The Collins Family: 8 months

Well I thought last months blog delay was bad. Here we are in the middle of January, Lena will be turning 10 months soon, and I have not blogged about her at 8 and 9 months. Where does the time go? My excuse this time is a busy holiday season and a broken computer.

We had a very special Thanksgiving in Beaumont. It was wonderful to spend time with family and eat some delicious food. Lena enjoyed it all just as much as we did.

Gig 'em Aggies!

Playing at Mimi and Poppa's

Lena is really on the go. She is crawling everywhere and staying curious. She loves playing with her toys and reading books. She is still babbling and making silly sounds, but she has actually started saying "mama'. It is mostly when she wants something at this point, but she definitely associates me with the word. Now we're working hard on "dada". Another new thing she is doing is waving, and she waves at EVERYTHING! It started mostly with waving at the Christmas tree, the big Nutcracker, and the small Aggie Santa we had as decoration. And then she started waving at the things in her room too. She is so cute and sweet!

Hi there!

We celebrated the holidays a little early with our friends at our Christmas Grub Club. Lena had a fun time playing with our friends' kids and showing off what a cutie she is.

We were so happy to start our Christmas break. We decided to spend the first weekend at deer camp. I enjoyed getting to see the new deer lease, and really liked making an afternoon trip to Fredericksburg for shopping and lunch. Lena had a lot of fun riding in the wagon and seeing all the exciting things and people in Fredericksburg. After a fun weekend, we went back to El Campo to celebrate Pappy's birthday. It was fun getting to see everyone.

Our dear deer

Partying with Travis

We decided to take Lena to visit Santa. We did a dress rehearsal the night before to be sure her outfit would fit. She was so cute and sweet. As is to be expected, we waited in line for over an hour. Lena was a trooper and smiled and showed off for all the other people waiting in line. Then when it was her turn to sit on Santa's lap, she looked at him, looked at me, and started bawling. I guess she wasn't so sure about him, and we'll try again next year.

We were able to meet up with Mamaw and some of the Womack's to celebrate Christmas with them. We met in College Station and had fun visiting. It was even more exciting, because Claire, Jacob, and Christian were in town from Wisconsin. We were SOOO happy to see them!

Lena loves Aunt Claire

Lena did not have a 8 month check up, but we did visit Dr. McDavitt for a few other reasons. Lena caught a stomach virus at the beginning of December. She passed it along to Cory, since he stayed home to take care of her. And Beth and I caught a minor version of it as well. Then a few weeks later, Lena's eye started to have mucous, so we decided to get it checked out. We met the nurse practitioner, who diagnosed it as Lena's first ear infection. It was a combined ear/eye infection, and other than the mucous in her eye she had no other symptoms. So I'm glad we took her in, because all it took was a round of antibiotics to get it cleared up. But we were a little concerned because the antibiotic did not completely clear up her eye infection. 2 weeks went by, and we decided to try some medicated drops. That did the trick. But on December 22, Lena started refusing to drink her bottle - which was highly unusual. She just didn't seem herself, so we took her to the doctor the next day. Sure enough, she had another ear infection. So Dr. McDavitt prescribed a different antibiotic and some ear drops to ease the pain. But it took several days for Lena to be comfortable drinking her bottle. From December 22 - 24 she refused to drink from a bottle. She wouldn't even drink her formula from a cup or straw. So we made sure she drank water, and mixed in formula with cereal and found other ways of keeping her nourished. Then on Christmas morning, Lena drank a bottle for the first time - I called it a Christmas blessing! She still had a cold and cough (that had been lingering since she had the ear infection) but we were happy to have her eating habits back to normal. So our poor girl had to deal with a lot of sickness in the month of December, you'll see in my next blog that unfortunately it didn't end there :( But the thing I always tell people, is that even when she is sick Lena is usually in good spirits. She stays pretty happy, playful, and usually continues to eat and sleep pretty well. So we are very thankful for that.

Other December pictures...