Well, this will be the last post for 'Lily Belle of the Valley'. The blog will continue and Lily will still be featured but we will give Zoe equal time with having her own blog. Zoe's due date is Wednesday so as of Lily Belle's 17-month birthday, the blog will be renamed: Zoe Girl Brockman.
With that being said, it is hard to say whether Lily knows what is coming. Actually, it is not hard to say: she does not know what is coming. In the last month, she has really progressed incredibly with a number of things, and we have started to note her consciously taken notice of Katy being pregnant. She likes to raise Katy's shirt, and pat the belly, give Zoe a kiss. She has found hers, and dad's, and mom's belly button and thinks it is the funniest thing to put her finger there. But, that is just another notice of her showing a development in recognizing certain things.
The other point of development that Lily has achieved during September is having achieved the transition to one nap. In a lot of the books, they say that this is a pretty big transition and it doesn't always go smoothly. As with everything else, Lily seemed to make this transition nicely. The first week or so, she was way tired in the morning but didn't seem to take an extra long nap in the afternoon (still only 60-90 minutes) but in the last couple of weeks, she has moved up to an average 2-hour nap. She certainly has some days where she falls back to a shorter nap but those tend to be the exception, rather than the rule. It certainly does change the way our days work with Lily. In one respect, it makes it harder because we have fewer windows where she is napping whereby we can be doing other things. On the other hand, it is nicer because we can do more outings (and longer outings) in the morning.
Then, in terms of her other skills, Lily is progressing nicely. The funniest thing she does right now is to say "Uh-oh." She doesn't really use it entirely appropriately but it is not as bad as Ron Burgandy's "Sometimes you just have to look yourself in the mirror and say 'When In Rome'". For example, we had a lot of tree limbs on the side of our house for a couple of weeks, and Lily was out in the backyard playing; she would get to those limbs and not be able to pass by and say, "Uh-oh". She'll do that as well if she spills ice on the ground or other more minor things, but it is pretty funny. She is saying 'mama' and 'dada' really well these days and there are a few other recognizable things. When we are eating and before bed, she is used to praying and she will fold her hands together if we don't do it right away; actually, I think she associates praying with eating because even if we have prayed, she'll suggest we need to pray again. She may be taking Paul's admonition in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 ("pray continually") a bit too literal, but we would rather her pray too much than not enough.
In terms of activities, Lily has pretty much stayed on her regular schedule with a few fun additions. First, Katy and I are taking a parenting class on Sunday nights and so Lily gets to start her downtown visits now on Sunday nights. We take her down there around 5 pm on Sundays and then head to our class. It certainly makes our Monday mornings a bit easier with having Lily already delivered downtown (for now, until Zoe arrives). Earlier this month, we bought an inflatable pool and Lily really enjoyed playing in there. I think she enjoyed more getting out of the pool and getting back in rather than playing in the pool. There have been a lot of other fun things we have done, and the last 2 weeks especially, it has been really nice to be able to all be here together to put Lily down for the night. The other thing we've noticed (and you can see in the picture below) is that Lily loves ice right now; she sees Katy eating it all the time and that is one of the other words she says ("ice, ice"). We also got to go visit Lily's preschool this month for open house. She starts in mid-October and it was fun (and a bit sad) to go and see it, but I know it will be a fun adventure for her. To prepare her for it, she got her own table to work at, which you can see below that she enjoys. Lily also enjoyed seeing us get all the baby equipment out this month to get ready for Zoe; she had a flashback and wanted to jump into all that stuff, but she wasn't as content to just lay there as she was as a small infant.
Despite all the advances she is making, Lily still continues to follow her signature look and wear extra-cute outfits to church (and elsewhere).
It is kinda sad thinking that any moment now Lily will cease being the center of attention, but we never planned for her to be an only child, so I know that she will continue to thrive in this new stage of life that we are entering into as a family.
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