It seems like overnight I've gone from having a newborn to having an active infant! Gabbie is 10 months old this week - if I had a dollar for every person who has said, " I CANNOT believe that" I would be one wealthy mama.

This age has brought so many new things including 2 teeth that finally popped up last Friday (June 12th)! She has been quite the little champ with them - I heard all sorts of horror teething stories, but apart from wanting to chew on anything and everything, she really hasn't been that affected by them. I think her gums have been bothering her for a few months so those little guys finally coming through probably gave her some relief.




We are crawling. Everywhere. I have dug deep in the creativity department to barricade her into our living room area since our living room and kitchen are one open space.


Not sure why I didn't think to do this earlier especially after last week she discovered she could get into the dog bowl. Now she thinks it's hysterical - once she sees it, it's like she attacks it with a vengeance crawling as fast as her little knees and hands will take her. Before I can catch her, it's flipped over and she's overcome with laughter playing in the puddle on the floor. It IS really cute actually and it's hard to get onto her as she's having a blast and it doesn't hurt anything. Oops - I guess that's the first hint that I may not be as tough of a mom as I thought I would be....fun.



I definitely had a tough lesson this week when I turned around and she had made it to the top of the steps in our house. My heart dropped but thankfully she froze in shock as I screamed her name. Oh. That was a horrible feeling. Please don't scold me any more - I did it enough to myself and will no longer be upstairs without the gate being up. whew. Now that I told on myself, let's move on to happier things...

Eating is becoming more and more fun as she requests in her own little way to feed herself. We've not resorted to spoon feeding some foods and letting her feed herself others just to make sure she's getting enough to eat. This past week I had a good friend suggest letting her hold a spoon while I feed her - she loves to think she's actually doing something. We have quite a variety of foods in our menu now including salmon. She had it for the first time last week when I cooked it for dinner for Brent and I. She loved it. Immediately. I've given it to her since and she still enjoys it. That's the only meat she's had so far and I'm ok with that. She's getting protein in other forms like a few scrambled egg yolks for breakfast which she loves.



And of course we have the old stand by's only now they're in solid form instead of pureed: black beans, green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, strawberries (she had these for the first time the day we picked them and without having any reaction!), tomatoes (she ate these at outback last week and loved them), zucchini (since we have a plethora coming in from our garden these days), yellow squash, apples (still as applesauce), bananas, yogurt - she LOVES yogurt, mango, and the only thing she isn't loving right now is avocado. I've tried several times over the past few months for her to eat it but she just doesn't love it. I think it's a texture thing maybe. I'll keep trying though - it's so darn good for her. Fletcher is loving this stage - he patiently waits at the foot of the chair for any of her droppings, which are plentiful. I know she's figured out that he likes the food she's eating - I have caught her a few times just straight up feeding her. It's very cute.
Both of the dogs are so sweet with Gabbie - they know when I'm going upstairs to wake her up from her naps and it's as if she understands they will be there with me too. She wakes up and immediately looks out the side of her crib as if searching for their cute little faces on the edge of her mattress. She gets excited when I'm holding her and they come running by us as if she knows they are her little play mates. Love it. I need to get some cute pictures with them. They've recently figured out they will get trapped on the wrong side of the gate if they don't come when I call. Last week I put the gate upstairs and called both Fletcher and Fiona to come up before I set it up. Fiona came, but Fletcher wouldn't. A few minutes later, Fletcher was sitting on the top stair peering through the gate as if to say, "Darn, why didn't I listen? Please let me in.." So funny. (those times pay for the times they destroy something in the house when I leave them out by themselves only to come home later and have to clean up....argh....but I do love them)

Anyway, back to Gabbie....We've had a VERY busy summer so far and I love it that way! I'll do more posts on all of our events, but our days have been filled with pool hours (well one hour is probably the most she can do). We're headed there today hopefully. She is quite the water baby and while I'd love to try to take the camera for some shots, it's not going to happen. Just trust me - she loves it. Yesterday she became even more adventurous and crawled into water up to her chin (we have a zero entry pool). I saw a little girl (probably about the same age as Gabbie) with painted toenails and it was sooo stinkin' cute - I went home and did the same...I'm hoping by starting her early, she won't do the old right of passage of spilling an entire bottle of nail polish in our carpet. At least in my head that's how it will work...we'll see. In the meantime, have you ever seen toes so stinkin' cute?!



She made a few friends and pretty much every little girl between 5 and 12 always comes over and talks to her which she adores. We have spent a few days with our friend Mayme and Katherine - Mayme is just a few weeks younger than Gabbie and they love playing with each other as I've mentioned a few times in previous posts.


Moncrief Photography has been SUPER DUPER busy lately (as in weddings every weekend and now trekking across the U.S. via bike!) , so we haven't gotten any pictures recently. It's probably better that way it forces me to make more pictures on my own. Here's a little collection of some creative shots to capture my little lamb these past few weeks...enjoy!

What 29 year old (or anyone for that matter) do you know that gets 4 days of celebration for his Birthday? Mr. Whitaker that's who. The boy is spoiled rotten when it comes to birthdays. It's pretty funny too because we have good friends who are the same way - the wife always throws a big party for her husband every year, but when time rolls around for her birthday it's a very quiet gathering of just their family. How did this happen? Pretty sure it had to do with his parents' anniversary being around the same time so they always felt bad because they would be on a trip, when they returned they always made it up to him by doing several things for his birthday. Seriously? Now the dude still thinks he's a boy and we do the same thing every year.

This year was no different: we started the celebration on Thursday attending the CMA Fest which was AWESOME! We took along several great friends and had a blast. We got to enjoy Alan Jackson, Jason Aldean, Tim McGraw, Lady Antebellum and Carrie Underwood. It was fantastic and yes, Gabbie went too! It was a very late night, but she was quite the little trooper - sleeping in her stroller (aka the smugglin' mobile) in the private bathroom we had. When we got home at 2am, she went right to sleep no problems! What a champ.








We had quite the adventure getting Gabbie into the stadium since they have a no stroller policy. We scouted out the "right" gate attendants and finally found the right group: 4 men who could have cared less that we were about to haul a stroller into the stadium along with about 12 bottles of water and coke in the bottom of our stroller. Lesson: when trying to sneak in items to an event, always find a man as they have made up in their minds that as women all we carry around are pads and tampons and they wouldn't dare to touch or see one. The guy who inspected my diaper bag, literally didn't touch one single item - Brent moved a few things around so he could see we weren't smuggling drugs or weapons. He didn't even inspect our stroller and we GOLDEN.

Alan Jackson
Lady Antebellum

Jason Aldean aka Brent's Bromance

Carrie Underwood


I even managed to smuggle in some cupcakes so at one of the breaks, we all sang Happy Birthday to Brent and chowed down on cupcakes. They were soo yummy:


The Crew:


The next morning, we woke up pretty early and headed to the Lakehouse in Alabama. You may remember a post a long time ago when we recorded the first-ever written directions to the lake house. This is that house again. We always get a kick out of pulling out the directions (which we keep in our car now) that we are the first with written directions.
We had a really really nice time - when we first got there on Friday we were the only ones at the house and pretty much on the lake. It was nap time for Gabbie (very convenient) so we put her down and headed to float away the busyness of the week right out the door on the lake (no worries - we had our video monitor so we could hear and see everything she did). It was amazing. With it being a week day, there wasn't a soul on the water which was nice and weird all at the same time because we've never been there when it wasn't a holiday weekend and the lake was packed.

Saturday the family came down from Hartselle and we had a great time on the boat, floating away all our worries and teaching the dogs how to swim. Well, Fletcher. We strapped on a life jacket and he attempted to learn to swim. It was funny - we're pretty sure he was meant to be a rescue dog because every time one of us jumped off the dock, he was barking and came right in after us.
Fiona didn't really get in the water all weekend - she hung out in the shade on the shoreline


Grandma really wanted to feed Gabbie, so I let her do it....


Jada has a big day coming up: taking her NCLEX aka State Board Exams for Nursing, so we both helped her study some while she was there for the weekend. (good luck, Jada!)



Grandma and I each made Brent a cake for his birthday so we all sang Happy Birthday to him (count: that's TWICE now that he's gotten Happy Birthday Sang to him...)


It was a pretty solid way to celebrate his last birthday in his twenties - so glad to get to spend it with him and all our friends and family!! What a very special husband I have - one I truly adore and thank God for every day. Happy Birthday, babe!


I almost forgot!! Brent's big gift this year was from his parents - an awesome road bike that he's been wanting for several years now. We finally put it together and went on a family ride last night: