Amma llama loves her mama

Last week Amelie turned 9 months old! She is getting to be such a little person and I just love cuddling and kissing her chubby cheeks. Shortly after she turned 6 months old, she cut her first tooth. Now at 9 months old, she has 3 teeth and is cutting 3 more.  Around 8 months old, Amelie was getting up to sitting from a lying down position and beginning to have some forward motion.  I took some photos of this of course.

 The basic idea of her movement was to first push up into a plank.

Next, she would push her body forward by pushing her hands backward and getting a little assist from her tiptoes.

Then, sometimes she had to take a little rest and check under the chair for missing Legos.

Finally, with a little encouragement from her big brother, she would repeat the process.

It looked very much like the butterfly stroke in swimming.

Now at 9 months, however, Ami is a proper and proficient crawler. She is even dabbling in cruising around the furniture. ('Ami pajami' in this photo.)

Everyone in our house loves playing with their little doll baby sister.  It can be dangerous, but I keep a pretty close eye on her.  This is easy to do because she is almost always clinging to my leg saying, "mom-mom-mom!" I like to put Charlotte or Toby in charge of babysitting for short periods of time so I can do things (like shower) and they have been great helpers this summer.

Amelie took her first trip to Edisto beach a couple of weeks ago as well.  It is difficult to take a mobile baby to a place full of sand, and either Rob or I had to hold her all day, but she absolutely loved being in the water.  She loves any and all water- the bathtub, the pool, the lake, and now the ocean- she is such a water baby!

Ami eats like a champ and is starting to drink a bottle in the afternoon (finally.)  She likes to eat those little puffs for a snack and try bites of whatever we are having for dinner. She gives kisses, waves at people, and says, "Mama, Dada, bye-bye, and ni-night."  She also shakes her head and nods, but I am not convinced she knows what those things mean yet. 

She is still not a great sleeper and wakes me up once or twice a night to nurse.  Usually at midnight and 4 am.  If she gets up between 5:30 and 6:30 am, Rob puts her in the backpack carrier and they go for a morning walk together and then have their breakfast together.  I love this, as it means I get some more sleep!

We love our little Ameloo. She is still so smiley and loving and happy.  As long as she is getting her way.  I'm afraid she is getting to be quite spoiled because we all like to hold her and kiss her... but can a baby ever be held and kissed too much, really?

roll with me baby

For Father's Day this year, I decided we would do something a little bit different.  Every year I ask Rob what he would like for Father's Day and every year he says, "something yummy to eat, like curry." And so I make a dinner and dessert that he likes for Sunday dinner and the kiddos make him some homemade cards, and I maybe have a small gift for him.  Well, we did all those things this year too (his small gift was a Superman t-shirt, because you have to be pretty super to be the dad in this house.) But I also secretly got us a babysitter for Saturday night and surprised Rob with a date night at the roller derby!  He really was surprised!

We had never been to the roller derby before, but enjoyed the movie Whip It when we saw it, and when we saw that Augusta had a roller derby team a few months ago, the Soul City Sirens, we began joking about going to a match.  When I saw they had a home match the night before Father's Day, inspiration struck.

So anyway, we went to the roller derby.  We sat on the front row. We thoroughly enjoyed the players' and refs' pseudonyms (Ivana Hitavitch, Speedy Garcia, Space Invader, Pink Sox, Julius Seizure, and Vanilla Vice to name a few.) It was different than the movie, obviously... much more suburban, well-lit, and family friendly even.

We tried very hard to figure out when people were scoring points and to see who the lead jammer was, but I'm not gonna lie, mostly it was fun to watch the brutality and imagine the bruises.  The 70's and 80's rock music was a nice touch too.  (My personal favorite song of the night was Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls.)

If you look on the wall you can see the half time score was 144 to 32, and the second half went pretty much the same way. The Sirens slaughtered the Rome Rollergirls.  It was very entertaining. I don't think we are going to become regulars at the roller derby, but it sure was a fun and different night out! After the match, we went out for frozen yogurt and took a walk.  

Awww, aren't we cute in our new hipster specs at the roller derby!?!?

I just love my Rob so much. He is a wonderful husband and father and I am glad he willingly goes along with my silly plans. We have so much fun just being dorks together.