Raising Mustard Seeds: August 2013

Intro

We named our blog “Raising Mustard Seeds” after the famous parable in Matthew’s Gospel. We had some mustard seeds of our own laying dormant in our hearts, and finally, the year before our marriage, we began to let those seeds grow. Our journey with Christ hasn’t always been easy, but it has bore more fruit than we could possibly imagine. And through the mustard seeds He planted in our hearts, He opened them to receive little mustard seeds of our own…

While Jesus in this parable is talking about how faith and our relationship with God should grow from something very small to something mighty and powerful, it’s applicable to our children as well. It is our hope that through prayer and proper parenting, our children will grow from small and helpless (tiny mustard seeds) to being mighty in Christ, so that they will be shining lights in the world and people will come to “dwell in the branches” of their faith.

So, this is our little space in the big internet where we will share our most likely crazy experiences as we start our family and we hope those who are close to us will enjoy laughing at us and with us, and maybe even learn something new :)

Friday, August 30, 2013

7 Peeks into our Week (#1)

**links to videos from the last post are now below the video frame in case they didn't work. It works on firefox for me, but I know they're a little finicky. Otherwise, our youtube channel is utacoustix. We post even more boring videos on there than the ones we do here HAHAHA. They just take up too much space on our phones, so we keep them online.**

1. We took a break from house craziness and went on a walk in this push car thing. Gianna LOVED IT! I'd taken her before, but the sound of the road scared her (yeah, remember the tape incident? Oy vey). With both Chris and I, she was much calmer and had a blast.

If youtube screen isn't working, watch the video on this link

We love the windblown look you've got goin' on, Gianna. Work it, girl!

10 and 2 Gianna, 10 and 2!!!

My mini Christopher

2. We put Gianna's big girl carseat into my car and left her smaller one in the truck. The old one says "up to 30 lbs or 30 inches". Somehow, Gianna is 10ish lbs from the max weight, but only 2 inches from the max height. Apparently only short, tubby babies are meant to stay in that carseat for long. Gianna is also an Amazon. 92nd percentile in height. Not really surprising though, given that her Pops is giant tall, too. The new one, is like an enormous command center. And it's easier to buckle. Praise God for that. We put up the backseat mirror too and Gianna loooooooooooves talking to her friend, Annaig while we drive.

Giant Baby

Small Baby :-( Waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh mommy nostalgia

3. Gianna is obsessed with pulling up now. Which is great. Except not. Like when she uses toddlers to pull up on. Yes, this happened on Wednesday at my friend Brooke's house. She even stole toys right out of poor Max's hands!

link to youtube

4. I love that Gianna can sort of chase after me now (she is still slow, so she can never catch up haha! mama is freeeeee! I mostly jest)

5. House progress update: Our lower kitchen cabinets are gutted. So much fun. Not. Gianna is literally living out of boxes. We need to buy her a dresser, stat. But not a new one. Craigslist or consignment/thrift is a must. I remember what I did to my dresser as a kid....(nail polish stains...some pink stains maybe marker or koolaid...). Rearranging our crib/pack n play situation (one is in our room, one in Gianna's room) is going to happen soon. Upcycling plans for book shelves for G, spice rack and wine rack for the kitchen in the works but there are much more important things to get accomplished.

6. Gianna likes watermelon

7. Here's one more little gem...

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Gianna is 7 months old!

Okay, so I know I missed a blogpost when Gianna turned 6 months, but I'm sure everyone lived. ;-) Truth is, I got in a habit of posting infrequently, so the month updates were suuuuuuuuuuper long.

The irony is that this is a ridiculously long post.

So I've "decided" (the quotations are because I am notoriously flaky with decisions and following through with them...like the 1324098324 times I "decided" I would write a journal entry every day...I find those single entries all over the place LOL) to post a weekly "Peek into our (insert appropriate adjective here) week" post that has some pictures, videos, and anything interesting that happened. I think I can handle that.

This whole family and friend blog thing would be sooooooo much easier if somebody *cough Chris cough* would blog every once and a while. Just kidding. He has to work and I'm only saying this because I know he reads the posts.

Anyhow, the past two months have been crazy. We moved into our new house and it's coming together slowly but surely. Slowly because we refuse to buy most stuff new (except our glorious couches), and surely, because if all else fails, you can make just about anything out of free wood pallets hahaha: http://pinterest.com/ritamay/pallet-wood-projects/

If I could describe Gianna in two words it would be: Hot Mess. This girl. I just don't know how my heart could get any larger. Back to the Hot Mess title though. She is all up in everyone's business all the time. Chris and I are basically just mobile jumping gyms. I literally feel like I have been beat up after "playing" (being tortured by) with Gianna for 30 minutes.

Gianna and her friend Annaig (sorry about fuzziness...Chris did this on his phone, and on mine it loads funny)

Since our last update, Gianna has started solid foods and can crawl and pull up!

We started giving her food the day she turned 6 months old (July 21). I was really expecting Gianna to just eat ravenously and never look back, but it has really taken up until about now for her to really, umm eat much. She tasted everything, but she really had to work on moving it around her mouth. She likes everything so far, in particular green smoothies and eggplant and arroz con pollo. Good taste. Granted. She also eats Chris's flip flops like....every day, so I guess that isn't saying much for her flavor palette.

Avocados

Avocados and celery for teething.
I can already hear her saying "Do it self!" in my mind.

Green smoothies, her favorite. No seriously. Malabar spinach, blackberries, blueberries, papaya, coconut milk...she loves.

She started crawling (it was really a weird sort of army crawl until last week when she seriously got the legs and hands coordinated) around mid August. I blame the Grossman kids for the crawling because it was right after we visited them. They must make life look too exciting to stay in one place. :-)

This was the beginning when she was army crawling...it cracked me up!

She got the hang of it within a week and now, you know, crawls in more of the normal way.

Check out my awesome pink cloth diaper with my awesome pink mama's holey knee socks turn baby knee pads!

Chasing the sun

Gianna was cranky on this day and trying to crawl around the kitchen. I was chopping up bell peppers/playing with her on the floor. She was trying to bear crawl at this point, so I put socks on her to slow her down. That failed. So I gave her a bell pepper to munch on.

That failed to distract her for long.

So I put those knee socks on her so it would be too slippery to crawl. I'm so on top of my parenting game, huh? LOL BTW 5 minutes after this picture she totally figured out how to get around the slippery-ness. I will obviously need to become smarter and clean up all the bell pepper seeds she got into.

Gianna likes to use humans and toys to pull up to stand or climb over. The toys are not always stable. Oops.

No tears were shed in the making of these pictures.

Keyboards are not only good for music; they are also good for standing.

Gianna likes to scream and make buzzy noises with her tongue.

Whenever I go to the store I wear her and people are like "Oh she's so sweet and calm". YEAH SURE WHEN SHE'S SLEEPING! And even then, she wiggles around like cover-stealing Chris.