Back!

It has been a CRAZY week! Tuesday I flew to Dallas with the little one and got to visit with the in-laws and Drew's Gran (Stella). SJ did really well on the flight with only a brief melt down at the end from being forbidden to eat the lady next to us' watch, magazine, coke bottle and hair. Poor kid. Then she took a great nap and we headed back to FW. She basically went straight back to bed.
We had so much fun the following days hanging out with my parents and sisters and other various friends and family along the way. My parents took so many pictures and video of her it was hilarious. I don't think there were many consecutive minutes where one of them didn't have an iphone or camera in her face. haha. She was a big mama's girl the whole time but did better about playing and laughing with other people as long as I was in the same room as her.
The wedding festivities began Thursday night and continued through Saturday night. It was so so much fun to hang out with my life long friends and also to meet some new sweet girls. I felt really blessed the entire week.
SJ slept great (minus some seriously early mornings) and ate great and really did great in general.
Sunday we left early for Kansas and Drew's brother's wedding. It was a little difficult to orchestrate with SJ needing naps and going to bed earlier than most people but we still managed to squeeze in some fun. Our new sister in law was absolutely stunning and more than anything else we are thankful to have her cemented into the family! Aunt KK woo hoo!
Monday we flew back to the ville and SJ finally had it with all the flying and missing naps and she just layed across our laps, stuck that cute thumb in her mouth and slept the whole flight. It was amazing. She has never slept in our arms since those early days of life and it was really too cute.
Today she seemed to be playing catch up from all the travel and teething and slept most of the day away (which was a nice treat for one tuckered out mama too).
That's the update.

8 Months!

Stella will be 8 months old tomorrow at 5pm... but since we'll be traveling all day, I thought it was okay to be a little early.
Stella has become such a big girl this past month. She is officially mobile and while she can crawl correctly, she usually either only uses her hands or her feet... she likes a challenge. She still sleeps through the night and has been hit or miss with the naps these days... we are just trying to roll with the punches. She has two bottom teeth and seems to be working on more. I feel like this month I have grown closer to her than ever. I feel like I can really diagnose and meet her needs and we laugh together all day long. She is super vocal saying mamama, dadada, nanana and bababa. Too bad no grandmother chose nana for her name because that is her favorite right now, I guess great nana wins the honor! She can also blow a raspberry and cluck her tongue. She likes anything dirty or metalic including floor vents, vacuums, chair legs, watches, rings, keys etc... Stella is a great shopping companion and likes to go out to eat also... she is always a big hit with other people and even gives them a smile sometimes. She has gone a few times to the church nursery successfully and has even let some close friends hold her with out crying! She has tried pieces of pear, avocado, nectarine, honey dew melon, apple, cantaloupe, sweet potato, pureed peas, carrots, strawberries, broccoli and banana with no allergies that I can tell. She is such a joy!
Stella decided to go BIG for her first Father's Day outside the womb and I am afraid she won't be able to top this gift for the rest of her life. She had one happy daddy! We also ate at Chili's (his choice) and got ice cream at Graeter's (strawberry chocolate chip for me and blackberry white chocolate chip for him) and yes we let SJ have a teensy taste. She liked the ice cream but seemed to go for the plastic spoon even more.



Here are some pics after some avocado... practicing with her spoon and blowing raspberries... see ya soon Texans!

Right Now...

Here's what we are doing right now...

suckin' on a purple carrot and a blue spoon that used to have green peas on it. she seems to love the purple carrot more than any other thing I've given her to gum on... she must know it's a rare treat (and from a local farm too)

In other news... today we had our first day at the buying club and boy oh boy did we buy! It's this really neato club that I just joined that promotes eating whole foods and organic and stuff like that... pretty granola (and yes they do carry granola). It's just one more step in the journey I've been on to provide optimal health, through food, to my family. We have been ditching high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils in favor of natural sweeteners and fats. We are also dabbling in soaked and sprouted grains, which this club also highly supports. They provide farm fresh eggs and milk straight from the cow along with other amazing things. Today was my first day and I had to put my deposit down so that cost some moolah and then I bought a gallon of maple syrup (drew likes him some waffles and this was much cheaper than buying it a little at a time). I also got eggs and beef and fish and cheese and an organic salve that supposed to help with rashes and bug bites. I'm hoping that through this healthy journey I will be able to continue in the healing process from all these nasty allergies (of which I am currently majorly suffering from and poor SJ too) and help Drew grow in health and give SJ the best possible health advantage in this life. It just doesn't seem a coincidence that disease is on the rise and so are the amount of chemicals we consume (though I know there are many factors). I still have a few quirks to work out... peanut butter being one (I still love me some reduced fat jif) and sodas (only one a week but still... trying to do less). I am not good at doing things in moderation and yet this diet is so complex and unconventional that it will take me a long time to make the switch and that's probably a good thing.

I'd rather....

see a picture of SJ than a picture of the garden and I figure you feel the same.... so here you go!

Garden Update

This is how we started out....

And here's how it looks now!





And of course we couldn't do it right with out our special garden helper...

Guess Who?

Strawberries!

We have been so busy around here lately! My mentor (we will refer to her as MG) and I made plans a month or so ago to conquer our fear of canning this summer. We decided that our first feat would be to go to a local farm and pick strawberries and then can some jam for our families. This would be fun and save us some money on jam that doesn't have any weird stuff in it. Well, MG and her family are also in the middle of their second adoption journey and found out that at any moment they might be able to go to Ethiopia and pick up their little girl. Then about 10 days ago we found out that they would be leaving in two weeks. So, the last two weeks we have both been going around like crazy people trying to get them ready... and by them I mean mom, dad and three children under five! It has been so fun. In the process I found out that there were strawberries ready for picking but I figured this would super duper stress out MG and didn't want her to feel obligated to go and so I decided not to worry her and that I would just go and can some for the both of us. Well, I get a call Tuesday night from MG saying, DID YOU KNOW THERE ARE STRAWBERRIES?!?! Umm... yes? So she is game on and wants to go and so we go the next day with her three and my one and pick 30lbs of strawberries in 30 minutes.... with four children! That has to be some sort of record. This was by far SJ's hottest life experience to date. She was a bit cranky but overall she did really wonderful and even drank some water from a sippy cup to stay cool. Then the next day we started canning at 11am and I left her house at 630pm with still a batch or two to go. We canned about 30 jars of jam plus had more that we froze and more that we are dehydrating. It was crazy! I am so excited to see how our jam turned out.
In other news, Stella has two teeth starting to poke through! Her bottom left front tooth is pretty much completely broken through and the right one is about half way through the gum! I am so glad after 2+ months of teething to see her getting some progress and hopefully some relief. On the other hand, I hate seeing her grow up. I LOVE gummy grins and would have been fine to wait on those teeth until she was closer to a year. But like I said, I am happy for her to hopefully have some relief. I guess it's because of the teeth but she has been a terrible napper lately. Her already short naps have become even shorter and she is super fussy during them. Sometimes I'll put her right back to bed after getting her up and feeding her b/c she is just so obviously tired. I'm hoping to resume our schedule once these teeth are in but we'll see.
We are finally finishing up some long over due presents to the gmas and here is a sneak peek at the second half of SJ's photo shoot.