Lily's First Halloween

We had so much fun on Lily's first Halloween. I'm actually sad it's over already! She was SUCH a good baby and very tolerant of what we put her through :)
Downtown Venice does a parade for the kids that dress up and then all of the stores have trick or treating. There were wayyyy too many people down there and it was incredibly hot but totally worth taking Lily down there to show her off.
Originally, she was going to be a monkey, because that's her nickname, but when I put the costume on her, she looked like a little boy. So, I had the idea to start searching for a flower, for obvious reasons. I found one on ebay and here is the dress rehearsal:

Notice the fleece body suit and head piece. Someone should really come up with a costume line for warmer climates.
Anyway, I really wanted to dress up too, something to compliment what Lily was dressed as, so Dustin came up with idea of gardeners. I then had the idea to go to Home Depot to buy a plastic flower pot so it would be easy to carry her around in. This is how it turned out:

I guess it was a good costume idea because a bunch of people stopped to ask us for our picture. I was a little overwhelmed with the attention. I really didn't think it was a big deal!
Lily did well though. She was very relaxed and she was such a trooper. We spent about an hour downtown and gathered some candy. I always said that I was going to have a kid to score some Halloween candy!

Here are some other pictures from the day...

Practicing sitting in her pot.

Just getting there. She was spacing out.


Our group, minus my dad, who always seems to evade being in pictures.
Yes, we had 8 adults to one child...actually 10 at one point, when Dustin's parent were there. Ridiculous. We have great friends and family that tolerated the crowds and heat to hang out with Lily. Notice Nicole with the pumpkin on her belly. She's due in February so she's next in line for the baby adventure!

And just to show how talented our friends are, here are our pumpkins:

From left to right we have Derek and Tiff's Asian pumpkin, Drew's funny football mouth (according to Nicole), Nicole's Bugs Bunny, Lily's water lily, butterfly and a dragonfly, and then Dustin's skull and cross bones. The one behind Dustin's is fake :)

My mom made mention that I didn't do a 5 month post for Lily. I did take some 5 month onesie pictures but they didn't turn out great so I have all of these great pictures from Halloween to remind me of what she looked like at 5 months.
What she's up to...

• She cut two teeth about 2 weeks ago. I thought we would get a break in the hell that is teething...and I guess we did...for about 5 glorious days, but she must be cutting another one because she is back to non-stop drool, incessantly chewing on things, screaming and restless sleep.
• Speaking of restless sleep, she is still not a great sleeper overall. How I miss the days of 10pm-8am, from 6 weeks until she was almost 4 months. :sigh:. Now, she sleeps from about 7:30pm-5am, then she might go back to sleep for an hour around 6:30am.
• Naps are still extremely sporadic. Some days she'll sleep for an hour in the afternoon and a couple 30 minute naps, other days its just a couple 20 minute naps here and there. There is not telling. Truth be told, we SUCK at trying to enforce a schedule with naps. Not only a schedule but also getting her to sleep in her crib. She naps on the couch, surrounded by pillows. We will not win the parent of the year award with that little known fact.
• She loves reaching for everything and touching people's faces.
• Loves sweet potatoes and pears. Not apples. At all.

Bored yet? Holy big post.