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Saturday, October 31, 2015

Fiona | 7 months

I love this stage we are in now. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly she learns & how fast she changes. From one day to the next, she is doing, learning, figuring life out. It's so hard to remember (already!) what she was like as a newborn.
The days of every two hour feedings, up multiple times a night, changing diapers on the hour are all gloriously gone. Seven months has new challenges though, like how to keep her from disfiguring herself as she climbs. on. everything. Everything. And she's crawling very proficiently. The other day I was baking in the kitchen & she was cruising around on the floor. Suddenly, I realized she was gone, & went to investigate. She was in the bathroom, standing, holding onto the toilet. The toilet paper roll is next!
Fortunately, she seems to be a lot tougher & resilient than me: she rarely cries when she inevitably bonks her head or slips on our wood floor. And if she does, mom can fix pretty much anything! Ah, I love that! She follows me around & tries to climb up my leg to see what's going on.

She's eating more & more, although I'm hesitant to start table food because of her dairy allergy/intolerance. I can eat it now, although I still try to limit it because I noticed she's a little fussier when I indulge. But she scarfs down rice cereal & fruit. Green beans were a struggle, but she did eat them. She loves sweet potato puffs & these Gerber fruit & veggie melts (confession: I eat them sometimes...they aren't bad!). I love watching her pick them up in her newly developed pincer grasp & actually make it to her mouth. So many new things this month!
She's down to two-three naps a day, but they're a little more predictable (going to Illinois kinda wrecked any consistency we'd had, but we'll get there again). I'm finding that I can tackle longer, bigger projects & finish them while she entertains herself. She's a pretty easy, good little girl overall. We are beyond blessed!

Friday, October 16, 2015

Coloring & other little things | part 1

My sister Shara was just here with her family. Sigh. They were here & gone so fast. A week wasn't nearly long enough. We didn't do anything too fabulously exciting. Just lived life as next door neighbors for a week. Our landlady is a saintly woman & let them stay in the guesthouse next door. It was just lovely to have the littles run across to our apartment in the morning for bagels & iced coffees. 

Here are some candid photos from their stay. I love looking at them. Each photo has a back story of moments enjoyed together, as if there are never 2,000 miles between us.

The dads took all (read: ALL) the kids to Cabela's so Shara & I could go to anthropologie. We married such sweet men!

We read books.
We colored. Very therapeutic. I don't remember the last time I colored. Hopefully Fee likes it! Madeira was very adamant that I use the glittery pens & stayed in the lines. How charming to be bossed around like that!
We made a cardboard crown & blinged it out to match Princess Sophia's, whoever that is. I suppose I'll learn who all these princesses are soon enough. 
We took some family photos. Went on a walk. Fished. Welcomed fall & all her leaves & golden-hued sunsetness. 




 Experienced a harvest festival with my friend & her daughter, who's only a few months older than Madeira.





 (Oh my! Can you tell who's siblings here?!)




 Madeira & Fee had matching jammies that Shara bought before Fee had even made her appearance. Madeira was all about matching! Fee loooooved having her cousins here! She was such a good little girl with all the excitement & activity going on. She started crawling while they were here--to keep up, I'm sure!
 

There are so many things I want to type about this little family trip, but they sound hollow in Times New Roman. They lack the real-ness & vivacity that the photos captured. So I'll just leave it at that. And I'll smile when I find glitter for the next three months on the kitchen table from making the crown, & maybe I'll buy my own cool coloring book & awesome set of smelly, glittery, stampable markers for when I'm lonesome & need something to soothe my troubled heart!

(part 2 is coming later. How much later is to be determined by how much I can get done in the next few days before we go to Illinois!!:) )

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Fiona | 6 months

Half a year. Where has it gone? Six months is my favorite so far. Life has evened out quite a bit: she's sleeping mostly through the night, is as predictable as she's ever been for naps & bedtime & eating, & is pretty content playing by herself. 
Nothing is off limits for her anymore. If she can reach it, she's got it. We've had to start fishing paper & other nasty tidbits out of her mouth. She's so close to crawling. Army crawling she's got down pretty good & can move surprisingly quickly.
She's started sleeping through the night on a pleasantly regular basis. The nights she wakes up, she only wakes up a few times for max 10 minutes. It's totally doable for this mama! She's still in her pack'n'play, but we did get a crib (finally). We just need to put it together. And while she's still waking up some, we have her as far away from the lovely landlady's part of the house as possible, which means she's sleeping in the entry way! Whatever works, right?
She can sit on her own now, & I keep waiting for the crawling thing to click into place. I tried to take some fun photos of her & it wasn't wildly successful. Her personality does peek through though, so I suppose it was a success, just not, you know, all perfect & stuff.
She's eating decently, but it's always a fight over the spoon. I didn't expect a "do-it-myself" attitude to crop up til at least a year! I have to hold her arms down to get anything into her mouth. I got some fillable squeeze pouches that I filled with pureed pears thinking that would help with the spoon issue, but she hasn't quite got the concept down. Most of it ends up squeezed out anywhere but her mouth. So feeding is a messy business. Sigh. 
 She must be becoming more dairy tolerant because I've been sneaking little bites of apple fritters & cheese & sour cream for my chili (it's fall! so hard to have self-control...) & I haven't seen any symptoms! I'm going to take it slow, but I think we're almost done with this dairy-free business!! SO excited to drink a cold glass of milk again!
 Her eyes continue to get more blue. Grandmas, thank you for that!
 This was mostly what taking photos consisted of: she kept trying to crawl off the blanket, take off her headband, eat her shoes...


 This was a close to a good smile that I got. I suppose I'll have to get used to that, huh?

 Love her little toes! I've noticed her feeling things very contemplatively lately. I can just see her learning & figuring things out. I love that!


 I still call her "Sweet Fee", but I might have to come up with a new nickname. She's still sweet, but there's a heavy dose of spunk & spice in there now, too.
 She popped her first tooth through right at six months, & now the other bottom tooth is through. I definitely noticed better sleeping after that! Like my ever-glass-half-full sister said, "Only 19 more to go!" Groan.
 But we're pretty much smitten by her. If we leave her for a few hours, she is sooo excited to see us again! It's tempting to leave her places just to see that!



 This face (below) cracks me up to no end! I just can't get enough of her little expressions & delightful selfness. She's become more than just my sweet babe to smooch on & gaze at adoringly (although I still do that): she's my sidekick, sous chef, fellow shopper, we can even have conversations now! Never mind that they go, "Blah, blah, blah". She is responding intentionally & I love it. 

I'll end with this one. It's not a very "good" photo technically: I used my broken lens, the one that can't focus automatically, so her face is a little fuzzy. The expression isn't a smile...but mmm, this girl. She's got us smitten.