Standing by the stairs

Not much time to type, but here's today's adventure. She did this for about 15 minutes.

The Road to Crawling

A story in videos...

October 16:

November 18:

November 19:

November 21:

November 28:

December 9:

December 28:

Also December 28 (roughly 1 minute after the last video):

Since I shot the last vidoe, Laine has not done a *single* belly crawl to get anywhere. LOL! She has been low-crawling to various places like the bookshelf, the small trampoline, or the bottom stair and then pulling herself up to a stand. She's not confident enough to stand upright, but she does get her feet under her while she remains bent forward. If she could reach a little higher, I have no doubt that she'd be standing upright most of the time. Good news for mommy, however, is that "real" crawling seems to be new and exciting enough to delay her *wanting* to stand in one place, so she's just motoring around and not standing for the last day or so. This is great because she stood on her own 5 times, at increasingly longer lengths, on Christmas Day.

Baptismal Gown

This post is just for Nana. I forgot to post pictures of Laine in her beautiful gown. I am sure someone with better editing software could do a good job accommodating for all of the light being behind her, but I couldn't do much to brighten the images. I hope you still enjoy them!

Wurst Fest

I apologize for the delays in posting lately. Our computer seems to be having "technical difficulties" with the extra storage drive (where the photos are stored) or Picasa (our photo editor).

Grandma helps Isaac with his hat.

Isaac and Laine in their lederhosen and dirndl, respectively. Grandma made these fantastic outfits for the kids!

Isaac takes Grandma for a walk around Landa Park.

Baby Girl and Daddy

Baby Girl and Mommy

Isaac, pausing long enough for a quick photo before running off again! :-)

Baptism Weekend

Laine and Todd before the baptismal service. Laine practicing her newest trick. LOL

The Walter family!

Reading the service leaflet

Mom and blue-eyed girl:

Todd's sister Shannon has agreed to be Laine's godmother, so she and the kids came all the way to Austin for the service! It was wonderful to have (almost) Todd's entire family here at once. We missed Scott. :-)

Godmother and goddaughter

The girls!

The McCrackens and Laine

Cute kiddos

SAND!

Kate and Grandma digging up dinosaur bones

Laine was not impressed:

Cousins!

Isaac helping Isaac to dig at another park. Sensing a theme?

Grandparents with all four grandkids!

Fun at the park:

Isaac goofing off with Grandma:

Touch a Truck

Yes, this was like a month ago. Yes, I am just now posting. Sorry.

This was Todd's birthday weekend. It was a free event in Round Rock where kids and parents got to climb on and into various types of trucks. Every little kid's (and grandpa's) dream, right? :-) Isaac had a very good time running up and down the ramps of the moving truck, but his favorite part was definitely the big sand pit where he could dig with plastic shovels. He was there for quite a while! Mom held our place in line at the backhoe loader until it got close. He also got to sit in a dump truck and a garbage truck. It was a bit scary to be so close to the trucks, I think. The theory is fun and exciting, but those trucks are pretty big when you're not quite 3' tall!

Isaac wore this sticker on his pj's and his shirts every day until it wouldn't stick any longer.

Driving the backhoe!

Family photo:

Judy had some more photos that I didn't get. Unfortunately, our computers don't like one another, so I am not able to include hers in this post.

Videos

I do think about blogging. Honest. It has been a whirlwind couple of weeks with various fundraisers. Here's what has been happening in the meantime:

October 14, Isaac demonstrates his "bouncing"

Laine sitting earlier this month, I think these are from the 15th:

This was the 21st:

At bed time the other night, Isaac decided to talk to Nana on the "phone." The following night, I took this video of him using the dimmer switch as a phone instead.

Laine's Halfy Birthday!

I intended to post this yesterday, but our computer got the best of me. It turns off automatically after 20 minutes of no activity. Unfortunately, YouTube uploading a video without me doing anything to it doesn't count as "activity," so it took me a lot longer than expected. I have figured out how to temporarily disable that option, so I finally got this finished.

I can't believe my baby girl is already 6 months old! She is such a tremendous joy. She is a sweet, happy little soul. I am so thankful for the light she brings into our lives. I will take her to the doctor next week, so I should have new "stats" on her then.

I got a little overzealous with the camera yesterday. I think you will get a laugh out of some of these photos, though, so I am posting all of them.

Laine had pureed carrots today - her very first bite of real food!

After she decided not to eat, I let her play with the spoon a bit to see if that would get her more comfortable with the idea.

After a nap, we tried again:

By the end of two tries, I would estimate that Laine actually swallowed about 1/16 of a teaspoon of carrots.

This is the dress Laine wore home from the hospital. I seem to remember that it fit her reasonably well and wasn't too big on her:

I don't know why these are sideways. They are saved correctly on my computer. Blogger won't allow me to rotate them, so you'll have to turn your head. :-)

Laine with "size comparison" Cabbage Patch Kid. :-) 

Re-commence head-tilting:

As expected, I ended up with a bit of help towards the end of the process: