Milestones

As I've said....Lily is crawling, pulling herself up on any and everything, edging her way around furniture and just growing and developing by leaps and bounds daily. She out grows things in minutes it seems. She had a pair of newborn shoes that she wore about four times before they no longer fit. Grace's old shoes were too big one month and too small a month later. This week, I once again made hand prints of Grace and foot prints of Lily and I had to specifically state that the feet belonged to Lily, as they look (in print) big enough to belong to Grace! At 7 months old she is so long that she is already in 12 month clothes and at that she is almost too long for them! She is not at all like Grace. She is going to be tall like her father and her poor older sister is going to be short like me. Hopefully not 5'2" short, but not the 5'6 or 7 I am guesstimating Lily to be.

Lily is impressively strong; not only is she able to pull her self up on everything, she can do it from a sitting position, no crawling or kneeling required. She just grabs on with her little hands and pulls. She's lightening quick too! More than once I was standing in front of her bedroom door and she's asleep, then I heard her stir, by the time I got the door open, she is already standing! She has fallen in love with this ability so much that she just wants to stand all the time...She fights so hard at bath time to stand up in the bath chair, the very thing that keeps Grace from drowning her sister every night. She is strong enough to support her self sitting in the tub and if she were in the bath alone, I'd allow it, but she no match for her big sister who is like a typhoon.

I wish Lily could be as proud of what she can do as I am and not get so frustrated at the things she cannot do yet. Yesterday, at the Library, all Lily wanted to do was jump up and run around the story time room with Grace and Rylan. She tried and tried to get away from me and was so frustrated that she was stuck crawling while her big sis and their buddy were off and running. It won't be long though. Lily tests those legs everyday. She has not mastered standing at a piece of furniture with one hand yet, but she gets closer everyday.** Here's her latest accomplishment...

** since I started this draft on Thursday she has mastered standing holding on with only one hand. She has even stood for a few seconds a coupe of time without holding anything... "Look Ma, no hands!!" **

I wish that I could share some video of Grace swimming, but it's not possible to both be in the water and video taper her at the same time. Brian will be back next weekend and we'll get some video of our little mermaid then. She has mastered and spends most of our time in the pool doing the Dead Man's Float. As soon as she discovered this new found ability to float, it's all she wants to do. It's quite funny to see. Before she needs to come up of air, she's got her arms out to the sides and her knees bent, so from the knees down her legs are out of the water, just like a skydiver. It's really very funny. She can swim under water and get a dive ring that I hold between my toes, halfway between the surface and the bottom of the pool. Lily gets quite a kick (ha ha! No pun intended) out of Grace's using Lily's float as a kick board and swimming her around the pool.

I am ''wowed'' daily in the car when Grace sings out the lyrics to a song on the radio. Currently her favorites are Kid Rock and Cyndi Lauper. So, trying to find a more appropriate version of some songs for her, we have the Kidz Bop CD in the car now. Sean Kingston's 'Beautiful Girls' is the new, number one, sings it even when it's not on favorite, with Gwen Stefani's 'Sweet Escape' a close second. I still crack up though when she sings out "...Sippin' whiskey out the bottle, not thinkin' 'bout tomorrow, singin' Sweet Home Alabama, all summer long..."

I hope to have Grace video soon...