Six months

Tylie turned 6 months old last week. I can't believe how fast time goes by, and how much babies can learn in such a short amount of time. She is not crawling or scooting yet, has no teeth, and has yet to say "mamamama." However, she stands very well by herself, says "dadada" among many other words, and makes some of the funniest sounds as she discovers how to. She's also recently started playing with her tongue a lot more in funny ways.
She loves to play peek-a-boo, and is getting pretty good at it. She'll lay on her back, grab a burp cloth, and put it over her face. Then, when I say "Where's Tylie?" she'll reach up, grab the burp cloth, and pull it off her face and grin from ear to ear. It is so cute! She makes friends everywhere she goes, and is always the life of the party. We love you Tylie!

Moving and Groving

Tylie has shown no interest in crawling yet...she rarely pulls up onto her knees (except to sleep)
and seems content to roll anywhere she needs to go. However, this week I have started to wonder if it's because she's just going to skip the crawling thing and go right into walking. She seems to enjoy it more.

(sorry it's sideways....I don't know how to rotate it!)

Lots of Catching Up to Do

I realize I've been pretty slack about keeping up with my blog. There just never seem to be enough hours in the day, and before I know it I've lost weeks. Tylie is growing up so fast, and I'm not doing her any justice by keeping her sweetness to myself. Therefore, here are a few of my favorite and most recent pictures of her.

Five months old already! (Of course, this was almost a month ago, I just never got around to posting it...and the lighting didn't really work great...I need a studio!)

Bundled up for a walk on our unbelievable snow day. She loved looking around at the beautiful scenery.

Sitting up all by herself in the tub (sink) the other night. I swear she just wakes up some days and decides she wants to do new things, and then she does them!

This is when I propped her in front of the sliding glass door during a snow storm so she could watch the flakes fall. She enjoyed it quite a bit.

This was her first feeding from a spoon. It was a few weeks ago, and it was so much fun! She's been watching us eat for a while, so we decided to let her have a go at it. She loved it! She kept grabbing my hand and pulling it toward her mouth, and then she would open up wide and chomp down repeatedly. It was really funny, and so grown up!

A Christmas Day Miracle!!! (only a few months late)

When they predicted it, we scoffed. When they cancelled school an hour early, we laughed out loud. And then it came...and came....and came....

Tylie and I went for a walk in the morning to enjoy the sight, and we're lucky we did. It wasn't more than a couple hours later that it was almost completely gone! Brent and I never thought that Tylie's first snow would be here in sunny South Carolina!

dobronamjernost

In celebration of Keshia's mission call (and in mourning for her leaving us to return home to Idaho) Keesh, Brent, and I spent the morning making sauteed bread puffs. I found the recipe online when I was searching for Croatian food, and the site said that they made these bread puffs fresh for visitors to wish them good will. They were delicious! Tasted a lot like cinnamon-and-sugar toast and french toast. We figure if these are the kinds of things she'll have to eat while she's out, she's in good shape!

When we were done, and after one last game of Hand and Foot, Tylie and I drove Keshia to the airport and said goodbye. It was a sad moment!

Dobronamjernost Keeshie, for everything exciting coming up in your life. Pohvala on your call to Slovenia/Croatia...you'll be a čudesan missionary! We are definitely going to miss you around here...

Christmas 2009

I love when it's time to begin Christmas festivities. When we were putting up our tree this year, Tylie got to help! She added her very own first ornament, given to her by Grandpa Duke. She loved it!

We went to our ward Christmas party a couple weeks ago. Lots of food and friends, a great musical program, and of course a visit by Santa Claus. Tylie got really tired half way through the musical program, so we searched high and low to track down Santa (sitting outside in his car because he was burning up in his heavy outfit) and got a picture early so we could take her home and put her to bed. She wasn't scared of him or anything! I guess that will probably come later, though, when she's a year or two...

This is Tylie's very first Christmas present! It came from Grandpa Duke, and he wanted us to open it early, so she dug in. She was, of course, fascinated with the wrapping paper, and not so much with the dress....she'll look darn cute in it though!

Christmas morning, getting ready to open presents. Wow, can you tell she's spoiled? Two sets of grandparents, an aunt and uncle, mom and dad, great grandma, and friends all made sure she had plenty to do!

Cute face!

All of us opening presents. Thanks everyone!

The aftermath. This is one kind of mess I actually enjoy a little bit....
Tylie after resting a little bit this morning. Such a sweetheart!

Crafting fun...

Keshia and I have been getting our craft on lately. We made these wicked-cool Christmas pillow cases for my brother Michael and his mission companion...had a lot of fun doing it, and feel pretty proud about how they turned out. He's in Switzerland, so we crafted a Swiss flag for them:

I also needed to get a stocking made for our new addition, Tylie. I found pattern I liked, picked out fabric, and completed the project over a stretch of three days. Here's the finished product, and a picture of all our random stockings hanging together....we're just one happy, mismatched family this year!

Ahhh...I love Chrismas vacation when I actually have time to work on these kinds of things. I could craft all day long!