Nashville Botanical Gardens

So to celebrate Mother's day and my birthday we spent a Saturday in Nashville.  

We went to the botanical gardens.

It was fun but I was disappointed by how few flowers there were.

But we got take some nice pictures and I got to wear around the new ring sling I made.

Our backyard is mostly dirt and weeds so this was Alice's first time sitting in the grass.

She really likes the grass and the outdoors.

 She was not the biggest fan of actually laying in the grass.

She fell asleep by the end of the walk around the gardens.

After that we went to a gourmet popsicle shop.

I got a strawberries and cream popsicle dipped in chocolate and Stephen got a chai popsicle.  They were so good!

Then we went to a craft brew place and tasted some beers.

After that we went to whole foods and picked up some different cheeses and went home and had a cheese platter with some wine and watched Star Wars VI.

It was a pretty great day :o)

Alice and Her Soldier

Last month Stephen was in the field for about 10 days.

"In the field" is when they go and train, usually in a field in tents, and don't come home at night.

Stephen calls it "playing Army".

His brigade was training for their upcoming deployment.

He mostly read the whole time since he was given a task that didn't require him to do much.

It was the longest he has ever been away from Alice.

It made me wonder again how on earth other wives survive deployments.

I am so grateful I haven't had to.

Here are a few picture I took when Stephen got back, it was really cute to see the huge smile on Alice's face.

She loves her daddy!

Alice also likes to play with daddy's combat boots.

Here are some pictures I took of her one morning before Stephen left for work.

These pictures were also the inspiration for my long overdue blog makeover.

Also, in case you can't tell, her onesie has a wolf cub on it, adorable right?! (thanks Barths!)

Alice: 8 Months

Appearance:  Her hair is growing in more so her comb-over is becoming a little less obvious.  I thought her hair was going to be straight but now that her hair is getting longer, it definitely has some wave to it.  Hopefully its a little tamer than mine.

New Skills:  She's crawling!  And fast too.  She crawls with her right leg "stepping" forward and pulling her left knee on the ground.  

She now makes a wookiee/tribble noise.  (see video below)  

She also started clapping.  It was completely random.  We were watching Star Wars and it was the part where they blow up the Death Star and Alice randomly started clapping.  It was really funny.

Likes:  Pulling down books, trying to grab electrical cords, finding shoes and sucking on them, pulling herself up to a stand on anything and everything, going after the cats or dogs, AKA enjoying the world of mobility in general.

Dislikes:  When I leave the room (and she is alone, she is fine with Stephen).  She seems to have developed a case of separation anxiety.  She has been more clingy lately.  Also, I have recently discovered that she must not like the blanket, she sleeps a lot better without it over her.  She moves around so much at night, I think she kept getting caught in it.

Firsts:  On April 10th she crawled for the first time.

On April 30th Alice got her first kiss.  We were at my weekly ladies Bible study and Alice was playing on the floor with the other babies and a 1-year-old Nolan had been giving her hugs and then he grabbed her and gave her a kiss full on the mouth.  We all thought it was pretty funny.

This little stud is the culprit:

Here is a video of the first time she crawled.  She was going after Lilo's chew toy.

Here is her wookiee/tribble noise.  She started making the noise on her own and now she and Stephen make it together.  I can't make that noise.

Pulling herself up:

Giselle teaching her how to spy on the neighbors:

Alice jumped herself to sleep in the jumper at church:

I took these random pictures of her when she woke up from her nap one day.

(If you can't see, the first canvas says "I prayed for this child")