Some photo peeks into our last few weeks (#9)

Well. I said I probably wouldn't keep up with my weekly posts. Prophecy Fulfilled! In all seriousness though, I'm getting back on the band wagon. Here is a quick picture edition of our last few weeks (in which Gianna turned 9 months old!!!)

 

She's currently into kitchen mischief. Opening cabinets, snooping around the fridge, climbing into (yes, into...and onto, for that matter) the dishwasher. 

 

 

Gianna was particularly uppity on this day in October. So, of course, like any good Mom, I took a picture of her.  I'm considering submitting it to "Reasons my Son is Crying" (the dad takes pictures and captions from other families, too). I guess the caption would be: I put her on a pink blanket. She did not like that at all. 

 

Gianna's breastfeeding acrobatics. Who doesn't love a downward facing dog and other invented yoga poses while eating? 

 

Sometimes, all the bibs are dirty. Enter the bandana bib! It works pretty spectacularly, especially with the crumb catcher mechanism. In my adult life, I have experienced this before with scarves. 

 

 

Something about the faces she was making just cracked me up as we were waiting for Chris to answer the phone. Oh yeah. That was when Chris HAD a phone. He lost it almost a month ago and we haven't replaced it. We miss our daily Facetime with Papa. The FaceTime feature on the iPhone is pretty much one of the only reasons I still have an iPhone.

 

 

I play piccolo for Gianna almost every day (some Baroque/Classical music like Telemann, Mozart, and Vivaldi, but also some songs she's familiar with like Do Re Me and Turkey and the Straw). It's so fun to watch her try to figure out where the sound comes out. She loves it and immediately lights up when I play. I opted to let her hold the piccolo versus my flute. The cheaper option by a long shot. 

 

In October, we took Gianna to the park for the first time and she LOVES the swings. LOVES them. She's also into climbing onto all the jungle gym areas and sliding. She can slide by herself going backwards on her belly and scootches down until her feet touch the ground.

I haven't posted videos in a while, but our computer makes it really complicated. I will have a video heavy post soon :-)

7 Peeks into our Vacation Week! (#8)

Finally getting around to posting again. I'll make excuses next blogpost, but for now, here's what we were up to last week!

Last week (yeah, so technically I'm a week behind), Chris took the ENTIRE week off from work. It was super glorious. One might even say it was EPIC. Chris was able to get some work done on the house and for deer season that he ordinarily would never ever ever get to do (because he like...comes home and puts Gianna to sleep and mostly of the time does dishes after dinner. Be super jealous, it's really okay.) AND we got to go on vacation! We took a short trip to Beavers Bend again. We liked it so much the first time, we decided it should be our "family vacation" spot. Here are some thoughts:


1. I am so out of shape. Last time we went to Beavers Bend, I was like 1-2 weeks away from giving birth. We hiked the crap out of that place. Lots of miles each day. Now, even while carrying Gianna in the Ergo, I'm 15 lbs lighter than I was in January, and I was super tired and whiny about how carrying her made my shoulders hurt. Yikes, mama. Time to work out again boooooooooooooooo hiiisssssssssssssssss.

 Out early enough that not one single person was in the parking lot

 Just in case we got lost on the nearly non-existent trails....

 Good lookin' brought his walking stick that he carved at home

 

 This picture basically sums up most of my and Gianna's attempts at pictures. 

2. Traveling with Gianna was refreshingly simple. Yeah. Weird, right? We got lucky that she slept okay (she's super persnickety about sleep). The best part was watching her on the porch of the cabin just excited to explore and lighting up with all the new scenery/experiences (like...eating a rock, for example. Yes. She spit it out. Eventually.). Granted, if I had to lug around bottles and formula and all that mess, I may not be singing the same song. Luckily though, I'm a mobile buffet and Gianna can snack on our food as well.

 

3. Experiencing boring things through your child's eyes make them pleasant and exciting. For example, I literally lost my mind trying to get us to go on this little 15 minute train ride around BB. Gianna wouldn't wake up from her first nap (she ONLY does that when I want to 1. get out, 2. go to a playdate I've already RSVPed yes for, or 3. have something else to do), but we narrowly made the second train. Normally, I would think it was the stupidest waste of money in the world. But it was great! Gianna had a blast and we got to be lame excited parents ogling over our daughter's first train ride.

 Those are some Christopher nostrils if I've ever seen them.

 She is REALLY happy to be here. No really, she is.

 Gianna wouldn't look at the camera, so we copied her.

 Gianna let me snuggle her and rest my head on the top of her head. Pretty much a first. It was sooooo excellent. 

 Train was moving and it was hard to get an "action picture" lol

Gianna got a kick out of standing while the train was moving. It was really fun until she started trying to lick the seat in front of us and crawl underneath it.

4. The Friday we left was the beginning of a yearly folk festival. If we had known earlier, we may have planned our trip to stay for the festival, but we at least got to eat fair food. 2 jumbo corn dogs with oodles of mustard, fresh squeezed cherry limeade (well...limes were squeezed...cherries were the HFCS variety with food dyes LOL), and cajun fried pickles. I LOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVEEEEEEEE fair food!!!!

5. I super failed at getting good Halloween pictures of Gianna, so I thought I'd try some new scenery to snap some good ones. My friend, Brooke, saved Halloween and let us borrow her daughters' costume from when they were little. In true Gianna form, however, she wouldn't stay still. Oh well, maybe next year, right??????

 

6. A lot of the trails on the hiking maps actually don't exist anymore...

 There used to be a bridge here.........

7. Fall leaves are sooooooooooooo beautiful!

 Isn't that a creepy mushroom?

 

8 Peeks into our Week (#7)

1. Okay, so I'm trying to learn how to use a sewing machine and am failing miserably. Once I get everything going, my top thread breaks or my bottom thread only thread sporadically (I've adjusted the tension blah blah blah). I'm really trying to learn useful skills I can pass on to Gianna and save us money at home. For instance, Chris had 2 pairs of pants that needed mending and I had to get a friend to help me with the repairs because I can't use a sewing machine. How silly is that?! Anyway, I feel like a total dunce about the whole thing and hope I can take a class or something. Youtube videos are NOT cutting it for me like they usually do. I refuse to turn into this:

Granted, I can't even take a selfie with Gianna in the bathroom mirror. Remember we tried that 2 weeks ago? LOL. So I'll be even worse off. 

 See???!

2. Randomness on my mind: I've read and been told to just give babies plain fruits and veggies to eat. The thing is, fruit by itself tastes awesome. Veggies by themselves....not so much. I mean. I like a carrot as much as the next person, but sauteed in butter with garlic/himalayan salt/pepper is literally 20 times as delicious. What normal person just eats plain peas without any seasoning? NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND. Want your kids to hate vegetables? Don't season their veggies. Gianna loves garlic and paprika.

3. Gianna drinks from a cup! She's so stinkin' cool. I had been using a plastic cup with a tiny amount of water and that worked but she was only having like 25% success. With the shot glass, she's super accurate and I can fill it almost all the way. The catch is that I have to hand it to her first because 9 out of 10 times she will lift the glass from the top and fling water everywhere. We will get there though. I attribute our cup success from my mom sneaking her water from 3 months of age, and Gianna's unwillingness to let us really feed her very much at all.

She really looks forward to drinking from her shot glass at meals now, LOL

4. This week she's figured out how to engineer a way to each bite sized pieces even though she doesn't have a pincer grip just yet. She gets the food in her fist and squeezes it up towards her thumb and pointer and eats it when it pops out. Color me impressed. She starting doing this consistently on Thursday when she ate 10-15 avocado pieces like that. And avocados are slippery!

Eating small avocado bits. In the video, I thought she spit out the piece but that was from earlier. That bib hides food!

Gianna also had Soba noodles (buckwheat....high in protein, very little to no wheat, depending on brand) for the first time and that was hilarious. In this video, she's kind of gotten the hang of it, but to watch her at the beginning trying to get a hanging noodle in her mouth was, to say the least, hysterical. 

5. I'm learning more and more that Gianna (and in general, babies/toddlers/kids) can probably do a lot more than I think she can. If someone would have told me that their 8 month old could feed herself and drink on her own, I would have been incredulous back in January because I am (we are) accustomed to things happening in a certain order or going through particular stages. It's funny that although I have questioned so much about my life, regarding faith, food, all things household, birth methods, etc that I never looked at the human aspect of questioning.

Why does a baby need to drink from a sippy cup before a regular cup?
Why should a baby eat only mush at first?
Why do you have to learn addition two years before multiplication?

Moee and more I'm learning to question everything, especially the status quo, or whatever is "normal", or "age appropriate". I know in most there is logic and truth, but there's not just one right way for each individual. I guess that's really the bottom line. Our society/world has put so much into groupthink and making norms that we've forgotten the uniqueness of each of us that pervades our brains, hearts, and souls.

6. Repainted baby rocking chair! Gianna likes to "try" to rock while sitting in it, but really enjoys just standing and rocking the chair when it's empty.

7. We went to the Farmer's Market this week for the first time in a few weeks and really, really stocked up . Chris had come early from work, so we were able to tag team at the market and hang out, chat, and sit by the fountain in downtown Tyler. It's always nice to tag team because I buy Chris a huge watermelon that weighs approximately as much as Gianna. A girl only has so many arms for produce bags and two 20 lb loads...

Apparently Gianna was pretty worn out by our trek, also. She's barely awake in this picture. I love that little grumpy looking face!!!!!

 Yeah see? This was her on the way home. I was desperately pleading with Chris to keep her awake because I didn't want to spoil bedtime!

8. Still working on our piano skills....

Normal Piano playing....

Phantom of the Opera-esque piano playing. Isn't she cute?