Half a Year

February 9th. It's a special day for our family. It's the day Brandon and I were engaged, the day our niece Brooklyn was born, and now, it's the day Amelia turns 6 months old!

It's hard to believe that Amelia has already come from this:

And This:

To this:

And This:

Millie is...

• CURIOUS: She can now go and check out those things that she has been wondering about, and likes to spend lots of the day exploring different areas of the house and overturning baskets and tasting things. (She is currently trying to check out the DVD player)
• CRAWLING: She officially started crawling last Friday. Suddenly I need to keep a closer eye on her.
• GIGGLY: She laughs more and more these days. Sometimes we are surprised by the things she finds entertaining. It sort of gives us a new view of the world as we see through new eyes. The other night she thought that going up and down the stairs on her dad's shoulders was the funniest thing.
• MISCHIEVOUS: She LOVES to pull our glasses off of our faces, and does so without even batting an eye. She also pulls my hair and has a knack for finding the things I don't want her to find. When we feed her, she often tries to grab at any food she can get ahold of.
• TALKATIVE: In the evenings (and other times), we are serenaded with a beautiful, resonant WAWAWAWAWAWABABABAWAWA! (That's her favorite thing to say)
• GROWING: She is 25 and 3/4 inches tall and weighs 15.9 lbs.
• EASYGOING: She is generally content wherever we are (unless she is hungry or tired)
• OBSERVANT: I have been seeing more and more signs that she knows what is going on and what we ask her to do.
• LOVING: She still has wonderful cuddly moments and loves to give slimy, slobbery, openmouthed kisses (we need to work on that) on our foreheads, noses, cheeks, and today she got my eye. She also loves being kissed and played with.
• PLAYFUL: She really likes singing games and loves it when we tease her.

We are so in love with our little Millie! It is an amazing experience to watch her learn and grow. Sometimes it's a little uncomfortable for us, because we are learning and growing too. But it is so neat to see things in a different way as a parent and to feel such a deep love for her and each other.

Projects

You know those people that have those blogs that you look at and every day (or at least every week) they post some new, cute, amazing project that they have just invented in their heads and finished and taken incredible pictures of? Well, I'm NOT one of those people. :) I made a list the other day of how many UNFINISHED projects we had going on, and I listed eleven of them (eleven! at least!), some of which we've been working on for over a year. So, like I said--I'm not one of THOSE people. But, making said list has helped me focus on at least a couple of them over the past couple of days. Actually, I think I'll post some from the past couple of months. Then maybe it will look like I'm more on top of things. Regardless of how unnaturally long my projects may take me, I have really enjoyed being able to create and learn a few things along the way. So, without further ado, here are a few of my (and Brandon's) projects:

I made a couple of embroidery hoop decorations to hang on Millie's wall. Are they on her wall yet? Well, erm, no. But at least I have made them, right? I did sort of make them up out of my head, but I found a lot of inspiration online.

We have been searching for an affordable, comfortable office chair for a while, because our current one was falling apart and looked like this:

But instead, we bought some fabric and reupholstered it ourselves (it was mostly Brandon). The exciting thing about this project is that we didn't put it off very long. It only took 3 hours.

While we were in Utah for Christmas, my mom helped me make a little dress for Amelia. I found the pattern HERE. I made the headband too.

This project is one I finished TODAY! I've really been needing new pajama pants. I had an old pair that I really liked, so I used them as a pattern. They are NOT perfect, and took me way longer than they probably should have, but they are done... and wearable.

Now, only about 7 more projects to go. Why is it that it's so much easier to start them than to finish them?