All photos taken by TK Photography. Awesome Maraca that totally saved the photoshoot: Come Together Trading
Monday, December 23, 2013
Gianna's Photos, 10 months
Merry Christmas Eve, everyone! We had planned to take family pictures for Christmas, but unfortunately, Chris has been so busy at work, he couldn't get off for pictures. Instead, we just took some pics of Gianna and are going to take photos all together in January. I even sneaked into some of the pics. Gianna is suspicious of the camera and doesn't last long, but still manages to look cute. This is the goodness our friend, Tiffany at TK Photography snapped in 15 minutes!
Saturday, December 21, 2013
7 Peeks into our Week, Advent Edition (#10)
We're baaaaaack! (Again). I hadn't felt like there was much to post in the last few weeks, and time during Advent is tight to begin with, but it seemed as if we were in this nice comfortable groove.We had a peaceful Thanksgiving (with no Black Friday or Thanksgiving Day shopping, Praised be to God!), got our Christmas present shopping done super early, and I have been cleaning and making balms and lotions to sell. Gianna was doing much of the same, crawling at lightning speed, standing on her own, cruising around using everything she could use as a walker, babbling, but nothing really new. It was glorious.
1. And then BAM. On Monday, she did this:
Here was the progression of that awesome moment.
She's not like running around the house by any means, and still prefers crawling, because she is like lightening and she has some crazy skills in that department (see below video and laugh). She walks when she wants. She only does it for me and Chris (so at least I have video for proof, right??)/ She is very calculated and judges the distance and either squats to crawl or uses furniture, or takes that leap of faith to walk. I love watching her brain work. Also ironically, we went to the 7:30 am daily Mass at the Chapel that morning and a sweet lector with 6 kids came up after Mass to say how well behaved she was (ahem, thanks freeze dried fruit treats!) and asked if she was walking. I said no and that I was enjoying the calm and sameness of it all right now. Ha. Ha. Ha. Gianna is such a stinker. At least she's taking it slowly and cautiously and not running yet. If that were the case, I would totally miss out on hilarious moments like the one below!
2. Our Advent: Now that we have a baby, we're trying to really focus on the Liturgical year a little more and plan activities or celebrations to fit. She's obviously still too young, but we're getting there. We have a felt/velcro ring advent calender (made by yours truly that Gianna can tear and play with, a Jesse Tree, and are only have "advent" decorations out until after Christmas. Then we'll swap out the tree ornaments for Christmas and keep them up until the Epiphany-ish. We also did St. Nicholas stockings, which was super fun. Additionally, we're keeping Christmas gifts simple, Gianna got 3 and I made 2 of them. I think from this year on, we'll all get 3 presents for Christmas, to symbolize the 3 gifts from the wise men. More on this later.
3. Sleep hallelujahs. Gianna fights (fought) sleep like the plague. Since birth, basically. It's her temperament, blah blah blah. Persnickety. Well, through a combo of psuedo swaddling (she can get out of the blanket in a second, but she really likes it and it makes her calm and happy and we can even sneak kisses, so win-win), breaking her a little bit of her opinions of what she needs to fall asleep (I mean y'all it was ridiculous...nursing, bouncing, rocking, only upright positions...), having a fun star light that Auntie B gave her, and her favorite Ducky, she's now sleeping through the night almost without fail. Last night was 11 solid hours straight. She will wake up once early on and just need a quick resettling and then it's golden. It feels like a small miracle every morning. Now if I could just get to bed sooner....
It's also nice that it's easy to get her down and she falls asleep on her own, there's no longer this crazy production. I think we really just worked with her at the perfect time, as I honestly don't think she would have been ready any earlier, just judging on how Gianna is....Gianna.
She's also napping better and longer, for 1.5-2.5 hour stretches. Hallllleeeeeluuuuuuuuuuuuujah! Oh the things I can do. Perfect timing, too, for Christmas shopping and Advent. In short, we all feel more peaceful these days :-)
Our house is cold. Thanks to single-pane ancient windows we have to HEAT our house to 66 every night. Whomp whomp. So in case you were worried she's burning up while looking so adorable right here.... ;-)
4. Gianna has 4 teeth! She cut the 3rd one (top) a while ago, but the matching top tooth just came in 2 days ago. Kind of a big week at the Rendall house, right? Gianna is funny in that she "teethes" AFTER her tooth is cut. Because that makes sense.
5. Gianna is not so good with the whole "drinking from a baby/sippy cup" thing. So I got her this kickin' camelback straw/soft mouthpiece get up that I love. She will be able to use it for years. And no lies. I love to sneak drinks from it too.
6. Gianna knows how to duck and crawl/slide under things now. If you'll remember our vacation to Beavers Bend in November, such was (thankfully) not the case. But she often gets stuck...like she did with our old fashioned rocking chair. This cracks me up.
7. Gianna got sick a few weeks ago and had 102-103 fevers for 2 days while Chris and I just felt nasty overall with funny noses and head coldish symptoms (no fevers) for 3-4 days. We did some serious elderberry syrup (immune booster) and lots of tea. And lots of snuggles with Gianna. It. Was. Awesome. She lay on me and breastfed (basically the best thing to do for a sick baby anyway) pretty much all day. I have never gotten so many snuggles in my life. I think it was just the switch from chilly to warm to freezing weather that really took us by surprise. Here are our facetime snap shots during those couple of days.
1. And then BAM. On Monday, she did this:
- 12:44 pm. Sent text out to say Gianna had just taken her first 2 steps.
- 1 pm. Sent text saying Gianna took 4 steps (and tumbled into my arms and hugged me!).
- 1:10 pm I got that awesome video!
She's not like running around the house by any means, and still prefers crawling, because she is like lightening and she has some crazy skills in that department (see below video and laugh). She walks when she wants. She only does it for me and Chris (so at least I have video for proof, right??)/ She is very calculated and judges the distance and either squats to crawl or uses furniture, or takes that leap of faith to walk. I love watching her brain work. Also ironically, we went to the 7:30 am daily Mass at the Chapel that morning and a sweet lector with 6 kids came up after Mass to say how well behaved she was (ahem, thanks freeze dried fruit treats!) and asked if she was walking. I said no and that I was enjoying the calm and sameness of it all right now. Ha. Ha. Ha. Gianna is such a stinker. At least she's taking it slowly and cautiously and not running yet. If that were the case, I would totally miss out on hilarious moments like the one below!
2. Our Advent: Now that we have a baby, we're trying to really focus on the Liturgical year a little more and plan activities or celebrations to fit. She's obviously still too young, but we're getting there. We have a felt/velcro ring advent calender (made by yours truly that Gianna can tear and play with, a Jesse Tree, and are only have "advent" decorations out until after Christmas. Then we'll swap out the tree ornaments for Christmas and keep them up until the Epiphany-ish. We also did St. Nicholas stockings, which was super fun. Additionally, we're keeping Christmas gifts simple, Gianna got 3 and I made 2 of them. I think from this year on, we'll all get 3 presents for Christmas, to symbolize the 3 gifts from the wise men. More on this later.
3. Sleep hallelujahs. Gianna fights (fought) sleep like the plague. Since birth, basically. It's her temperament, blah blah blah. Persnickety. Well, through a combo of psuedo swaddling (she can get out of the blanket in a second, but she really likes it and it makes her calm and happy and we can even sneak kisses, so win-win), breaking her a little bit of her opinions of what she needs to fall asleep (I mean y'all it was ridiculous...nursing, bouncing, rocking, only upright positions...), having a fun star light that Auntie B gave her, and her favorite Ducky, she's now sleeping through the night almost without fail. Last night was 11 solid hours straight. She will wake up once early on and just need a quick resettling and then it's golden. It feels like a small miracle every morning. Now if I could just get to bed sooner....
It's also nice that it's easy to get her down and she falls asleep on her own, there's no longer this crazy production. I think we really just worked with her at the perfect time, as I honestly don't think she would have been ready any earlier, just judging on how Gianna is....Gianna.
She's also napping better and longer, for 1.5-2.5 hour stretches. Hallllleeeeeluuuuuuuuuuuuujah! Oh the things I can do. Perfect timing, too, for Christmas shopping and Advent. In short, we all feel more peaceful these days :-)
Our house is cold. Thanks to single-pane ancient windows we have to HEAT our house to 66 every night. Whomp whomp. So in case you were worried she's burning up while looking so adorable right here.... ;-)
4. Gianna has 4 teeth! She cut the 3rd one (top) a while ago, but the matching top tooth just came in 2 days ago. Kind of a big week at the Rendall house, right? Gianna is funny in that she "teethes" AFTER her tooth is cut. Because that makes sense.
5. Gianna is not so good with the whole "drinking from a baby/sippy cup" thing. So I got her this kickin' camelback straw/soft mouthpiece get up that I love. She will be able to use it for years. And no lies. I love to sneak drinks from it too.
6. Gianna knows how to duck and crawl/slide under things now. If you'll remember our vacation to Beavers Bend in November, such was (thankfully) not the case. But she often gets stuck...like she did with our old fashioned rocking chair. This cracks me up.
I wish I had gotten a pic of her stuck in the rocking chair. She could only get her head and shoulders out of the side hole and was like swimming trying to escape.
7. Gianna got sick a few weeks ago and had 102-103 fevers for 2 days while Chris and I just felt nasty overall with funny noses and head coldish symptoms (no fevers) for 3-4 days. We did some serious elderberry syrup (immune booster) and lots of tea. And lots of snuggles with Gianna. It. Was. Awesome. She lay on me and breastfed (basically the best thing to do for a sick baby anyway) pretty much all day. I have never gotten so many snuggles in my life. I think it was just the switch from chilly to warm to freezing weather that really took us by surprise. Here are our facetime snap shots during those couple of days.
LOL. Poor baby.
8. Oh and Gianna is totally 11 months old today! Woohoo!
And a few other pictures of our last month:
My little lady
Reading with Ducky on the way home for Thanksgiving
The hair is getting sooooooooooo long!
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