Fishies

Sophie has been exploring the house and one of her favorite places to crawl to, is the fish tank. She loves to watch the fish. She pulls herself up to her knees at least once a day to look in the fish tank.

Chips are yummy!

Sophie has been crawling for 3 weeks and she is starting to really explore. This week, Sophie crawled over to the couch, because Brian and Lillie were eating chips and she wanted see what they were doing. Like a true "Marsh," she loved her first chip. Tonight, Sophie quit nursing when she heard the rustling of the chip bag and went to go eat a chip.

One night, when Lillie crawled into bed, Sophie cried out a "eh" and started to crawl over to Lillie's bed. When she got to Lillie's bed, she looked up and said "eh" again. As if she said, "I want up." I picked her up and laid her down next to Lillie. Sophie had a huge smile on her face, because she wanted to lay in bed with Lillie for prayers and songs.

Two weeks ago, Sophie started to say "Ma, Ma." Last week, she started to say, "Da, Da." When ever we would try to have her repeat "Ma, Ma" or "Da, Da" Lillie would chime "Lil, Lil."

Lillie continues to make us laugh. 3 weeks ago, Brian and I were snoozing in bed when we heard her yell "It's Daddy's Birthday!" at 7:30 in the morning. We couldn't help but laugh and it was a great way to wake up.

Lillie is also doing great in school and learning things that I never thought a Preschooler would learn. She is starting to recognize words that rhyme. I knew that her Preschool teacher, Mrs. Hoard, was teaching the kids to rhyme, but then Lillie really surprised us two weeks ago with recognizing syllables. We were driving home from the grocery store, when Lillie started to clap the rythem to "Mommy, Daddy, Lillie." I asked her is she was doing a cheer, because they have "cheerleaders" at dance class. She said "no, I am clapping to the beat of the words." I proceeded to give her more words to "find the beat." She clapped the syllables for "refrigerator, house, garbage truck, basketball, mailbox, yogurt" and other words as we traveled home and put the groceries away. When I dropped Lillie off at school the next week, I told Mrs. Hoard "thank you."

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from the Marsh's. Christmas also marked Sophie's 10 month birthday. Sophie started crawling on Christmas. It was hard to take a picture of them by the tree, because Sophie kept wanting to move. A few weeks ago, Sophie started to sign "all done" and last week she started to sign "milk".
Lillie is also starting to learn a new language. She loves Dora the Explorer and she tries to tell us Spanish words. Instead of "Feliz Navidad" she would say "Feliz Naughtydad".
We had a great Christmas. The girls love all of the presents that they received from Santa and our family. Thank you to everyone.

Christmas Photo

Last week, I took a picture of the girls in their Christmas dresses for the Christmas card. It took several attempts to get this great photo. Lillie and I were singing the theme song to Dora the Explorer when I snapped this photo. Unfortunately, Sophie's skin broke out in a rash and she will be wearing a different dress on Friday.

Teething biscuits for 7 teeth

Today, Sophie tried a teething biscuit tonight for the first time. She ate more of it than Lillie did at her age. But Lillie only had 4 teeth and Sophie has 7. She bit a piece of the cracker off and I held it out towards her, She took the piece in her hand and tapped it on the piece that I was holding. She did this several times knowing that the two pieces went together.

Sophie had her 9 month check up last week. She is almost 28" (2" more than Lillie at 9 months) and 17lbs, 5oz (and 1.5lbs more than Lillie at 9 months). Yesterday, Sophie pulled herself up to play at her activity table.

Hey Santa

Tuesday, I worked at Lillie's school and they had a Jack and Jill family tell the class about Hanukah. We also learned how to play dreidel. That evening we finished our Christmas shopping and visited Santa at the mall. When we told Lillie that we were going to see Santa, she asked "Is Rudolph going to be there?" I told her that the reindeer were at the north pole. Sophie did not cry or smile when she sat on Santa's lap.
One of my favorite memories of this Christmas season will be: When we got to the mall, Lillie stopped as she was getting out of the car, because she heard the Salvation Army bell ringers and thought that it was Santa's sleigh.



Sophie is starting to make new noises and she is starting to squeal really loud. She loves to dance while standing at her activity table or even when she is sitting down. This past week, she developed another ear infection. (Edited 12/10: I forgot to add Sophie's new accomplishment yesterday. While I was writing this blog entry yesterday morning I heard music. We don't have a church nearby and Lillie was in the bathroom. I then realized that it was the musical toy on the side of Sophie's crib. Sophie had learned how to maneuver herself over to the toy and kick her leg to hit the button with her foot. At 6:30 this morning she was fussing a little bit and I was hoping that she would put herself back to sleep and not need me to feed her. But she had maneuvered herself over to the side of the crib with the toy and began playing the music. Brian called it "the mommy call button.")

Lillie is starting to recognize words. The other day she saw the word "money" on a store wall. Lillie asked if it said "monkey." I told her that is said "money" and she will remember the next time we shop at that store. This week, we were doing workbook pages and she recognized the words "Yellow, Orange, and Green." Her Preschool teacher does a "word of the day" exercise everyday that she is in class. Another Christmas Memory: On Monday, we started putting ornaments on the tree. I unwrapped an ornament with different colored mirrors on it and handed to Lillie to put on the tree. When she saw the ornament she said, "Whoa, that is a pretty ornament."

We are getting use to the Michigan snow. It has snowed or flurried almost everyday since we have been back from Nebraska. If it snows an inch or two, they do not plow or put down sand/salt. In Nebraska or Pennsylvania they would have put down lots of gravel and salt. There was a lake effect snow storm that hit Michigan this past week. We are an hour from the lake shore. We got 1" of snow, but the lake shore area got 11-18".

Happy Halloween

We have not updated the blog in a while, because we have been trying to get over a cold. Sophie's cold turned into a double ear infection and bad diaper rash. In addition, she had her 2 top front teeth come in within 2 days of each other. She is working on the 3rd top tooth now, so we have been missing out on a lot of sleep.

Last night, we took Lillie trick-or-treating around our neighborhood and Sophie went along for a buggy ride. There were a lot of kids trick-or-treating and it was great to see all of our neighbors.
The best part of trick-or-treating is eating the candy and tonight, Brian had to show Lillie how to eat pixy sticks.

Sophie's 8th month photo:

And finally we leave you with a Lillie saying. Saturday, we watched the Husker football game on TV. When Lillie saw the football players in their uniforms, she exclaimed, "Hey look, they are wearing capris."