Happy 10 Months, Amy Grace!

Ok, so this post is technically a day late. But Amy Grace has now been a part of our family for 10 months and 1 day, and every day she displays more and more of her little (ok, not so little) personality! At 10 months she is suddenly eating like a horse and tipped the scales at 15 pounds, 3 ounces yesterday. After being fairly apathetic about anything other than breastmilk or formula for a long time, she has really developed a taste for regular food, and it's going to be a lot of fun introducing her to "big-girl food" over the next few months!

Amy Grace is also a TOTAL Daddy's girl - her face lights up anytime he enters the room, and for a long time she has played a sort of game with him where she will stare at him and smile until he looks at her, then start laughing and smiling even more. She loves for Brent to tickle her and roughhouse with her, and her daycare teachers are convinced that this is why she has no problem holding her own with two walking, 20 lb+ boys in her class. I absolutely love watching the two of them together!

Cheering on the Auburn Tigers with Daddy over Labor Day weekend

She has not done too much new lately, except, dare I say it - sleep through the night! A week or so ago I started putting an extra ounce in her daytime bottles and doubled the amount of solids she was getting. She promptly devoured everything that day and slept the whole night, and hasn't looked back since. She is quite the early riser, usually waking up between 5 am and 6:30 am, but this actually works out pretty well since no good comes of my being lazy in the mornings anyway! She even slept through the night at my parent's house, which seemed like quite the feat since she was out of her element, so to speak.

In all ways, Amy Grace is really growing up now, and I know that the toddler years are just around the corner. We have enjoyed AG's babyhood, but I can't wait to see her keep developing and learning and growing every day.

Football Opening Weekend!

We had a great time Labor Day weekend cooking a delicious meal of beef brisket, cheese bread, and "atomic buffalo turds" (jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and a 'lil smoky and wrapped in bacon - YUM!!). Our friend Jessica joined us for the evening, and a good time was had by all. Amy Grace had to go to bed not long after the Auburn kickoff, but we had fun taking pics of her throughout her first real football Saturday. (The last Auburn game she watched - using the term loosely - was the Iron Bowl and she was just 2 weeks old).

Havin' a blast with her Auburn shaker on top of Daddy's shoulders

This is all that was left of a teething biscuit

Me and Amy Grace

Shake, shake, shake!

Fun in the exersaucer

Another half-hearted attempt at the sippy cup. So far it's more of a chew toy than something to get liquid out of.

Training for the Trail, Suburban-Style

We recently planned a hiking/camping/backpacking trip to the Smokies for the end of September/early October! We are super excited but knew that we needed to get in better shape to really enjoy ourselves on the trail, especially considering we'll be taking Amy Grace along too. Our last trip to this area was back in the fall of 2007, which was a lot of fun, but we definitely were not in good condition to do a lot of hiking, like we'd planned.

Luckily, this time around we both have been eating well and exercising for about 3 months and have each lost between 20 and 25 pounds (yay!), so we already had a great head start. However, there is a very steep hill a short drive from our house, and we have been "hiking" up and down it several times a week to help get our bodies used to the demands of hiking in the southern Appalachians.

Just like in the Smokies, you are rewarded with a great view from the top of the "mountain," even if you do have to watch out for cars careening around the curves! From this pic you can definitely tell that the Birmingham area is, in fact, the southern terminus of the Appalachian mountain range. It's like look out over a mini-Smokies, some days even complete with the haze that gave those mountains their name. (For the locals, I believe the last ridge you can see is Oak Mountain, though you can't really see it well here.)

Here is the view from about halfway down:

Garden Harvest

Back in May, we planted our first garden! It has been an adventure and a good learning experience over the last few months, and there is just something about eating food you've grown yourself. We planted tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, squash, strawberries, onion, and cucumbers (and maybe a few others that I can't recall because they never grew!). The jalapenos have done the best of all, producing a steady crop of tasty peppers. The tomatoes were second best, with one plant producing a ton of tomatoes, but they were all a little over grape tomato size! We got a few cucumbers, which are wonderful in cucumber salad. The squash have yet to mature, but from the looks of things I think those will turn out well, too.

Our other plants did not do so well, however - the onion and strawberries never produced anything, while the bell pepper plant has produced lots of peppers -- all the size of a tiny ball!! We are grateful, though, for what God did bless us with and look forward to next planting season.