The Loftis Family

I wanted to take Amelia’s 8 month pictures while we were on the Cape so we had to wait a bit past her 8 month birthday to do them.

She’s so mobile now. She’s found the cat’s water bowl (fun times), she’s discovered that pulling up on the bedroom door and making noises will get mommy up when she’s sleeping in and she’s removing things from the tops of tables. It’s so much fun seeing her move around, but it’s oh so challenging to keep her from climbing on the dishwasher or from pulling up on the chairs in the kitchen where she’ll inevitably fall and bonk her head on the tile floor.

We’re baby proofing slowly and heading to BRU today to get a play yard for her. We have stairs and can’t affix a gate to them while we’re selling the house so we have to contain her somehow when we need to leave the room for a few minutes. Yes, we’re buying a baby jail.

Every month I think ‘wow, this is the best month yet’ and then the next one is even better. She is simply so much fun right now, so smiley and so giggly all of the time…ok, most of the time. The 3 hours of screaming on the plane on the way home don’t count. I’ll give her a break though, we got her up early that morning and she has 3 teeth coming in at the same time…ouch! You can see one of them in the sixth picture. The others are coming in on each side of that one.

First some sweet ones and then some goofy faces for fun. She liked exploring and eating Gramps’ grass.

As promised, here is Part II of our trip to the Cape.

The Cape is my happy place, it’s where I spent time every summer growing up. It was such a joy to share it with Amelia.  We went miniature golfing (I did win despite having Amelia in a sling on my hip), we ate lots of ice cream from Four Seas (YUM!) and Amelia had a few tastes herself.  We lounged around my grandfather’s home and enjoyed knowing that we didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything if we didn’t want to…the perfect vacation.

It’s hard to explain to someone who has never been there why I love it so much.  I hope these pictures help explain it a bit (that’s Dustin sailing in the second one).

We went for a long drive on Wednesday, upon Gramps’ recommendation we took the scenic route from Centerville to Province Town (P-Town).  Boy do those Cape Codders love their antique shops.

P-Town is an interesting place; it’s part beach town, part party town and part artsy-fartsy town.  I guess the best way I can describe it for Houstonians is by saying that it’s Montrose on the beach.  We ate lunch on the beach, walked the streets taking in the sites and picked up a few souvenirs before heading back toward Gramps’ place.

Here’s the Monkey on the beach. Sitting with Daddy, looking for stuff on the beach, being told ‘no, don’t eat stuff off of the beach’ and enjoying her ability to stand and cruise.

Here are a few street views of P-Town.  Yes, that shop is bizarre…it’s called Spank the Monkey.  Not sure what they sell, but it sure sounds interesting.

On our way back we decided to take in one of the many lighthouses on Cape Cod.  Well, unfortunately we chose the Chatham light house which is a. small and not very impressive, b. not really on the water and c. still operated by the U.S. Coast Guard and completely off limits to the public.  Oh well.

We had a wonderful time and look forward to taking Amelia back again and again.

We got back last night from 10 days on the Cape with Gramps (GGP/Pa-pa as he is called by his great grandbabies). We spent time with family friends and many of our extended family members. We even got all 4 great grandkiddos together for some pictures with Gramps.

Here are a few pictures from the first few days of our trip. If you want to see the rest please click here. ***Please note that these pictures are not the high resolution images and will not print well. If you want a certain image to print, heck if you want all of them please let me know and I’ll forward them to you. This is the case with ALL of the images on this site.

Keira learned to WALK at the Cape. She walked across the room toward me and didn’t think anything of it until we all started clapping and cheering. She continued to hone those skills throughout her time there and she’s a walking fool now! This is Keira just after she officially started walking. YAY Keira!

Here are the girls (Amelia, Keira and Kaitlynn) the first time they went into the water together. They were just dipping their toes in but Kaitlynn went ‘all in’ as you can tell in the second picture.

Keira and Amelia relaxing together

Gramps with the kiddos. I am certain that it’s not surprisingly to anyone that it’s quite hard to keep a 2 year old, a 14 month old, a 12 month old and an 8 month old focused and in one spot long enough to take a few pictures. It doesn’t help that we had lots of parents, grandparents and bystanders calling names and taking pictures. Fun stuff.

Amelia with her Great Aunt Kathy

Feeding the ducks before the bonfire…eek that sounds like we roasted the ducks…no worries we didn’t.

We had a wonderful time with our family and look forward to seeing everyone again soon!

Amelia is 8 months today and had a weekend full of milestones. First, she started crawling (as noted in the previous post), then she learned to make a new noise (hand moving over her mouth while she makes lots of sounds…the sound we made when we played Cowboys and Indians when we were kids). Then she got her first tooth (yay for her, boo for me) and last but certainly not least. I think this might be the most exciting milestone yet….only kidding.

8 months, countless bottles, nipples, sippy cups, water bottle adapters, etc. and a pretty sports bottle was all she needed.

Did you know that tables don’t have nipples?

Someone might want to let Amelia know.  Weird kid.

Amelia officially started crawling today.  She’s been scooting, rolling, flipping and flopping here there and everywhere since she was about 5 months.  Tonight she started putting one hand in front of the other and moving her legs at the same time…ie: crawling.  She’s done it a few times before, but we didn’t really count them.  Somehow this seemed more real.  She was of course chasing after poor Spencer’s tail.  I just so happened to have the camera in my hand so I got a few shots of her after she completed the feat.

She’s also cruising (walking along furniture) and pulling herself up on everything!  Her favorite thing to do is to stand on the sofa and play peek-a-boo with one of us over the back of the sofa.

We also had to start baby proofing a bit…boo.  Dustin found her this afternoon playing with an electrical outlet.  Yes, the little plastic plugs are now in place.  Now we just have to figure out what to do about the litter box and cat food bowl before she’s really off and running.  Fun times.

Here are a few other pictures of Amelia from this afternoon.  She’ll be 8 months on Monday…how time flies!

Since I haven’t blogged lately I thought I’d pop on here and share a cleanish dirty joke in lieu of more photos of Amelia smothering some new food all over her face. Enjoy.  (edit: My dad didn’t really say this though he is clever enough to say it.  This joke was forwarded to me.)

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Our friends Nikki and Chad recently visited Ireland and Scotland and saw this most delightful little truck in Cork, Ireland. They spelled our name wrong, but what do the Irish know?…only kidding mom.

They also brought back this adorable t-shirt for Amelia it says ‘gorgeous just like mummy.’  Awww…thanks guys.

Here’s a little bit of crabby and a little bit of happy for you.

Now face North

Think about direction

Wonder why you haven’t before

Ok, my ode to R.E.M. is over.   I love that song.

So you’re probably wondering why I am referencing Stand, well…Amelia learned to pull herself up to standing position and yes she was facing North at the time.

I squealed with delight and her Daddy and I clapped and cheered her on.   She just loves doing new things and seeing us get as giddy as school girls about the littlest things.

YAY Amelia!  Here she is the first time she did it.