Fun times with friends and family!

We are back from our trip up north! We left for Edmonton last Friday and spent the weekend there with Brian's family, also making a trip to Martin and Angie's to see them. Lynsey discovered her birthday present from Brian's mom a bit early, so she was allowed to have her new train over the weekend - "All Aboard" was resonating in my head all weekend! We had a great time at Martin and Angie's - Lynsey at first just patted Asher on the head somewhat condescendingly, but eventually they did play together a bit:). We left for La Crete at 5pm on Monday and the drive went really well! Lynsey fell asleep around 8pm and slept pretty much the whole way! What a relaxing drive it was (from 8pm on anyway). We had such a great time in La Crete! I can't remember a week when I have visited so many people - I saw people I hadn't seen in ages and managed to make it to the house of every one of my sisters and brothers up there for a meal! I can't remember when I've eaten so well! Lynsey did so well for being away from home for so long - she had her moments of not wanting to nap, and even had one bad night, but she does that at home, too. The ride home was just as successful as the drive up there, so I think we will continue to stick with the strategy of leaving on long trips somewhat close to her bedtime.

I feel like she's changed quite a bit again in the last week! She is definitely developing a way of communicating with us, shaking her head when she doesn't want any more food, and sometimes it sounds like she's saying "no", although I'm not sure yet if it's deliberate. She makes a lot more sounds in general now than she did even a few weeks ago, especially when she gets excited! One thing that has developed that is not so cute is a bit of an attitude:(. I took her for a walk today and I was going to let her walk for a bit, since she gets tired of being in the stroller, but she refused to walk straight, constantly veering towards the road. When I would grab her and try to make her walk on the sidewalk she absolutely freaked out. Eventually I had to put a screaming Lynsey back in the stroller where she screamed most of the way home. I think part of the problem is that she is getting her one year molars on the left side top and bottom, but I also think she is growing up and growing some defiance while she's at it. I'm not really sure how to handle her little temper tantrums because she is too young to be disciplined, but I feel like I should be doing something to try and discourage this behaviour! I put her to bed as soon as we got home, but she only slept for half an hour and now I hear her on the monitor again. Very frustrating! Oh well - like everything else, this too shall pass!

I posted a bunch of pictures from our time in Edmonton and our visit up north. As you can see, I am hard-pressed to get a picture of Lynsey where she is not squinting like crazy. Every time she sees a camera these days I get this fake smile and I don't know how to get a real one out of her! Oh, well - one day I'm sure she'll find it funny to look back at our many squinty pictures of her:).

It's official - she is walking:)

In my last post, I couldn't say that Lynsey was officially walking because she just wasn't all that consistent yet. Now I can say that she is, in fact, "walking well". She turned 11 months old on Friday, and Friday was another big day for her in the walking department - she spent a lot of time on her feet! I now can tell people that she walked at 11 months, instead of going on about how she took her first steps at 10 months, but wasn't consistent for a long time blah blah blah. The other day we were watching TV and Lynsey just walked back and forth from the front door to the back door with a burp cloth draped around her neck (I like to think of it as a victory towel:)). Such a funny girl! She is definitely starting to change again. She is starting to babble more, putting different sounds together instead of just "dada" or "baba" etc. She does such silly things like putting a blanket over her head and walking around even though she can't see anything - not a good idea for her! But so funny for us! Just yesterday I noticed her "driving" one of her toy tractors - I had never seen her actually put the wheels on the ground and push it around, so that's one more thing she's figured out!

We are embarking on a long trip tomorrow - going to Edmonton for the weekend, and then driving up to La Crete to hang out with my friends and family. I'm really looking forward to the visiting, not the driving so much.

Getting sturdier all the time

In the last week and a half, Lynsey has been getting sturdier on her feet every day. Just yesterday it seemed like she was choosing to walk everywhere instead of crawling! She still doesn't know how to stand up in the middle of a room, but she now walks away from furniture quite regularly, whereas at the beginning she would only walk when you put her in the middle of a room. I don't know when she'll be considered to be "walking well" because she still crawls most of the time, but her eleven month birthday is in a week and based on her progress so far, I will guess that by then she will be. I guess we'll have to wait and see!

We switched her out of her infant carseat last week. She is still rear-facing, but we're making a trip to La Crete after Thanksgiving and I think I will defy the law and forward-face her for the trip. She'll be so close to a year that I can justify it - I really don't want to make such a long drive at this point in her life with her facing backwards! What a nightmare! I'm looking forward to going home and spending some time with family, allowing them to get to know Lynsey a bit better. I made a decision when Lynsey was born that she would not grow up thinking of her family in La Crete as strangers. So, although the drive will be long with an eleven month old, I believe it will be worth it:).

Some more walking

So Lynsey has become a bit braver in the last few weeks. On Saturday, I was playing softball for Corporate Challenge and Lynsey and Brian were watching. There was a chainlink fence that she was hanging on to, and a few times she just walked away from it - out of the blue! There is a really short, somewhat choppy video at the bottom of the post - she had walked 5 or 6 steps away from the fence and Brian ran to get the camera while she was standing there, and managed to catch a few more before she fell. Now, some might think this means she's walking now, but that is not the case. She has become braver with standing over the last few days especially, so she is making some progress, but she is by no means walking. She clearly can when she wants to, but for whatever reason has decided to take her time.

As I mentioned before, I played in Corporate Challenge for BDR last week and what a wake up call! I am so very out of shape it's shameful. I have decided to become active again. I'm going to play volleyball in a league this fall and I'm going to start swimming again at least once a week. I used to be so harsh on people that would really let themselves go once they had kids, but I can totally see how it could happen. It just won't happen to me - not if I can help it!

10 months old!

Lynsey turned ten months this week - so crazy that she's that old already. She has started posing for the camera a lot of the time (see below - a lot of fake smiles!). She can be so silly! We had a fun long weekend. Brian went camping with his dad and other male family so it was just Lynsey and me for the weekend. On Friday we went to Three Hills for a girls night with my sisters and nieces and on Saturday we went to Banff to hang out with Brian's mom, aunts and cousins. I was a bit worried that it would be a stressful weekend, being away so much, but it ended up being a lot of fun! Lynsey did pretty well, with the exception of Saturday bedtime when she freaked and wouldn't drink her bottle. The good news is, she finally cut those two top teeth that have been hanging around for weeks now! What a relief! Since those teeth came out, she has been eating, drinking and sleeping a lot better. Her nights have been really good all week. She doesn't do so well at naptimes, though - she keeps waking up and crying before she's ready to get up, so she cries for a bit and goes back to sleep. Not really sure why she's doing that, but I'm hoping that it will just be a phase.

I went into BDR on Friday and told them that I'm not coming back to work. I had been thinking over the last week that I might be interested in working one day a week, basically just to get out and do something different. I wasn't completely sold on this idea, but I thought I'd pitch it to them and see if it was even an option and then take it from there. As it turns out, that isn't what they would want so that makes the decision for me. It seems kind of final that I'm definitely not going back now, but I still think it's the right decision for me. I know I'm ready to get involved in more things this fall so that should help me not feel isolated. I'm looking forward to this week because I can still participate in Corporate Challenge for BDR. It should be fun to participate in some competitive sports again, even if I'm not at the top of my game anymore:). Once a competitor always a competitor!

Lynsey's walking hasn't progressed much over the last few weeks, just as I sort of suspected. She still takes steps sometimes, but she isn't very balanced and as soon as she realizes we've let her go she instantly goes down to her crawling position. Oh, well - we'll keep encouraging her and let her get there on her own time!

Some shaky first steps!

Lynsey has been busy growing up over the last 10 days:). She is starting to love it when we read to her - in fact, we have found that when she is whiney, we just have to pull out "I Love You Through and Through" and as soon as she sees it she starts smiling and crawling over as fast as she can. We think she has a crush on the little boy in the book:). We've been spending quite a bit of time with Ruthy and little Elijah before they move in a week - it's so sad that they are leaving! We'll have to find another best friend for Lynsey:(. She shrieks when she sees him (he's the boy in the pool in case you don't know who I'm talking about) and follows him around everywhere. Hopefully we can still see them from time to time - Westlock seems far away!

Now I don't know how people measure when their babies start walking, but I think I can safely say that Lynsey took her first real steps today! They were shaky and a bit unbalanced, but she definitely put one foot in front of the other unaided and reached her destination (fell into her destination really:)). It was very exciting to see! When Brian came home we tried to get it on video, but it was difficult to do because we really were both required to try to get her to walk so we'll have to wait until there's a third party around to properly get it on video. She did do it again in the evening, so Brian got to see it which is nice. I sort of think she might do what she did with her standing and take some time off now, though (she hasn't stood for more than a second or two since that day she did so well). She seems to lack some confidence. She does, however, like independence, so I think that once she realizes that walking can get her from point A to B with a better vantage point than crawling, she will try harder.