Is summer really winding down?

I'm a little late on this month's update, but at least I'm doing it. :) Erik was home for two weeks earlier this month while he worked at his new "home" store in Brigham. It was so wonderful to have him home again. We didn't do anything too exciting, but just having the company was nice. Now he's back up in Idaho, but as of Friday, he will be done with training. He starts on overnights on September 1. I guess one good thing about this training period was I got used to sleeping alone, so it won't be such a weird adjustment once he starts his new schedule.

Lillian is learning so much lately. She's a champ at sitting up now and rarely falls over when doing so. I picked up a stacker toy the other day so she'd have something new to play with. She can't stack them by herself yet, but she sure has fun tipping them over if I stack them for her. They can also connect to make balls of different sizes, which she likes to push around. It took a little trial and error to get where she could actually pick the balls up, but once she figured out she needed both hands, she was doing great. She's tried to play tug with Laddie a couple times by taking his toys, but Laddie usually just gently takes them from her and puts them somewhere safe for his enjoyment later. I played a little devil's advocate with a water bottle by giving it back to Lillian after he took it away just to see what he would do. He walked back over and took it away again...even though he didn't want to play with it at the time. Possessive little bugger!!

Even though Lillian still fits in her infant carrier, we went ahead and bought her a convertible car seat (converts to forward facing once she's a year old). I was getting sick of lugging the carrier around, and now that she can sit up, I don't need it when I go to the grocery store. Plus, the base had to be reinstalled about every other day because we could never get it to stay completely tight. I guess we were pretty lucky, though; most people only get a couple months out of their carriers because the kid gets too big pretty fast. We got to delay the purchase of a new seat for a long time.

She seems to be enjoying the babysitter. When I pick her up, she's usually playing on the floor with the sitter's son, who's about 4, maybe 5, months, I guess. Lillian tries to interact with him and he's not quite interested yet, but she looks like she's having a good time. The sitter always says how good she is and how well she naps...sometimes I wonder if it's the same person we're talking about...

It's hard to believe the summer is almost over. Lillian is 7.5 months old, and last month was the 1-year anniversary of moving into our house. It's flown by. I'm kind of hoping that the coming year will be a little less exciting. A lot happened in the last 12 months and I'm ready for some slow times...but I'm not going to get my hopes up.