Lottie's Goings On

UPDATE: As of Wednesday, Lottie has 6 teeth. The other eye tooth showed up.

We are 1.5 weeks out from Lottie's first birthday, and she has been busy, busy, busy working on new things. I touched on some of the new things in a past post. I included an update on those things here as well as several new things she is doing.

Teeth
Lottie cut 5 teeth in a month. She has both front top and bottom teeth and 1 eye tooth. I managed to get a picture of all of them. Not sure what face Lottie is making here, but she is showing off all her pearly whites (you can even tell that the second eye tooth is about to come in).

Signing
I finally caught a video of Lottie signing "more."

She is not a big fan of having her diaper changed since it means pausing her playtime, so she has started signing "all done" as soon as I lay her down for a diaper change. It cracks me up.

Crawling
Lottie now exclusively crawls on all fours, and boy, can she move.

Pulling Up
Lottie pulls up on anything and everything. She can bend down and pick things up and sit down without just letting go and plopping down. She even tries climbing things.

Cruising/Assisted Walking
It was a matter of days before pulling up led to cruising around furniture. She can pretty much get anywhere and into anything by cruising around the living room. She keeps us on our toes. The coffee table has to be kept virtually clear of everything.

Lottie has also started walking with the train, her early birthday gift from Chris and I. She will go up and down the living room over and over again. The first video is from Thursday, the 19th and the second is from today. In just 4 days, she has already improved a lot and gained more confidence!

Sidenote: For whatever reason, Lottie loves this video of herself. She cracks up and does the mouth and tongue stuff with the video.

Dancing
Lottie has started dancing to music. It includes bouncing up and down and swinging her arms side to side. In a couple years, I hope to get this girl into some dance classes!

Cow's Milk
Lottie is drinking whole milk now in addition to breast milk. She seems to like it though sometimes she just lets it flow down her chin and everywhere. We aren't sure if she is still adjusting to how thick it is or if she thinks it is fun, but she sure looks silly sometimes.

Eating
Lottie will eat anything and everything. The only thing she refuses are peas. She devoured corned beef and cabbage on St. Patty's Day. One of her favorite meals is black-eyed peas and cornbread as well as refried beans and taco meat. She also loves green beans, bananas, and cheese. I think she is becoming quite the little foodie. She even makes contented yum noises while eating.

Electronics
All I think is "What a fascinating and modern age we live in" (Master & Commander). Lottie is already beginning to work our electronics. She knows to swipe my phone to unlock it.

She also will swipe my touchscreen laptop. She recognizes the play symbol on touchscreens. She even figured out what to press on the screen to turn the page on a read-a-loud book. Finally, she understands that the buttons on the PlayStation remote works the TV, so she will get the remote and press the buttons while watching the TV. She can get into crazy places in Netflix.

Like I said, this little girl is busy, busy, busy. It blows Chris and my minds that she is still doing new things every day. It is incredible to watch.

TBT: Nana & Ganny's Visit

Our Throwback Thursday post is from July when Lottie was 4 months old. Nana (Nay-nay) & Ganny came to visit us at the end of July for a few days. We had a great time sharing Lottie and the beautiful upstate with them. They drove in Thursday morning, picked up Chris and Lottie, and met me in Greenville, so we could go to the zoo. Greenville has a little, but good zoo. Sadly, we arrived too late to feed the elephants, but we did have a great time checking out the rest of the animals and were highly entertained by the orangutans.

  

In the picture on the left, the front orangutan is drinking his pee as gross as that sounds. We watched him pee in the cup and then drink it. Sorry Darwin, but there are clearly a bjillion, if not infinite, steps between him and me.

Lottie enjoyed walking around and looking at everything.

However, halfway through the experience, she looked like this:

The next day we took Dana & Ganny to Chimney Rock, NC to see the mountains and go shopping. They enjoyed it a lot.

A local fruit stand along the way

Having ice cream in Chimney Rock

When we arrived back home, Nana gave Lottie a beautiful purple crocheted blanket. Lottie loves it—it is her cozy blankie.

The other blanket is the one Dana made Chris when he graduated high school.

The following day, we visited the Walnut Grove Plantation. It is a great example of an upstate plantation, which were very different from the Charleston or Lowcountry plantations. The history is very interesting—they lived a more normal late 1700s log cabin life-style. They actually had some reenactors with muskets. Chris really enjoyed talking with them about their guns.

Afterwards, we took Dana and Ganny to Wade’s, a very fun southern cooking restaurant in Spartanburg.

http://www.eatatwades.com/

It was a great visit with a bunch of different activities. A nice end to Chris’ summer. We were so glad Dana and Ganny were able to come!

This is the Real Life

There are moments in life where you can't help but think "I am so glad no one is here to see this" or "I can never agree to have my life filmed for a reality TV show" or "I am so thankful God is in control because I don't got this." They only multiply when you become a mom. I would like to call these Mommy Moments.

I hope you moms know what I am talking about. You know--you are looking around proudly thinking that your child is fed and happy, and your husband is fed and happy, and then life takes a turn in the blink of an eye. Your daughter who has just started pulling up on things heads to the coffee table to pull up and see what is there, but you aren't worried because you just cleared all the lunch dishes from the lunch your husband and you had in front of the TV while your daughter was napping. Until you watch in horror from across the room as your daughter grabs the top of your husband's almost full (thankfully cooled!) tall coffee mug that you missed and yanks it over. You rush over with towels to clean up the coffee table and rug. You pull your daughter's coffee soaked clothes off and throw them into the washing machine along with the cover to the baby swing, which was also soaked. You hurriedly spot clean the stuffed electronic toy that was splattered. While your daughter clothed only in a diaper plays in eye-sight in the living room, you decide it is the perfect time also to wash the dog bed that your dog threw up on last night. You get the brilliant idea that you should empty the inner cover of the nasty and old foam mix that fills the bed and replace it with cedar. However, as you empty the inner cover into a trash bag, you miss the bag completely and end up with a huge pile of the stuff on the floor. While trying to pour the remaining amount into the bag, you steal a glance at your playing daughter and notice that she is playing with the bottles of acrylic paint that you had yet to put into your newly organized (as of 2 hours before) craft cabinet. You are now covered in nasty, old, possibly throw-up stained dog foam, so you send a silent prayer up that your daughter doesn't learn how to pop open tops at this exact moment, and you quickly go back to the dog foam mess. Some shoveling of foam into the bag and a quick vacuum with the handheld vacuum later, you are finally heading to the shower with your daughter.

You can't make this stuff up. It is Real Life. Our Christmas card may look like this:

but our reality is this:

And in all honesty, our reality suits us. Some moments just require a bit more humor than others, as well as the confidence "that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil 1:6). So, I guess, here is to all my future Mommy Moments--may God always bring us out on the other side laughing.

TBT: Christmases #5 & #6 & Baby Luke's Timely Arrival

There are several posts I want to write from a few months ago that were not written for some reason or another (most likely due to my working mom schedule). Since I recently learned about the new-fangled acronym TBT (Throw Back Thursday), I figured I would start posting on Thursday about past things.

So, here is my first TBT post about the remainder of our big Texas Christmas trip. I wrote about Christmases #1 & #2 here and Christmases #3 & #4 here.

5) Clyde Christmas

On the 27th, we all headed to Clyde to have Christmas with Dana and Chris' sisters and their families. It was the first time the 3 cousins were going to meet. We were pretty excited. Of course, they were fairly indifferent to each other at the ages of 1.5 years (Chris' older sister, Mary's son Grayson),

9 months (Lottie), and 1 month (Chris' younger sister, Elizabeth's daughter Claire).

Grayson and Lottie did pay enough attention to each other in order to desire whatever toy the other had. Lottie didn't mind sharing when the only toys were Grayson's new toys. However, the tables turned when Lottie opened her gifts and suddenly had toys she didn't want to share.

In the end there were plenty of toys to go around with all the great books, games, baby doll, and such that Lottie received in addition to all the boy things Grayson received.

Chris even showed Lottie how to play with her new baby doll.

Mostly, it was wonderful being with everyone. The house was packed full of family, and the table covered in food. It was cozy, loud, and just as it should be.

Ganny with the Great Grandkids

Mary with Lottie & Grayson

Nana with Lottie

6) Aero Bee Ranch Christmas

We left Clyde Christmas and headed to the ranch to celebrate with Great Gran & Great Papa.

Kisses from Great Gran

They gave her a jumper, which she loves. She loves to bounce and sway and swivel. 

Conversations with Great Papa

Uncle Mike also showed up for a little hunting, so we got to spend more time with him.

With all the family around, Chris and I sneaked in a little date. We went to the Burnet Air Museum. Although small, it was really cool. We were the only ones there at first, so the docent, a very sweet little old man, gave us a tour. He founded the museum, so he knew the story of each artifact and gave the perfect amount of detail. His brother was a crew member on a B-24 (same plane featured in Unbroken) and disappeared on a mission just like the book Unbroken describes as happening to so many B-24's. He was incredibly interesting.

 Sitting in a B-24 gun turret

A C-47

After a couple of days, Chris left to go on his annual boys hunting trip, and Great Gran and Great Papa headed home, leaving Lottie and I with Poppa and Gigi. We relaxed and played--it was a nice change from the first half of the trip where we changed locations every 2 nights.

Walking to the "lake"

 1st time to pull up on anything

 New game with Gigi - being pulled around in a laundry basket

Discovering pots and big spoons

We partied hard on New Year's of course (Lottie went to bed by 9, and we watched a movie and did a puzzle). The next morning we did have mimosas though (Lottie cut her OJ with water--she lives on the wild side).

Meanwhile, Chris was stuck in West Texas due to an intense ice storm, so we ended up behind a day. We decided to load up and drive the 2 hours to Waco, stay with Bros and Sarah, and then leave early the next morning.

However, much to my excitement, Sarah went into labor that night. Chris and I opted to stay another night in order to greet Baby Luke on his first day. We had a fun, relaxing (at least for all but Sarah) day until Bros and Sarah left for the hospital that evening. Luke arrived at 530 am, and Chris, Lottie, and I swung by the hospital on our way out of town to see the precious new family of three. 

Chris, being the master swaddler (a doctor on his peds clinic actually told him he is), gave Sarah and Brian a lesson.

 Luke came on the only day that both Chris, Lottie, Sarah's parents, and me were in town. God's timing sure is perfect!

Gadsden, AL

A couple of weekends ago, Chris, Lottie, and I visited Gadsden, Alabama, our future home. The forecast said it would be very cold and rainy with a winter storm warning (it was the weekend after all the snow), but we went anyways since I had already booked a hotel through Priceline (non-cancellable). It ended up being in the 50's and rainy, so not as bad. Even with the weather, we still enjoyed the city a lot.

Gadsden is about 4.5 hours from Spartanburg or 2 hours west of Atlanta and only 10.5 hours from Katy (4 hours closer!). It also returns us to the Central time zone. The Coosa River runs through the middle of the city. I created a map of some key places from our trip here. (What do you think for my first try, Carrie?) Chris and I both decided it reminds us a lot of Abilene in size and amenities.

(Random side note: Gadsden is about 5 hours from the coast--this will be the furthest inland I have ever lived. For someone who does not love the beach, it was weird to realize that I have always lived less than a 1/2 day's drive from the coast.)

We left Friday afternoon with the ice warning beginning about the time we would arrive in Gadsden. Well, I should say the time we thought we would arrive in Gadsden, since we forgot to account for the time change. Let's just say it is pretty disappointing to think you are 35 minutes away per the GPS ETA, only to realize you are really 95 minutes away--all of sudden your butt is achy and you really just want out of the car. We did hit snow, but nothing to make us stop for the night. When we reached Gadsden, one of the first things we saw was the sign for Chris' hospital.

It was very exciting. We continued to the hotel and spent the rest of the evening looking over some brochures and doing a little research.

The next day we called a realtor and asked about residential areas to explore. And since Chris is friends with everyone he meets, we also talked to the hotel receptionist, a cop, and people at church on Sunday. We found Gadsden to be even friendlier than Spartanburg. We then spent the morning driving all over the city and neighboring towns. We found several great places to live. We also checked out Gadsden Regional Medical Center, which is the hospital where Chris will do most of his rotations, as well as Riverview Regional Medical Center, where Chris may do a couple of his rotations. Both hospitals looked very nice and had a great feel.

Gadsden Regional

Riverview Regional

Down the street from Gadsden Regional, we discovered this comforting sight:

The first words out of Chris' mouth were "we will be just fine here."

Amidst all the researching and exploring, we did take time to enjoy the city and the trip. We ate incredible catfish at Top O' the River, an extremely popular local place with a great atmosphere (Greg & Dad--we already know we are taking y'all there).
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We also ate at Kati Thai, which is a little hole in the wall Thai place that was consistently ranked as one of the top restaurants in all of my research, and rightly so, as it was the best Thai we have ever had.

Sunday morning, we attended Rainbow Church of Christ and felt very welcomed. There are a couple of other churches we plan to visit as well, but it was nice to know there is already one that may work as our new church home.

The trip really was a great little chill family weekend away. Lottie's schedule was even more messed up than it ever was on our 3 week tour of OK & TX, but she handled it like the precious sweetheart she is. One of my favorite moments of the trip was goofing off with Lottie in the big king bed after her bedtime.

All in all, we really enjoyed ourselves. Gadsden seems like a great city. I think we will enjoy our 2 years there. We are still very sad to leave Spartanburg, but it was comforting to find Gadsden so promising and pleasant.