Fall

It's officially Fall, even though that doesn't mean much in Savannah, Georgia. We have had the air off for a couple of days with the windows open, but today it's back hot as ever.
Today we took Lane to her first ever pumpkin patch. She was NOT a fan! She basically hung on to me, Luke, Gran, or Papa when we attempted to set her down. So...she is going to have to get over this pumpkin fear before we head to the farm next week for the 4th annual Dorman family barn dance, where I know pumpkins will be on site. It was such a shock that Lane was not into the pumpkin patch. She is very chill and hasn't really disliked anything before, so...I hope it was just an off day instead of the start to major separation anxiety. She hasn't shown any signs of that with new people or the nursery though, so I'm just not sure what to think.
For major milestone news: Lane's 5th tooth, on the bottom left, broke through on September 14th, and Lane took her first 4+ steps on September 26th. I knew she would be an early walker, but I did not know she would beat my record. I walked at nine months, and I guess Lane just had to out do Mama. She gets better and braver every day!
Tomorrow we are dedicating Lane in the church. Our church does not believe in baptizing babies, but we do make a formal dedication as parents to raise our children knowing and loving the Lord. Our church family is wonderful here, and we have been fortunate enough to find great life friends. I will be sure to put up pictures of Lane's special day with her nine month blog (yikes that is coming up next week--tear).
I am going to blame Kathryn Grassmeyer (seriously check out her ETSY barefoot decor store #AWESOME) for this next little admission. I don't want it to arrive yet...because I am FOR SURE not rushing Lane's life any faster than it is already flying by, but I do already have her first birthday theme planned, and the cake that I am going to try and bake picked out. Lane's first birthday will be all about polka dots!!! Polka dot balloons, polka dot cake, basically polka dots everywhere. You'll see the cake in the photos below.
For Halloween I cannot justify $20 for a Halloween costume. Our church does have a festival where you take the babies out in costume, but that is the only place at this point that I know we'll be attending. So...lucky for me already own all of the items for Lane to be a beautiful ballerina. We have the cutest ballet shoes and tutu. I am looking forward to dressing her up as the the cutest little ballerina around. The hair and bun issue is what I am going to be struggling with. Not sure what I am going to do with that yet.
Here is the picture purge and Happy Fall Ya'll!

This is the cake I am going to bake for Lane's Birthday! 

So cute even with a baby doll hat on! 

Here is a shot of her ballet slippers--In the words of Rachel Zoe "I die"

Standing in the pumpkin maze 

I love this shot with Daddy

Family Photo 1 

Family Photo 2

Papa and Luke working their roping skills

Gran, Papa, Luke, and Lane watching the pig races

Family Photo 3 (what Lane thought most of the time)

Sitting in a field of pumpkins

8 Months

Guess what day it is??? It's HUMP DAY...and Lane's 8 month birthday! It also happens to be her Gramps birthday too! Wes (Luke's dad) has not officially decided on what he wants to be called, but I was watching the Bernstein Bears (don't judge) and I heard the term Gramps and liked it. So I recommended that, but we'll have to see if it sticks. My parent's are Gran and Papa and Luke's mom is Honey, so Honey and Gramps sounds cute don't you think?
In Dorman family news, Luke is still on the job hunt these days. He is working with our friend Matthew Johns, a custom home builder running two renovation jobs he has going right now. The last time Luke got to play superintendent he LOVED it. I think this will be a good chance for him to see if this is really something he might want to do long term. He has a whole host of options we've been running through recently, so please pray for guidance down the right path. We are fortunate that he has some different paths to choose from, but man it's tough to decide on what will hopefully be the dream job!
I had my first MOPS meeting of the season!! We had a wonderful turn out that makes me even more excited about what we have planned for the rest of the year.
Another big news item for the Dorman family is Lasik for Luke. I really did think he was super cute in his glasses, but I think he is much happier with vision. I made him take a ton of pictures with the glasses on right before the surgery. He had surgery on August 28th and everything seems great! They actually let me sit in the room and watch the surgery... It was cool and gross all at the same time.
Before I cover Lane, I need to share what a sweet surprise my husband had for my 30th birthday. The actual day of my birthday we took it easy and had a romantic candlelight dinner at home. The 31st was the opening to football season, so we had some friends over that morning for a boat ride and then planned to watch football all late afternoon and evening by ourselves. I had one quick errand to run at the church, but told Luke I would be back home in about 30 to 45 min. In that short amount of time he had a huge gathering of our friends show up, park who knows where, and wait in my kitchen to surprise me on my return. I really was SO SHOCKED! Everyone had prepared awesome dishes of food, and hung out to watch football at our house for the night. We set up two TV's down stairs like college kids and had a blast. Thank you to everyone who came and made my big 30 so special. My only regret was not making myself a little more attractive before I went to run my errand.
Now to what you really want to know about! Lane is working on her 5th tooth breaking through on the bottom right. She LOVES to eat puffs and cheerios, and basically anything she gets to pick up and feed herself with. She still loves her momma's milk the best though. I was planning to pump till 6 months, but now I've decided 9 months. It really isn't too bad now that I have gotten down to only 2 pumps a day, and still have enough milk for her to drink. She is a super fast crawler, major climber, and assisted walker. She can climb the stairs now, and loves to walk around the house pushing a diaper box. She will walk for a short amount of time with me holding on to just one of her hands but does not really like that yet. She furniture cruises like a champ and doesn't realize danger anywhere. We have had a lot of bumps and bruises this month learning how to move around. She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth (including a bug she found on our floor). Lane is just one happy baby!

The trio had another play date!

Sleeping on Papa

Boat ride with Papa 

LOVE 

Sleeping on Uncle Clint too!

Cam Newton Jersey from Lisa Carlton

Waving hello to everyone!

Sleeping on Daddy

First busted lip- crawling over me on the ground, she fell into the floor with her teeth cutting the lip 

When Daddy watches Lane I come home to this!

Lane never sleeps at the church nursery because she is so nosey, so I had to take a picture of her in rare form! I LOVE the ladies that watch her at the church. 

At Bonna Bella for Grandparents Day 

Queen of the wagon!

Uncle Ben had a birthday yesterday! 

Typical look with that hair that stands straight up! 

You want to take away my toy and have me sit still for a photo???? End of the WORLD!

All you get is ONE PHOTO LADY!

Sweet friend Harris

MOPS Moms! They are some of my best friends now

7 Months

Happy 7 month birthday Lane! WE LOVE YOU SOOOOO MUCH!
Here are some pictures to capture the past couple months:

Wow

Too much is happening with little miss Lane for me to not write this down. Thankfully, I have already finished 51 pages of her baby book, but this past week alone we've hit some major milestones. Overall it's been a pretty crazy past couple of weeks for us.
In sad news for the Dorman family, Luke lost his job about a week ago. It came as a bit of a shock, but luckily we have Dave Ramsey's emergency fund in place, so I think it will just be the beginning of something amazing God has in store for us. Luke really has handled everything so well (much better than I would). I get angry about stuff, but Luke has such peace and control over his emotions. I do know that this is a blessing in disguise. Luke really was not happy...he was trying hard, but overall things just were not going well. Now Luke has the chance to really decide what he wants to do. Change career paths totally, or just maybe switch things up slightly?! I'm somewhat excited to see what's ahead for us.
In case you didn't know, I'm heading up our church MOPS group this upcoming year. That's right folks...they let me take charge. MOPS stands for Mothers of Preschoolers in case you were wondering. We meet every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month from September to May. The kids are being watched in childcare rooms, and we moms socialize, have a speaker, do a craft, and some fun games. I started attending while pregnant with Lane and loved getting to know and become friends with all of the other moms. So if you live in Savannah and want more information just let me know. I hosted a fun day of planning at my house with the steering committee where we nailed down most of the major things. I'll be sure to share a lot of the items we do on here in the future.
In SUPER HAPPY NEWS!!!! Luke and I celebrated 4 years of wedded bliss on July 25th. We've had a crazy fun ride, and I think it gets better every year. Watching Luke become a dad and SERIOUSLY ROCKING THE DAD ROLE has made me love him even more in different ways. We kept the anniversary low key and chose to grill out at the house on the egg. The egg is treating me very well (a gift that keeps on giving)!
In Lane news: we had friend Ellie Grace (who was born 2 days after Lane) come play for a couple of days recently. It was wonderful to see how much they interacted even at such a young age. They loved sharing toys and constantly checking out what the other one was doing. We went on boat rides, swam at the pool, and just hung out. It will be fun to see them interact again when we hang out during football season.
In big milestone news: Lane's top two teeth arrived on July 31st. She has 4 teeth in total now. She was still pretty chill when the teeth cut through, so let's pray the rest of her teeth come in as smoothly. I am going to say she really started crawling just yesterday on August 7th. She was army low crawling forward before today, but yesterday she actually got up on all fours and truly crawled. Just as soon as that happened I turned around, and she can now go from laying flat on the ground to sitting up. As soon as that happened she went from laying flat on her back, to sitting up, then pulling up on the side of her crib. So I guess tonight we'll be lowering her crib mattress. I feel like she is going to be running around this house tomorrow. I mean WOW! When she wakes up from her nap we are headed to buy some bumper coverings for our coffee table. She already pulled up on that this morning.
So that's the major happenings in the Dorman household. Please pray that Luke finds himself employed and HAPPY(most important) somewhat soon.
I'll do a picture purge here soon, but today I'll just stick with some text.