9 Months Old Today!

Wow - it's been 9 months since we first met our beautiful daughter and every day I can't believe that we're parents.  Even as I'm writing this post I'm getting emotional.  I know that you always hear that you will never know love until you have a child...but it's amazing how true that is.  Obviously it's not the same for everyone as not everyone wants to have children, and they find their happiness and joy in other ways.  I always knew that I was meant to be a mom (and Steve was definitely meant to be a dad) and now that that has been realized, it's just the most amazing joy of life.

OK, enough with the sappiness!  So much has happened in the past 2 weeks!  I swear that we have a little genius in the making. :)  Q had been getting kind of close to crawling, although backwards, for a while.  Then last Wednesday morning when we were in Digby at my grandparents' house, she started to get up on all fours with ease and just hanging out there.  Then later on that night, in front of Daddy on Skype, and both sets of grandparents at the house, she crawled!!! It was so amazing!  Q's way of crawling involves getting up on all fours and then launching herself forward into a sort of bellyflop.  It's not the most graceful thing in the world, but she gets where she wants to go, even with some funny grunts along the way.  Quinn's also getting the hang of waving.  Sometimes she needs a little prompting, but other times she'll start waving when you say "bye bye" or the occasional "hello".  It also turns out that Quinn has learned how to dance.  This involves bouncing up and down when she's being held and sometimes when she's sitting in a chair or on the floor.  She loves music, especially "Bird is the Word", much to my chagrin!  She also LOVES to play peek-a-boo.  Sometimes she needs you to put the blanket over her and she'll pull it off, but other times she'll put whatever is in her hands at the time over her face (e.g. napkin, baby wipe, foam number from her playmat, your hand) and pull it down before you even have time to ask "Where's Quinn?".

Foodwise we're doing well!  Quinn loves yogurt, especially mixed with bananas.  She also tried some potatoes and some mixed berries (the berries were in prepared baby food pouches).  I'm going to make some baby asparagus and a fish/veggie dish...we'll see how those go!

Stay tuned for some pictures and video!

First Road Trip

This past weekend was the first time that we've taken Q on a trip in the car any longer than the hour drive to/from the airport in Phoenix - we went to Toronto for my friend's wedding.  Things went very well on the 4 1/2 hour drive actually!  We stopped halfway in Kingston for something to eat on the way there.  Quinn slept pretty much the entire ride to Kingston and only fussed a bit on the second leg, but nothing that a little bit of singing didn't help!  Saturday was the wedding and our friends babysat for us...and luckily Quinn was as good as gold!  We missed her while we were gone though and couldn't help but smile when we saw her fast asleep with her little butt in the air!  The drive home today was also fairly easy - just a couple of stops for gas and food, but that was it!  Quinn behaved like an angel!

The past few days, Quinn has started shaking her head "no".  Obviously she's too young to really understand what "no" means, but it's very cute to see her do it.  I'm going to try to get her to do it on camera, but we'll see how that goes!

This past week I also got professional photos taken of her and am anxiously (not patiently!) awaiting the proofs!  As soon as I get the photos, they'll be posted, trust me!

Other than that, not a whole lot to report!  Still no teeth or any true crawling, but we're waiting with baited breath for both!