Playing Catch Up

I know that I could title every post playing catch up because I'm really not good, but I'm busy...what can I say? Bailey had lots of fun playing with her cousins last week during Thanksgiving. We had tons of exciting things going on:

We went to the beach one morning with Kate and Owen.

While the cousins played in the water and with the birds.

Bailey tried her first handful of sand...and it was delicious!

After a fun morning at the beach, we came home and Bailey got dressed up.

She was imagining what it will be like one day to have lots of hair.

While the cousins were here, Bailey started doing all sorts of trick in one week. She went from doing a funky army crawl, to crawling normally where ever she wants. She can also pull herself up to stand on anything--even if it is really low to the ground she tries to stand up. Bailey had her nine month check up and here are her stats: 27 inches tall, 17.4 pounds--both are totally normal and average if she would have been born on time. The doctor was absolutely amazed at all of the tricks she can do--crawl, stand up, rolling, etc. She doesn't even look like a tiny preemie baby anymore. I swear that she's grown and learned all sorts of tricks in the past few weeks; she is definitely making up for all of her lost time being so tiny.

She loves her feet right now and are quite the form of entertainment for her. It comes in handy when I'm changing her diaper because she can hold her feet up for me.

This is an example of what she looks like some mornings when we come to get her out of bed! We've had to lower her crib because she had no idea how close she was to falling over. She is just so happy to stand up all the time.

She also really loves to eat now! She's eating all sorts of vegetables mixed with rice cereal. Just one month ago, the smell of rice cereal would make her gag and eating vegetables had severe consequences. She has decided to grow up.

I decided that we should give her a bath in the sink, now that she can sit up on her own. We got everything prepped and ready for a fun time, but Bailey didn't want to give it a chance.

All she wanted to do was escape the entire time. It's like she was being held captive and looking for any moment when we had our guard down to make a run for it. It's a good thing that she was too slippery to stand up. I'll get her to like it because I want my babies to take baths in the sink. I remember my mom giving us baths in the sink and I always thought that was so fun. Bailey just doesn't know what's good for her yet.

The last big event that we tried to pull off with the cousins is a photo shoot. Someone gave Bailey and Kate matching dresses and we went and bought Owen a little man suit to match. We were going to get them done at JCPennys, but of course on the day of our appointment (which happened to be the day after Thanksgiving) the power went out at the store so they had to cancel. So we did the best we could with our lack of professional photography experience (I say that smiling because the people at JCPennys aren't too professional either). Here's what we came up with:

Here's Kate, Bailey, and Owen giving us their best looks. Owen looks handsome as usual and the girls are just adorable with their dresses and hair!

Kate and Owen were good smilers in this one, but Bailey isn't quite sure what to do.

I love this look on Bailey. She really works her eyebrows to their full effect. She looks likes she's trying so hard to understand what I'm telling her. She loves listening to people talk.

Here's my pretty girl with her big smile!

It was so much fun having everyone down last week. I can't wait until it happens again in a couple of weeks for Christmas. And who knows, maybe Bailey will want to chase the big kids around so much that she'll start walking. I don't think it will be that soon, but Brian is betting by the new year. That means I need to decorate for Christmas and do some major baby-proofing this week!