New Pictures Added

On Flickr. You should probably link to the Flickr page while you are there because I think this blog may be drawing to an end...

My how times just flies...

So many things have happened since the end of February. Helen made her first road trip, started eating solid foods, learned to sit up on her own, took a day trip to Japan, and went swimming!
We planted Helen a tree in honor of her first year of life. It started out a little bigger than her, but at the rate she's growing we expect her to catch up to it quickly. That all depends on how much rain we get here though.





She's starting to like being on her stomach more,








but this is the closest that we've come to seeing something that looks at all like crawling.







We all loaded up in to the rented minivan and went to Lafayette so that Helen could visit Grandma and Grandpa and she also got to meet a lot more new relatives and good friends.






The weekend after we got back we decided to hang out in the pool with our new neighbors. Mom may not be back in a bikini, but Helen seemed to have no problem sporting hers.






Then we took a day trip to Japan. Ok, the Japanese Gardens in Fort Worth. We find it hard to go to the supermarket some days, let alone Japan. But we thought it was fitting since Uncle Joe and Aunt Nerdo were actually in Japan.





They did bring Helen back this cute outfit. The second she put it on, she started moving FAST, like a ninja...see??










But in all seriousness, we are all having a great time and hope to see even more of our family and friends in the near future. As always, I have uploaded even more images onto our Flickr page, so please feel free to go and check them out.

A new toy and general cuteness

Through the kindness of family and friends, Helen's toy chest keeps getting more and more full, and I am incredibly grateful for that because it makes it a lot easier for me to keep her amused. She took to this new spinning toy right away. Usually it takes presenting a toy to her a few times for her to warm up to it, but this one went straight for the mouth.



And we've been trying to be better about taking pictures of our day to day lives. It had been a while since we had taken pictures at Helen's bath time, but she was just so happy about playing with that other naked baby in the mirror that we couldn't resist. Here's one of my favorites.



I've posted many more at our flickr page, so if you feel like it, check them out. Fair warning, this may be the last post of the blog. It never occurs to me to update it and I'm really not so sure that anyone even looks at it at all. But I will try to keep the pictures posted on Flickr from time to time.

Update

Just a note letting those of you who have admonished me for not updating that there are new pictures up on the Flickr page. Thanks for keeping on me about updating, I'll try to do better.

Also, we went to the doctor today for Helen's 4 month checkup. Turns out she does have baby eczema, but we are going to try to treat it with a few things the doctor mentioned, so hopefully that will clear up soon. It doesn't seem to be bothering her any though, so that's good. As always, Helen is way above average on her weight and height. She now weighs 20 lbs. and 6.5 oz. and is 27.5 inches long. No wonder she's already wearing 9 and 12 month old clothing. And the doctor also gave us the go ahead to have her start sleeping on her side, so maybe the ski slope head thing will start to go away soon. One can only hope...

Guess What!

MONKEY BUTT!

Helen is finally big enough to wear her monkey pants without them falling off. Before we know it, she'll be crawling, and this will be the only angle I get to see her from!

All I want for Christmas...

Well, it took going to 2 different malls 3 different times to get it done, but here's our little angel on Santa's knee. I had to wake her up from a very deep sleep right before the picture, hence the look of "What the heck are you doing to me mom?"

Helen's Smile

Since the smiles just started to get bigger, I wanted to share them with you all. I apologize for the poor picture quality, but I was taking video at the same time and couldn't use a flash. Not only is she cute, but doesn't she look cool in her little hoodie?