Lily's First Thanksgiving

Lily-Months 9 & 10

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The Remodel

I know that this blog is for Lily, but I thought I had better put at least one post with non-Lily related photos because they are my justification for why I have been so bad at updating the blog for the last 6 months. In July we started a remodel project of our bathroom and kitchen...eventually extending into most of our upstairs. The project grew so large that we were forced to move out for three months and live in Liberty Park and the SLC homeless shelter (actually, a big thanks is due to the staff at the Neuenschwander Holiday Inn for their kindness and hospitality). The photos below are the before and after pictures of the house. Hopefully you can tell which is which.

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Lily- Month 7 & 8

Two months and counting and the kitchen/bath remodel is still not done! Not having a computer up and running at home and then, on top of that, not living at home, and on top of that, being covered in slate dust, has made it tough to keep this thing updated with pictures and video. Only a week or two to go on the remodel and then I’ll be able to do a little better on the updates.


Alright…so let me just get this out of the way right to begin with…Lily is the cutest kid I have ever seen. Again, that is not bragging, that is just fact. They are doing scientific studies on it right now to prove it, and they don’t have all of the data collected yet, so I can’t give you the raw numbers, but they are telling me that they haven’t ever seen anything like her…she is off the charts cute. Look at the pictures below and if you still need raw numbers, maybe what you really need is a slap in the face or a punch in the nose. And then she goes and adds a winning personality to it and…man…I’m getting all flustered just thinking about it.

The last two months have brought out so much of Lily’s little personality. She is such a social baby. When we were in South Carolina and Georgia, whenever we would go out in public, she would pick a person and stare at them until they looked back at her and then she would just start laughing. At our hotel in Savannah, there were these awesome large black ladies that worked at the front desk, and every time we would walk by their desk, they would just start yelling “Lily! Oh aren’t you just the cutest little thing in this whole wide world?! Look at you wrapped up in all that love!” After a few times of that, each time we would get off of the elevator, Lily would immediately look straight over to the desk and just start smiling and laughing until they noticed her.

We had a ton of fun on our first family vacation. Lily played at the beach where she got scared by the waves and ate sand to help calm herself down. She loved swimming in the pool at the hotel and kept dipping her face into the water. In Savannah, she experienced what real heat feels like as we spend two days there during…what do you know…the two hottest days of the year in GA. Check out the photos of her on the trolley tour to get a sense of the sauna that was Savannah.

Since the vacation, I feel like I have hardly seen my little girl. I go to work and then come home, spend five minutes with Lily, and then go straight down to the house to work on the remodel. I have really missed the relaxing evening with Lily and Ash and that is definitely what I am looking forward to the most with getting this dumb remodel over with.

Here are some of the other big developments over the last two months:

She has started to say “Mamamamamama” and “Dadadadadada.” Seriously. I’ve got video evidence that I will put up soon.

She has moved past the lunge and is now doing the traditional crawl. She is crawling like a bounder. I don’t know what a bounder is, but Ash tells me it is fast and crawls a lot.

She still loves to look at tags. Whenever we give her her blanket, it is the first thing that she finds and then she just starts staring at it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if her first words are “Machine Wash Warm.”

She has started to wave. At first she was just moving her are around because she figured out she had an arm that she could move around. But now, she legitimately understands that she is waving hello and goodbye. The other day she was crawling away from Ash and Ash said “bye Lily,” and Lily stopped, turned around to face Ash, sat up, and waved. Then she started crawling away and, just to make sure the first time wasn’t a fluke, Ash said it again. Lily did the same thing all over again. I have made it my goal this week to get that on video and put it on the blog.

And then yesterday, Ash said “bye Lily,” and Lily didn’t have her balance, but she was so determined to wave that she lifted her hand anyway and then did a face plant.

We tried feeding her these little baby crackers the other day and she couldn't figure them out. She would get this disgusted look on her face and then start to do this little gag noise and try to spit it out. There are a bunch of pictures of it in the slideshow below.

Ashley just wrote to tell me that Lily was in her grandpa Paul’s office and was playing over by his bookshelves and when Ash turned back to look at her, she had just about pulled two binders out, and right before they fell, Lily army rolled herself out of the way. That’s pretty cool, huh. I’m not saying she should be in the army or anything, but still, it’s nice stuff to know how to do.

That is all that I can think of right now. In summary, Lily is the cutest baby in the world. The end.

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Lily-The Crawl

Lily crawled for the first time yesterday! She gets on her knees and rocks for a second and then thrusts herself forward. The remote is a HUGE motivator!!!

The First Supper Video

Lily-6 Months

I'm working on a list of highlights and some video, but for now, here are some great pictures:

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5 Months- The First Supper

So Lily entered the world of solid food this week…her love/hate relationship with food has officially begun. We gave her rice cereal, which to me looked like bird poop, but she seemed to like it, which means either that it didn’t taste like bird poop or that she likes bird poop.

Technically, I have never eaten bird poop, so I was thinking that maybe a fun interactive blog activity would be to have someone out there reading this blog go and eat bird poop and let us all know how it tastes, and how that taste compares to the taste of rice cereal. The first person to do it will automatically be named Lilypad Friend/Relative of the 2^nd Quarter and receive a battery powered hand fan.

Do birds pee?

It was pretty cute watching Lily figure out the whole eating thing. She’s used to the rhythmic tongue motion that goes along with breastfeeding but I think her tongue was broken or at least in reverse because most of the food we put in her mouth was rhythmically conveyed back out of her mouth and onto her face (see accompanying photos).

She must have been getting some of it down the food tube and must have been liking what she got down because every time we took the spoon away to get more food, she would start to freak. Then, every time the spoon got back to within three feet of her, she would send out her little go go gadget arms, wrap her hands around the spoon, and pull it straight to her mouth. Bird poop or not, she was digging it.

Also in the News:

Lily was also almost eaten by a Boa Constrictor (her second close encounter with a reptile in her brief 5 months of life…remember the pygmy alligator?).

Lily met her cousin Oliver for the first time and helped him hold his head up. It was great to see them together. Oliver had the “look but don’t touch” thing down with Lily while Lily instead chose the “look, touch, grab, pull, and put in mouth” approach with Oliver. There were also a couple of minutes when we had them both laughing and they were just feeding off of each other so their laughter just got louder and louder. It was pretty dang cute. Lily was saying after Oliver and Kristal left that it would be nice if Coby and Kristal and Oliver could move back to Utah so the laughter would never die.

Lily and I watched the garden grow together. The watermelon is struggling but the tomatoes and cauliflower are coming in nicely (see picture in slideshow).

Lily pooped out of another diaper and smiled like she did it on purpose so I got mad at her and didn’t let her suck on any Sour Patch Kids for an hour.

And that is all that I can think of. Enjoy the pictures below and I’ll try to get some video up in the next couple of days.

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Another Wedding Pic

This is a picture that was taken by Natalie's wedding photographer. What a babe, huh (Lily, not the photographer)?

Lily's Ode to Drew Gooden

In protest of the Spurs, who she contends "flopped their way into the NBA finals," Lily is showing her support of the Cavs by growing her hair out into a Drew Gooden duck tail.

Lily Watching Herself on the Slide

For added fun on this, start the top movie, then when the song starts, start the movie right below it. Mute the bottom movie and you will get to see Lily's reactions coincide with what she is watching....or you can just watch the top movie and forget about everything I just said.

Video: The Slide

This is one of the cuter things Lily has done but, without a doubt, the cutest thing she has ever done came when I showed her the video. She just sat there on my lap completely entranced by the video and when she would see herself going down the slide she would move her arms around just like in the video and then would get this big smile on her face. Then when she was watching herself walking back up the slide, she would move her legs just like in the video. It was insanely cute. We got a little video of it and I will take a look and see if it captures the moment enough to put on the blog. Enjoy.

4 Months-The Wedding

So I finally enter the 21st century by getting the world wide web (you know...the information superhighway) at my house and then I go a month without doing a blog update. Seems kinda backwards, I know. I think the problem is that when I am at work, I think to myself, "No need to spend lunch doing a blog update...I can do it at home." Then when I get home, it's always "Right after I mow the lawn, I'll do the update," or, "Right after I conquer Zelda for like the 16th time this month, I'll do the update," or "Right after I dance one more round of DDR, I'll do the update," or, "Right after I finish this sentence, I'll do the update." Anyway, to all of the five readers of this blog, sorry for the delay. Here goes:

So, what a difference a month makes. There is a ton to tell, but if I tell it all, then you won't feel the need to visit, and if you don't feel the need to visit, you won't feel the need to bring more presents. Here are the highlights instead:

Lily had her 4 month checkup last week and is doing great. She now weighs 13 pounds and is 24 inches tall which puts her smack dap in the middle of the 50th percentile for both. She also had her head measured and is slightly below the 50th percentile for head circumference. I know what all of you who are jerks are saying, "Ooooohhh....small head...that must mean that she has a small brain...that must mean that she is stupid and will never amount to anything just like her dad." Real nice guys...and why did you have to bring me into it? For those of you who are thinking that, maybe you should ask yourself two questions: Which is bigger, a pumpkin (not the gourd kind...just a regular Halloween pumpkin) or a pear? The pumpkin, right? But which has more density? The pear. Bonus question: Which would you rather eat raw? The pear. So what I am saying in a scientific way is that it is much more important to have density in your brain than mass. For all of you lawyers out there, here is some proof: I had this kid on my little league baseball team when I was younger that had this huge old noggin'...the thing was so big that he had to have a specialty helmet cast for him and I think they used one of those Swiss exercise balls for the mold. Anyway, the kid had this huge head but he could barely form a complete sentence...he was a seriously a moron and I don't mean in the mentally handicap sense...he was just a dummy. On top of that, I think he is in prison now so I think my example would probably hold up pretty well in a court of law (Danielle?). Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that the doctor said that the slightly smaller head is really more of just an issue of pride or, in Lily's case, lack thereof.

That was a long highlight. Sorry. I'll try to make them shorter.

She is reaching for everything, including my nostrils.

She is starting to recognize her own name and turns her head when it is said. The kid on my little league team couldn't even do that.

She does this weird grunting thing which you will probably hear on the video. It's pretty cute for like the first three seconds and then it's kind of noisy and then it is kind of annoying and then it's kind of "please stop it Lily" and then it is kind of "SHUT UP!!!"

She is drooling less.

She has the same thought with everything she comes into contact with, which is: "I wonder what this tastes like and I wonder if I can fit the whole thing in my mouth to find out."

She loves other peoples hands and her own toes.

She loves to be outside...it is usually a lock to calm her down.

Her farts stink...Bad. The other day her Grandma Brown was holding her while she was standing in Natalie's wedding line and Lily kept farting these nasty farts and Grandma was caught in this weird position of not wanting to tell the people it was Lily because then people would be like, "Yeah, sure it was Lily," but then not wanting to not tell them because then they would think it was her. She didn't end up telling them and so a large group went home that night wondering what Grandma ate that day.

She loves to lay in bed with us each morning which we usually love except when she is grunting.

She learned to roll over. Over the stretch of a couple of weeks she only made it from her back to her tummy a few times and usually with a little help. Then one day last week, Ash left her on her play mat for a few minutes and came back to find her on her tummy. Ever since then, we can hardly keep her on her back. She's such a pro now that she throws in the occasional trick like, my personal favorite, the toe grab, where she grabs onto a toe and then rolls.

She was able to spend Memorial Day weekend at Great Grandma & Grandpa Davies' cabin in Bear Lake which is Ashley’s favorite place in the world and also the place where I proposed (to Ashley). It was great to be able to show Lily the cabin that has been such a special part of Ashley's life. When Grandma Davies found out that Lily was able to stay at the cabin that Grandpa Davies built with his own hands, she was so happy that she cried.

She got to be a bridesmaid in her aunt Natalie's wedding (to her new uncle Cam). She looked like a total babe in her little pink dress and grunted and cried just enough to make sure that Natalie and Cam are extra careful on their honeymoon.

She also got to see her aunt Danielle for the first time in a couple of months. It was great to have Danielle and Chris here and Lily misses you guys already. She definitely made her contribution to the efforts to convince Danielle to move the heck back to Utah and bring Chris along with you while you are at it.

All in all, it was a pretty good month. I have put a bunch of pictures below which should all be pretty self explanatory based on my highlights above. Enjoy.

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Week 15- The Book

We leave Lily alone for five minutes and this is what we catch her doing

New Video- The Sit Up/ The Giggle Evolved/ Eat the Hand

Here are a few new video clips. I hate watching myself on video and figure others feel the same, but it is worth it to watch the giggling video. The other night I was putting Lily's pajamas on and as I was putting her hands into the sleeves, she got really excited and started laughing. I started moving her arms around and she really started to laugh. Then (and I'm not kidding you) for the next 10 minutes as I moved her arms, she was laughing almost nonstop as hard as I have heard her laugh. It goes down as one of my favorite moments with her so far. The video was taken the next night with me trying to get her to laugh again. It didn't work nearly as well, but it is still pretty cute.

Weeks 13 & 14- The Zoo

I might be getting the exact facts wrong, but did you know that the gestation period for a pregnant peacock is two years? Or that the African elephant can leap distances up to 30 feet? How about the fact the alligators can have up to 7,800 teeth in their mouth?

These are the things were learned on Lily’s first trip to the zoo. Our friend Whittney (who is married to our friend Brett) is one of the directors of Hogle Zoo…or maybe one of the owners…I can’t remember, and she got us free tickets to attend the opening of the new White Alligator Exhibit.

So there are only ten of these Alligators in the entire world and they just brought one to the Hogle Zoo for the summer. They are completely white except that they have blue eyes which means that they are not albino. Lily loved looking in at the alligator…probably because it reminded her of her dad who has white hair and blue eyes and is also not an albino.

Lily was also able to get up close and personal with a pygmy alligator (they have a rare form of dwarfism that constricts their growth to one foot in length). Lily got too close and the alligator bit off her ear. Luckily we were ably to slice open the gators gut and get the ear back and then we used leaches to get the ear to reattach…it sounds like a bigger deal than it really was.

The whole zoo experience was excellent I would highly recommend going…especially if you haven’t been since 9^th grade Zoo Day. As a way of thanking Whittney and Brett (and in response to blog reader request) I have included like 40 pictures of the adorable little couple below.

Lily continues to do great. We have been putting her on her stomach for a few minutes each day to get her used to it, but up until last week, she has spent most of the time with her face planted into the ground and quickly getting ticked off. But last Friday, for the first time, she started to push off the ground with her arms and lifting her head. It’s pretty dang cute and I’ll try to get some video of it for the next post.

She is also still figuring out her voice. What started as an occasional coo has escalated into a full on coo fest. She can go on for an hour making almost nonstop noises…not mad or sad noises…just noises. It’s pretty fun to listen to unless there is something good on TV and then we just put her downstairs.

Below are a bunch of pictures that we took over the last couple of weeks. A bunch of them we taken at a graduation/going away party for our friends Katya and PJ who are moving to Dallas (even though the Mavs just got eliminated from the playoffs). Katya and I got to be friends when I was serving my LDS (you know…the Mormons) mission in the Baltics. It was pretty cool for me to think back to the first time I met her in Daugavpils, Latvia, and then five years later, be in Provo, Utah celebrating her graduation from BYU. I’m glad that Lily was able to meet her and PJ and I hope that the next time she meets them, it won’t be at her wedding or something. It was also great to be with the parents of my good friend Peter and have them meet Lily. I know you already have grandkids of your own, but you can be Lily’s third set of grandparents if you want.

The other pictures are of Lily with her great grandma Madge and Lily with the bow down over her eyes which happens 3 or 4 times a day.

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures.

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New Video- The Release/The Voice

This first clip is short and is designed for casual viewers of the blog. It shows Lily right after waking up and being released from her nightly mummification. I love how she keeps her hands down at her sides for a few seconds even after being released.



This next one is pretty long and is designed for the avid blog readers (all two of you). It shows Lily figuring out her voice. We also do a little bit of singing with her and while she doesn't really sing along like I described below, you'll get a little bit of the idea. What the video lacks in succinctness, it makes up in substance. For those of you who really love Lily, this one is for you.

Weeks 10, 11 & 12- The Song

Maybe it was finally seeing me again after I was out of town most of the last two weeks… Maybe it was of the music she has been listening to on her iPod the last couple of weeks… Maybe it's this whole American Idol craze going on. Whatever the reason, our little Lily started singing this last week.

The first time I heard it was Saturday morning (although Ashley reports earlier occurrences). Lily was getting fussy and I was trying to calm her down so I decided to sing to her. Almost immediately after I started singing (Nine Inch Nails’ song “Hurt”) Lily not only calmed down, but started basically singing backup vocals to my lead vocals. It's not like she was carrying the tune or anything (I’ll be the first to admit that she was a little pitchy) but she was definitely making noise to go along with my noise. Each time I would stop singing, she would stop making noise and then start to laugh. Then I would start singing again and she would start her noises again. It has to go down as one of the 250 cutest things I have seen her do in her short 12 weeks if not the cutest.

I don't know...maybe the whole singing thing isn't that big of a deal. I did, however, do some checking and it turns out that Celine freakin’ Dion didn’t even start singing until she was 6 months old, so, you know, go ahead and draw your own conclusions here.

For all of you doubters, Mom was gone and Danielle didn’t answer her phone to hear it, but luckily Grandma Brown stopped by just in time to witness the duet. It would really help my case if Grandma Brown could leave a comment here attesting to my claims.

Other than the fact that I have been out of town for a lot of it, the last couple of weeks have been great for Lily. As Ashley said in the comments on the giggle post, she has started to figure out her mouth and hands a little bit more and when there isn’t a pacifier around, her entire fist quickly becomes the next best thing. She is also figuring out her tongue and, although I have yet to witness it, Ash tells me that Lily will start moving her tongue around when you stick your tongue out at her. Her favorite toy right now is the ceiling fan in our bedroom. She plays with it by laying on the bed and staring up at it for 30-45 minute stretches and laughing most of the time. I know that these are just small milestones along the way, but each one of them amazes me. The fact that she can look at my tongue and realize she has one too and then start trying to stick it out to imitate me is, in and of itself, a miracle.

On Easter Sunday, we were able to bless Lily at our church (LDS…you know….the Mormons). The whole day was great and she looked like a total babe in her little dress which is the same dress worn by Lily’s Aunts Danielle and Natalie at their baby blessings (I think it is also the same blessing dress worn by Steve Young, Mitt Romney, and at least one of the Osmond Brothers). When I took her up in front on the congregation to give the blessing and held her in my arms, she looked up at me and gave me a big smile. It was a pretty emotional experience for me and I was reminded again of what a blessing she is and how grateful I am for her. Thanks to all of you who were able to make it to the blessing, and to those of you who were not able to make it, here are some pictures taken after the blessing along with a few other pictures taken over the last couple of weeks. Enjoy.

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So This is What the Future Holds?

Danielle (of Friend/Relative of the Month fame) mentioned to me a while back that Lily looks a lot like I looked when I was a baby. I decided to check it out. I found the picture below in my baby book and have placed it next to a picture of Lily for your consideration.



Based on this comparison, I did a rendering of what Lily will look like in 25 years. To see future Lily and to try different hairstyles and colors, click here: Stellure : Members use the login email: sbrown@asphaltzipper.com and password: lilypad and then click "Browse Catalog."

Weeks 7 & 8- The Talk

There comes a time in every kids life when they naturally begin to wonder, “How was I made?” Well, that time came for Lily this past week. She can’t talk yet so it wasn’t like she just came right out and asked, but you could see it in her eyes every time she looked at you. It was a look that went beyond the normal curiosity and wonder of a new baby…it was like she was looking straight into your soul and demanding answers. The picture above was taken right after we had “The Talk.”.

Besides that whole thing, the last couple of weeks have been great. Lily had her two month checkup and everything is working and growing like it should. She is exactly average for both her height and weight. She seemed to be a little disappointed by that but I just told her, “Don’t feel bad…that just means that there is room for improvement.”

Other Developments:

• She is getting a lot better at making eye contact (unless she is getting in trouble) and she usually will turn her head towards you when you come in the room.
• She is also getting better at pushing herself off the ground when she is put on her stomach.
• As you see from the video, she is still smiling a bunch and has added a little giggle that melts me every time I hear it.

All-in-all, she remains the cutest little girl in the world, at least that I have ever seen. If you have anyone you think is close, feel free to send me pictures and I will be happy to objectively look at them and decide. Does anyone know what the earliest age is that you can start entering them into beauty pageants?

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Weeks 7 & 8- The Giggle

Week 6 & 7- The Smile

As you can see from the pictures, the big development over the last couple of weeks is that Lily has started to smile…and not just a little bit…she smiles a ton. How much you might ask? I’m not very good with numbers but I would say anywhere between 30 and 5,000 times a day, so yeah, quite a bit.

We have discovered two ways that, if she is in the right mood, are guaranteed to get a smile out of her. The first is by doing Head Shoulder Knees and Toes where, almost without fail, when you touch her nose at the end, she gets this big grin on her face. All of the smiling pictures you see are taken immediately after touching her nose. The other way, which we just discovered this week, is to sing the ABC’s. The kid gets a real kid out of the ABC’s for some reason. There are times when you are saying them when almost the whole song, she’s just cracking up. I’ll get it on video so you can see what I’m talking about.

Now I’m not a baby expert or anything, but doesn’t that seem really fast to be smiling that much…like almost genius level fast? Two weeks ago she didn’t know me from Adam and now she’s laughing every time I say the alphabet. Next week she’ll probably be telling her own jokes. This might be a stretch, but maybe it’s her way of saying, “The alphabet?! Body parts?! Hah! I had those down when I was still in the womb…give me something challenging! I printed off a couple articles on Quantum Physics that I’m going to try reading to her when I get home and we’ll see how she responds…who’s laughing now?

All in all, she just seems to be extraordinarily happy with her life and the job that we are doing as parents.

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1 Month- The Blowout

I love to fish but one of my least favorite parts of fishing is cleaning the fish at the end of the day. I’m always doing everything possible to keep from actually touching the innards of the fish. I’ll still my knife in and wiggle it around hoping it will magically sever anything still attached and the innards will happily slide out without ever coming into contact with my hands. It never works and eventually I always end up having to stick my hands into the mess.

Although we have had incidences where the poop didn’t all stay in the diaper during the first 5 weeks, we had our first official full-on blowout yesterday. Unlike previous blowouts where a small amount of poop found its way out the diaper leg holes or into the small of her back, with this blowout, the poop extended the full length of Lily’s back, into the creases of her neck, and on up into her hair.

It’s a strange analogy, but I actually thought of fish cleaning as I stood looking down at Lily’s blowout. At first, I was doing everything possible to keep my hands from actually coming into contact with the poop…I had a handful of wipes and I was dabbing at the poop covering her back, hoping it would magically soak it all up. Instead of soaking it up, I was more like an artist spreading the thick paint over the canvas of her back…there was just far too much poop to be soaked up through traditional methods.

Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that my hands would have to touch poop and once I had accepted that fact, I let go of the inhibitions and dove in. I dragged my index finger like a squeegee along her back, moving the poop into a contained area and then, once pooled, I lifted it off and wiped it into the diaper. I then wrapped my hands around her poopy legs and back and carried her into the kitchen and set her in the sink. You’ll see in the photos how Lily immediately gripped the sink divider and held on for dear life as we spend the next ten minutes scrubbing her down. The look on her face is priceless and has to be my favorite picture we have of her so far.

In the end, once again, the whole experience was strangely endearing…much more than pulling the guts out of a dead fish.

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Week 5- More Video

Sorry this clip is so long...I am having trouble getting the shortened version uploaded. As soon as I get it figured out, I will swap them, but until then you'll just have to deal with this beast.

Three Weeks- Love Rules

Happy Valentine's Day! Lily welcomed in Valentine's Day by making this weird grunting noise every 10 seconds or so for what felt like the entire night. Luckily the holiday had me in the loving mood and I didn't get mad, but I told Lily that if the grunting happens again tonight, we're moving her room to the basement. She responded with a blank stare at the light above my head.

It being Valentine's Day, I thought I'd give an update on our little love bug. Besides this weird grunting thing she has going, Lily is doing really well. This last week she has been eating incredible amounts...I'm talking 4 ounces every two hours or so! Again, I did some calculations and if I were to eat the same ratio, I would be putting down 5.6 pounds of food every two hours or 67 pounds of food a day! We think she might have Prader-Willi Syndrome...now that I read the symptoms, I think I might have that too.

She is getting better at focusing on your face when you are holding her and loves to watch your mouth move when you talk. She also loves to be held against you chest and falls asleep almost immediately whenever you hold her that way. She also loves the Jazz and thinks that Deron Williams should be going to the All-Star game instead of Ray Allen because Deron plays on a team with a winning record. All in all, she is just about the cutest little thing to ever hit this planet and the best Valentine's Day gift her mom and I could ever ask for.

Here are this last weeks pictures, most of which were taken in her new Valentine's Day outfit given to her by her aunt Danielle. These pictures might look all the same to some of you, but not if you are her dad or if you ever stand a chance of being the Lilypad Relative/Friend of the Month.

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The Lilypad Relative/Friend of the Month

We've decided to spotlight the relative or friend whom we deem has done the most to show Lily that he or she loves her during the previous month. The spotlight will be reevaluated each month and will always be in the same place...directly below the most recent post. Work hard to show Lily you love her and watch closely to see if you are the next LILYPAD RELATIVE/FRIEND OF THE MONTH.


This month's winner is Lily's aunt Danielle. Danielle showed Lily her love this last month by buying her a great sheep blanket (which Lily loves to sleep on), a Valentine onesie (see picture in the Valentine's day post), building Lily her own MySpace page, and most of all by flying up from LA to see her. Thanks for all of your love and support Danielle and congratulations.

Lily chillin' on the sheepskin

Danielle at the Oscars (in the white dress)...One of the perks of being relative/friend of the month...

Two Weeks

Lily turned two weeks yesterday. She went to the doctor for her birthday and she is doing very well. Her doctor said that her color looks great and she is now 22 1/4 inches and 7 pound 14 ounces (compared to 7 pounds 4 ounces at he first appointment). That means that in two weeks she has grown 1 3/4 inches and 10 ounces! That might not sound like much but I did some calculations and if I were to experience the same relative growth over the last 2 weeks, I would have gone from 5'10" to 6'8" and from 175 pounds to 189 pounds. So, she is growing fast and doing great.

It is hard to believe that it has only been two weeks since Lily was born. It feels like she has been here for so much longer, and even though she has cut into our sleep time a bit, I don't mean that in a bad way. We have loved having her home and having her become the center of our attention. Here are just a few things we have learned about our little girl in the short time we have had her:

• She was born with an innate ability to wait to complete going to the bathroom until the exact moment you begin to move her old diaper from under her and the new one in it's place. This isn't just a once or twice thing. She has done this on 95% of the changings. Last week, we tried to fake her out by opening her old diaper but keeping it there until the exact moment we were ready to slide the new diaper under her. She is clever and saw through out deception and, right as I went to slide out the old diaper, she pooped on my hand.
• Not only did I not mind having my hand pooped on, but I actually found it endearing. Ash and I have also found these things endearing: being peed on, being thrown up on, being spit up on, being woken up in the night, and being yelled at even after we have fed her, burped her, changed her and swaddled her.
  
• She sleeps for long periods during the day...sometimes as long as 5 hours...without waking up once, but she has never once made it more than 2 1/2 hours without waking up at night.
• She hates the part of baths where she is getting her body soaped up and washed, but she absolutely loves the part where she is having her head scrubbed and her hair put under the faucet.
  
• She loves having her hair brushed...it calms her right downs after a bath.
• She's still not sure about the binkie but if you tickle the roof of her mouth with it, she closes her mouth and start sucking away.
• She hates the car seat.
  
• She farts as loud as her parents and has, as a result, been blamed for every fart over the last two weeks.
• She is starting to be more aware of the things around her and is making eye contact. The other day I had her sitting in front of me after a bath all wrapped up in her blanket but she was still shivering and had this look on her face like "what the crap just happened to me?" I held her up against my chest and she looked up at me and stared into my eyes for the next ten minutes. Every time I would put my face close to hers, she would stick her tongue out and try to touch my face with it. She warmed up and it about melted me.
  

All in all, we are so dang happy to have Lily in our lives. We have loved getting to know her and watching her get to know us and the world around her. Thanks to everyone for all of the help you have given us.

Here are a few pictures from her first two weeks at home.

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Video of Lily

Happy Birthday Lily

Lily Brown was born Monday, January 22nd at 2:06 pm at St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City, UT. She weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Her head was 35 cm around which, according to all of the doctors and nurses I talked to, was the biggest brain they have ever measured. In case you are still questioning her intelligence, She's 3 days old today and already has her own blog, so that's pretty good.

Ashley and Lily are both doing great and are now home from the hospital. Lily celebrated by barfing 4 times yesterday. She also celebrated by opening her right eye which, as you will see in some of the pictures, she couldn't quite get open at the hospital. We are so excited to have her out and now to have her home. Everyone tells us our lives are about to change...we are excited to have her change them.

Because all she does right now is eat, sleep and poop, there is not a whole lot to report. Here, however, are some posts you can look forward to:

• How Lily learned to say "Dad" before she turned 1...week
• How Scott and Ashley noticed a light go on in Lily's room and were scared somebody had broken in, but when they went back into her room, they found her reading (and she was only a month old!)
• How Lily's rich aunt Danielle set up a scholarship fund for her
  
• How Lily beat up her cousin Oliver even though he is 3 weeks older than her and a boy
• How Lily learned to change her own diaper

Here are more pictures of the cutest baby in the world (that is not just a dad bragging about his little girl...they actually did some tests at the hospital and proved it):
To see a larger image, just click on the picture.

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