Alison you have been an outside baby as long as you were an inside baby.  Watching you grow and learn and change is such an awesome reminder of God’s power.  I can’t tell you how much I love being your mom and how much I love all the time we spend on the ground playing every night.

Weight 18pounds (35th%)

Length: 27 inches (25th%)

Head circumfrence: 17.75 (70th%)

Such a tiny little girl…with a big old Reasonover head 🙂

At nine months you still only have 2 teeth.  You are wearing size 2 diapers and 6-12month or 9month clothes (but you can still fit into some of your 3-6 month onesies!)  I am trying to work on putting shoes on you.  You aren’t a fan of shoes and it really is my fault.  I don’t think I bought any shoes for you until the last month.  You never put them on for the first 8 months of your life, so its no wonder you aren’t a fan.  Now that it’s getting colder I need to start training you to keep your shoes on.

You are turning into a picky eater.  You will eat any and all fruit, but you aren’t such a fan of veggies or meat.  You are also compeletly over being fed with a spoon.  If you can’t feed yourself you aren’t interested.  Except when it comes to applesauce.  Applesauce is affectionally known as ‘baby crack’ around our house.  If you won’t eat your carrots we mix it with applesauce.  Then you will eat it all!  Works with almost everything.  You don’t like much protein except black beans, so I’m feeding you lots of those.  We are starting to work with a sippy cup (with water) and the doctor gave us the go ahead to add milk in small amounts to the cup soon.  We have started yogurt, so it’s ok to start adding some milk.

Sleeping is still a challenge with you little girl.  You do sleep through most nights, but on the nights you don’t sleep we have a hard time getting you to go back down.  You just want me to hold you all.the.time!!

This past month you finally starting crawling for real and not just army crawling.  Now you are all over the place and into everything.  You can pull yourself to standing and like to play with toys where you stand up.  I am not ready for you to walk so just stay on the ground 🙂

You L-O-V-E your brother.  You are finally getting tougher and sturdier so I can let the two of you play.  You love to sit back and watch Reed when he’s acting goofy or wrestling with Daddy.  You just watch him with those huge blue eyes and laugh and laugh and laugh.  Oh we have such a great time in the evenings after work.

You like to blabber a lot!  (Randy says you are just like me, but I disagree).  You will look at Randy and say da-da, but I don’t think it is intentional. 

The cutest little development I have seen is that you will hold your hand up as though you are waving, but you don’t actually wave.  When we leave the nursery at church you always hold up your hand to the girls when we leave.  They get SUCH a kick out of it.

My favorite thing is that when you are on the ground and want me to pick you up you will hold up your arms and open/close your hands.  I know I talk about how much you want to be held and about how you only want me to hold you.  This is a problem when I’m trying to get ready for work or make dinner…but oh this brings me such incredible joy.  There isn’t much more I want out of this life than the happiness I get from you (and Reed).  When you hold you little hands up for me to pick you up I will literally drop whatever I’m doing to satisfy your request.  I love you so much sweet girl.

This evening was a volleyball night for Randy so I was solo with the kids like I am every Thursday night.  I put Ali to bed and she seemed to fall asleep.  Then I put Reed to bed and sat down on the couch for the first time all evening ready to read a magazine. 

As soon as my feet hit the ottoman Ali started screaming.  I knew she wasn’t hungry and she had a clean diaper so I let her cry for a while.  After just a few minutes I had this feeling that I needed to go check on her.  Normally I would let her cry for a good 15 minutes before checking on her.  For some reason I went with my instinct and went to check on her.  What I found was a little girl STANDING in her crib and leaning over the rail at the waist.  No exaggeration she was probably minutes from falling out of her crib down to the ground. 

Praise the Lord for those little nudges he gives us and praise the Lord I wasn’t too wrapped up in my own agenda to listen to the nudge. 

If she had fallen it would have been an immediate trip to the ER (because the fall would have been longer than 2 times her body length.  Little nugget of info for you if you don’t know that rule of thumb.)  As I ran to grab her out of her bed I started thinking through what I would have done if she had fallen.  Randy is at volleyball and wouldn’t hear his phone.  All 4 of the grandparents were out of town.  No car seats are installed in my car because I had just picked up the rental that afternoon.  In short I would have to run next door and bang on Victor’s door so he could come stay with Reed.  Then I would have to just strap Ali’s seat into the seatbelt with no base (because I have no idea how to strap in the base and I definitely wouldn’t have been able to figure it out in such a crisis).  Again…Praise the Lord that it didn’t come to this.

Obviously as soon as Randy got home we lowered her mattress all the way to the bottom.  Yeah for Ali being able to pull up to standing, but couldn’t you have showed me this new trick in a less dramatic fashion?? (Sorry I don’t have pictures, obviously it was a tense situation :))

Alison you are already 8 month old!

You are still a super smiley and happy baby.  The only time you fuss is if you are hungry or I walk out of the room.  I love that you are a cuddler and that you are a mommy’s girl.  When I hold you you snuggle in and its so easy to hold you that I don’t want to put you down.  That’s convenient because you don’t ever want to be put down!

You are still a crappy sleeper.  Some nights are good, and some nights are not.  Hopefully you will start consistently sleeping through the night one day.  One thing is for sure…if Reed had been as terrible of a sleeper as you, you would not have been born so quickly!!

You are a good eater and will eat most anything I feed you.  However, you are definitely a woman because you like your foods sweet.  Applesauce is your baby crack.  Anytime you refuse to eat something we will put a little applesauce in it and all of a sudden you open your mouth wide.  Funny girl.

You are crawling like a wild woman, but it isn’t a traditional crawl.  I need to get it on video because its hard to describe the way you crawl.  But it is funny.

You are wearing size 6-9 or 6-12 month clothes and size 2 diapers.

Your hair is still a little red and GiGi just told me that my great-grandmother’s hair looked like yours.  Maybe that is where it comes from.  Who knows if it will stick around though 🙂  You also still have those captivating blue eyes like your brother and your daddy’s eyelashes. 

You LOVE to watch your brother act silly.  He runs and jumps all over the place to make you smile and you pay off every time. 

I love that you are so attached to me, but you have captured the heart of all the men in your life too.  Your brother, Daddy and Duke are so enamored with you.  It makes me happy to see how loved you are.

Love you sweet girl!!!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, Alison has teeth. I literally had no idea they were so close to emerging. Thursday night she was awake from 2-4am, but she never screamed. She was just awake and smiley. Same story on Friday night. Annoying, but not bad. Saturday afternoon we were at our old neighbor’s house swimming with the kids and having drinks and dinner. Ali was sucking on Doreen’s margarita glass (yes, just the glass, not the margarita) so intently that I started to wonder what was going on. Sure enough when I reached my impeccibly clean finger into her mouth I felt not one but two teeth!
What a sweet girl, she didn’t even scream and cry with her first teeth. Let’s hope all of her teeth come in this easily.

I feel like a broken record, but this first year of Ali’s life is flying by.  I can not believe this little girl is already 7 months old!

Let’s get all the details out of the way first:

Height & weight – no idea!!  Praise the Lord we haven’t been to the doctor for a sick visit in months!  (Of course she woke up yesterday with a snotty nose and feeling a little warm)

That brings me to teeth.  She doesn’t have any yet, but I’m not surprised.  Reed was a late teether too.

She is on the move.  If there is something she wants, she can get to it.  She hasn’t crawled yet, but she rolls like a maniac and can scoot herself to whatever she wants to play with.

Size – Ali is wearing size 2 diapers and either size 6 month or 9 month clothes.  She can fit in 6 month, she can also still squeeze into a few 3 month onesies but she’s getting too long for her 6 month jammies.

Food – She is still nursing, but now she’s getting one formula bottle a day.  It hurts my pride, but it’s better for me.  She is OBSESSED with sweet potatoes.  I think she would eat a whole cup if I kept feeding it to her.  I’m still making her food and it seems easier this time around.  I thought it would be harder, but I just puree whatever I’m feeding Reed.  She likes everything I have ever fed her which is a change from Reed.  He was a picky little eater at her age.  She eats: melon, peaches, bananas, prunes, applesauce, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes and oatmeal.  I think this month we are supposed to start meats so that should be fun.

Sleep – she takes 2 or 3 wimpy naps at school everyday.  Then when she gets home she will eat and take another nap.  Sometimes she sleeps all the way until her nighttime snack (around 9) and goes right back to bed.  On good days she wakes up at 6:30 or 7 for her morning meal, but most of the time its more like 5:30. 

Her hair is starting to grow back in.  She has just gotten the first little curls in the back.  LOVE it!!

She really has such a sweet temperament.  She isn’t too excited when I put her down on her changing pad to change her diaper, but I’m not sure if that is because she doesn’t want to be put down or because she doesn’t want her diaper changed.  One huge bonus is that she is in a HUGE mommy phase.  As soon as she sees me she lights up.  When I put her down or walk in the other room she reacts immediately.  I would be lying if I said I didn’t love this!!

I rave about her sweet personality all the time, but she is seriously the sweetest child ever.  (Maybe she just seems like a breath of fresh air compared to her bossy and serious older brother).

Half a year already! My how our lives have changed. This first six months certainly went a lot different than the first six months with Reed. All we can say is… she’s certainly a girl.

Ali has added more laughing to her smile this past month. When her mood allows it, she will smile at us from across the room and sometimes get herself worked up enough to giggle. At these times she seems to laugh at everything. I think she got a little of that from her mother. She is a joy to be around. Her teachers have even commented to us how good she normally is.

She is eating an assortment of solid foods now and is not as picky as she used to be. In fact she will dive into the spoon with her mouth wide-open for *almost* everything we have tried.  She is eating bananas, cereal, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes and applesauce. 

She is wearing size 2 diapers and 6 month clothes (and growing out of them quickly).  At her 6 month checkup she was 50% in both height and weight…just like Reed.

She is finally sleeping like a champ and cross our fingers she has been very healthy all summer.  Let’s hope she keeps this up!

As for sitting up, she is still a little wobbly and shouldn’t be unattended, or at least un-padded. And when left to roll around on the floor, you’d better watch your feet… she’s even started to push with her legs when she’s on her tummy. Watch out! We might have a crawler in the next month’s update.

My little chunk is 5 months old already!! 

Alison you are the smiley-est baby I have ever seen.  You really only cry if you are hungry or want to be held. 

You love to play in your exersaucer.  You are reaching for toys and chewing on everything you can get your hands on.  I wonder if you will get your teeth on time or be a late teether like your brother.

About 2 weeks ago we let you try rice cereal.  You weren’t a fan at first, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of feeding you.  I knew you were hungry for more than breast milk, so I let the professionals try.  Of course you ate like a champ for your day care ladies.  Rosario commented that you were going to get ‘fluffy’ once you started eating food.  Boy was she right!  You really are a big ole’ chunk of a baby girl and I love it! 

Now we are on to oatmeal and applesauce.  I can’t wait to make all of your baby food just like I did for Reed.  (I wonder how it will go when I make you sweet potatoes…Reed is truly obsessed with sweet potatoes so I might have to make one for you and 3 for him so that he won’t eat yours.  HA!) 

You are a terrible napper and we are hoping your naps will get longer and more consistent next month once you move to the next room at day care.  We think the room you are in is just too noisy and hectic for you to ever get into a deep sleep.  Right now you only sleep for like 45 minutes 2 or 3 times a day.  We need you to sleep longer than that!!  At night you are finally sleeping through the night…but not every night.  I still feed you around 10pm but I try not to feed you again until at least 5am.   Luckily your congestion has finally cleared up so we don’t hear you coughing all night long.  Let’s hope you stay clear for a few months.

You are wearing 6 month clothes and we are still shoving your little bottom into the last of our size 1-2 diapers.  You really should be in size 2s, and we will get you there soon!!

It is a good thing you are such an adorable and happy baby when you are awake because it makes up for all the times you wake us up in the night.

Your daddy, brother and Duke are still wrapped around your little finger.  Luckily the feeling is mutual.

The other night you were fussy right before bed.  I was trying to put Reed to sleep at the same time that I was holding you to calm you down.  As soon as I walked into Reed’s room and you saw him you stopped crying.  He made you laugh and you were happy again.  Both of you went right to sleep (but only after Reed could ‘kiss A-li’ and ‘hu-g- A-li’.  He demands to do that at least 3 times every single day).  I hope your relationship is always this special.

Every day of your life has been a great one for me.  Your smile literally lights up my life.  I love being your mommy and I love watching you get bigger and stronger.  I can’t wait until you can talk and we can go on mommy/daughter dates. 

I love you sweet girl!