Month 18, July 2006

We went to Virginia Beach for a week this month to visit Michelle's parents and have fun on the seashore. Lily loved the new surroundings and all the attention from her grandparents and other family members. She also got to meet her "fans" at Lola's workplace who keep up with this web page!

Lily has also started saying a lot of words this month, like "shoes" (which she loves), "ice" (which she sucks on when new teeth are coming in), "hat", "ball", "balloon", "feet", "socks", "hand", "doggy" (even though she's afraid of any that get near her), and "light" (when she wants me to turn on a light). She can say some names of the other kids at day care, though for some reason she points to Madeline's picture and says "Nangy". Maybe that's supposed to be "Maddy"?


We had a small 4th of July party at our house with the Willises. We set up a big water slide for the kids to play on, and Cameron had a great time zooming down it over and over!


Madeline was pretty fearless on the water slide, but Lily needed some coaxing. Eventually she got in the water, rode down the slide a few times and looked like she was starting to enjoy it.


Here's a Quicktime movie of Lily going down the slide. It should start playing if you click on the picture, but if it doesn't, you can download the movie here.


Cameron rode his cool new car in the yard, and Madeline and Lily joined in with cars of their own.


Some "older" kids had fun on Cameron's car too! Apparently it can support more than a 4-year-old's weight!


We got a cake for Michelle W.'s birthday, which is somewhere around July 4th.


We ended our 4th of July party with some good old-fashioned explosives. Bill and I lit the fireworks, and our two Michelles were the cheering squad!


We actually had our party on July 3rd, so on the 4th we took Lily to the Willis' house and the kids rode cars some more. You may notice in the background of the third picture that some lunatic is running around much too fast with his daughter!


Ahh, a chance to relax at home on the couch...


... and enjoy a good nap.


We bought Lily sunglasses for our upcoming beach vacation. She's looking very sophisticated here.


With a different hat and sunglasses, she now looks like a thug!


This is the hotel we stayed at in Virginia Beach. It's a time share that Michelle's parents own. The balcony overlooks the ocean and the boardwalk.


We walked out onto the beach with Lily our first night there. She was exhausted from flying on Friday, staying one night in Lola and Pop's house, and then packing up for the beach on Saturday. She started to perk up while we were out looking at the ocean.


Pop and Lola occasionally took Lily on the boardwalk, which gave us some welcome breaks from parenthood here and there.


Michelle's feeding Lily a bottle in the first picture, but a few days later she remembers we have helpers this week!


Lily is modeling some of her bathing suits.


We didn't take Lily swimming in the ocean, but we did let her play in the waves as they came in.


Here's a movie of her enjoying the incoming tide. (Click the picture or download the movie.)


Most of the time Lily swam in the indoor kiddie pool. Here Michelle and I are teaching her to surf! (Pop and I did some boogie boarding, which was fun.)


Lola and Pop played with Lily in the pool too. She recognized them immediately this trip -- no "warming up" period necessary. She called them "Lala" and "Papa" a few times, and if we asked her where Lola or Papa was, she pointed to them.


We drove out to Busch Gardens one day. It was stiflingly hot, though, so we only stayed a few hours. I tried taking Lily on an innocent-looking baby ride, but she didn't like it and cried. However, she was quite happy about Mommy winning her a huge, stuffed SpongeBob! (Meanwhile, I won her a smaller Elmo, in one of the games where you always win. That should give you an idea of my athletic prowess.)


We met our goddaughter Alexandra for the first time. Her mother is Annie, and we took the two girls to the pool to play together for a while.


At the beach Lily slept in this inflatable Winnie the Pooh bed. To our great surprise, she slept like a rock most nights. We took the bed home for her to sleep on, in case she liked it better than her padded Winnie the Pooh bed.


Is Lily secretly a witch? She was riding this broomstick around several times.


These are Michelle's flip-flops, which Lily keeps bringing to her, saying "shoes!". She brought me my shoes or sandals too, and has continued doing this even after returning from our trip! She wants us to wear shoes all the time.


On our flight back from Virginia, we went straight from the airport to catch the end of Cameron's birthday party. Lily was very well-behaved for having just spent several hours in planes and airports.

In the last few days of this month (July 24th to 28th), Lily had a high fever, around 102 degrees, and it peaked at 104 degrees. She had a convulsion, and I called an ambulance and they took us to the emergency room. Luckily, the convulsion didn't hurt her in any way, and her fever ended on Sunday night. After the fever she had a slight spotted rash on Monday, which the doctors told us is typical of a viral infection called roseola. Though this kind of infection is relatively harmless for a baby, it was quite a scare for us as first-time parents. Lily's back in day care now, happy and active again, so it looks like the illness is over. Whew!