Lilah Turns ONE!!!

Happy Birthday Lilah! (insert song here)

At this moment sleep right next to me on our bed is a super cute and much LARGER and more active baby than one year ago today.


For the first time in writing this blog I had to sit back this morning and think a bit before I could figure out what to say.

It has been an amazing year. In just one year Lilah has gone from 7lbs to 19lbs (aprox) and from a blobby baby to a cruising toddler. She is babbling away each day just busting to tell us what she is thinking of the world. And I am pretty sure Jason and I have learned more from her than she has from us.

It has been a year of sadness as well as celebrations, but at the end of each day watching her curl up on one of our laps for bed, we know that all can be right and good with the world another day.


On the celebration end, this weekend we had one of two and a half parties for Lilah's birthday at my Aunt Missy's house in PA. Lilah got to meet seven of her cousins and we got to kick off the birthday fun a little early.

We had a fantastic time and as you can see Lilah was more interested in feeding her Daddy the cake I made her to smash than actually smashing it herself. (Maybe we will have more luck tonight!).

However she did know that the party was about her first birthday as you can see her sporting her I'm "one years old" finger in this photo while being held by my cousin Holli. (Hopefully next year she won't look like Nixon).







It was also an opportunity for family pictures and amazingly enough seven of the cousins sat on the stairs for JUST long enough for me to get this photo :)

You have to admit we have a pretty cute family!

So, a very very happy birthday to (as we call her) Miss Lilah Bean!
We can not wait to see was this year brings!

Lilah's Wild Adventures

With just a little over one week till Lilah's first b-day (one week and four hours to be exact), she is growing by leaps and bounds each day. From standing a few seconds on her own, to FINALLY holding her own bottle, to being able to point at what she wants us to get her. The last week has been full of milestones. Milestones and adventures!

With eating always the great adventure, I has to share this photo of Lilah enjoying her new favorite food - yogurt! She loves it and has some each day. I discovered her love for it when I was having some of my own yogurt one day and she practically ripped the spoon out of my hand.

In the "thing we do as grownups she like to imitate" area, Lilah has also been stealing toothbrushes from out of my mouth. This is her with my second replacement after the first one seems to have gotten "lost" among her toys. Well at least I know she already has good hygiene!



I forgot to mention in my last blog post that we had gone out for Tara's bday with family and friends. Normally, I let posts be posts and don't revisit them, but I mention it here only to be able to share this photo of Alexander after his first "boys" trip to Krispy Kreme. I think he could fit his whole body in that hat!




I have mentioned the wonderful nanny and nanny share that we do a few times on the blog, but I wanted to share the photo of Lilah and Kiran after a long walk to the park last week. (ooooahhh aren't they cute....)





Lastly, yesterday Lilah and I had an impromptu adventure to the Wheaton Regional Park with Erik, Gayle and Jordan. As Jason was working on our floors all day, I had gone to lunch and then tagged along on their daily adventures. As you can see from this photo Lilah had a wonderful time on the carousal and after some walking and more walking she got to admire lots of butterflies in an exhibit that closed yesterday.


And because it is fun, Lilah when she first sees her evening "dessert" of Organic O's (or just O's as we call them around here.

Weekend Updates....and two weeks left till ONE YEAR

OK readers of the MMB blog, I have a small bone to pick with you all ... how is it that I post cute photos, funny stories and updates for over a year with one small comment here and there and Jason posts TWO updates in one year and gets FIVE comments. I see I am just not cute enough for you all! ;) (note winking eye means this is just a joke and I am not really mad so please keep coming back to read!)

So that said on to the updating. This past weekend my mom came to town to visit. We realized it was the first time someone has been here on a weekend in quite a while, so we took advantage of her to be our personal photographer for swim class (we tried music class too but that picture did not come out so well)! As you can see we all do really get into the pool with her and she is getting really good and splashing around and her favorite game - let's climb out of the pool and crawl away. I especially like the song where at the end we all go shhhhhh as this is suppose to teach them when to be loud and when to be quiet. Silly instructor silly silly silly.

We ran lots and lots of errands and tried our best to tire Lilah out all weekend but as you can see from the first photo above that only seemed to work when she was reading. Now that Lilah has learned to crawl and stand up and walk with our assistance she has been pretty unstoppable.



She is also learning to feed herself - which is great! and messy. We have been allowing her to go for it and the calamity that has ensured has been quite funny. I also learned last night that if I substitute broccoli for organic O's as a finger food she doesn't seem to care. Yea! Although she did spend quite a bit of time trying to feed the broccoli to me while keeping the O's for herself - hmmm.






She has also gotten even more expressive than ever as you can see from this photo. Right now sticking her tongue out is her favorite thing to do in the car, in the house, on the street - you get the picture.

Brown Bear and Cheerios

So, I was putting Lilah to bed last night and, as per the normal process, we read a book. The book of the evening was "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?". It is a good book about animals and colors. Maybe a little old for her, but I feel that she's a quick learner. Anyway, we were then talking about the colors and it got me thinking, and sharing with Lilah, that when she is older she can move up from her plain Cheerios (actually Organic O's) to ones that have lots of colors like the book - Froot Loops. They are both round but now bigger, flavored, and with colors!!! The other option that we, Lilah and I, agreed upon were Lucky Charms (a daddy fav) since, while still plain, they are now different shapes and have colorful marshmallows. 

Lilah's First Trip to the Park and FOUR videos! (longest post ever)

WARNING TO READERS: This is going to be the longest post this site has ever had as I have four videos and a ton of photos to share from our trip to the park today. So be forewarned you might want to have a cup of coffee handy!

After our most recent tropical storm blew threw, it left us with what might be the last nice day our area will see till next May. So Jason and I decided to take advantage of it taking the whole family (Jason, Lilah, Hunter and myself) out to the local park that we walk Hunter around every day. We did the picnic thing packing sandwiches (and sweet potatoes for Lilah), chips, drinks and walked the four blocks over to the park to sit on a large blanket under a tree.

If we haven't talked to you, this family outing was much needed as Lilah has spent the last few days cutting her two top teeth, causing fever, pain and general crankiness to ... well everyone! She has been getting better and better, but today turned a corner and could not wait to get outside and play.

The first video you are seeing was actually at the end of our picnic when we hit the slides and Jason and Lilah had fun seeing which of the three available she liked best. The next video was Lilah watching other dogs play at the park.

Hunter, of course, as you can see in this video, had much more interesting things to check out than other dogs in the park. We are continuously amazed with the different things that Lilah can do, increasing on a daily basis. We are also surprised with all of the odd things (well odd to us!) that she does. Today's realization was that when she is napping and we go in to check on her, she is always sleeping with her head shoved in one of the four corners of her crib. Jason wants me to take a photo, but I am always so afraid of waking her.

This video was the first one that we shot at the park, after Lilah decided she wanted to feed herself sweet potatoes and then give mommy a BIG KISS on the stomach. (picture a child, face full of sweet potatoes crawling as fast as light right into you so hard it almost knocks you over -- what's not to love about that). As you can see (and I say in the video) she is hamming it up for the camera. She now understands that the "click" of the camera means turn around and smile or make a funny face.

We also took TONS of photos today and I was going to post about six of them, but am now realizing folks coffee might be running out. So stay tuned for tomorrow when I will post all the photos from today's adventure, plus a few I have been holding out for just the right blog post.

And remember....she turns ONE in three and a half week AKAK!!

A look back at Lilah throughout the months - Through Photos!

As we move closer and closer to Lilah's first birthday, I have been going through all of our old photos of her to get some framed for our house. So...a look back....

This is a photo that Jason took my first day back at work after maternity leave. Outfit provided by Lilah's Aunt Sarah she had the best smile already and it made my day to get this over e-mail just as I was starting to get lonely.









Lilah's first fancy schmancy party - Enchilada X-mas at the Reich's (also known as Alexanders parents). This is her first fancy party dress a hand-me-down from Sydney.











At her first formal photo shoot. This picture was taken when my friend Erika (also a professional photographer) spent the day with us shooting Lilah, Lilah and well more Lilah.









The first time she sat up on her own. We were at Darryl and Beth's house and she could not wait to play her piano all by herself. (now she uses it to stand up).















And last, but NEVER least - Lilah's amazing ability to make the international sign for Cockerspaniel (see previous posts on this if you are confused).

So a quick look back - enjoy!

Quick Note - new blog!

Good evening /morning to all! Just a quick note that I have finally kicked off my organic gardening blog at: http://mightyorganicearth.blogspot.com/. Come over and visit sometime!

Lilah is 11 months!

A bit too tired for much commentary, I wanted to get up Lilah's 11 month bear photos that we took tonight. As you can see she not only sits on the bear, but likes to stand beside it now a well.

The comparison photos are from when she was five months old (can you say "lots more hair!". WOW time has flown by. With less than a month to her 1st birthday we are getting prepared for some fun!

It's September - Do you know what that means...

Well first it meant we had a fantastic Labor Day weekend with friends. Saturday we worked around the house and made lots of tasty goodies for the weekend parties. Lilah helped by making sure we bought the right groceries at the store - trying to touch everything as we walked by.

Sunday we had a wonderful lunch with Gayle, Erik and Jordan eating tasty food and watching the kids play in the baby pool. It has been amazing to watch the two of them grow together developing new skills and interests.

We also went to a Labor Day party at Beth and Darryl's on Sunday night, where we got to hang out and relax with a bunch of our friends, many of which we had not seen in quite a while. Lilah got to be the "middle child" having a great time with Sydney and Meredith as well as giving air kisses to Alexander.

Then today we caught up around the house, getting a new printer (our old one died) that also allows us to print photos - whoohoo!! Lilah also decided it was time to learn how to feed herself. So a messy video showing her first, pretty darn successful, attempt.

Also for fun, and to probably amuse only me, a photo of her finally getting Cheerios (well actually Organic O's, but whose being specific) in her mouth.

Lastly, in case you didn't realize it - LILAH TURNS ONE this month. Wow and wow for us here in the Boig household. More to come on that in future posts where I also need to discuss Lilah trying to walk, her upper teeth that have come in, and many more fun subjects.