Sitting up and Crawling!!!

After our run this morning, Brandon pulled out the video camera to try to catch Genni in one of her attempts at sitting up on her own and got her first time crawling!  She has been trying harder to figure it out lately, but this morning, she actually did it!  And we got part of it on camera!  It was very exciting, (please excuse the post-workout mess that I am in the background).

Life lately...

February was a really fun month for us.  Lisa got engaged and made plans to take her fiance, Clint home to meet my family (in Idaho).  Naturally, I didn't want to be left out of such an event, so Genni threw a fit until Brandon agreed that we should go (it was very important to Genni that we get to know Lisa's fiance).  I decided to make it a surprise and was it ever!  My dad picked us up and on our way to Millie's house, I texted her a picture of me trying on bridesmaid's dresses that I had taken the day before (I'm so sneaky).  We walked in and Gracie started screaming Genni's name.  Millie walked in with the intention of setting things straight for Grace, but then realized that my dad was in fact, holding Genni.  She said "what?" a few times, each time getting louder until she finally screamed, "WHAT?!" and saw me standing behind my dad and Genni.  We hugged several times, it was awesome.

We kept my being there a secret for a couple of days and when Lisa arrived on Friday night with Clint, we surprised her as well.  When they got to my mom's house, Millie insisted on showing Lisa a bridesmaid dress she liked and when she walked out, I walked out behind her and said "but this one is my favorite".  Once again, there was a lot of screaming and hugging...and it was also awesome.  So that was a lot of fun.  The weekend was spent doing A LOT of wedding stuff.  We tasted wedding cakes (this may come as a shock to many, but this is my personal favorite part of wedding planning), picked out bridesmaid's dresses, jewelry, shoes, announcements...it was busy, and I was so glad to be part of  it.  We love Clint and are so happy that he will be part of our family.  AND...it snowed while we were there!!!  Genni was a little confused by the snow at first, but she ended up having a lot of fun in it.  Warning: there a lot of pictures of this event.  But in my defense, she was SO cute in her little snow outfit.

The day after getting back from Idaho was Fat Tuesday!  After fighting major traffic, we finally made it to the parade.  And despite major exhaustion from travelling the day before, we had a great time.

I feel like Genevieve changes pretty much every day at this point.  This morning Brandon and I were watching her play and were both pointing out new developments she has made.  It's so exciting.  She is pretty much sitting up on her own now.  She tips over sometimes, but she just gets up on her hands and knees or rolls around until she's in a new position to play.  For the past couple of weeks, she has been getting on her hands and knees and rocking, like she's trying to take off.  She'll make an attempt once in awhile to move forward, but as soon as she picks up one of her hands, she crashes...until this morning.  For the first time, she moved her hand and knee forward and stayed up!  The really exciting thing was that Brandon was here to see it.  She isn't crawling yet, but she's getting closer every day.  We've made a couple of attempts at solid foods, but she's not totally interested in them yet and to be honest, neither am I.  It gets so messy and the diapers get smelly...so we're not in a huge hurry to bring that into our lives.

Whether he's talking or singing, she loves listening to her dad.

This was an especially rough day of teething.  She spent most of the day in the Bjorn, chewing on frozen pacifiers and teething toys.

The other day I left Genni playing on the floor in her room for about 2-3 minutes and I heard her screaming protests (she does this as a warning that crying is moments away).  This is how I found her...she's really excited about the new found freedom of rolling and scooting.

I've been trying to get her to attach to a "lovey" to help her put herself to sleep, but have been totally unsuccessful.  I didn't even realize the teddy bear was in her crib from earlier.  A few minutes after putting her down for her nap this morning, I went in to check on her and this is how I found her.

So sweet!

Genevieve's First Christmas!

I do realize that Christmas was a couple of months ago, but I didn't have the pictures until now.  So here it is.

We spent Christmas with my family in Idaho and had a lot of fun.  My nieces and nephew were so excited to have a new cousin!  They were constantly asking to hold her and presenting me with their recently washed hands so that they could do so (Millie, knowing my paranoia of germs, explained to them before we arrived that they could only touch the baby if they washed their hands first).  Genni loved the CONSTANT attention and even though we thought she would be overwhelmed by the amount of noise and commotion, she actually loved it.  Little Logan loved her immediately and was constantly asking questions about her and "how old will she be when I'm 10...and 14...", it was really sweet, but sadly I didn't manage to get any pictures of the two of them together.

Christmas morning was spent with Millie's family.  Mom and Elizabeth came, which was really neat and then we had Christmas dinner with Dad, Debbie and my brothers.  

Isaac is the baby whisperer...seriously.  He's amazing at getting babies to sleep, and he likes it, and I like handing off a tired, grumpy baby and having her come back to me happy and rested.  I miss having him around.

Sam was good with her too, and they were both really excited to be "new uncles" again.

Don is very serious about cooking breakfast.

Grandma Davis gave Genni this adorable Christmas sleeper.

She desperately tried getting those Santa's on her feet into her mouth.

Mia and Elizabeth.

Genni was really excited about the tissue paper, and was very anxious to get it into her mouth (do you see a pattern here?  She wants to put EVERYTHING in her mouth).  Side note: last night I was bathing her and for the first time she noticed the drain.  Unfortunately for her, the drain was under 2-3 inches of water, but that didn't stop her from trying to get her mouth on it.  She tried several times and was not at all discouraged by the amount of water she inhaled during these attempts...I was, however, so her bath time was cut short.  Bath water is so gross, is there a trick to discouraging babies from trying to drink it that I'm unaware of?  Apart from being disgusting, it was really funny.  Anyway, back to Christmas.