For our 2 remaining followers....haha

Hello to those still checking in! I thought everyone had pretty much stopped reading until I had two emails in the last few days asking where their updates were. lol So, here I am for our two loyal readers. *grins*

Amelia is, as always, simply wonderful! Somewhere along the way, she has come to the conclusion that she MUST be held for the majority of her waking hours...and preferrably her sleeping hours, too! Most folks tend to point the finger at sweet, innocent little ol' me as the culprit but I'm quite sure I have no idea what they're talking about. :-D

She isn't crawling yet but sits up like a pro! For the times she's not wanting to be held, she MUST stand and/or MUST be touching somebody in some way or another. My mom and I took Amelia to Applebee's yesterday, and for the majority of the time we were there, Amelia held my hand. If she let go for whatever reason, it wasn't long before she was reaching back out to grasp my finger. She didn't really LOOK for it, she just held her little hand out and somehow knew what she wanted would suddenly appear. ♥

If she's sitting on someone's lap, she'll find their fingers and slide down until her little feet are on the floor just so she can stand. She doesn't want you to hold her up by holding on to her body - it HAS to be by holding her hands only. Her game. Her rules. lol!

Amelia has 2 little bottom teeth that are sharper than any knife I have in the kitchen. Her toothy little grin is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and melts my each and every time I see it. At church last Sunday, she stood up agains the back of our pew and blew raspberries at the people behind us. I don't think any of us paid nearly as much attention to the message as we did to Amelia. How sad!

Her "words" are starting to sound more like actual vowel and consonant sounds instead of just babble but she hasn't said anything yet. Mom and I are trying to get her to say "Mama" but I think David's mom is trying to get "NaNa" to be her first word. David goes between "Mama" and "Dada." lol Eh, I don't guess it really matters since she won't really know what she's saying for a while and ANYTHING would be an improvement over whining.

Yes, she does take to whining quite a bit. Thankfully, only at home and very, very rarely does she do it in public unless she's extremely tired. Even then, picking her up and carrying her around fixes the whine-box. Holding her so she can stand fixes it at home. ;-)

Amelia is eating very well, preferring "real" food to that icky, smooshed, liquid mush they call "baby food." We chose to do more of a Baby-Led Weaning introduction to solids and it has worked wonderfully for Amelia. She was completely uninterested in solids in all forms for the longest time, but just as it's been with everything else, a light switch flipped and she dug in. She's reached the point of mostly feeding herself by hand and plays a little with her spoon. If we're at a restaurant, we feed her so it doesn't look like a herd of wild animals came through when they weren't looking, but she mostly feeds herself the rest of the time.

She still doesn't hold her bottle completely on her own, though, but that's to be expected since the glass bottles are a bit heavier. Amelia uses her sippy cup fairly well now, so we're moving on to straws and open cups. Now, THAT'S a mess! hehe Thank goodness it's only water!

Ummmm....let's see....Oh! Her birthday party is THIS Saturday and her birthday is the following Friday. I will NEVER have her party on Mother's Day Weekend again if I can help it. lol Who knew people actually made a weekend out of the holiday?! I think it's awesome and hope maybe Amelia and I can do the same when she's a little older but nobody around me had done anything like that. We usually went to see Gran on Mother's Day and that's about it. Maybe we do it all wrong. lol

*sigh* I love her. Each night I rock her to sleep and am overwhelmed with emotion, thinking I couldn't possibly love her more than I do...then morning comes and my heart has somehow expanded overnight to accomodate the additional joy and love a new day brings. Her open-mouth, slobbery kisses are the BEST kisses in the world and her incessant "talking" is music to my ears. Although...I have a feeling she'll be the child that NEVER stops talking once she starts.

Y'all know I've never quite had the words to express the feelings of gratitude and joy I have for the blessing of this child and I still don't. I try but it's just not possible. So, I get a little misty-eyed, say a prayer and hug her a tiny bit tighter. For some things, there truly are no words...

I'm going to go work on some birthday stuff but leave you with a couple picture links. I hope they work! If not, PLEASE somebody lt me know and I'll upload some to Photobucket.

As always, THANK YOU for being here for the last year! Yes, it's been over a year now since my water broke and I went to the hospital. Sometime over the next few weeks, I need to write down how it all happened and put it in the "my story" part of this site. :)

Here are the pictures:

April: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2060256&id=1378911125&l=b20bdd07ef

May: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063509&id=1378911125&l=ee0993761b

First Easter: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059695&id=1378911125&l=2ece19639f

Thank you! See you soon! ♥♥♥