First Birthday Party Plans Already?!?!?!

Hello Again Everyone~

I hope this finds everyone doing well. Things are going great in the Hill household. Our little girl is just growing like crazy.

Being a teacher and having summers off is really such a blessing! I have enjoyed these past couple months so much! It has been wonderful to spend so much time with her, play with her, and have her make me laugh and smile each and every day. I only have 2 weeks left before we start back at LMU and it will be bitter sweet. I treasure every minute I spend with Lorali, so I will miss being with her all day... but I also really really love my job and am looking forward to getting back in the classroom and interacting with the students.

Will got a "lateral promotion" - if that's what it is called, I'm a little business-talk ignorant :) - a couple weeks ago. He did not move up in rank at Enterprise, but he did double his fleet size!!! He went from having one main branch and two satellite branches that totaled about 85 cars to now having two main branches and two satellites with about 185 cars!!! The extra commission on the larger fleet size will be nice but it does mean longer hours for him. You should see the look on Lorali's face when she hears Daddy's keys in the door!!! It is one of the sweetest things I have ever seen. If she is playing on the floor when he gets home she will stop whatever she is doing, look at the door, start clapping her hands, and bounce up and down!!! As soon as he walks in she starts waving and saying "hi". She loves her Daddy!!!

I took her to her 9-month check up earlier this month. Dr. Feld said she looked great and was perfectly healthy, but she did drop a percentile in weight. He wasn't too concerned about it but wants us to start giving her some PediaSure every day just to give her some extra calories. We call it her "milkshake" and she seems to really like it. When I told him that she stopped eating her baby food a few months ago he wasn't surprised that she hadn't gained very much weight, but our little miss independent needs to put on a few more ounces before her 12-month check up. Now that she is older and can eat different foods it shouldn't be too hard to put some weight on. Before all she could eat was Cheerios, and Gerber puffs, etc... and those things have very little calories in them!!! She had to eat 70 puffs for one serving and still only got 35 calories!!! Why don't they make adult snacks like that :) Anyway, now she is eating yogurt, pasta, animal crackers, teddy grahams, goldfish, and whatever she can have that Will and I eat. I am still nursing her but the countdown to the day she can have cow's milk has begun! Breastfeeding has been a HUGE BLESSING!!! I am so fortunate to have been able to nurse her for this long and have such a great milk supply, but I am also kind of ready to have the freedom of being able to leave the house without my pump!!! I plan on starting the weaning process pretty soon, but I need to call my lactation consultants because I don't really know the best way to go about doing it! It will be bittersweet when she is weaned, but it has to happen. She is also about to get some top teeth, so that may speed along the process :) haha

Since my last post we have gone on a couple trips/vacations. We went to Ohio over the Fourth of July for my annual family reunion. It was great to catch up with all the family that we don't get to see that often! Unfortunately it was rainy for most of the day, but we still had a really good time. I even got to play volleyball for the first time in about 2 years!!! It was really fun to get out there and play, even if it was on the grass and just for fun.

A couple weeks ago we took a family vacation down to Lake Mitchell in Alabama. Will's dad has a house/cabin on the lake and we stayed there for 4-5 days. We got to spend a couple days with Summer, Jason, Colton, and Catelyn! It was great to see them before they made their move to South Carolina! Lorali loved spending time with her cousins :) We had a cookout over the weekend and some of Will's friends and their families came down. Kenny and Linda stopped by on their way back from the beach and spent the afternoon with us too! We had an amazing time. It was great to get away and just spend time together. There was no TV, internet, or cell phone service... and guess what... WE SURVIVED!!! :) Lorali absolutely LOVED the lake! She would just sit and ride in the boat. She would clap and point to people as they rode on the wakeboard or tube. The water was really warm and she would get in and splash around. We would put her on the platform on the back of the boat and she would fall back into the water! She had such a good time!!! We will definitely need to make that an annual trip!

My mom, Robin, Caitlyn, and Grandma Dusty are coming down this weekend. Lorali's best friend, Molly, turned one last week and her birthday party is Saturday. We can't wait to celebrate with her. We have started making some plans for Lorali's first birthday party. I cannot believe my baby is going to be one in less than two months!!! We have put together "Wish Lists" for Lorali at Target and Kohl's. I realized when we started making our invite list that there is no way I can come up with gift ideas for everyone and this would give people an idea of what she needs. I hope no one thinks this is "greedy" or "faux pas", it is really just easier for me to make a list than try to come up with ideas off the top of my head! I also thought it might help avoid getting too many duplicates of outfits and toys. People certainly don't HAVE to get something off the list, but I know when I'm buying a gift I like to know what the person wants/needs. Hopefully it is helpful and people don't get upset... Everyone I mentioned it to thought it was a good idea!

I have already mentioned some of the fun things Lorali is doing these days, but here are some of the milestones/fun things she is up to. She is crawling all over the place. She is standing by herself for up to 15-20 seconds! She is maneuvering herself all over the furniture. She waves, says hi and bye, mama, dada, and anything else that jibber jabbers out of her mouth. :) She claps anytime someone says "yay" or she hears clapping on the TV. She is pointing at objects. I'm almost afraid to say it, but she is back to sleeping through the night (I hope I didn't just jinx myself!). She is beginning to take lids and try to put them on the objects they belong with. She thinks she can walk, but when she tries to take a step she falls to her bottom. She wants to walk to us soooo badly, but she just isn't quite ready. It won't be long though!!! She has taken a couple steps to the side and couple mini-steps forward, but nothing that would really classify as "walking".

Well, I think that is about it... If I forgot anything I will be sure to include it in the next post. Here are some pictures from the past few weeks...

Love and miss everyone,

Ahleasha, Will, and Lorali

She woke up early last Saturday and came to lay with Daddy... she was sooo happy :)

I don't know what this face is... it's like she's saying "What do you think you're doing?" haha

Mmmm.... Teddy Grahams :)

Hhheeeyyyy!!!

Look Mommy, toilet paper!!!

Lorali and Molly... aren't they sweet!!!

Look at my cute shades!

Lorali with her cousins, Colton and Catelyn...

Lorali and Catelyn were soooo tired on the boat...

Look at her floating in the water... she had so much fun!!!

Will, Catelyn, and Lorali in the lake...

She's crazy... what can I say... :)

Lorali and Me...

More silly faces...

She loves the pool too!!!

Already 9 Months Old...

Hello Everyone...

Well, I don't really know where to start, so I guess I'll just start rambling (like usual, lol). I will tell you all about the past couple months and post some pictures and videos of everything at the end.

At the beginning of May we made a trip down to Birmingham to visit Will's family and celebrate Papaw's 85th birthday! We had a really good time visiting with everyone and at the end of the trip we went to our friends' Scott and Brooke's daughter's first birthday party. It is hard to believe that we will be planning Lorali's first birthday party in just a few months!!!

My first Mother's Day was not exactly what I had planned. The Friday before I got a phone call that my grandpa Barney was going to the emergency room because he was having severe abdominal pain. As it turns out he was suffering from gall stones and acute pancreatitis and needed to have surgery ASAP. So, Lorali and I loaded up Saturday morning and headed north to Ohio. Once we got to the hospital they told us that they had to wait until my grandpa's liver enzymes went back down to normal and make sure the pancreatitis went away. So, the waiting began. We waited and waited, and finally he had his surgery Tuesday morning. So, I was able to spend my first Mother's day with my daughter, mom, grandma, and great-grandma but not with my husband. Oh well, it could have been worse... I'm just thankful that everything worked out with my grandpa and he is recovering and doing really well.

Some friends of ours had a cookout for Memorial Day. We all hung out, ate dinner, and then had a huge bonfire. We had a good time, until Lorali got her first boo-boo. We were giving her a bath in our friends' tub (which is deeper than ours). She went to pull herself up and her hand slipped. She fell in the tub and hit her eye on one of the jets. It was just a very minor cut, but it was the first time we had seen blood come from our daughter, so it was a little scary. Within a few minutes she was fully recovered and acting like her happy silly self.

I went home again the first weekend in June for my little sister's first dance recital. She was the cutest little dancing poodle I've ever seen!!! My best friend from high school (Susan) and I finally got to see each other! She just finished her doctorate (in neuroscience, she's pretty smart) at the University of Cincinnati and is getting ready to move to Seattle with her boyfriend and beautiful dog so we figured we'd better get together before she moves across the country! It was great to catch up with her, even if it was in the middle of a garage sale! :)

The next weekend we packed up and went to Nashville. I had a one day conference to go to so we thought what better reason to go visit our friends Jason and Cortney and their little girl, Paige. We hadn't seen the Rockhills since Paige was a whole 3 days old so it was about time we got together! It was so sweet seeing Lorali and Paige play together. Paige wasn't feeling real great the first night, but by Saturday she was better and the girls had a blast. It was really cute to watch Paige interact with Lorali because she's never really been around another baby. Whereas Lorali is around Molly all day so she was all about playing with Paige! Lorali was a little too much for Paige to handle at first, but she adjusted and they had a great time playing in the bathtub. It was great seeing Cortney and Jason too. We always have so much fun when we all get together.

This past weekend was Father's Day. And I must say, we had a wonderful weekend! Will's mom came up to visit and was such a huge help with Lorali. Cathy came up Saturday and stayed until Monday morning. We went to church Sunday morning and Cathy watched Lorali and Molly so Will, myself, Rebecca, and Ryan could play golf. After golf we came back to the house and grilled steaks and hung out. Then, once again, the bathtub and Lorali had a disagreement. Lorali pulled up on the side of the tub and her hand slipped. This time the blood was a little more serious, but she is okay!!! She had a cut on the crease of her eyelid right under her brow bone. The bleeding stopped within a couple minutes and the sides of the wound aligned themselves so luckily she didn't need any special treatment. I called our pediatrician just to make sure I didn't need to do anything else, and he said she would be fine. But, how awesome is it that our pediatrician answered his personal cell phone at 9:00pm on Father's Day! By Tuesday we couldn't even tell she had injured her eye two days before, so that is a relief.

I finished up my summer school classes this week, so I now have about 8 weeks to get everything ready for fall semester. I am starting my doctorate in September so that will be exciting, and scary, and hopefully not too much to take on. Will is thinking about going to back school to get his teaching certificate. There is a post-baccaleaureate program at LMU that meets two Saturdays a month for a year and then he would need to do his student teaching. It would be really nice if we could both have summers and winter breaks off!!! He enjoys his job at Enterprise, but the schedule change would be nice!

Some more updates on Lorali - she is full on crawling all over the place! She can get from one room to the next in a matter of seconds so we have to be sure to keep a close eye on her! A few weeks ago she decided she no longer wants us feeding her baby food. She will eat any solid foods we put in front of her (she loves cheerios, puffs, veggies, etc) but does not really like anything from a spoon. I let her try to feed herself one day and she did manage to get a couple spoonfuls in her mouth but for the most part just made a mess. It was really fun to watch her try to figure it out though! Every now and then she will eat baby food or oatmeal, but for the most part she just wants to feed herself. She pulls up on everything and wants to stand as much as possible. It won't be long and she will be taking her first steps! She has started dancing whenever she hears music. It is amazing how they just innately respond to certain stimuli!!! One of our favorite things she does is as soon as she hears the bath water running to drops whatever she is doing, crawls all the way into the bathroom, stands up at the edge of the tub, and just looks back over her shoulder like "Hello! I'm here! Bathe me!". Bath time is still her favorite time of day! She mimics almost anything Will says or does, it is so cute. She will do the hand-over-the-mouth noise thing (not sure what it's called), she blows raspberries all the time. Oh, and we went to a couple weeks of swim classes! She absolutely loved the water, but only lasted about 30-45 minutes before she would get cold. We also took her to the lake one day on our friends JooHee and Patrick's boat. She loved riding on the boat, but the lake water was still a little cold for her.

Well, I think that about covers the past two months... at least a rough overview of everything we've been up to. Next weekend is the fourth of July and we will be going up to Ohio. My family has a huge reunion every year on this weekend. It should be a fun quick trip up north. I take Lorali to the doctor next Thursday for her 9-month well baby check up. I will try to update this soon after to give you all the details of her visit.

Hope this finds everyone well... keep in touch and come visit whenever you'd like!!!

Love,

Will, Ahleasha, and Lorali

Papaw's Birthday Party

Nanny and Grandaddy

She loves to swing!!!

Mother's Day 2009 - no Will :(

Lorali and Grandpa Scott

Lorali and Mommy on the lake

Lorali and Daddy on the lake

Swinging again...

Lorali and Great-Grandpa Barney

Lorali and Gamma Dar

Lorali, Great-Grandma Dusty, and Aunt Caitlyn

Our precious little girl...

She loves the bubble machine toy Grandpa Scott bought her!!!

Lorali and Paige in the tub having fun...

If you are friends with Will then I shouldn't have to explain why this is funny...

Feeding herself with a spoon for the first time...

Swim Class...

Fun in the sprinkler pool!

Giving Nana sweet baby kisses...

Man, she looks like her daddy sometimes!!!

Having fun with daddy at the park...

Getting ready to go down the slide with mommy...

Riding the turtle...

She loves shopping with Mommy :)

7 months already...

Hello Everyone~

Can you believe Lorali is 7 months old already?!?! We took her to the doctor a few weeks ago for her 6-month well baby check-up. We have switched pediatricians and are really happy with her new doctor. We have to drive to Knoxville for her appointments now, but it's worth it for the better healthcare! Anyway, Lorali weighed in at 14 pounds 8 ounces (25th percentile) and was 26 inches long (75th percentile). I asked the doctor if it is bad that she dropped from the 50th to 25th percentile in weight but he said that since she is so long and only dropped a little bit that it was nothing to worry about. I think she had just gone through a growth spurt so it will just take some time to fatten her back up :) Our new doctor is Dr. Feld and he said that she is perfect. Lorali got mad at him during her check-up because he was trying to listen her to heart and lung sounds but she really really really wanted to eat his stethoscope and he wouldn't let her... it was pretty funny.

We took Lorali to her first horse races a couple weeks ago. Will and I went up with some friends and spent the weekend in Lexington watching the races at Keeneland. Saturday was miserable because there were so many people there. Thankfully my aunt and uncle live about 10 minutes from the track and were able to keep her for us during the day. My mom and Robin and Caitlyn came down also and helped watch her. We all went back to the races on Sunday and had a really good time. Will even won some money!!! woohoo, that doesn't happen very often :)

We had our first Easter as a family a couple weeks ago. We are terrible parents though because we did not take a single picture of her in her Easter dress!!! We had a nice Easter. We went to Sunday School and church in the morning then stopped by the LMU baseball game for a little while before heading home to catch the final round of the Masters. Later that evening some of our friends came over and we had a nice cookout with everyone.

This past weekend we went up to Ohio for Caitlyn's 4th birthday party. We had a really good time and Lorali traveled really really well!!! It was so nice to finally make a long distance car ride without her screaming the majority of the time :) We got a lot of great pictures which I will post at the end.

She is getting so big so fast!!! She has started to try to crawl. Right now it is more of a military style but she is getting there! I know one thing, we can't leave her unattended anywhere anymore! She talks to us a lot and still brings tears to our eyes when she smiles. One of the biggest changes is she has started to sleep in her own bed at night! This was really weird at first, but I'm glad we did it. She is sleeping pretty well and for the most part only waking up once a night. Within a few minutes we can usually get her back to sleep and only on rare occasions do I have to nurse her. Dr. Feld says that by the time she is 8-months she shouldn't be eating in the middle of the night anymore so we're trying to work our way towards that.

Well, I think that's about it for now... Will is going to Talladega this weekend so Lorali and I will be on our own, but we'll have a good time even though we'll be missing daddy.

Here are some recent pictures...

Here are Lorali and Caitlyn at the Pinnacle straddling the Kentucky/Virginia state lines...

At the baseball games...

4 generations...

She's so stinkin precious...

Caitlyn and Lorali in their polka-dots...

I love swinging!!!

Lorali and Uncle Cody...

Lorali and her fairy wings...

Will and his fairy wings...

I will update this in a couple weeks...

Love,

Ahleasha, Will, and Lorali

Finally... an update...

Hello Everyone~

Well, I turned on my computer 3 hours ago to update our blog and am just now getting around to doing it! I decided that even though everyone else is in bed I HAVE GOT TO GET THIS DONE!!! I really need to do a better job with my time management. :)

Anyway, as I'm sure you have figured out or assumed by now, Lorali has been growing and developing like crazy! At the time of my last post she had just started rolling over in both directions. Well, when she was about 5 months old she started to sit up on her own. Now she will sit on the floor and play with her toys for a long time. It's really nice that she doesn't have to be held or strapped into something all the time now. It's really convenient at the grocery store and restaurants because we can use the seat on the shopping cart and high-chairs now! She has also started to try the whole crawling thing but hasn't quite figured out how to move forward yet. She tends to scoot backward more than anything and that makes her frustrated because she gets farther and farther away from where she is trying to crawl to! She has also tried to pull herself up a couple times on her crib rails and the coffee table. It's going to be a totally different world once she is mobile!

Now that she is six months old we have started giving her baby food. We started her off with sweet potatoes last week. The first couple bites kind of threw her for a loop, but she really seemed to like them after a few bites. We have moved onto carrots this week. She has done really well with those also. Next we plan on trying squash and then moving on to green beans. We tried a sippy cup a couple weeks ago, but she didn't really want anything to do with that yet.

Last week was my spring break so Will took some vacation and we went down to Florida to visit with his cousin Sambo and his family. It was great to get out of Claiborne County for a while, but what really made the trip awesome was getting to take Lorali to Disney World. Now, believe me, I know it is kind of silly to take a six-month old to the Magic Kingdom and expect her to get excited about the princesses and everything, but the tickets were free, so it was worth it! Will's mom met us in Florida and was able to go to the parks with us and help with Lorali so that was great. It was hard at times because if the lines were long for the attractions we couldn't really wait because Lorali would have needed a diaper change or to be fed or to take a nap, and those things are really hard to do when you're standing in an 80-minute line. Nonetheless, we had a great time! And even though it sounds a little crazy, I really think Lorali had fun! For one thing, she was basically held either in the Baby Bjorn or someone's arms for a week straight. We definitely put a lot of miles on the Baby Bjorn! She loves to ride in it and face outward so she can see everything. She would just kick her little legs and throw her arms around and squeal! Also, she made her first airplane trip and did wonderfully! I was a little nervous because she is not a good car traveler at all! But, as long as she's not constrained by anything she seems to do just fine. On the way down she just sat there and made cute faces at the man next to us and took about a 30 minute nap on Will's chest. On the way back she sprawled out across our laps and slept the whole way!

What else do I need to fill everyone in on... well, Lorali is about to get her first tooth! We noticed a couple days ago that you can see the top of one of her bottom teeth that is about to poke through her gums! Nursing should get really fun here soon, lol. Also, for those of you that don't know, Will turned 30 last Friday. He is handling it really well. I think he's too busy with work and Lorali to really even notice! We had a surprise party for him last night (well at least he says he was surprised, but I think he knew something was up). Lorali also made her first trip to Ohio about a month ago. My friend Rebecca and her little girl, Molly (who is two months older than Lorali), went with us. It was a really fun girls' weekend. We hit the outlet malls and hung out with my family.

My mom and grandparents are coming in town this weekend. It is the first time we have had visitors in over a month! It has been strange having the house to ourselves, but we always welcome anyone who wants to come stay and visit (and help babysit, lol).

Well, I think that is about it. I take Lorali to the doctor for her 6-month checkup here in a couple weeks so I will update you guys after that. Here are some pictures from the past few weeks...

Love,

Will, Ahleasha, and Lorali

Here is a picture of Lorali and me and Rebecca and Molly. We always sit in the same section at the basketball games (along with Brandie and Melanie) so our athletic director named the section "the crib" and put a sign up for us!

Here she is watching Daddy paint the cornhole boards that Levi made us...

Isn't she precious!

Here's Lorali with her Great-Great Grandma Kidwell... 5 generations!

Here are some pictures of Disney World...

Here is a picture of us with Will's birthday cake... Lorali really wanted to try it!