Reality Check

Thursday night, April 30th, started out like any other night. I got home from work and started our evening routine, if you would call it that. Everything was normal until bedtime. Violet does not like bedtime and usually will not go to sleep without a fight. However, for some reason, she fell asleep eating her bedtime bottle. I considered this a blessing, as this is how I used to put her to sleep...so much easier! So then I went and laid her in her bed and thought I had the rest of the night free!

Well, probably an hour later, Violet woke up crying. I go into her room to see what the problem is and she's standing in the corner of her bed! Needless to say, I freaked out. I immediately grabbed her and called John into her room to lower her mattress to the lowest setting (it was still on the highest setting). We had never seen her pull herself up to standing before so it was a total shock!

That was my first reality check that we need to start baby-proofing the house.

You see, Violet started crawling (finally!) on April 22nd.

And then on Saturday, April 25th, she sat up in her crib. When I woke up, I heard her talking to herself and went to get her. This is what I found.




That's right, my little girl was looking out her crib like she was in a prison cell! She was just calmly sitting there, kicking her legs through the rails trying to look over the top to figure out her next move, I suppose.

But even with the crawling and the sitting up in her bed, reality hadn't quite sunk in.

The third sign it was time to baby-proof that I'd been ignoring for quite some time is the fact that Violet likes to stick her finger into little holes exploring. You see, she has this little xylophone toy that she likes to turn upside-down and poke her fingers into the screw holes.

While I knew this would one day present a problem, I wasn't too worried because she wasn't yet crawling. So therefore, she couldn't stick her tiny fingers into the outlet holes.

Now is obviously an entirely different story.

But no, this point was not driven into my head until we found her standing in her bed.

I now am printing out baby-proofing your house checklists to make sure I don't forget anything. The first priority (lowering her bed) is already done. Next is installing outlet covers on all the outlets in our house. Third priority, not quite sure yet. I'm guessing cabinet and drawer locks. For normal people with babies, it would be picking up all the little things babies can put into their mouths. But Violet doesn't put things into her mouth yet. She often will pick up a quarter or other coin and just play with it. One day this will probably change, but for now, we're safe in that context.

So there is the story of how I got a reality check the other day. While I'm sure I'll have many more, that one sure did freak me out!

9-Month Check-Up

Tuesday, April 21st was Violet's 9 month check-up...officially, she was 9 months and 2 days old.

John took her to the appointment b/c I had a chiropractor appointment to try to figure out what's been going on with my neck.

I had e-mailed John some questions for the doctor I wanted him to ask for me, and he actually e-mailed them out and the doctor wrote down the answers on the paper!

Here are her official stats:
- Weight: 18.36 pounds (42nd percentile)
- Length: 28.54 inches (82nd percentile)
- Head Circumference: 17.68 inches (77th percentile)

Some new things in Violet's life:
- She likes to clap her hands (a lot)
- She now has 3 teeth...two on bottom and one on top.
- She says 3 words: Dada, Mama, and uh-oh. She may have said "block", that's what we heard once but we haven't ever heard her say it again so it could have been coincidental.
- She waves bye, but only when she's in the mood. She doesn't like to wave bye when one of us is actually leaving, but when it's playtime, she'll do it!
- She throughly enjoys banging things together. We went out to eat the other day and she was sitting in the high chair...I gave her a toy to entertain herself and she starting pounding it on the table. Needless to say I then had to take it away because we don't want to ever be one of "those" families. We tried to find ways to entertain her without so much noise.

I think that's all for now!

Spring Fever

Sunday, April 19th was John's first triathlon of the season...the Spring Fever sprint triathlon. It was also my second triathlon with Violet...the first was Redman last September. Spectating and photo-taking was definitely a different experience with her! I shall tell the story through pictures.

Here's John jumping into the pool to start his swim. We only watched the first few laps because then it was time to head outside to try to catch him heading out of transition.


And here is Violet wondering what's going on and why we're out and about so early. You can almost see the look on her face saying "Mom, what are we doing now?". Priceless.


Here's John heading out of the bike transition. I was worried we wouldn't make it there in time to get a picture...but we did! Unfortunately, that was probably because he got a flat tire in the transition...he has pretty bad race-day luck!


Check out his sweet bike.


Here he is heading out on the run. I used the time on the bike as an opportunity to feed V before it was time for the second transition. After that, I pushed Violet's stroller back and forth, trying (unsuccessfully) to get her to take her morning nap.


And here he is approaching the finish line. Run daddy run!


Violet FINALLY fell asleep for her morning nap, just before daddy finished. She fought it really hard but tiredness took over.


However, the nap did not last too long and she woke up. Yay, daddy's back!


While I knew that meant she would be grumpy from such a short nap, how can you not love a face as ornery as this?!


So, since she was awake now, I had to get a picture of her and John. It took several tries because every time one of them was looking at me, the other wasn't. I gave up.


And here she is being loaded back into her carseat after the big race, happy as ever!


Our day of triathlon was now over...while it was more difficult spectating with her, we made it through the day and even got quite a few pictures of John so I considered it a success! =)

V's First Easter

I bought Violet her Easter dress really early (like, right after Christmas) because I found a really cute one (on sale)! So, Easter Sunday comes and I go to put it on her and it's almost too small! Oopsie... Also, I decided since she's too young to put up a fight and because I couldn't help myself that she needed a set of bunny ears!

So here she is all dressed up.


It took about a bazillion takes to get some good pictures. She was more interested in playing than sitting still for me and her "ears" kept falling down and yadda yadda...but here are a couple more.




We headed over to my parents house for a little while and then to John's parents house for some more fun.

In the week following Easter, I took pictures almost every night. I know this because I had to upload my pictures the following Sunday before John's race because the card was full!

Here she is smiling away.


In this one, she was actually clapping but it looks like she could be tapping her fingers together in a mysterious way thinking of an evil plan.


Here she is playing with the phone book (again!). My caption for this one is "Uh-oh, you caught me!"


Here she is trying to steal Daddy's gum!


And this one I just love...here she is "reading" her My Little Pony book.


I love it because first, she looks like she's actually reading it! For those of you that don't know, I have always been an avid reader! And second, she looks like such a little person instead of a baby. She's sitting there in her jeans and shirt and just looks like such a big girl!

Next post will cover John's first triathlon of the season!

Loving the Phone Book

So, a few weeks ago, I needed to call Wal-Mart auto express to get their hours. Since that's slightly harder to search for on my iPhone, I decided to whoop out the phone book.

After wiggling over to check out what it was, we quickly discovered one of Violet's new favorite things...tearing apart the phone book!

She sits there and rips page after page out...sometimes she just rips and rips, sometimes she crinkles the pages, and sometimes she tears the pages into little pieces. Whatever her mood, the phone book can be quite entertaining.

Here's a picture of her "roar" face, where she's smiling SO big and showing off those two little teeth, while playing phone book.

"Roar, I'm a monster!"


And here she is just playing away...


Next post will include all our Easter pictures! And hopefully, video. I know I keep saying that but one of these days it'll happen! =)