Prayers for Mister

Please pray for Mister today. Yes, we are asking for prayers for our cat. Mister has been very ill the past two days with a fever of 106 (alarmingly high for a cat). He won't eat or drink. He has been hiding in the basement but has come out a few times to go sit outside. He has been to the vet twice already and is on antibiotics but they don't seem to be helping. I am taking him back this morning. So please add Mister to your thoughts and prayers today. He's a good kitty.

Half Pint Then and Now

Remember this back in September?


Check her out now...
and her pearly white.

Crawling Video

Lions and Spiders and Puffs

Something so sad about this picture... :)

Sweet moves.

Thought I'd throw this one in...

First of many carousel rides, good fun.

Well, it's been a action packed few weeks. My mom pointed out that it's been 17 days (now 18) since I last posted, so, I apologize for those of you who check Amelia's blog regularly. It's been a busy few weeks! We had lots of visitors, Spring Break '08 was a success. Amelia loved all the action. While our visitors were here, she had lots of firsts... For one, she is into a full blown crawl these days. She can get where she wants to go, I can still catch her but it's only a matter of time... She likes to rest and reassess, maybe play a little after a few moves forward, which means she pushes herself back into a sitting position. This sitting business is cute, but it's tough when trying to lay her down for nap, you can imagine.
For another, her first tooth cut through! She can't even believe it herself and she started this new move with her tongue. She opens her mouth and stretches her tongue out and down her chin. I figured out she can feel her sharp little tooth on the underside of her tongue. It's like she wants to say "what's up with that thing?" Ford and I plopped her in her crib with some toys a few days ago while we cleaned up her room, we had our backs to her for a moment as we were chit chatting away and suddenly Ford says, "look at this!" I turned around to see Amelia standing up holding onto the edge of the crib, just peeking her little nugget over the edge. I couldn't help but gasp. Yes, she can pull herself up to standing. She's got it mastered now and she thinks she's pretty sweet. :) Well, she is. However, I would've liked a little time to adjust to the first two new happenings.
Other things she's into these days include sharing. She's mastered feeding herself finger foods now and she'll give up a sweet potato puff every so often if we are persistent in asking nicely. She digs her puffs. She went to the zoo for the first time and she rode the carousel with her daddy. She thought the lion she rode was pretty cool but lunged for her dad after a few trips around. She does most of the moves to Itsy Bitsy Spider, just out of the blue one day she joined me. She must have figured "again with the Itsy Bitsy, there must be something to this...let me try it..." She loves to give kisses, she kisses her dolly now which is just plain cute. And lastly, she makes monkey noises. We think it's hilarious so we encourage it often, then I started to think she's going to think it's a language and I imagined someone saying hello to her and her responding with "eee eee, aah aah" so we'd better cool it. :)
So, our guests are all gone and it is back to life as usual, which is anything but usual with our Amelia Badelia. She's fun. Come check her out...

Grass work...

Amelia loves grass...and weeds, and dried leaves, and flowers. When we take her outside, she practically leaps out of our arms and toward the grass. She's very serious when she does her grass work; inspecting and feeling and observing and pulling apart and crinkling and tasting...she has a lot of new things to learn about now that it is spring. She certainly takes her time in absorbing all that is new. I wonder if she'll like bugs and snails and slugs and worms...
The sweatshirt she is wearing in the photos used to be mine. It was probably a hand-me-down, and then got handed down again and made it's way back into my pile of baby clothes my mom gave to me when Amelia was born. I washed it of course but it still smells like our old house to me. I wanted to get a few photos of Amelia wearing it and it's a good thing I took them when I did, it's already too small (speaking of weeds).
Spring means spring breakers and we have some headed our way this week. The Corey's are coming and then Grandpa and Grandma Turrell. Lundbergs and Collars are stopping by on their way to the Gulf. It's going to be an exciting week. Amelia loves visitors!
It is definitely spring in Nashville and it has been raining a lot. But everything is green and new and smells good. I'm so happy the seasons change in Nashville. After growing up in Michigan, I need to be able to feel the change of winter leaving and spring beginning. I read that spring, metaphorically, means the start of better times. I'm thankful that we have that to look forward to every year. It has been a heavy winter for a lot of our loved ones, especially back home it seems. So many we know are going through challenges in their lives at this very moment, including the onset of illness as well as personal loss. So I have a prayer request for all of those who are suffering today that the newness of spring brings healing, new hope and restorative peace.
Happy Spring.