Naptime according to Sophia

I had no idea how much having a kid would make me laugh. Life with a baby is just so stinkin' funny! I suppose I am biased, but here's the latest example.

We got home from church, and I fed Sophia a little lunch of pureed peas and carrots, which she gobbled down. We then headed upstairs for her naptime routine: diaper change, nurse, and into bed. That all went smoothly enough, and I came back downstairs to eat my own lunch. John and I then heard about half an hour of intermittent "talking," followed by silence.

Fast-forward 30 more minutes or so.

Crying is heard over the monitor. Not "my arm has just been pulled off," just "I'm cranky and need a nap but don't want one." I leave her for half an hour of this intermittent fussiness. Finally take pity on the kid and head upstairs.

I walk in the room and see that she is about two feet away from where I put her down for her nap. Strange. Then I get closer to the crib, and see that there is quite a large amount of carrot orange spit-up where her head had been, and she had scooted all the way to the bottom of the crib. Not sure how she managed that, but smart kid, huh? At this point I am already cracking up.

I get still closer and then I smell her. Not good. So we go for a diaper change. No wonder she couldn't sleep! We get a new diaper on, amidst lots of very cute kicking and gurgling (and smiles!) which make me laugh all the more.

Now I figure I'll feed her a little more before I put her back down. Not so. (This might be TMI coming up.) She has decided that it would be more fun to hum and blow raspberries than actually nurse. Now I have given up on trying to hide my laughter, and just put the kid back to bed. And don't worry, her head is now where her feet were, so no carrot spit-up in her face.

A bit more of the cute noises and a couple whimpers, now back to sleep.

Nothing earth-shattering, and I'm sure that she is much funnier to me and John than anyone else, but I just had to share.

Food, glorious food!

Now that Sophia is starting to eat "big people" food, I have been having fun making her a whole variety of purees. I do realize that making purees is not something that most people normally put on their "fun to do" list, but look how pretty the different colors are! At any rate, when I have made her a batch of food I feel that I have accomplished something. So far I have made peas, spinach (the two latest, and the ones in the pic above), green beans, applesauce, prunes, carrot, and sweet potato.

The food processor I use may be little, but it gets the job done, and done well. This latest batch of peas and spinach only took me about 10 minutes. Blanch the spinach, use slotted spoon to get it out of the water, then boil peas in that water. Puree spinach while peas cook, then rinse processor and puree peas. Pop it in the ice cube trays, saran wrap, put in freezer. The next day I put the cubes in labeled bags, and all done! Now Sophia has food for the next two weeks.

P.S. Mom, I hope you got the reference from the post title, I named it that for you . . .

So big, so fast

This post is an illustration of just how fast they do grow. Sophia is in the Boppy in both pictures, but looks like two different babies! She will get weighed at the doctor's office this coming week, and I'm sure will be well over 16 pounds. Whew!

4 days

6 months

The basement project is done!

When we moved into our house last April, most of the house got nicely organized. Still a work in progress as we add our personality in and do some painting and decorating, but for the most part I am pleased with how things look. The basement, however, had very quickly turned into a disorganized catch-all. Especially with the holidays and my sister's wedding! I kept saying to myself, "I'll get to it after Christmas, I'll do a big clean out and re-organize." So here's the before, yikes!

The last week or so I have been tackling the basement in little bits of time, during Sophia's naps and after she goes to bed.

Now John has a workspace. Though with only a tool chest and no saw or other big tools I'm not sure how much he can do down there!

When I moved all of our stored items (in boxes) to the opposite side of the basement, they became much more accessible for when I need to get into them. Half of those boxes are filled with books, so I am looking forward to having some bookcases to put them in, upstairs in the dining room.

Here I finally have a little pantry, so I don't have to pack everything into the kitchen with the limited cabinet space.

I had put all of our "off-season" clothes in the general storage area, then kept getting so frustrated digging thru everything to find it again. Finally thought to put clothes by the washer; there is a little niche that fits the bins perfectly.

The space to the right of the dryer has my craft supplies stored there, and now I know where they all are! I just need a folding table so I can get my craft on . . .

So now I am done, and my type A self can get back to the fun things, like my photo wall project for the living room!

Random cuteness

Once in a while I am going to pop in some random cute pictures (hence this post title), so that you all can see what I get to see everyday.



Sophia loves her green beans and rice cereal. As soon as I put her in the high chair she starts making frantic "I'm hungry" noises to try to hurry me along. I've tried a tiny taste of said green beans and rice cereal . . . nasty! I wouldn't be in such a rush to eat if I were her.



Aw, she's already a smart little reader!



Actually, she just loves to eat her books.



Isn't it great when you can dress your kid in a raincoat and galoshes in January instead of a snowsuit?!

Ah, cheese

WARNING: Mention of baby poop to follow, so if that is TMI stop reading!

After not being able to have dairy for about five of the last six months, I am pleased to report that I can now eat it again! Sophia does not seem to be suffering any ill effects, and I think that is due to the fact that she is now eating solids. She has a nice big helping of rice cereal and veggies each noontime, and the rice cereal seems to have slowed her poops down from three to four a day to once every other day. And no increase in gasiness or poop with me eating dairy again!

I am a dairy-aholic, so being able to eat cheese again is like saying hello to your best friend that you haven't seen in five months. That may be slightly overstating things, but I can't tell you how much I enjoyed my pulled pork with cheddar and fried jalapenos last night. If that sounds good to you too, head over to Buck's Naked BBQ in Freeport. And now I am really looking forward to the next time my mother-in-law makes her lasagna, because it truly is the best (and cheesiest!) in the world.

Really, that's all. I just wanted to express my joy about eating dairy again (Beth, your day is coming!), and make sure the world knew that if you are ever cooking for me in the future, feel free to cheese it up!

P.S. I'm pretty sure there are errors in both grammar and spelling in this post, but my blog is not about being perfect, so try to ignore said errors. Unless they are really glaring, in which case you can feel free to harass me about it, and then I may or may not fix them. :0)

Here it is!

Sophia is a sneaky little baby. She always knows when the video camera is on, and stops whatever cute thing she was doing. But Mama has prevailed, after almost a month of trying! Check it out . . .

The thumb

I have always been a little bit nervous about cutting Sophia's fingernails.  I have tried using an emory board, baby nail scissors, and clippers, and the latter seems to be the least traumatizing.  (Quickest, so we avoid a meltdown.)  Today, however, the event that I feared finally happened.  I had finished trimming her left fingernails, and was just starting on her right when I managed to take a good chunk out of the tip of her thumb.  For a little tiny thumb, that sucker bled like a head wound!  Of course, Sophia was screaming, I was looking for something to staunch the wound while calming her down and trying not to get  blood all over her.  She did calm down quickly (faster than I would have!), but then I had to hold pressure.  Have you ever tried to hold pressure on an almost 6 month old tiny little thumb?  When she just wants to put it in her mouth?  After that came the fun of adapting a bandaid.  I'm pretty proud of my job there, as it seems to actually be staying on.  What I am not going to do today?  Finish trimming her right fingernails.  That is a job for another day!

I give in.

Blogging is another thing I swore I would never do, yet here I am, writing my first post. Some of you know to what I am referring when I say "another," but for those of you who don't, here's a little background.

When I graduated from college with my nursing degree in 2003, my college professors had my classmates and I write out our five year plan. Mine was roughly as follows: "I am going to work in cardiology for a year, and then move to work in the ER. I plan to get my master's degree and teach. I will do disaster relief, and eventually work toward my doctorate, do research, and get published." What I was NOT going to do was ever quit working as a nurse, and certainly not become a stay-at-home mother. I pretty much thought that was a cop out for those who couldn't do anything else.

Well, I guess I can admit when I am wrong, because here I am seven years later, burnt out on nursing (although I am on a disaster relief team that I love and plan to stay involved with!) and loving being a stay-at-home mom to my almost-6 month old, Sophia. I watched my husband John complete three years of grad school before going to work as a PT this summer, and have decided from seeing him go thru it that I never will. At least not for anything related to the medical field!

At any rate, this blog is going to be a mishmash of my thoughts, decorating projects I do around the house, updates on the cutest baby ever, and whatever else I think of. Here's to doing things we swore we never would!