Ila - Six Months!

Hey y'all!  It's me - Ila!

I turned six months old last Friday, April 10th!  My mommy can hardly believe it!  She can be a little dramatic and has been moaning and groaning about how I'm already half way to my birthday!  She's so silly.

My daddy had to go out of town for a bachelor party on Friday, but my Gamma came to town, and Mommy, Gamma and Sissy took me to The Children's Museum.  I like it there because they have lots of mirrors so that I can see myself everywhere that I look.  I love to look at myself because I am so cute.

There was also lots and lots of space for me to roll and roll around and lots of fun toys to play with.

I love to roll.  I don't crawl yet, but I can get from one side of the room to the other in the blink of an eye by rolling.  Sometimes I get stuck in a corner or something so I scream and scream until Mommy comes to save me.

Speaking of Mommy, I sure do love her.  She's my favorite person in the whole world, and other people are only allowed to hold me if they stand next to Mommy so that I can see her the whole time.  I don't like it when Mommy leaves me EVER!  You know what I did to make sure that she couldn't leave me?  I started refusing to take a bottle!  A few weekends ago, Mommy and Daddy tried to leave me with Poppa James and Sue-Sue to go to a couples shower.  I showed them though!  When they brought out a bottle, I screamed for an hour straight until Poppa finally called Mommy and she came home and fed me.  I did it to Gamma once too when Mommy and Daddy tried to go out with some friends.  Now Mommy knows that she can't leave me or I'll starve myself.  HAHAHAHA!

I have what Mommy calls a "witching hour".  Starting every evening around 5:30, I must be held by Mommy and MOMMY ONLY for a couple of hours.  This can be a little frustrating to Mommy because she's usually very busy around this time, but I don't care.  I ONLY want Mommy to hold me.  She used to try to hand me to Daddy so she could do something silly like cook dinner or brush Sissy's teeth before bed, but I just scream and scream until Daddy gives me back to Mommy.  So Mommy has started putting me in an ergo during my witching hour.  I like this a lot.  It's so comfortable against Mommy's chest, and now I just sleep in my ergo while Mommy cooks and cleans the kitchen and gets Sissy ready for bed and stuff like that.  It makes it more difficult for Mommy to do things while wearing an ergo, but I don't really care.

Some other things about me are: I am very, very ticklish.  Mornings are my favorite time.  I wake up smiling.  I love to smile.  Smiling's my favorite.  I am very good at sleeping.  I still sleep in my bassinet next to Mommy and Daddy's bed.  I like it there.  I love to pull on the cat's fur when she walks by me.  It's so funny!  It makes me laugh!  I love to give kisses and slobber all over everybody's cheeks.  I still don't have any teeth.  Prior to 5:30 every day, I'm a perfect angel.  I am completely addicted to my paci.  I looovvveeee to talk.  If I'm trying to talk to you and you don't seem to be paying attention to me, I will start coughing and pretending that something is wrong so that you will run over to me.  Then I grin and laugh because I fooled you.  I'm also really, really small.

I had my six month check-up yesterday, and at 12 lbs. 15 oz., I don't even register on the charts.  My Mommy asked the doctor what percentile I was in, and the doctor said, "zero".  But since I'm proportionate and happy and meeting all my milestones, the doctor said I am A-OK!

Mommy took that picture before I had my shots.  I wasn't so happy after I got my shots, and if Mommy would've told me they were coming, I wouldn't have been smiling in this picture!

For my half birthday, Mommy and Sissy made me half a birthday cake!  Mommy let Sissy decorate it, and I laid in my nap nanny and watched her.  I love watching Sissy.

Since Daddy was out of town on my actual half birthday, we didn't celebrate me until last night.  I loved my cake.  Sissy did a good job!

But then they didn't let me eat any of it!  And they all ate it RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!  How rude!

So I don't get to eat cake yet, but now that I'm a big girl and six months old, Mommy says I can have some other food.  On Sunday, she mashed up a banana for me.  It was my very first time to eat food!  I really liked it, and ate everything that was in the bowl!  Sissy helped feed me too.  I sure do love my big sissy.  She's very nice to me.  Sometimes she gives me hugs and I grab her hair and pull it and she screams and I just laugh and laugh!

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you!  I can sit up now!  I did it for the first time on exactly my six month birthday!  It's amazing at how good I've gotten at it in just a few days!  It sure is fun to be able to sit up by myself now!  It's much better than laying down all the time!

I'm such a happy girl.  I think I have a pretty good life.  It's so awesome to be me!

Easter Weekend

Ila is content with a teething ring; Eden is watching her two TV shows of the day... Let's do this quick quick quick!

First Eden and Ila's Palm Sunday pictures.  Because
A. my dad and Susie bought their dresses in Ireland so they're special to me
B. this is one of my all-time favorite pictures of Eden ever (and I take a lot of pictures - y'all may have noticed!)

Okay - on to Easter weekend!  Last Saturday and Sunday were completely jam-packed and completely wonderful!

On Saturday morning we took Eden (and Ila) to the community Easter egg hunt.

so excited on the way there!

We went home for a quick lunch for Eden and a quick nap for Ila.

awwwww...

Then we headed over to my dad's cousin's house (she lives across a pasture from us).  My second cousin, Meredith, was in town for the weekend with her little girl, and Nancy and Meredith invited us over so that Eden and Savannah could play.  They had stuffed a piñata with Easter eggs and stickers and toy jewelry and bouncy balls, and it was so sweet, so cute, so fun!  Eden and Savannah loved it!

We went back to our house, and Eden and I dyed Easter eggs while Ila watched us from her bumbo seat.

Later that evening, Dustin's parents came over.  Eden and Dustin's mom dyed more eggs, and Dustin set up his fryer on the deck, and we had an outdoor dinner feast of fried fish, fried shrimp, fried soft-shelled crabs, hush puppies and french fries.

I love going to my grandma's church for the big services like Christmas and Easter.  So much so that I found it worth it to wake up at 4:45 to get everything and everyone ready to leave our house by 6:45 to be at her church for the 8:15 service (though I really REALLY think we should consider going to the 11:00 service next year!).  We don't do the Easter bunny.  Partly because I think he's super creepy (LIKE REALLY!), and partly because I don't feel he adds much to Easter the way Santa Claus adds so many fun things to Christmas.  Eden got her little pink golf clubs that morning (so cute, pictures of her playing golf coming soon!), Ila got a giant stuffed rabbit, and Eden knows the presents are just from Mommy and Daddy.

I was a little nervous about how to explain Easter to Eden.  Christmas was easy - Jesus's birthday!  Great!  She understands birthdays and babies being born!  Easter is definitely trickier, and I knew anything about Jesus dying was going to be way over her head.  So I told her that Easter is when we celebrate that one day we will all get to go live in heaven with God and Jesus.  She seemed excited about that, and she asked cute questions like, "Does Daddy get to come with us?".  We talked about it every night during her bedtime routine.  I was pretty proud of myself because she seemed to really understand what I was telling her each night (we talked a lot about heaven).  She thought that we were all going to go to heaven at the same time, but I just let that slide.  It wasn't until about a week before Easter that I realized she thought that we were all going to heaven ON Easter!  Oops!  I explained that we weren't going to heaven on Easter, that's just when we celebrate it (although I did tell my mom that maybe she knew something we didn't!), but even after trying to explain it better, on the way to church on Easter morning, Eden said, "I'm excited to see Jesus at church!"  Hmmmm.... guess I didn't do as good as I thought.

Ila was the most precious thing EVER all dressed up for her first Easter!  (Dustin said, "Why is Ila dressed like it's the 1800s?")

An attempt at a picture of them both after church:

not so much

Eden just hanging out at the tomb of Jesus:

After church we had lunch at Babin's (which happens to be where we had lunch for Eden's first Easter too!) with my grandma, my mom, Mark, Jacob, Marshall and Audrey.  Then we spent the afternoon and evening at Pops and Granny's house with my dad's side of the family, and Eden got to hunt more eggs with her cousins.  (Eden knows that I'm the one who puts the eggs out, and that's cool with her as long as she can put them in her Easter basket and then eat whatever goodies I put in them.)

We tried to get a picture of the four cousins together.  Three out of four is pretty good!

It was a happy, happy Easter!  Maybe by next year, I can explain it better to Eden!