Good Motivation

Yes, Mama. I can stand up away from my crib
all by myself. I just need the right motivation.

Ally is getting BIG

Ally says: "Good Morning!"
Yup, she's now quite able to pull herself up in the crib, and is really close elsewhere. The spindles of the crib are just perfect for her. She never seems to go right to sleep anymore, but spends 30-60 minutes pulling up and playing (happily, if you can believe it) in the crib before finally passing out. She's adapting the skill for other pieces of furniture, and she is successful a lot of the time. Cruising does not seem to far in the future!

Our little librarian-in-training pulling books out of the reference section	Carl is very patient and lets Ally pound on pet him and pull his tail
	We missed the moment, but the picture helps you visualize. Carl was on the table with his tail hanging down. Ally (almost) pulled up to standing and grabbed at his tail. He just kept flicking it out of the way.

Tip of the day to our readers: If you want to see any of the pictures "in full", click on them and the large image will (or at least SHOULD) open.

PS - While I finished this post, Ally crawled into the front hall and discovered a new bookcase to "organize". She is very excited.

Lots of Pictures

Sorry we've been bad bloggers. Where does the time go? I guess a lot of it goes into playing with Ally - feeding Ally, dressing Ally, and helping her to walk. Yes she is crawling now - but her favorite thing is walking and standing. You can see she does a lot of it in the pictures below.

In the pictures you can see the fashion show we had one night; how she really does (sometimes) like to eat, and how adorable she looks in her BabyLegs (AKA legwarmers).

I wanted to say hello to our new friends Cheryl and Alice. Alice is about 6 weeks older than Ally and she came home from Guatemala in May. It was really nice to get together with another mom, swap stories and enjoy the beautiful weather at the park today.

I love that she has 2 handfuls of shredded apple and some apple falling out of her mouth!

Sometimes she is just too cute!!

Fashion Show Starts here:

New shoes, cute shirt from Aunt Suzie and fun demin skirt.

New Outfit from Grandma Debbie. (Yes the 6-12 fit just fine.)

Becky and I got new slippers recently and they had the same style in baby sizes, so I HAD to get Ally a pair. Her feet need fleece slippers to stay warm, right?

So the next few are shots from this morning. We bought these BabyLegs, leg warmers and they are fantastic. No need to take pants off for changing, and they keep socks on so her feet stay warm. Yes I know we bought slippers, but it turns out even the smallest size slippers are too big for her feet! The babylegs come in all different patterns, Those of you who know her will appreciate that Becky loves this pattern!

She is so proud of herself - she pulled the napkins off a table and proceeded to shred them. We let her play with it until she started to eat the paper!

A quick update

I don't have a big chunk of time, so this won't be too elaborate today. I wanted to get some photos up.

This weekend, Grandma Debbie and Poppy (yes, that is my father) and Julie, Ally and I travelled to visit Aunt Beth on Nantucket. It was great to see them all, and the fam got to see Ally crawling. She's really started to take off...pulling books off the shelf, exploring the cat food...it's fantastic and crazy all at once. Right now, the sofa cushions are working as a gate to keep her in the general area I want her in. We'll see how long that works. Ha.

Here are the photos!

I am so excited!	Thanks Aunt Beth! I love the toy room.
Hanging with Grandma and Poppy	Aunt Beth and Ally

Forward Progress

Ally has started to crawl today! She only seems to be able to go a few feet or maybe only wants to go a few feet yet, but it is what I'd call crawling! As you can also see in the video, she can get to crawling position from sitting, and vice versa.

Cousins, Grandparents and Funny Looks

Ally, Kimn and Jesse	Eric and Ally watching baseball
Ally and Kimn	Ally and Grandpa Frank

So we had a visit from Julie's cousin Kimn, Eric, Justin and Jesse while they are visiting from Hawaii. Justin somehow eluded our camera, we'll have to try again if we can see them when they get back to town here. We also visited Grandma Barb and Grandpa Frank this past weekend, and Ally loved to sit on Grandpa's lap and rip up catalogs.


This is Ally's latest pose. It's almost like her other facial expressions, because she's started imitating. So if I look at her with an expression (that she knows how to do), she'll imitate it. Now if I put my hands on my head, that is what I get back. It's pretty funny.

Also new today, Ally has started to get herself to a sitting position in her crib from laying down. We figure she is using the bumper to help her, but she will fuss forever and not go to sleep, then when I go in she is sitting up looking at me. I'll pick her up, which doesn't make Ally terribly happy, but then she'll pass out on my shoulder within 5 minutes because she's worn herself out.

We figure she has to figure out how to lay herself back down soon. I don't know. Every time she was put down to sleep today (yes, all three times) that is what happened. The first time she was really upset! I hope that she deals with it better tomorrow. Maybe it's that I need to deal with it better.

Oh, and when Ally really starts moving, I am in deep doo-doo.

Ally likes to stand, her teeth are getting big and she loves the cats.

Ally really likes to stand up and hold on to things. No she is not walking or even cruising or crawling, she does the Army crawl on her stomach. But she is so proud of herself when she stands. She also loves the cats - she laughs so much when they come near her and she gets really excited. They are still smarter than her and come near her but usually stay out of her reach. You can see that in the one with Carl on the table - Ally cannot reach him. The only other news is how big her teeth are getting, they are so big she can chew on the chair!