6 Months

Dear Annie,

Half a year! That's how old you are today, and boy did we all celebrate :) You are becoming such a fun little person now, and I can almost get glimpses of the toddler and little girl that you will become. I am really trying to savor each moment and cuddle with you, because I am now getting what people mean when they say to "savor these times because they pass all too fast!" I know that soon enough you won't want to be held and won't be entertained just by grabbing at my face and hands so I am just trying to soak it in.

When we were at your 6 month doctor appointment yesterday, the doc asked us what you like to do. The real answer to that is STICK ANYTHING IN YOUR MOUTH. Literally, anything. If you don't have something in your reach, you usually attempt to pick up the quilt, or grab at the rug, and put THAT in your mouth. You love to chew on anything and everything, and as SOON as you get your little mitts on something, it goes immediately to your mouth with absolutely no hesitation. Doesn't sound like much fun to me, but you seem wildly entertained by it, so whatever! At daycare, you love to play in the jumper - you apparently spin all around and yell and squeal, and of course, stick all the toys in your mouth :)

You also are getting to be quite the charmer! Most of the time, if someone gives you a smile or pays attention to you, you are quick to smile in return. You seem to like to see new people - you can be in kind of a blah mood at home, and we take you out and about and you are all smiles! But yet, we know that you love us and get nervous when we aren't around, so your social side seems to be best explored when your dad or I are nearby. Everyone comments on just what an adorable baby you are - and it's true - we just can't get OVER your cuteness! We had a little photoshoot today, so I'm including some of my favorites in this letter.

I'm glad to say that you finally seem to like walks in your stroller and the Ergo! If you'll recall, you were touch and go with these things for awhile :) Now we can take you out and be FAIRLY confident (not totally of course - you must always keep us on our toes!) that you won't have a meltdown.

You are still sleeping really well - usually taking 2 naps a day, although we never know how long you'll be down - sometimes you are raring to go after 30 minutes, sometimes it's 2 hours. At night, you go to bed at 7:30, and in the past week have been waking up a bit too early for your parents' liking, but it might just be because of your hungry tummy! You still sleep at least until 5, and sometimes will put yourself back to sleep after a few minutes, and other times will definitely go back to sleep after eating. You're almost always ready to start your day at 6:30! Your dad and I GREATLY enjoy watching you wiggle around your crib at night on the video monitor - you are all over the place!

Sitting up is your newest trick - you seem to enjoy your new view of the world, and we like that you can now interact with us a bit more, and sit in high chairs when we are out and about. You roll all over, and rarely will stay where we put you unless you are tired. You also are turning yourself in circles when you are on your tummy, and are starting to put your legs under you, but I think you are a ways away from crawling or any forward movement.

I finally packed up all of your 0-3 month clothes - I could still fit some of the pants on you, but they were more like capris at this point :) You're still on the small side, but fit well into sizes ranging from 3-9 months so you seem to be right on track!

You had your first taste of "solid" food today with rice cereal - it was humorous to say the least :) You definitely have a ways to go before you understand the concept of eating from a spoon, but we'll get there! I'm so so glad that we made it together to 6 months of breastfeeding. It means a lot that I was able to provide all of your nutrition for your first months, and I will always cherish our feeding times, especially now that it is a pleasant experience for us both!

Annie, your first 6 months have been so much fun, and I can't wait to see what the next half of a year brings!

Love, Mom

At the cabin with babies...

You may remember me mentioning my 2 neighbor couples who have babies that are 4 months older than Annie - well, we all decided to take a trip up to my parents cabin this past weekend! It was a bit of a hectic weekend due to having 3 babies underfoot, but we had a great time. The weather was amazing - pretty sunny most of the time, and not too hot! Nate, Molly, Ben and I all went up after baby bedtime of 7:30 on Thursday night, and Aaron and Allison came up Friday morning. Annie slept the whole way this time, and transitioned pretty well to the pack n play which was great!

I will let the photos from the weekend tell the story...

Annie woke up earliest, and was soon joined by Mia to "play" (as you can see, they are really interacting here)

Ben, Nate and Molly got started early with some bloody marys

Time for a dip in her new floatie! She's still too small for this now, but I let her try it out anyway :)

Swimming with Dad!

This one might get us a call to CPS...

This was more of a full body shot, but I discovered in photos that apparently breastfeeding boobs make this swimsuit obscene. Thus the family friendly crop job!

Not too shabby of a day!

Showing off her new sitting skills!

and then there were 3 - but Mia wasn't into a photo session at that time

I just love this face. Notice the hickeys on my arm - those are from Annie a few nights prior!

Madeline's trying to get away!

the moms and babies

Ben wanted to see what his sister is in for in a few months :)

Annie sure did love checking out the baby in the huge mirror in the bathroom :)

Hanging out after the babies went to bed - didn't want to disturb them, and it was raining, so we hung out in the garage :)

Beautiful morning

Annie was the first one up, again!!

Aaron and Ben made a delicious breakfast

We took a family pontoon ride

It started raining randomly (it was sunny - we looked over and saw what we thought was mist and then it started pouring for a bit) so we had to protect the child!

One of my favorite pastimes - putting a toy just out of Annie's reach to make her work for it :)

Then it was time for the matching outfit photoshoot! All the girls had this outfit randomly - no planning (although I did tell them to bring it) - As you can see, Madeline was THRILLED with this, but she got over her anger quickly

Took another pontoon ride, where Vito stood guard

One of the only times all weekend where all 3 babies were napping at the same time

then they woke up and joined in :)

Mia and Annie, up bright and early!!

We took a walk, at first Annie was pretty excited about it

Then she got tired... (perhaps she should have slept later than 5:30??)

passed out

Everyone else left fairly early on Sunday, but we stuck around to enjoy one last pontoon ride because it was a gorgeous day!

25 Weeks

Whew, another busy week! We just got back from a weekend at the cabin at about 6pm tonight, so this is probably going to be a shorter post.... but I always say that and then write a novel, so who knows :) The cabin will be a post on it's own because of the MASSIVE amount of photos I took!

The evening before we left for the cabin!

I seriously feel sometimes like Annie is changing at warp speed! I just went back and re-read my post from last week and it seems like such a long time ago already. So weird. Over the weekend, Annie seemed to master sitting up when she's put in that position! I remember just 5 weeks ago thinking it would NEVER happen - but slowly over the past few weeks, she's gotten way better, and today she sat by the lake for 10 minutes without falling over once! I remember thinking this was not a big deal at all before, but it seems like it really does change things when babies can sit up - they really become active participants in the world and seem so big when they can hold up their own bodies! We tried out a high chair at Culvers on the way home from the cabin and it worked out well. She still seemed so tiny for it, but no toppling over at all!

A little wary at first...

but then, yay, this is fun!

Annie got to hang with the big girls this weekend, and we got a glimpse into what life is like with mobile babies.... yikes. Annie can roll a lot, and wiggles around, spinning herself around on her tummy, but nothing resembling crawling just yet. It's pretty weird, because the place she seems to move the most is her crib at night! She wriggles around all over the place, and tonight in about 10 minutes, she went from her head being in one corner, to being shoved all the way in the complete opposite corner of the crib. I guess she doesn't care enough to move that much when she's out in the world :)

Modeling a onesie given to her by Allison - a little tight but definitely cute :)

Poor little Annie got her first semi illness this week - just a runny nose, but it was pretty gross! We got some use out of the snot sucker. I think she had a pretty good run of nearly 6 months without being sick though! It actually didn't even seem to bother her too much, it was just a little difficult for her to eat a few times, and she'd wake up not able to breathe - poor baby :(

Speaking of sleep, it wasn't quite AS amazing this week - she still goes down completely awake and puts herself to sleep fine, but had been waking up before 6 (usually maybe for reasons though, such as peeing through her diaper, being all stuffed up) and this morning woke up kind of freaking out at like 4:45.... since we were in a house with other people, it's not like we could let her cry at all either, Ben tried to calm her down, which failed, so I fed her and into bed with us she came and fell back asleep, but only until 6:20. And, yes I realize that is not that bad at all but it's easy to get used to sleeping through the night! It's just so hard for us to know what to do if she wakes up at night now! She has gone 10-12 hours per night without eating for 3 months, so I don't really want her to start getting her in the habit of eating at night since clearly she hasn't needed it... but then again, what if she really IS hungry? Difficult to know since they can't communicate too effectively!

A visit from Aunt Becca last Sunday

Overall, we have just been having a blast with our little bunkin - she's so smiley and fun most of the time! She has her cranky moments still, but they are getting to be few and far between.

An example of a semi cranky moment at the neighborhood potluck last Sunday - just wasn't feelin it :)

Mindy's Baby Shower!

My good friend Mindy is expecting her first baby, a little girl, at the end of August! She has hosted MANY baby showers (including mine, Rebekah's and Laura's) so we really wanted the day to be special for her! I co-hosted with Laura, which meant we could use her awesome party room - good thing, since there is NO way my living room could have fit the crowd!

Laura and cutie pie Nathan - my how he has grown since this post!

I have a tendency to go a little overboard when hosting events and completely overwhelm myself. I tried to keep everything fairly simple for this event, but also have some fun elements that would make it really fun for Mindy! I did a little googling and research and found a few websites that gave me inspiration. Mindy's nursery is pink and green, so I knew I wanted to incorporate those colors into the shower. I found this great blog post that gave me some ideas!

We decided to do a small candy buffet for the favors and decor - I was a bit overwhelmed when I found a few articles on how to set one up - it sounded SUPER expensive and like you had to get a ton of candy or it would be lame. While ours wasn't huge or elaborate (there were only about 20 people there after all!) I thought it still looked cute. We had brown sixlets, pink and green jelly beans, pink and green rock candy (all of this from Oh! Nuts, which was pretty affordable and shipped very quickly!), sour patch watermelons and starburst "reds". Luckily, I was able to borrow some dishes and scoops from my friend Erin's mom, since she did a candy buffet at her wedding a few years ago. I got clear plastic bags with baby themed designs on them (also from Oh! Nuts), and had this sign on the table:

Welcome to Mindy's Candy Buffet!

Grab a bag

Fill with a treat

and always remember

Babies are sweet!

(yes, very cheesy, but oh well)

There were a few bunches of flowers and a diaper cake for decor as well.

I got a great idea to have people bring onesies to display from this blog post - I emailed the blogger and got a few more details as well - she was very helpful! I printed up an insert to send with the invitations that told people to help build a clothing line for the baby, and to bring a onesie to the shower to display - I indicated different sizes on the insert as well so she wouldn't just get tiny ones. This worked out really well and I think it is an awesome way to get a bunch of really cute onesies! I got little tags from Michael's and had everyone write who the onesie was from on it, which we then hung around the clothespin.

For games, Mindy did not want to play any games that required a lot of moving around :) (which was my same request - ha!) We played Becca's variation of the "guess the stuff in a basket" game that we played at my 2nd baby shower - kind of a Price is Right, baby style where people guess how much each item costs, and whoever is closest gets a point for that item. Obviously the most points wins! I also did a game that I played at Molly's shower where I had 11 songs with either "baby" or "girl" in the title (like My Girl, Baby Got Back, ...Hit me baby one more time, Brown Eyed Girl, etc) - I played a little clip of each song and people had to guess the song and artist.

On to the food! Here was our menu - we tried to keep it pretty light and summery.

Rolls

Pineapple Chicken Salad

Vegetarian Chickpea Sandwich Spread

Ham & Cheese Sliders

Fruit Salad

Green Salad

Chips, Salsa and Spinach Artichoke Dip

Bowls of Trail Mix on various tables

Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting

Perfect Party Cake Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

(I got these cupcake liners to match with the party theme!)

I made the chicken salad, ham & cheese sliders and the cupcakes.. The perfect party cake cupcakes were a little more lemony than I expected, but were definitely delicious. I love my larger decorating tips - I can finally get cupcakes to look the way I want!

Everyone seemed to loved the food! I think it all turned out great and we actually had a really good amount of food - definitely not too little but we didn't have many leftovers. We had pink lemonade and limeade for beverages to keep with the green and pink theme (although I discovered that limeade isn't very green...) but I was originally thinking of getting green and pink Izze sodas to put in a white tub - I still love this idea but it would have gotten pretty expensive. We also had soda, water and champagne for other options.

I really had fun hosting this shower! It did get a bit stressful at times, like in the 20 minutes right before it started where we were rushing around, but I think it all came together really well!

Happy Baby Shower, Mindy!