1. Piper just started giving kisses when asked. It is the open mouthed, dead-fish type, but none-the-less she understands and obliges. 
2. She says and waves bye-bye (with a southern accent)
   
3. As mentioned before Piper has 6 teeth.
4. She is walking EVERYWHERE - see video below. 
5. She is quick as a spider monkey when climbing the stairs.
6. LOVES table food, more than she is able to eat actually. We have to start her baby food a little early before she sees us eat b/c she will refuse to eat then - and she really isn't that good at eating everything she THINKS she can eat. Tonight she ate tiny pieces of pizza.
7. Started splashing and playing in the bath rather than just surviving it. 
8. Loves the vacuum - LOVES
9. Can completely destroy a nicely folded basket of laundry in no time flat.
   
10. Said "Daddy, I love you" very clearly... (ok so that one is made up)
    

The girls are growing up fast - Piper will be 9 months old in a matter of days and Sophia is enjoying each day as Piper gets a little older and more wrestl-a-ble. You'll see one of the pictures below where Piper is actually enjoying the wrestle time - but trust me when I say that Piper does not always enjoy these times of rolling around with big sister. Problem is that sis doesn't know her boundaries just yet - but she is learning.

Today mom built a tent using a table in our dining room area. Piper was so excited to see her big sister under the sweet little fort.

Enjoy:

We made this visit about the 3 year (next month) and 6th month (last month) for the girls. Everything went well - Sophia was great for the first time in several visits and didn't freak out, in fact she got a chance to strike some of her poses for the camera that she and daddy have so diligently been working on. Before we get to the photos (which will of course have Zazzle on them b/c they are copyrighted) I would like to give a spider bite to you: I asked Sophia this question: "What brings us here to the photo place Soph?" and she said, "the car dad...(laugh)"

Before we had kids, when we were still living in our first apartment in Oviedo, we started a Saturday morning tradition of doing either pancakes or waffles and bacon. Many frequenters of this blog can attest to this fact as they have participated in this tradition.

We have continued to do this most every Saturday morning using our favorite Krusteaz pancake mix from Sam's wholesale club and pretty much any lower sodium bacon we can find (our favorite is Hormel Black label, but for a while we were using Gwaltney...pretty much we go where the deals are so we have tried many different brands). Sophia is now old enough to help stir the batter (not unattended mind you - I left her once and...let's just say we had to restart the process) and enjoys participating very much. She is also in charge of the chocolate chips.

It's good to be back. I'm sure that we lost some of our "faithful" - but have faith! The lack of blogging up until Em's recent post was simply a blip on our radar! We are now back in the saddle. We left the interwebs for two things - one was the trip to Detroit to celebrate Grandma's 90th - the other was my trip to Windy Gap with our school. This year, my fourth at the school, I went for the entire week rather than just a partial week. This was a wonderful time as I was able to hear two great speakers instead of one - our first speaker was Bruce Marcey - who is lead pastor of a church here in town called Warehouse 242 and Nathan Smith who is a youth evangelist. I missed my girls (all 3!) and am glad to be back.

Today we celebrate Em's birthday! We headed out to Salsa's which is a wonderful Mexican restaurant near our house. Afterwards we came home and partook of the Carvel Icecream Cake. Below are some pictures from tonight of the girls and as a special added bonus a video of the Birthday song...

    There it is - one of the greatest sources of contention in our child rearing with Sophia cropped up again with Piper about a month ago. This picture was taken on 7/9/08 according to its stamp. I won't say much more about it, let's just say that I have strong opinions about the "big bow". Everyone at church loves it. All the people in Wal-Mart love it. Neighbors Love it. Most importantly Emily loves it.
    But the day has arrived people, and I could not be happier! Piper now has enough hair to house a REAL bow. This is no trick photography - this is an honest-to-goodness clipping bow in Piper's hair. It is not as the librarian asked: "Is there velcro or something on there?" - NO! Piper has hair! It is a wonderful thing.
And this one is for free...I know I don't look thrilled but focus on the baby (and I'll give a virtual dollar to anyone who can name th location of this photo):

It started off as Piper laying in the bed so that I could help Sophia get dressed. I went to the bathroom for some arsenal for the war that is getting Sophia's hair done, and came back to the sweet scenes above.

Part of the reason that I post this is the obvious! TOO CUTE, the other reason is selfish. I hope that I never forget these moments and never take for granted that I get to be home with my babies and experience these times with them.

Highlights of the past month:

1. Sleeping better at night
2. Naps increasing in length and frequency
3. Almost sitting up by herself (see pictures above)  
4. Venturing into the Johnny Jump Up (video forthcoming) 
5. Really good at pulling hair (and other more important stuff) 
6. Solid Foods 
1. Cereal (a "no-go")
2. Sweet Potatoes
3. Carrots
4. Squash 
5. Peas  
7. HAIR!! (kind of) 

Overall - this has been a fun time of watching Piper grow. She is really maturing fast and is becoming a fun little girl. Her stomach, which was rather temperamental early on in her little life has settled down quite a bit. Last week at Church the room leader for Piper's nursery referred to her as "perfect". This was a great thing to hear after several rough weeks of seeing: Parent Alert - P. Fair on the screen during the service. Fun times are here.

Piper has officially graduated to solid food! After a ton of work on Em's part - Piper finally ate a whole container of Gerber Sweet Potatoes. I had a whole video of it - of her chomping down and grabbing Emily's hands and pulling them to her face. It was a sight to behold. So the cereal was a no-go, but the sweet potatoes are looking good. Piper is finally beginning to sleep better at night as well. We worked on this the same time that we were transitioning Sophia from the passy last week - so you can imagine it was a fun night in our house.
I don't know if any of you have a Trader Joe's grocery store around you. We ran across this place on recommendation of our friend Kelly and have loved it. Trader Joe's is a hard place to explain - everything there (or most everything) is their own brand and packaged stuff. They have lots of gourmet stuff, organic stuff, health stuff - but there is lots of unhealthy stuff there too. As is evidenced by the picture to the left. This item, the Mandarin Orange Chicken was something that was talked up every time we went to the store and so we naturally didn't buy it. Finally we caved...and man - is this stuff delicious.



Speaking of current food obsessions. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago we were taken out to a Japanese-French Fusion Restaurant here in town. When we went there - one of the appetizers that we got was edamame. If you have never had edamame - it is baby soy bean pods that are boiled. You just pop them out into your mouth and chew. Sophia has LOVED these from the word go. You can see her chowing down on them on the left here.

Day 3: We woke up early and headed out to Walmart to purchase a sand anchor for an umbrella. We also purchased two of those grass beach mats which turned out to be a great buy. The umbrella was a must today as it was hotter due to there being less cloud coverage than day 2. The bumbo seat also came in handy for Piper. She sat contentedly and watched the people and waves and felt the wind on her face. She quickly fell asleep both days after just a brief period of time in the water and on the waters edge.

Day 4: With checkout at 11am we spent the morning packing up and saying goodbye to our "new house". It was a very fun first family vacation.