Easter in Huntington

Lillian spent the Easter weekend in Huntington with Na Na and Paw Paw Denby. She got to spend a lot of time with her cousins Wesley and Katelyn. Lillian’s Aunt Elli had these pictures made. Lillian loves her cousins!

Happy New Year 2015!

Amy, Snowman and Lillian in Michigan

Lillian and Katelyn in Huntington, Texas

Lillian, Amy and Josh have been on an extended road trip, first to visit Amy’s family in Michigan, then to see Josh’s family in Lufkin and Huntington, Texas. Lillian’s Na-Na, Peggy Denby, sent the picture of the two. There is a rumor that both girls have a fondness for the color pink.

Lillian and Katelyn in Huntington

While Lillian and Josh were up visiting the Denby grandparents in Huntington, she got to spend time with her cousin Katelyn, the daughter of Josh’s sister Elli and her husband Josh Williams. Katelyn has a new brother, Wesley, but, as he is not yet a year old, he’s a bit young for the fashionable girl cousins.

Peggy reports that the girls had a blast: they had a special dining and play table that they both loved and they played outside and giggled and danced the day away.

Christmas with the Denbys

Lillian’s Na-Na, Peggy Denby, sends this report from Huntington, in deepest East Texas:

Lillian has kept the Denby family busy this week.  Her horse and bunny have been in on many of her wild adventures.  The fairy princess has requested dance partners on many occasions.  Fortunately, her Daddy Prince was the only partner caught in the act!

Nana told her that Santa would be wanting cookies when he dropped by so we had fun making sugar cookies and adding icing and sprinkles!  When eating the “pretty” cookies, she tried as hard as she could to keep all of the icing off of her fingers – so dainty!  The last picture shows the results of eating too many sweets – green “zits” – or is that green sprinkles?

 Santa brought her a red scooter (which she has used inside and outside) and from other family members a guitar and harmonica!  As she provided entertainment on one instrument, she insisted someone else play the other (and often told someone else to dance).  By 8:30 every evening, all adults were worn out – but Lillian persisted in entertaining her stuffed animals in her bed!

We have loved having Josh and Lillian here, playing, and hearing Lillian say “Come on, everybody … let’s play hide n seek!”  Such a sweet child … she even told NaNa (after having her hair pulled into lopsided pigtails and  saying “ouchie” several times): “It’s beautiful”.  She’s a real charmer!

Lillian Enjoying The Simple Things

This weekend, Josh’s mom and dad, Peggy and Keith Denby (better known to Lillian as Na-Na and Paw-Paw) came to visit Lillian and her dad. Here is Peggy’s report, along with some pictures:

On our visit this weekend, Keith and I enjoyed playing with Lillian while Josh got his errands done and enjoyed a little grown-up time.

The pictures show how easy she is to entertain! She loves singing BINGO. She gets excited and gets a couple of the letters — but always ends loudly with a grin on her face! She made two of her baby dolls dance while we sang the song (of course, I was provided with a baby doll to make it a real dance party).

Also, please note the “dinosaur” she drew on her magic drawing board! Well, NaNa thinks it looks like a dinosaur!

For quiet time after lunch, we watched the OLD Winnie the Pooh; I really didn’t think she would watch it, but she sat on my lap and quietly watched the entire story of Pooh and the Honey Tree! At the end, she jumped down and got close to the tv and stared at piglet and pooh — I wondered what she was thinking! Anyway, Dora and Bubble Guppies were forgotten for a while.

Grossing Out Grandpa

Sometimes I think I am a dog

When Lillian was up with her dad at the Denby’s place in Huntington, grandma Peggy undertook the challenge of re-starting toilet training the Lilz (Ashley and Josh had started right before Ashley’s final hospital stay, which interrupted the process). Lillian’s Houston grandparents had high hopes for quick success: Peggy successfully started a routine (sit on pot, flush, wash and dry hands) and Lillian cheerfully executes all the steps, save one: actually producing any output on the pot. Still we are continuing the routine, and Lillian happily lets you know when she’s produced anything of interest in her pull-up training pants, usually by pointing her finger.

Today we again made several trips to the bathroom and went through her routine, still with no production. About 20 minutes after the fruitless mid-afternoon trip, Lilz walked over to me, thrust her hands down the back of her pants, pulled them out covered in a smelly greenish substance, waved them around and said: “Yuck.”

I agreed.

More about New Words

“Yuck”

Lillian’s grandma Peggy says:

We are missing Lillian and her cute little words. I don’t know if we’ll ever figure out “ani” but “yuck” is expressive of everything she sees (and does). One night when I had put her down for the night, and after about 20 minutes of her usual figeting around in the bed, she started saying “YYYYYYuck”… “YuCK!”… “yuCK”… “YYYYYYYUCK!”. I really thought it was cute until I smelled the reason–a full diaper–so I went back to change her (again) and start the sleep process all over … So I know sometimes it REALLY means “YUCK”.

She also used it properly when she was eating a bowl of raisin bran cereal (from which I thought I had picked out all of the raisins) and accidently chewed a raisin … out came the raisin … followed by a convincing “YUCK”.

Now if we can just get her to add a few more words to her vocabulary to help us follow her spoken instructions. Being dragged around by a finger, followed by a finger pointing at something, which as silly adults we do not always interpret to her satisfaction, is sometimes annoying to Lillian (as we all discovered). Aunt Cari was pretty insistent that she “use her words” and Lillian did say a version of snowman (no mis) and reindeer (rrrrreer) for her.

More East Texas Christmas

Lillian sculpts in Play-Doh with her aunt Elli and cousin Katelyn:

Katelyn and Lillian and a keyboard:

Lillian in the sandbox:

Motoring with grandpa Keith:

Reading Kai-Lan with dad:

Christmas

Lillian Grace Denby

Christmas Cousins

Katelyn and Lillian