The Little Gym play date

 Our play date group had a fun afternoon at The Little Gym today. They were gracious enough to allow us to come for an hour of free play. I was very excited about going as I have always wondered what it was like. Granted it was free play so not quite like the structured classes they have but we did get to see the facility and different activities they do. Their website is actually very informative but they are pretty pricey. I haven't done any research on what gym classes cost so could be worth it for the cleanliness, structure, and employees engagement. The employees were super awesome as well and did great with the kids. I've wanted to sign Lillian up for the classes but after today I decided to wait until maybe next year solely because she wasn't as interested in running, climbing, jumping, etc. as I thought she would be. Could be there were so many people to watch or nothing to particularly grab her attention. I tried to grab a couple pictures to show what they did offer.

This was called the jumping track I think. Kids can just jump from one end to the other but they let the kids also sit on top of it while it inflated and deflated. As you can tell from the picture Lillian did not enjoy it deflating.

Lillian did however enjoy the balls and sweet Kyleigh rolled the ball with her.

She also enjoyed the bubbles. These bubbles were legit too. They didn't pop real easily (you could catch them on your fingers) and just floated around the room. Someone told me they are Gymboree so I plan on trying to find them as they were worth the cost in my opinion. 

We have a ramp leading up to our carport door instead of stairs and Lillian loves walking up and down that so I thought she would love this. She did like it but was more captured by people watching.

Lillian's 15th Month & Well Visit

This is my last monthly update. It is getting harder to remember and keep up. I also feel that I should move my blog to private. I had a friend who recently had to make hers private due to inappropriate comments from strangers. And another friend who has had pictures and her identity stolen from her blog. Thankfully I haven't had any issues but hate to think of strangers reading details of my family and creeping on our pictures. You'll have to send me your gmail address to be added. I'm pretty sure not many people care about our lives but I enjoy writing posts and having it for future reference. Plus it is a lot easier than making a scrapbook. And I promise even if we haven't talked in years I won't think its weird that you read this. lol

Lillian turned 15 months old on June 19th. I waited until now to post because she also had her 15 month well visit today.

Dr. Appt.: Lillian's weight was 23lbs 6 ounces up 3lbs exactly from her 1 year appointment. Her height was 31in. She is in the 75% for height and weight and only 25% for head. I've always wondered how those stats work. According to the CDC growth charts, most 15-month-olds fall between these two numbers (but don’t worry, all kids grow at different speeds):

Weight:
Girls: 19 to 27.5 pounds
Boys: 20.25 to 30 pounds

Height:
Girls: 28.75 to 32.75 inches
Boys: 29 to 33 inches

Head Circumference:
Girls: 17.25 to 18.75 inches (her head was 17.3 I think so even though its 25% there is no concern they said)
Boys: 17.75 to 19.5 inches

She did have two shots today. One was Hep A and I can't remember the other one. She also had a diaper rash come and go for about 3 weeks. This last week was pretty bad and it hurt her when we wiped it so we changed wipes (kroger fragrance free) and it cleared up some before heading to the doctor. She had small bumps on her belly and had been scratching it. The doctor said it had become a light yeast rash so he prescribed us some topical cream to help.

Sleep: Sleeping well still taking two naps a day. Usually the morning nap is 1 hour and afternoon is from 1.5 hrs. to 2 hr 15 min. She sleeps longer in the afternoon if I stay on the opposite side of the house or take a nap. lol Lately and maybe a few times at the beginning of the month she'll wake up about 30 minute early in the morning. Not sure why. Lillian has been peeing through her diaper at night too. I tried cutting back water/milk and hour before bed and bigger diapers. I guess we'll have to try overnight diapers next.

Eating: Same as usually. Eats us out of house and home 5 times a day. Chowing down on a rib and girl loves some corn on the cob now that she has more teeth.

She had her first smoothie this month and loved it.

I put strawberries I've frozen, banana, water, spinach, and broccoli in it. Hers are a lot healthier than mine.

Teething: We finally cut 3 more teeth this month so we are now up to a whopping 6 teeth. lol. We got our  Baltic Amber necklace this month and I feel like it does work. We ordered ours from Inspired by Finn Since she has worn it we haven't had to use the teething tablets at all. She is also less fussy so I'd say it was worth the money.

Other Happenings:
-Lillian chewed her first piece of gum this month. I know it sounds terrible but she was so interested in my gum so I took a little (abc gum) and gave it to her. She did really well and never swallowed it. I think it helped her to learn to chew. Anyways here is a video

-Another Hilarious video if you haven't already seen it. Lillian decided to do some exercising with Momma. She is good at the squats and we are working on her jumps. lol

-

First cookie from Kroger. I made the mistake of going before Lillian had lunch so this cookie kept her happy long enough for me to get what we needed without any meltdowns. 

NASA Day

Huntsville primarily known for the the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command (AMCOM) and Marshall Space Flight Center. Basically if you live here you are a rocket scientist. jk. The Marshall Space Flight Center and Downtown Huntsville put on a free event to celebrate NASA's past, present, and future. There were lots of booths for kids to build rockets, color, and different demonstrations of rocket science. Lillian was a little young to really enjoy anything, Kevin enjoyed it because of the field he works in and I enjoyed walking around with my family at a free event taking pictures.

Apparently Astronaut is not one of her first career choices

NASA Tat

For lunch we tried out a pizza place on the square called Sam and Greg's. It was actually really good. Made it even better with the table we sat at. 

After naps that day we enjoyed the rest of our family day at the park. The playground is more fun now that Lillian can run around the play set but she still loves the swing.

Father's Day

I am very thankful for the father I have. He has always been as a father should be, loving, caring, disciplinary, and Christ like. Sure he is not perfect and has made mistakes but that is what makes him such a wonderful dad.

I am also so very thankful I have Kevin as a husband. He has turned out to be an amazing father to Lillian. I never doubted he would be (he has an awesome father that raised him very well). It is funny how much more you can love someone when you see how sweet and caring he can be to a child. Lillian loves her daddy so much already and I see that special bond forming that I have with my dad.

We spent father's day in Nashville. I had already been up there the latter part of the week and Kevin came up for the weekend and got to hang out with his buddy Jordan. Lillian is totally a daddy's girl right now. As soon as she saw him at my parent's house she literally ran as fast as her little legs could take her. Every time she sees him whether its been all day or just 10 minutes she gets so excited to see him. And she says Dada all the time. It is so sweet I can't be jealous. Anyways I had no idea what to get Kevin as a gift. He is awesome at surprising me with gifts and I am too scared to spend the money on the gifts that interest him. He had mentioned awhile back about some LG Bluetooth headphones. I did my Amazon review research and decided which ones to get him but being the cautious frugal person I am I didn't buy them. Sunday morning Lillian woke us up nice and early and we snuggled in bed then showed Dada a picture on my phone of his gift. I told him I hadn't ordered them just yet in case he wanted a different model or was no longer interested. He seemed excited and ordered them later that day. We went to church then headed out for lunch at El Chicos. El Chicos is our family's FAVORITE Mexican restaurant. I think it's delicious but Kevin isn't as much of a fan so it must be a Heffington thing. The reason we went here was my Dad retired back in December from AT&T and they give him a certain budget to go out to eat as part of a retirement party. Usually it is with co-workers but since he had worked from home since I was in middle school he didn't have co-workers besides us so they said he could take family out. Well the budget for food was a very large amount so we invited one of my dad's brothers and some of his family and my dad's sister and her family. Surprising with 25 of us there we still didn't come close to using the whole budget. We had a fun time hanging with family and celebrating all the dads.

After lunch we headed back home to AL in time to rest before church that night. Kevin had gotten a new stereo so he was working on setting that up and we had an impromptu dance party. You can see a video here of Lillian and Daddy Dancing. Lillian loves music and dancing but unfortunately Dada and Momma are both very "white" when it comes to dancing.

Shout out to all the dads out there. I know you are all trying your hardest and giving everything you've got for your families. Special shout out to my older brother who will be a father in less than 6 months!

Lillian's 14th Month

Lillian is 14 months old today!

This sweet girl is growing too fast now. We are officially walking. Here is a video I took on May 2nd when she finally started walking but now it seems so silly because she is moving all over the place. Here we are Gap and she would throw a fit if I tried to carry her. The floors were slippery so she falls a few times but its crazy how quick they start going once they realize they can walk.

Sleeping: Lillian still takes two naps a day. It took a while to figure out the best schedule now but lately it has worked well if she sleeps from about 9am-10am and then again from 1:30 until 3. She will wake up earlier sometimes or we may be a few minutes getting her down if we are out and about but she still is awesome at going to sleep. No problems with night time sleep except while we were at the beach. It was Eastern Standard time instead of Central (where we live) so we though she'd sleep in until 8am (one hour later than her normal 7am). WRONG! She woke us up about 6:30 every morning which would be 5:30am at home. I think it was because the room got too bright in the mornings but luckily since we have been back home she is back to waking up between 7-7:30am.

Eating: Still eating a lot but I have noticed she is more picky than before. Before she even takes a bite she'll push it away and I have to get on to her to take a bite and once she realizes what it is she's fine. I did buy one of those squeeze pouch things that was spinach, chic peas, and some other vegetable and I had to force it down her. She did not like it one bit. We are working on feeding her meat and veggies before fruit because she has come to love fruit and won't eat anything else once she's had a bite of fruit. She is still so sweet but if she is hungry she has a melt down. We are working on patience for sure. We have always signed eat and more, but randomly at the beach she started actually signing please. Here is video of what she signs a lot. It's more, eat (her version), and please (her version).  She also shoves food in her mouth. We have to give her just a few bites at a time or next thing you know she has chipmunk cheeks. She has shoved half a banana in her mouth multiple times

 and she still loves baked ziti. Momma hates the clean up though.

Teeth: Poor thing I thought for sure she was teething one week this month but no signs of that 4th tooth coming through yet. Once she has more chompers I feel like she'll be able to handle more foods without me having to bake/boil them soooo soft.

Other Happenings: 
-This month was busy. We had Easter, My Birthday, Mothers day, our trip to the beach, quick trips to Atlanta and Nashville.
- We had some nice weather (between rainy days and tornado weather) this month so we got out as much as possible. She loves her cozy coupe car now. Mommy failed and out her in without shoes on so her poor little toes got scratched up.

- Lillian is much more interested in her books now. Especially walking to her bookshelf and pulling them all down. I must say though she is also very good at helping clean the books up when we are done.

- We go to story time at the library on Tuesday mornings and stayed for the craft time this time. It was Lillian's first time coloring and she made this duck puppet. She was only interested in it for about 3 minutes then she just wanted to eat the crayons or drop them on the ground. I will cherish this puppet forever. :) 

- Lillian's personality has also come out this month. She has thrown a few fits especially around eating time. And she has started making so many faces. They are so funny and cute but we know some of them are attitude so we have been working on "being sweet". Kevin was able to capture one particular face we have seen a lot lately. This was the face she made after I told her No when she was throwing a fit at a restaurant. So far the fits aren't bad/embarrassing for me yet so I am hoping to train her that they are not okay before they get out of control.

- Lillian is still pretty clingy to Momma and Dada or Nana and finally opened up to Papa while we were at the beach. She'll say hi and wave to strangers all the time but if they try and actually engage in conversation with her she'll cry or gets a 'tude. 

- She went to Bible class for the first time on April 27th and only lasted about 10 minutes before my cousin had to go get her to calm her down. We tried again the next week and her new teacher is a friend of mine with children, who is so sweet and awesome, said she doesn't mind if Lillian cries if I don't. So we just leave her and hope she will get use to it. Then we went out of town one week and tried again yesterday and she cried the whole time. I hate for the teacher/other children have to listen to her cry the WHOLE class so any advice would be great. Next time we are going to try and have just Daddy drop her off and also take her to the nursery (which is her classroom) during worship for just 10-15 minutes to get her more use to the room. During the nursery time they are free to get on the ground and play with toys where as in class they are confined to the chairs. Here's to hoping she'll learn to love it soon. 

- We decided not to do the whole baby proofing thing in our house. Except the cabinets that have cleaning supplies or other harmful things.We are more working on setting boundaries. So far Lillian is doing great but she loves those kitchen cabinet doors. 

-My Mom got Lillian this chair and she LOVES it. It still needs a slip cover but it is so funny to watch Lillian climb in and out of it. 

Myrtle Beach Trip

My sister's boss owns a penthouse condo in North Myrtle Beach and we were able to stay there (for free!) for a week with my parents and my sister. We went here last year as well Lillian's first beach . It was a wonderful trip and we had awesome weather except for one day. It was a typical relaxing beach trip where we went to the beach, pool, and shopped at the outlet mall. I figured we'd just take pictures to remember our trip instead of write out the whole week. Plus pictures are more fun!

Mother's Day pictures before church

They have a normal pool, baby pool, and lazy river. It was great weather but the water was still way too cold in all the pools except the lazy river so that's where we spent most of our time.

Lillian really started walking more this week so we took lots of pictures oh her all over the beach

She was in a mood in the morning when we tried playing in the sand.

one of my favorite pictures!

after lunch we were much happier to be back on the beach splashin' in the water

Had to take family beach pictures while we were there too!

Check out Kevin's biceps!! Obviously he is the only one who works out in this family. 

This girl loves her Dada

Props to my sister Nina for capturing some candid shots

Had to get the typical sand, grass, wearing white beach pic as well. :)

Snuggling with Nana reading a book

Aunt Nina brought Lillian a cape! 

It was a 9.5hr car ride out there so Lillian listened to her "boombox"  

and watched Baby Einstein on Kevin's nexus. He was able to download a couple videos from you tube so we didn't have to worry about having WiFi. You'll also notice a fan. Our car is an escape and usually keeps the temperature pretty even in the front and back but with her in that plush car seat I thought she felt warm so instead of freezing us out up front we turned that little fan on.