All About Julia

This post is dedicated to our one-and-only baby girl. You soon will have to share the spotlight with a new little brother, so for now, this long blog post is all about you and only you. We love you so much! Without further ado, here are some photos of you from over the past few months that simply didn't fit into any of our other blog posts.

Couple of our favorite random photos from June
On a walk in our neighborhood, with her Diego doll in hand. This was one of my favorite summer outfits of hers.



A few of our favorite random photos from July
My two favorite people at the lake:


At lunch with daddy downtown on a work day:


On a road trip to the lake, riding in the back of my parents van. She was watching videos on our phone and asked to have daddy's lifejacket. She instructed us on how she wanted to wear it until we got it just right. She sat happily like this for a long part of the car ride:

Random Happenings in August
Before Jarret and I even thought about having kids, I knew one of the events he looked forward to the most as a future daddy was the first time he got to buy his kid a pair of Nikes. If you don't know, the man loves the Nike brand and he particularly thinks baby-sized Nike gear is about as cute as it gets. After one of his August business trips, he got to "work from home" on Friday. We spent the morning as a family out at Firewheel Mall, and Jarret finally had his special moment!

The terrible picture I took on my phone at the store...


Jarret's Nike photo shoot...


Then he forgot about the Nikes and just started snapping pics of his baby girl's expressions...







One of the first high school football games of the season was Plano (Jarret's alma mater) versus Lakeview (my alma mater). Seeing as how Lakeview has consistently gone down hill over the last two decades, we always sit on the Plano side and cheer on the Wildcats. Jarret's parents came with us for the fun:



She loved waving her paw with the rest of the crowd and saying, "Go Plano!" Now when we see a football game on TV, she typically yells out, "Go Plano!" (Occasionally, it's "Go Aggies!" or "Go Cowboys!"):


Ah, a girl after my own heart. Here, she's sitting on the steps near the Planoettes (drill team) looking as though she could already be one of them:



Girl time with Haley while Noah went with Karla and Dustin to a church meeting. The girls played and shared beautifully, and it was the first time I'd really seen them totally co-communicating about what they wanted to play together. You know, the whole, "Come on Julia, let's go do ..." and "Haley, come do ... with me." Below, they sat in the chair together during a TV show and then took turns with the AquaDoodle:



Wearing daddy's wakeboard helmet to ride her bike:


Stickers! Jarret had taken Julia into a clothing store and claims he only turned his back on her for a brief moment. The next time he saw her, she looked like this....covered in sizing stickers!



Lake Palestine weekend trip with her cousins. They were each wrapped in the blanket Gran had made them earlier that week:

Random happenings in September
Family breakfast at Original Pancake House:

Feeding the ducks with daddy on one of his special days off after a business trip:


Reading a new book with Grammy:


Heading out to putt on the green with Papa (she loves golf!!):


Random cuteness:


Watching a video with her cousin and best bud "Jakey":


Hanging out and racing with her friend Audrey who lives two doors down. We're particularly fond of the picture of Julia's crazy, crazy hair when she's running:





Learning to dribble a soccer ball:

We also wanted to capture a few of the funnier things Julia has said over the past couple months:

• August 3 - While playing in the Mat Room up at church, Julia had gone to see a baby lying on a blanket. When I asked her if she got to sit by the baby, she got a big smile on her face and replied, "Yeah! I pet her!"
• August 27 - The 3 of us were riding in the car to the Plano/Lakeview football game, when Jarret said to call my parents back and tell them to "suck it up" and come with us even though they'd been awake since the crack of dawn (he was saying it nicely, as in, make them come with us because he knew they'd have fun). Anyway, we kinda forget sometimes that Julia pays more attention to our conversations than we realize. We were boldly reminded of that fact when her little high-pitched voice spoke up from the back seat, "Suck up! Suck up!"
• September 13 - Julia loves when we place pillows all around the edge of our ottoman so she can do "big jumps" and land on the pillows. When getting ready for her big jump, she declared, "Get set, Mark 12, 30, GO!" I was thoroughly confused for all of one second before I realized she was combining our Bible memory verse (Mark 12:30) into the common phrase, "On your mark, Get Set, Go".
• We began potty training Julia in mid-August following the method in which the child tells you when they need to go potty, rather than the parent constantly asking. Within hours, Julia learned the phrase "I need to go tee-tee!" But her stubborness kicks in many of the times she needs to go tee-tee and she doesn't want to stop playing. In these instances, you'll hear her say "I need to go tee-tee" (when she realizes she needs to go) suddenly followed by a very passionate, "I need NOT to go tee-tee!" (when she realizes that you're about to whisk her away from her activity).
• A few weeks ago, Julia realized that she could get out of bed and open her bedroom door at any time she wished. This would sometimes happen only 10 minutes or so after I put her down for a nap, and I would hear her open her bedroom door and say, "Mommy? I woke up." I'd walk upstairs and tell her, "Julia, you didn't wake up. You haven't gone to sleep yet." She'd look at me very seriously and say, "This is sleep" as she fluttered her eyes closed for a few seconds. Oh, how I wish it were that easy to simply close your eyes and be asleep!

Her pronunciation astounds us, so we wanted to document some of our favorite words that she still says incorrectly:

• top part = PopTart
• snower = flower
• packack = backpack
• lellow = yellow
• chacksip = chapstick
• teesh = teeth
• hangaburr = hamburger
• nerote = remote
• poppilop = lollipop

Thank you for lighting up our days with all the funny things you say and do, cutie pie!