I Heart Pizza

Anna-Kate has tasted her first pizza. I think she liked it!

Will and I are painting this weekend. We are excited to do this, just us. After AK goes to bed, we are going to paint 'til it is time for bed! Tune in again to see the progress.

9 Month Stats

For all grandma's and aunts everywhere, here were the interesting stats from the doctors appt today:
Height: 28 in 70 %ile
Weight: 18lb 8oz 50 %ile

9 Month Update

9 Months! We have loved you in our world baby girl!

Mobility: She is still a pre-crawler.

Verbal: "Da-da" wins as the first word. She says something that resembles, "yay" or "hey," but I don't know that we count that. She also has a pretty consistent "do[g]" that she says whenever we see Bailey, MK's dog.

Food: She still gets most of her sustenance from nursing and baby food. But, this week she has started to push away the spoon of babyfood. She will close her mouth, shake her head, and swat away the spoon. If I put puffs, green beans, peas, ...etc in front of her, she looks at me with a big grin and then starts to concentrate on picking up the food. She thinks she is such a big girl. Now, the meal time routine is to give her about half of her baby food. Then give into the table food demand. Since most of it ends up on the floor, I then give her the rest of her baby food.

Size Stats: We go for her check up on Tues. I can't wait to see how tall she is. The above pictures are her in a 12month sleeper!

We went to lunch today at Red, Hot, and Blue with my family for my mom's birthday. Anna-Kate perused her menu to figure out what she wanted. (ha ha)

I gave her some random things from our fridge.

When R,H, and B saw the food under her high chair they may not have appreciated our patronage. Most of this ended up there instead of her mouth, but great effort baby girl.

Favorites Missed

I love the smile captured here!This is simply a familiar scene in our house. AK on a blanket with toys surrounding her.

I can not get enough of this beautiful face!

Play Mates

I say this all the time, but I love how well Mary-Knowles and Anna-Kate play together. We are not without our unhappy moments, but in general they get along so well. Now that AK is more interactive and active, they really do play together (near each other) more often. It makes me look forward to next school year when they really play together. My job will get harder, but a lot more fun and interesting!
I love this picture! Look at their sweet hands.

I came in to MK's bedroom and both girls were looking at this.
MK, however, loves the camera. And, the camera loves her too!

I brought the girls to my house today. It makes for a fun outing for them, and I can get a few chores done while they sleep. AK loves showing off her house, and MK loves getting to explore a new environment.

The girls did inform me that they did not appreciate that I took this before getting them dressed for the day!

Life Lessons

Life Lesson #7 - Adoption creates a beautiful family!
My friend from high school Quinn adopted Mary Katherine and is so happy to be a mom. I am so proud of her for making that choice! These are some of Anna-Kate's "aunts." We girls have been friends since at least high school, some middle school, some even elementary school. We got to meet Mary Katherine at a party in her honor last weekend. What a beautiful and happy family!


Life Lesson #23 - [When diamonds aren't available] Target is a girl's best friend.

Anna-Kate, Mary-Knowles, and I needed an outing on Friday. When you don't have plans and no where you have to go, Target is the place to be!

Life Lesson #81 - It's tough being a baby.

In the hopes of keeping this blogger honest, I will admit that last night was a hard night for the Simmons house hold. Anna-Kate woke up at 10 and at 4:50, crying. Crying in a way that said, "I am in pain and why is no one helping me?!!!" She was trying to throw herself back in order to get away from the pain, but that didn't help. She is teething and this [or these] new tooth is hurting her way worse than the last one. When we apply baby oral gel, she screams like we are hitting her. But when the numbness sets in, she calms down and is our normal child again. As my father-in-law says, "growing a set of bones in your mouth isn't easy."

The honest part....after getting only about 5 hours of sleep last night, Will and I left after big church to come home and take a nap while Anna-Kate did.

New [to us] Activities

What do you do with two babies on a snow day? when you have been stuck in the house for days? when there is still enough snow/ice on the ground that a stroll doesn't make sense? when kids and adult are going stir crazy?

take a bath!

Where do you go first after those snow days? to entertain the girls? to give all of us a change of scenery? to meet a friend and her baby? to reward yourself for surviving all the house-bound snow days? Chic-Fil-A!!

Meal Time

As a new mom, I am finding that as soon as I get used to one stage, Anna-Kate is ready for the next stage. Watching Mary-Knowles, I am finding that to be doubly true. (Don't you love the bottom on this sleeper?!) The girls have now decided that they want to eat on a three-meal per day schedule. Mary-Knowles has also just decided that she would rather feed herself; one has to be really sneaky to get her to eat baby food.
With MK deciding to feed herself, lunch in particular has become a longer activity. AK finishes eating her food long before MK. I have used these extra minutes to read to them and talk to them. It is harder to keep their attention when they are able to crawl away or reach for new toys. Anyway, after I finished the book, Anna-Kate decided to check it out for herself.
These pictures also serve as my proof that Anna-Kate absolutely loves books!! When she starts getting fussy but it's not time to eat or sleep, I have started distracting her with books. For the record, I did not stage these pictures.
Still eating, still reading, and still waiting to clean up!

Time to play again!

Tennessee

the travelers

Will, Anna-Kate and I, along with Will's parents (known as Oma and Opa to AK) left on Saturday morning to begin the ~12 hour journey to Memphis, TN. We stopped Saturday night in Birmingham, AL before finishing the drive on Sunday. One of my favorite parts of the trip is the fact that I feel like I now have a 'history' with Will's parents, something unique that we will talk about in the years to come.
We knew AK would make or break the drive. She did wonderfully! She slept at her normal nap times. And, only fussed a little when she was hungry and we were waiting too long, or at the end of the day when we had all been in the car for 10 hours.

Memphis

Anna-Kate enjoyed meeting her great-grandparents, Grandmother and Granddaddy Doc Simmons.

The only tourist-y think we did while on this TN vacation was go to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis. Anna-Kate is too young, we know, to really appreciate this, but it was still fun to watch her get excited about seeing the ducks.

Alamo

Mama Ruth and Papa Joe Pierce were able to come to the hospital to meet Anna-Kate when she was born. She enjoyed getting to see them again. Her absolute favorite thing at this house was their dog JR. JR would lick her face and jump on her, and she would just laugh! I fear Will and I are going to hear requests for a dog before we know it.

This is Anna-Kate sitting in her great-grandfather's rocking chair. This was his chair when he was a small boy.