noseys!

Hallie likes nose kisses. She also likes climbing on people. So this game is perfect for her - she climbs up on dad and then we have nose kisses ("noseys").

When Hallie is done eating

Here's a trick Hallie figured out that she has been using lately when she wants to be done eating, or when she doesn't want the food you're trying to feed her (preferring to eat only rice puffs). It is very difficult to get food into her mouth when she's making the "elephant" noise over and over like this. The arm flailing is either her enthusiasm in making the noise, another line of defense for getting food to her mouth, or as Erin likes to think, she is doing the ASL sign for "done", which we have been trying to teach her.

a dance party featuring dj lion

Remember this lion? Well, recently Erin brought it out of storage so Hallie could check it out, and she loves it. Will rediscovered that he likes it too (sidenote - he seems to re-discover and want to play with many of his old toys as soon as Hallie takes interest in them). A week ago or so, as I arrived home after a long day of working, Erin told me to grab the camera and come downstairs to join them for a surprise. Turns out it was a dance party, with the lion providing the tunes - a fun time for all of us.

Hallie's bath pictures: 10 months

It has been a good month for Hallie, but a busy one for dad so sorry that the blog posts have been a bit sparse. She continues to develop in her big 3 activities: talking (and singing), eating, and crawling. She's like a little jungle cat crawling all around the house - it's amazing how fast she's gotten. It's great to see her chase Will around, they are really starting to be able to play together.

She's also quite stealthy in her crawling when she wants to be, and there are a number of things she constantly tries to get into when we're not watching. When she's upstairs, she likes to creep into Will's room and pull all the books off the shelf, only sometimes settling on a book to read. Her favorite is "Baby Colors" - every few mornings I'll leave her on the floor in my room to go downstairs and prepare breakfast, then come back to find her sitting amongst a pile of books intently reading that one and maybe learning about colors. The other thing she is constantly trying to get into is the cat food in the kitchen. If she has her mind set on it, she will repeatedly crawl directly to the cat food and try to get some into her mouth before a parent stops her, tells her "NO" and puts her down somewhere far away (only to have her immediately resume her quest).

She has also been cruising around the infant room at daycare, which has been fun for her teachers. She tends to go for exactly what she wants to play with, and usually gets to do what she wants - even if she has to bully the other babies a bit.

What are YOU looking at?

She has been teething over the past month, and actually has 2 teeth just poking through on the bottom - you might even be able to see them in the pictures below if you zoom in. All the teething has led to a pretty constant flow of snot (and she HATES getting her nose wiped). Probably related to the teething, she has begun exercising a lot more control over what she eats. She can eat almost all foods but clearly has her favorites - like the rice puffs we give her which she can feed to herself, I think she could be happy subsisting solely on those. We started blending many of the entrees for our family dinners to give her, and she'll eat that...sometimes. It's really cute when she tells you she doesn't want to eat something - she makes an elephant noise with her lips, does it over and over very frantically so you can't get any food near her mouth. We have a video of this, I'll post it soon.

Another very recent development: Hallie has started standing up on her own. She pulls herself up on various pieces of furniture, then bounces and yaps to show how proud of herself she is. In fact, she can do a bit of "walking" by supporting herself on various objects that can slide or roll - I have a video of that coming soon as well.

22693 visits to Will and Hallie's page as of this posting.

Lodge sled racing

When we were at the Lodge for the holidays (yes, almost 2 months ago now - sorry, it's a busy time for me these days), we didn't have many activities to do outside, but Grandma and Grandpa wisely bought a couple of sleds and of course there was much snow so we definitely put them to use. First Will and I rode on a sled tied with a rope to the Mario Kart, and Grandpa towed us around the ice-covered lake. That was fun but a lot of snow got in Will's face, so he preferred to ride with Grandpa and watch me try to hold on for dear life as those two tried to bury me in a tidal wave of snow or at least cause a spectacular wipeout.

Anyway, it seemed to me that pulling each other on sleds was the only reasonable way to take advantage of all the Northern Wisconsin snow. I did not think we could do any downhill sledding anywhere near the Lodge due to the dense growth of trees pretty much everywhere. But I had forgotten about the "road" down the hill from the Lodge to the lake that is so convenient for loading/unloading boats (and delivering snacks and beverages via Mario Kart). Turns out this road was just steep enough to get a solid sledding run. And, since we went up and down in the MK several times, there were conveniently two parallel snow-chutes for RACING.

Unky Grant, AJ, Erin, Will, and I had several races with various rewards and consequences - for example, Jenna had to eat several of the worst flavors of Harry Potter jellybeans as a result of losing numerous races to me (I know many of you readers know how much I enjoyed that). Will tried to pick who would likely be the race winner and ride with them (usually me), but the times he "was not the winner" usually meant a few minutes of crying until he was ready to try again.

Enjoy the highlight video below, which includes Will going down "all by my big boy self", then suffering a heartbreaking defeat when racing his dad, and finally, tasting sweet victory in the ultimate championship doubles run, which ended in a pretty excellent crash.