Aquarium Visit

Last weekend, we met up with Margaret and Hal at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was a lot of fun! Alexandra really liked looking at all of the fish. Other aquarium patrons got a laugh out of Christopher holding Alexandra by the shark tank and saying, "look - it's a baby!" Since her stuffed shark is one of her favorite toys, we knew she would like seeing the real thing.

At the rainforest exhibit at the aquarium. Hal said his favorite animals at the aquarium were the birds! The exhibit boasts of having a couple of the loudest birds in the world - they have nothing on Alexandra when she's upset in the middle of the night!!

Here's my little fishie in her bath at home. Her favorite thing in the bath is her "chewie" - her own washcloth. We usually bathe her in the kitchen sink, but I bathed her in the tub for the first time last night. It went really well (except that she got a little bit cold), so we'll be heading up there for bathtime for good once I can no longer stand the splashing in the sink.

Music appreciation

I was playing the piano the other day, and felt something touch my feet. It was Alexandra Marie! She crawled under the piano bench and started touching my feet while I was playing! This is now what she likes to do when I play. On the bright side, it's nice that I can play the piano and not worry about what she's doing, since she's right there with me. I'm hoping this means that she will want to take lessons in about six or seven years.

Nine months!

Alexandra turned nine months old this Wednesday! We had our pediatrician appointment yesterday, and she marked the event by cutting her top two teeth after we got home (for a grand total of four teeth). She fed herself a graham cracker and bits of banana in addition to our usual puffs, and even drank a little from her sippy cup. When Dr. Laura came by to say "hi," she showed off her crawling skills and pulled up to standing (on the dishwasher of all places). In mommy-world, these are all major events!!

Here are her stats from our pediatrician visit:

head circumference - 18 inches (91st percentile)
length - 29 inches (92nd percentile)
weight - 19 lbs. (54th percentile)

She continues to be long and lean, but now has a head-size proportional to her length!

We had fun celebrating William's 32nd birthday last weekend. Here are some photos of the event (courtesy of William, since I was too busy playing with babies to take any of my own).



Alexandra loved playing with Will's super-fun piano. It's more her size than ours at home!



Cousins!

Alexandra and Will playing a duet on Will's piano.

Hair bow!

Alexandra wore a bow in her hair for the first time this week. It's the first of many more to come!

Manicures and Playgrounds

The weekend before last, I took out my cousin Rachel for a manicure/pedicure. We have been so blessed to have Rachel and Sol living nearby for the last nine months or so, and are looking forward to meeting their little baby boy in about a month! Alexandra is excited that she will soon have a little second cousin to play with.

Rachel and I showed up dressed alike for our outing. You can't tell that she is super pregnant in this photo (but, she is)!

That Saturday, since we had unseasonably warm weather, we took Alexandra to the park to try out the swings and the slide. We went to another park on Sunday with Grandee, and Alexandra had a ball! You can tell in the photo above that Alexandra started out a little hesitant on the swings. . . .

. . .but then she had a lot of fun!

She didn't know what to make of the slide, so we will try it again next time.

By Sunday, she was an expert on the swings!

Tigger!

We have been having a lot of fun reading stories to Alexandra and listening to music (since we're not letting her watch TV until she's closer to 2 years old). Since we've been listening to a Winnie-the-Pooh CD lately, I thought it would be fun to read Winnie-the-Pooh books to her. We also took a trip to the Disney store to get her a Tigger. Christopher wasn't familiar with Winnie-the-Pooh. He asked me why Tigger was the only one, and I said, "oh, because he's Christopher Robin's toy, and there's only one of him." That answer wasn't good enough for Christopher. He did some research, and found the real reason that Tigger's the only one. See the illustration below.

Portait Innovations - Take Two!

To celebrate Alexandra at 8 months old, we took her to Portrait Innovations for some professional photos a couple of weeks ago. We had an absolutely wonderful experience! Not only were they running completely on time, but it took only 17 minutes to get numerous wonderful shots of my beautiful girl. After another couple of minutes deciding which poses we wanted, and then a break to have the photos printed, we were out of there. Total time of photo experience - under an hour!! We are always going to go there for our photos!

Here are some of our favorite shots:

This next one is probably my favorite.

Doesn't she look like Christopher here?

Note that the shoes match the dress (of course!)

Although I absolutely love this set-up. . . .

We just couldn't get her to smile at the end.