Merry Christmas!!

Halloween

We got home from our Halloween party just as Max had arrived home. We let Lily stay in her costume for a little while for Daddy's benefit, and because the biggest game in the south was playing (Georgia v Florida), and she is just too funny.

My Little Football from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

The (2nd) Cutest Baby in the World

My lovely nephew James Anthony McNulty. What a clever little boy he is, already playing with his toys at 4 weeks old. As you can see he is perfect in every way, just like his cousin.

The (2nd) cutest baby in the world! from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Practising for Trick or Treat

Ha'penny Bridge

I will get some more posts up here soon, but for now, here we are on the boardwalk, with the Ha'penny Bridge behind us in the centre of town in Dublin. What a lovely day it was!

Playtime

Playtime from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Go Falcons!

So with Lily being a Georgia Peach, of course she supports her local American Football team the Atlanta Falcons. They will play 16 games this regular season, and are on week 3 today, and just beat the New Orleans Saints!! They lost their first game to Pittsburgh, but won their second against Arizona.

Since Lily just loves to watch football so much, she doesn't mind if they win or loose as long as they try their best. What a great lesson to learn so young.

Go Falcons! from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

What a performer

What a performer from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

I don't know how I almost missed this one. Lily runs through her full repertoire of tricks in this video.

Walking

Lily took her first steps on 17th August, the day before her first birthday. Look how far she has come already, this video is from last week.

Walking from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Lily and Friends

Lily has had a couple of friends over recently, Emerson is in the first two pictures with her, and Lola in the second two. They each came over for a couple of hours on two different days, and they had lots of fun! Emerson was so sweet and gave Lily her necklace just to show what good friends they are. Lola and Lily had a bath together after dinner, and even managed to share some of the toys!

One thing I realized was that it is really hard to get babies to look at you for pictures when there is anything else going on at all.

Oh Great, a Sense of Humor

So all of a sudden she can play jokes on me. She thinks it's so funny to hand me something but then not let me have it. As demonstrated in this video with the dryer sheet!

Oh Great, a Sense of Humor from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

The Puppies

This past weekend, Lancaster came to visit with us. He is Ace and Amy's dog, and Paddy's best friend. Both dogs LOVE Lily but she is not too impressed with them. Here they both are, pretending not to be interested in Lily, but you know the second I would look away they would try to lick her all over.

















Lily got bored of the armchair and ottoman and went over to her play area to see about some toys. The dogs followed of course. Lily likes to take a few things out of the box and throw them on the floor, I mean place them on the floor for playing with later. Well the dogs thought at about the same time that one of these toys was very interesting altogether, and had a bit of a stare down over it.
















You can see who won! He may be small but don't let that cute face fool you!
















Well Paddy came back over and they shared for a bit, and then I rescued the toy so I could salvage it for Lily.

Then Lancaster came over to tell Lily that he was sorry he tried to chew her toy,
















..and that he left his favorite toy for her to play with on her mat. Aww.

My Little Helper

Lately Lily has been such a great help around the house.

Lily helping sort out her clothes that she has out-grown.
















Lily helping mummy with her exercise DVD, and also daddy's fantasy football sheets, what a multi-tasker.
















Lily helping mummy fold the laundry.

How old are you Lily?

We spent some time teaching Lily to put up one finger to show

how old she is when we ask her. It has become her main party

trick. Everyone is always suitably impressed when she co-operates!

How old are you? from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Happy Birthday Lily!

Jeanius!

Thanks Ace and Amy for these great diapers! They could however make me extremely lazy in getting her ready in the mornings.

Cake

No surprise, she likes cake!

Birthday Baking

Lily's first birthday is approaching fast, and we will be celebrating in style I'm sure. To get the festivities underway, all of the babies in my playgroup that have August birthdays celebrated together at Stella's house. I will post pictures of that later. All of the mums who have August babies brought food, drinks, etc to contribute to the party. I said I would bring the cake.

That was the start of the obsession.

The party we all decided would have a farm animal theme since it was girl and boy friendly, and very sweet to boot. So I got online to the bakery at Publix thinking, farm animal, has to be a fairly common idea, of course there will be a cake, but no. Seems to be that the majority of kid's cakes are cartoon characters.

So then I went searching online for people that had baked their own cakes. And in my usual style I think, yeah of course I can do this, just follow people's instructions and voila. I thought, if I can just bake a rectangular cake, frost it green, and then put the farm theme candles on there, done. Then the party grew in size and I kept seeing these amazing cakes online and it turned into something a little fancier than I planned.

The Thursday before the party I had a bit of a panic attack, thinking, why didn't I just offer to bring bagels!!?? Trip to the shop and done. No, of course I insist on being the cake provider and now what happens if it doesn't work???!! No time to order one, well I suppose we will just be having some ice cream with some farm theme candles.

Anyway, luckily it did work, phew, and actually turned out better than expected. And tasted really nice!

This was the main part of the cake, it is vanilla flavor...

These are some cupcakes I used to make the silo...

This is a pound cake I used to make the barn...

This is the vanilla cake with green frosting...

Next step was to add the fence posts, made from Tootsie Rolls...

Then I made some cupcakes and decorated them with chocolate chips, marshmallows, coconut, and jellies to make pigs, cows and chickens...

These are the plates that we had picked, they are part of all of the decorations that started all this madness...

The finished product!!

Standing Up

As soon as Lily has begun to master something, she is on to the next thing. She is able to get about from A to B crawling, so instead of sticking with that, and exploring and whatever, she wants to stand and walk.

She barely tolerates much playtime unless she is standing up leaning on the ottoman, or her table toy, or being walked about by yours truly. So in the interest of saving myself some back pain, I thought we could have a little standing practice each day. She actually did quite a lot better than I expected the first time I let her go, so I grabbed the camera and this was really just next few times I let her go.

I think she'll be off and running in no time. God help me then.

Standing up from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Dancing

While I had always noticed that Lily seems to really love music, now lately I have realized she is dancing to some of the music that comes on the tv or radio. She was very happy with the Black Eyed Peas on Friday, and sorry Max, but she seems to really love that Justin Bieber song too!

She seems to have figured out how to work the remote control too. Not as far as knowing which button controls which function, but that if you press buttons on it, things happen to the tv. Pretty clever I think. She is also completely put out if you try to give her a remote control that does not work the tv. I thought I was being clever giving her the one from our bedroom since it wouldn't work in the living room, but she was totally uninterested and unimpressed. Sigh. Anyway volume up, volume down, volume up, volume down is fun for everyone, right?

Dancing Queen from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Dancing Girl from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Why buy toys?

In our former dining room, Lily has a great play area set up. It is complete with foam mat, jumper, car bouncer, two boxes full of toys and books, the works. She starts out here when it is playtime many times a day. It keeps her occupied for about five minutes if we are lucky.

Invariably she crawls over here, and finds magazines, the remote control, a coaster, any bit of fluff (or worse) from the carpet, car keys....you get the idea. She could stay occupied for hours.

So when she is this happy...why buy toys!!

On the Rampage

On the Rampage from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Peas

Peas from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Just was looking back over this and had to post it. So funny!

Look familiar?

Recognize those cheeks anyone? Lily had no chance, of course she would inherit those cherub looks.

Since I posted this people have asked if it is me or Max - its me!

Pat-a-Cake

This blog would not do justice to day-to-day life with Lily if it did not include something about Pat-a-Cake. She is obsessed. She wants anyone who will oblige to say Pat-a-Cake over and over and over and over......you get the idea. She is pretty sure she says it herself too, I would never tell her it is not quite right.

This video shows her saying a little bit of it, it has been hard to capture her in her full glory. She's a tricky little one! Anyway she had a bit of an attitude that day too, so you can see a bit of that. Of course she's still an angel to me, but I can see where the twos might really be terrible.

Look closely and you can see her two front teeth on the way...

Such a big girl!

What a big girl Lily is now! (This is also the post that will cause her to hate me when she is older).

Walking

During our visit to Columbus over 4th July, Lily wanted to show everyone how great she is at walking. All the time, all day long, back and forth, over and over. Our backs are so unhappy, but how can you say no to such a cutie pie.

Thank you Great Grandma Rita for such a pretty dress!

Happy 4th July!

Happy Birthday Dad!

I love you JuJu!

Smile for the Birdy!

Applebees

Since Max finished his training the same weekend that the Sanfords were in town visiting, we decided that we would go out there to visit him and show off baby Lily and all her skills. She was especially interested in the dessert and cocktail menu, hmm wonder where she got that from?

She has also learned to smile when you point the camera at her and say 'smile', only problem is that it really is not a sweet beautiful smile but more of a grimace. You can see it in the video if you know what to look for but here are a few photos.

She did pretty well here...

Then it goes a little pear shaped..

And, this is what happens when you give a baby a lime!