal with diaper rash, but she has it now, unfortunately. She hates getting her diaper changed. It was so pitiful the other day. I had to change her, and when I laid her down on the changing table and started taking her diaper off, she put her little hand on the diaper and told me "No no". I felt so bad for her!! But on the recommendation of my good friend Rhonda, we got some Flanders Buttocks Ointment. It has seemed to help. We just got it last night, so we'll keep using it! I hope it clears up soon!

Well, that is really all the new and (not so) exciting things going on with us! I'll try to take some more recent pictures of Lenzi and post them soon!

Recent Pictures!

2010-07-29T15:43:00.008-04:00

Here are a couple of recent pictures of Lenzi from her last week at Gabby's house.

This is Gabby!

As of yesterday, Lenzi seems to be doing much better at napping at daycare. Yesterday she took an almost 2 hour nap! It was so nice to have our sweet, happy girl back last night! However, she did decide to wake up at 4:30 this morning, so maybe she got too much rest yesterday!

Day 1 of daycare: completed.

2010-07-26T20:35:00.003-04:00

Well, Lenzi survived her first day at daycare today! Scott dropped her off and picked her up, since his office is much closer to the daycare than mine is. He said when he took her in this morning, she was really shy and clung to his neck. The director of the daycare met them at the front and walked them back to Lenzi's room. Her teacher, Miss Bessie, brought out a bag of toys. Scott set Lenzi down and she grabbed a toy and brought it back over to Scott. Scott had to leave to get to work on time, so he hugged her and gave her a kiss, and gave her to Miss Bessie.

I called the daycare on my lunch break to check on Lenzi and spoke to the director. She said Lenzi was having a great day so far. She ate breakfast and lunch and was playing just fine. She did mention that Lenzi didn't want to take a morning nap and asked me if she usually napped in the morning. I told her yes, that usually she takes an hour and a half to two hour nap in the morning and a shorter nap in the afternoon. The director said that she probably couldn't fall asleep with the noise of the daycare, but they were going to lay her down in the afternoon to see if she would sleep then. But overall, she said, Lenzi was having a great first day. So I was relieved to hear that!

I got home before Lenzi and Scott this afternoon, so I started cooking dinner. Scott got home shortly afterwards. I took Lenzi from him and started loving on her, and had to set her down while I tried to finish cooking dinner. She started fussing non-stop, and Scott said that she never ended up taking a nap at all the whole day! The poor baby was beyond exhausted. She cried through her dinner, bath, and while we got her ready for bed. I rocked her to sleep, and she was completely out by 6:30!

So all in all, it went pretty well, but hopefully she will learn to nap! I can't imagine her going all day without sleeping everyday. Most friends I have talked to says it takes a good week to get used to everything.

I am glad for the most part that Lenzi had a good day! Here's hoping that tomorrow she will nap!

Updates.

2010-07-21T11:35:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. There really hasn't been a whole lot going on in our world. But here are a few highlights:

Scott got a new job! It is for the City of Covington as their Senior Planner. It's a similar position to his last job, but a bit more of a promotion. It is closer to home than his previous job, and is not too far from Lenzi's new daycare and her pediatrician's office, so that makes me happy that he is close by! But now I don't get to eat lunch with him anymore. :(

This is Lenzi's last week with her sitter Gabby. It's hard to believe she will be starting daycare on Monday. I really hope it's an easy adjustment for her! I definitely think this is going to be harder on me than on her (at least I hope so!).

Lenzi has two molars that have fully come in, and I think she has two more that are making their way through. It has been a long month and a half of teething for Lenzi and us. I also have some suspicions that her eye teeth may be making their way through as well. She has been especially fussy this week and over the weekend, and the gums where the eye teeth should come in are redder than usual. I have heard these are the worst ones to break through, so I really hope if they are coming, that they come quickly!!

Lenzi's new daycare has a rule that the kids have to wear shoes. Lenzi has never really worn shoes consistently. We'll put them on her if she is walking in her walker outside, but she generally doesn't wear shoes at all. She has never been a fan of shoes. So on a recommendation of a friend, I took Lenzi to Stride Rite to get her sized and to buy a pair of shoes for daycare. They are similar to these:

The ones she has are white and pink with a pink sole, and the velcro strap goes across the shoe diagonally.They are really soft and flexible, and the saleslady said they were popular with kids who don't like to wear shoes. Today is the 3rd day that she's really worn them all day, so hopefully she'll get used to it soon!

Well, that is really all the new and exciting stuff with us. I'll try to take some recent pictures of Lenzi this weekend and get them posted!

Adventures in...Daycare?

2010-07-12T16:46:00.003-04:00

So. Our wonderful sitter Gabby is going off to college at the end of the month, and Scott and I have been looking for a new daycare situation for Lenzi. Several of Scott's former co-workers use a daycare center in Covington, and have raved about it. I called them when I was home back in April after I was laid off, and found out there is a waiting list. So I went ahead and got Lenzi on it.

They called Scott a few weeks ago and said they would follow up with us to let us know if there would be a spot for Lenzi in mid-July. I just got a call from them today and Lenzi got in! I'm really relieved, because we really wanted her to get into this particular daycare center after all the good things we'd heard about it. I was also worried that it would cost a lot more than what we are paying now, but it will only cost $3 more a week! So that was a huge relief too!

The lady I spoke with said that since Lenzi isn't really walking yet, they were going to start her off in the Creeper Room and then move her to the 1 year old room later. That made me happy because the Creeper room only has 6 kids (Lenzi included) so hopefully it won't be so overwhelming for her.

Honestly, I am a little nervous about her going to daycare! She has always been with an in-home sitter, and only one of three kids, all of which have been older than her. I know it will be good for her to be around other kids her age. But this is totally new for me and it will take some getting used to!

One Year.

2010-07-06T08:30:00.009-04:00

Wow.

It has been one year today since our precious baby came into the world. I'm feeling really nostalgic today. I keep remembering what was going on a year ago. Right now, Scott and I were at the OB's office getting an ultrasound of Lenzi. The midwife thought Lenzi was going to be really big, and they wanted to get measurements to see how big in case I needed to be induced to avoid a c-section. Meanwhile, I'd been up since 4:00 AM with contractions. I don't think that either Scott nor I imagined that we'd be having Lenzi that night. After all, I was 38 weeks pregnant, still 2 weeks from my due date. But we did! At 10:39PM, she came into the world and our lives.

She was 6 pounds, 7 ounces and 18 inches long. She was tiny. She was perfect. I couldn't believe I loved someone I'd only sort of known for 9 months and had never seen before. But I did. I was madly in love with her from the minute she was placed in my arms.

It's hard to believe in one short year that she can go from that tiny newborn to this beautiful little girl:

Happy first birthday, my precious girl! We love you so much!

First Birthday Party Pictures!

2010-07-04T22:00:00.002-04:00

Lenzi's party was a blast on Saturday! We had about 25 guests come to our house and help us to celebrate Lenzi turning one. I've posted the pictures on Facebook here. Sorry I'm being lazy again and not posting them on the blog, but there are close to 70 pictures, and it would take me FOREVER to post them all here.

Most of the pictures are of us opening presents and Lenzi completely demolishing her cake. I can't believe how much fun she had tearing into that cake! We had to give her a bath to get all of the icing off!

All in all, the party was great and we are so thankful to have such awesome family and friends to celebrate with! Thanks so much to everyone who came!

Lenzi's actual birthday is on Tuesday the 6th. Unfortunately because I have recently started a new job (and I took a week unpaid to go to Florida for vacation), I can't take the day off to spend it with my baby. But I know she will have a great day at Gabby's and we will have a small family celebration that night.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! Ours was extra special this year thanks to Lenzi! :)

First birthday party planning!

2010-06-28T15:29:00.003-04:00

We have the date set, the invitations sent out, the house (mostly) cleaned, the cake ordered, the majority of supplies purchased (thanks to Scott's mom Paula and my mom!). So most of the stuff is done. The party is scheduled for this Saturday at our house from 1:00 PM to 3:00PM. We are planning a pretty low-key affair, since Lenzi is so young, she won't really remember it anyway. We're not doing any real theme; just hanging out with family and friends and cooking out. The plan is to grill out burgers and hot dogs and have cookout type side dishes.

I'm still waiting on the final invitees to RSVP so we can buy the food, but we are expecting about 30-35 people (we invited close to 40, but we knew not everyone would be able to make it, being a holiday weekend). I went ahead and ordered Lenzi's cake today on my lunch break at Publix, so that will be ready to go on Saturday morning.

Other than buying the food, most everything else is done. I think in lieu of getting Lenzi a gift, Scott and I are going to take her somewhere fun, like the zoo or the GA Aquarium. We're both off work on the 5th, so we thought it would be nice to spend some time with Lenzi!

I still can't believe our little girl is turning one already! Time is going by so fast!

Cutie.

2010-06-24T15:59:00.004-04:00

Painted little toes!

2010-06-22T09:45:00.002-04:00

Last night Scott and I were playing with Lenzi after dinner and we noticed that her little toes were polished! It only took us like 2 hours to notice--shows how observant we are, ha!

Lenzi's sitter Gabby polished them. I still have no idea how she got Lenzi to sit still long enough to paint them. She insisted Lenzi wasn't asleep. I am lucky if I can get her to sit still just to cut her fingernails!

Here's a photo of the adorable little painted toes Scott took with his cell phone:

Lenzi's first beach trip

2010-06-19T20:13:00.003-04:00

Well, we are back from our trip to Panama City Beach, FL. We had a great time with my best friend Tara, her husband Justin, and their son Alex! Lenzi had a LOT of fun at the beach! She loved everything about it, especially the ocean. I think she may love it more than the pool if that is possible!

We took quite a few pictures of Lenzi enjoying the beach. I've posted them up on Facebook, and you can view them here. You don't have to be signed up on Facebook or my friend on there to see them (at least I don't think you do. But leave me a comment if you can't see them). It would take me forever to post them all here, so I thought this would be the easiest way to see them all!

Lenzi did so well with sleeping and eating on the trip. She really surprised me and Scott. And I think we have officially retired the baby food. I don't know if it was being around an older kid and watching him eat, but Lenzi wanted nothing to do with any sort of jarred baby food. She LOVES grilled cheese sandwiches (I tear it up into pieces for her), and she is also eating chicken nuggets cut up into little pieces. Unfortunately she has also decided that she does not like vegetables anymore. But Tara told me about a yogurt for babies that has pureed fruit and veggies in it, but only tastes like the fruit. I was able to find it at an Ingles grocery store out here, and we tried a cup of it with dinner tonight. It was pear and green beans, and she scarfed every bite down! As you know, she LOVES yogurt and I am so glad that I can still get some veggies in her with no fussing!

And she actually slept pretty well on the trip too. It was a little different for her and for us to be sleeping in the same room, but we all quickly got used to it. It was also different for her to be sleeping in her Pack and Play, but she got over it pretty quickly and slept through the night with no problems. So we are really thankful for that!

Lenzi's teeth are still really bothering her. But some good news, we are seeing two of the teeth break through, so we're hoping the end is near. It has been really uncomfortable for her, so I hope these last teeth hurry up and break through to give her some relief!

Well, that is the latest with us! Lenzi's birthday is in 2 weeks, so check back for updates about her party!

Almost Beach Bound!

2010-06-11T08:47:00.002-04:00

We are leaving for the beach tomorrow evening! We are headed down to spend a week at Panama City Beach, FL with my best friend Tara, her husband Justin, and their sweet two year-old son Alex. We are hoping by driving down at night, Lenzi will sleep in the car. This will be her longest car trip to date: about 5.5-6 hours. So hopefully it will go well!

Scott and I are a little anxious about how Lenzi will sleep while we are gone. She is teething like crazy right now. She's getting at least one (if not more) of her molars in and it has been pretty rough for her. She has been pulling and scratching one of her ears because it has been bothering her, and she has made that poor little ear bleed. My mom took her to the pediatrician yesterday for me because her ear looked bad, and I was worried that she had an ear infection. The doctor said both of her ears were perfectly clear and that teething was in fact the culprit. She gave Lenzi a prescription ointment to help clear up the scratches, but said Lenzi was fine to go swimming on our trip. So we will definitely pack the Motrin and Tylenol to help with her discomfort!

By the way, Lenzi got weighed at the pediatrician's office, and she's a little over 18 pounds! She weighed a little over 17 pounds at her 9 month checkup! But the doctor didn't seem to be concerned, and she has become much more mobile lately, so I'm thinking that's why she is so small. She is definitely petite!

In preparation for fun in the sun at the beach, my mom and grandmother set up a little kiddie pool for Lenzi in the backyard yesterday. Mom said she played for an hour straight! Here are a couple of pictures of the water baby splashing around:

11 Months Old!

2010-06-06T09:19:00.008-04:00

This can't be right. My little baby can't possibly be 11 months old today! But it's true. In one short month Lenzi will be one year old!

Here is what she is up to:

Pulling up on everything in sight! It will only be a matter of time before she figures out the whole walking thing. She is also crawling at breakneck speeds.
Almost completely on table food. She is not a fan of pureed baby food anymore. She loves to eat grown up food! Some of her favorites are waffles (torn up in little pieces), cheese, oatmeal (the Quaker kind in the packets), peas, green beans, etc. She used to like bananas cut up, but has decided she doesn't like them now.
She can repeat almost anything we tell her, but she says Mama, Daddy, Ball, Bye Bye, Uh Oh, Button, Hi, Belt, Duke, and Kitty consistantly.
She is getting over her stranger anxiety thank goodness! She will smile at everyone and doesn't cry when someone new holds her.
We have switched her from soy formula to milk based formula in preparation of drinking milk. So far there hasn't been any issue as far as reflux goes, so we are very happy about that! The milk based formula is a lot less expensive than the soy!
We haven't started the transition from bottles to sippy cups yet. She drinks water out of a sippy very well, but we haven't tried it with formula yet. That is next on our to-do list.

She has been a very busy girl!

We are also very excited to be going on our first family vacation in a week! My best friend Tara's parents have a condo on Panama City Beach, FL and she has invited me, Scott and Lenzi to spend a week with her, her husband Justin, and their adorable 2 year old son Alex. We are hoping that the beach stays clean when we go. I read online the other day that the oil is not supposed to hit Panama City Beach for another 3 to 6 weeks, so hopefully the beach will still be pretty when we go.

It will be interesting to see how Lenzi does. She has never spent a night away from home before, and she has never slept in her Pack and Play (the little portable crib/playpen she has) at night, so hopefully it will be ok. I bought a mattress that will fit inside the Pack and Play to make it a little more comfortable, so maybe that will help. Fingers crossed that we all get some sleep that week!

Here are some pictures I took of Miss Lenzi this morning to commemorate her 11 monthday!

Video of Lenzi Crawling and Pulling Up!

2010-06-01T21:03:00.005-04:00

So sorry it has been at least 2 weeks since I last posted. But the good news is that I finally have an office and computer at work, so hopefully I will be able to update much more frequently!

Here is a video that Scott and I shot this afternoon of Lenzi. She is a crawling maniac and pulling up on everything in sight! We have a feeling that she will probably be walking by her first birthday (which is right around the corner...hard to believe!).

Here are a few recent pictures of her as well:

Lenzi and her Daddy

Scott's parents were in town for the long weekend, and we all went to my parents' lake house for lunch. Lenzi was happy for the car ride headed to the lake...

...and sleepy for the car ride home.

Hope you enjoyed these! More to come soon!

Recent Pictures!

2010-05-21T18:10:00.019-04:00

Sorry I am so late in getting these posted (as well as not updating as often as I should be!). But here are some recent pictures I took of the munchkin:

(See her little eye in the mirror?)

Here are a few pictures of her swimming at Gabby's (her babysitter's) house. She absolutely LOVES swimming!

Lenzi in her little bikini!

Here are a couple of the big girl pulling up at Gabby's:

Updates.

2010-05-11T21:33:00.003-04:00

Sorry about the lack of posts lately! I have just started a new job and it has kept me really busy. I don't have my own computer at work yet, so I can't even check my email during the day, let alone post! But here are a few new updates in the Gaither household.

Lenzi turned 10 months old last week (the 6th to be exact)! She is so much fun right now! She loves to crawl and pull up on things and she is SUPER vocal! She can now say "uh oh", "tee tee" and she can almost say "button". Funny story about "tee tee". I will ask Lenzi if she "tee teed" in her diaper, and she will whisper "tee tee". She never says it out loud; it's always whispered. I guess she is being ladylike and softly discussing it with me! It is too funny.

She loves to "sing" and chatter when we are riding in the car. I guess the days of actually listening to songs on the radio are over. But I love it, and I love our little "conversations" that we have on the way home from the sitter's house. I ask her about her day and she "tells" me about it, and then I tell her about mine.

Lenzi adjusted pretty well to me going back to work after being home with me for a month. I have had a harder time adjusting. It is hard to go from spending all day with my baby back to only seeing her for a couple of hours a day. I wish I could have enjoyed my time home with her more, but I was stressed out about losing my job and going through the very long interview process for my new job. But I am working to support Lenzi and to give her the life she is used to. That's what I keep telling myself, anyway! :)

Since Lenzi is a crawling and pulling up maniac, we have discovered there is the need for a new coffee table. Our current coffee table is beautiful, but it is glass and the glass can be slid around if you push on it. So we began the search for a new baby-safe table. Since the rest of our living room furniture is old hand-me-down and college furniture, we decided to go ahead and get a whole new room of furniture so everything matches and looks nice. We found a set at Haverty's that we like a lot, but Scott hates to make immediate decisions when it comes to spending a lot of money at once, so we are going to keep shopping around. We are hoping that we may be able to catch a Memorial Day sale at the end of the month.

Well, that is the latest with us. I will try to be better about posting more regularly, and I will try to get some new pictures and/or videos up soon!

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T18:06:00.005-04:00

Sometimes it's still hard to believe that I'm a mom! But it is great to be able to celebrate Mother's Day for the first time this year as one.

Scott and Lenzi got me a beautiful handmade necklace for Mother's Day! It's a brass necklace that has an L for Lenzi on the back piece and her birthday on the front piece. It also has a garnet gemstone that dangles in front (Lenzi's birthstone is a ruby, so I thought that fit pretty well!). Here is a picture of it:

I love it!

We spent the afternoon at my parents' house enjoying a wonderful meal and spending time together! I was able to snap a picture of Lenzi with her aunt Becky:

They are both wearing their Bob Marley T-shirts!

It was a great day, and I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful husband and amazing daughter. She can frustrate me from time to time, but I just look at this face and it is all worth it:

Hope all the other moms had a wonderful Mother's Day too!

Walker!!

2010-05-01T15:24:00.004-04:00

I got Lenzi a walker from Toys R Us yesterday. I got it all put together and put her in it and she just cried and cried. She didn't understand what she was supposed to do, so she got upset.

Scott was able to raise the seat of it up so it was more comfortable today, and she realized that she could walk around pretty freely in it, so she liked it! Here's a video we shot of her trying it out in the driveway:

Side note: You can also see the new flowers we planted near the front porch! Thanks to Scott for doing all the work and giving our yard some color!

Update on Lenzi's abilities

2010-04-29T10:08:00.002-04:00

Lenzi is turning 10 months next week (on the 6th), and I don't think I have updated what her recent milestones/abilities are. So here is a rundown:

She is wearing some 9 month clothing, but it's getting a little small, so I've started putting her in 12 month clothing, which is a little big! The pants legs are way too long, but the onesies, shorts, and dresses fit ok
She was 28 inches long and weighed 17 pounds, 11 ounces at her 9 month check up.
She has 7 teeth (that's right, I said seven). She is getting her seventh one in as we speak. So now she has 4 teeth on the top, and 3 on the bottom.
She can say "mama", "dada", "kitty", "baby", "bye bye", and she is trying really hard to say "stinky". She can get the "st" part out, but can't quite say the rest!
She is eating more and more finger/table foods. She loves the Gerber puffs, sweet peas, diced apples, diced carrots, and these things called Mum Mums, which are like rice cake wafer things. She is still eating pureed baby food (stage 2), but really dislikes the stage 3 baby food because it has chunks in it. We're going to keep trying! She also eats some pureed meats (but Scott and I can't stand it. It smells like canned cat food). She also LOVES yogurt.
She can now crawl on all fours! No more army crawl. And she is getting pretty fast too!
She is also beginning to pull up more and more! We need to get some new, baby-friendly furniture for this reason. We have a glass coffee table, and that thing has got to go!
We are officially retiring her swing. She is getting WAY too big for it, plus she doesn't really like it anymore. She would much rather crawl around. This kid is on the move!

Well, that is all I can think of at the moment! I'm sure I'm forgetting something. I will attempt to get some recent pictures and maybe a new video posted soon!

Another Lenzi Video

2010-04-26T21:06:00.003-04:00

This one is of Lenzi playing with her Daddy. My best friend Tara gave Lenzi a little Fisher Price Tea Set for Christmas, and part of the set has some plastic "desserts" on a little plate. Lenzi loves to knock the desserts off the plate. Towards the end of the video, I was able to capture her crawling a bit. She has just figured out how to crawl on all fours, and I was trying to get her to do it for the camera, but it was getting close to bedtime, so she was tired.

Enjoy!

Video of Lenzi playing

2010-04-25T17:38:00.003-04:00

I just shot this video of Lenzi playing in her Pack 'n Play. She is so cute!

Bath time pics!

2010-04-24T10:30:00.007-04:00

It's been awhile since we posted some pictures of Lenzi in the tub!

Here is her new hairstyle, courtesy of Daddy:

Bath time is finished and we're heading to bed!

Night night!

Big girl!

2010-04-22T14:21:00.003-04:00

We got Lenzi a sippy cup to start drinking water out of so she would get used to it. This was actually the third sippy cup we tried, because she didn't like the other two. This one has a little straw she can drink out of and it's easy for her to hold. Here's a couple of pictures of the big girl:

We had to lower the crib mattress tonight...

2010-04-18T20:39:00.003-04:00

...because Lenzi is trying to pull up!! Here is a video we shot of her attempting to pull up to standing. She actually did it once, but it was before we could get a video of it.

Cuteness Overload!!

2010-04-16T12:52:00.004-04:00

Need I say more?

I love how she smiles for the camera now!! It makes getting cute pictures like these easy! Scott and I should take her to get some professional pictures made. Believe it or not, she's never had professional pictures done.