Fall Fun!

All Summer I was complaining to my sister, Kelly, because we only have one mature tree in our yard to provide shade from the hot sun. Now that Fall is here, I am extremely grateful that I only have to rake the leaves from one tree. It has taken awhile for enough leaves to fall to make raking worthwhile, but last week we were able to create a large enough leaf pile to jump in for the first time at our new house. Faith sat in the middle of it all for a good 45 minutes while I slowly raked a large pile to surround her with.

She spent the majority of the time tasting the different leaves and then constantly sticking out her tongue in order to get out the pieces stuck in her mouth.

Gracelyn really had no interest in the raking of the leaves. She preferred to ride her bike with some of the neighbor kids. However, as soon as the pile was big enough, she invited all of her friends over to jump in the leaves with her. Pictured above is Brianna Reinoso, Alyssa Reinoso, Sydney Richards, Gracelyn & Faith.

This is Faith deciding that her tummy is full from all the leaves and she has had enough. What perfect timing though! At this point, all of the leaves had been gathered into a pile and all I had left to do was bag them up for the trash man. It was such a beautiful 60 degree day and we took full advantage of it by spending most of it outside! I love warm and sunny Fall days!!!

Six Months & Standing!!

No - You do not need your eyes checked. Yes - You saw it right. Faith is 6 months old . . . . . AND STANDING!! She reached this milestone yesterday on Nov. 12th and boy was she thrilled. She had this huge smile on her face and she took 3 little steps along the edge of the little black footstool that she was holding onto. And then she let go and did a total faceplant - Oops! Luckily, I stuck my hand out and caught her before her face smashed into the ground. Gotta love those mommy instincts!

She is also working on mastering the skill of sitting up unassisted. Right now she can sit up for about a minute before she looses her balance and falls over. This is such an improvement from the 10 seconds that she could sit up last week though.

Although Faith has not shown much enthusiasm for eating Rice Cereal, she does enjoy a good cereal bottle once a day. This seems to fill her up pretty good and it gives her a chance to get used to feeding herself. Here is a picture - She took to holding her own bottle from the first day I tried to give her one at around 4 1/2 months.

And here is Faith's favorite new game. One-by-one, she likes to stuff all of the toys on her excersaucer down through the leg holes of the seat - while her legs are in it. Sometimes they get stuck and create quite a toy-jam but she doesn't seem to mind. Every once in awhile I will pull a few of them out and put them back on the top of the excersaucer and she will continue to be entertained as long as she doesn't run out of toys to stick around her in the seat.