Julia at 9 Months

 Julia turned 9 months old on Thursday.  It's getting really hard to get good pictures of her because she's on the move.  She's been crawling for about 3 weeks and decided it would be fun to try going down our stairs.  We all decided afterwards that that was a really bad idea, and we won't be letting her do that again.  Her sleeping has gotten a bit better but the last few nights have been rougher.  She has a cold and she just cut her third tooth.  Hopefully, things will settle back down now that the tooth has finally broken through the gums.  She continues to be a smiley baby and has gotten a bit chatty.  She'll say ba, dee, ga, gee.  I've heard ma a time or two and da da a couple of times.  She is laughing quite a bit, too, and that's really cute.  I've stopped nursing; it was just getting too hard.  She was easily distracted, so I couldn't do it around the other kids.  I had to take her upstairs and turn on her noise maker and turn off the lights.  Then, the whole time I had to worry that the kids were okay downstairs.  On top of all that, I'm pretty sure my supply was down, and I was having to supplement every feeding.

I took her to the doctor yesterday, and she weights 17.5 lbs (26%).  She's 28.5 inches tall (82%), and I can't remember her head circumference, but she's in the 90th percentile.


Here are a few pictures that I was able to get.  There were a few good ones:

 

 

Laundry area redo

 When we moved into our house, one of the things we wanted to do was update the laundry area.  We "inherited" a nice washer and dryer with the house, but the laundry closet was not big enough to hold the new high efficiency washer and dryers.  So, there were no closet doors on the laundry closet.  We wanted to change that. 

 This is the before photo, cabinets and washer and dryer all exposed:

In order to be able to push the washer and dryer as tight against the wall as possible, JD had to alter the plumbing and dryer vent.  The dryer originally vented from the back:

We wanted it to vent from the bottom, so we bought this thing to change the vent direction:

So, now it vents through the bottom of the dryer:

 

And, JD had to cut a hole in the floor to vent it through the floor:

 

 

JD had to build a bulkhead, so that we could install closet doors:

 

And we removed the cabinets and installed shelves:

And we changed the lighting:

 

 With the closet doors:

 

Down on the Farm

 Last week the big kids were on spring break, and they spent the week at my in-laws'.  While they were there, they visited a petting farm and saw "all the animals on Noah's Ark."  When I asked if they saw giraffes, they clarified that they saw all of the animals on Noah's Ark that live where Nana and Granddaddy live.  Those animals include pigs, rabbits, goats, and llamas (???).  The kids had a great time, and I enjoyed a bit of quiet and the ease of only having one baby in the house.  Thanks for letting the kids come down!