6 Months Old

My baby girl is half a year old today!

She is such a joy, I love getting to know her everyday, and I wouldn’t trade being home with her for anything in the world.

My plan was to weigh and measure her today and tell you exactly how big she has gotten, but she fell asleep an hour early and threw my plans out the window. (Did I use this extra hour wisely? No, I’ve been blog hopping…)

I will, however, mention these milestones:

Evelyn seems to enjoy her floor time more now, and is increasingly mobile.  She will roll across the room, but she’ll do it so slowly that you don’t really notice if you’re not paying attention to where you originally set her down.  Once she rolls onto her tummy she is hesitant to roll back onto her back, but she’ll do it most of the time.  She isn’t crawling yet, but I have seen her do a full-fledged push-up with only her hands and toes touching the floor.

She is enjoying solid foods and drinking water from a cup.  (Both sippy and otherwise.)

She still nurses frequently (which I’m happy about),  but she loves eating from a spoon, as well.  So far she has loved everything except her rice cereal, which she prefers mixed with something else.  She eats avocado, banana, carrots (which she loved, but they don’t love her… silly allergy that should go away soon), green beans, squash, oatmeal, random things we give her little tastes of… and she also enjoys sucking on pickles.

She usually gets a little messier when Steve feeds her than when I do…

Today for her “birthday” she even had a little cake.

There was more on her tummy than in her tummy, but she loved squishing the frosting through her fingers.

She makes the best silly faces, and loves to laugh with us when we laugh at them.

She and I went to Utah last week to celebrate her Aunt Stacy’s birthday.  We traveled with my parents and my sister Liz met us there.  Unfortunately most of the pictures I got seem to be of me and her, but at least cute Molly made it into this one.

Evelyn is a good traveller, and she came home willing to go back to her previous schedule. Thank heavens! (Schedules are GREAT!)

Her usual day looks a bit like this- wake up Mom around 6:00, play in the mirror for several minutes, eat some cereal, sit in the bouncy seat while Mom showers…. wake up Dad at 9, read scriptures and nurse- sometimes she’ll take her nap at this point, but usually she waits until Daddy leaves for school and as her nap at 11.  Random day to day stuff, errands, etc. Short nap around 2:00… 3:00 Relax with Mom and Dad, play with Dad while Mom makes dinner, the 3 of us have started having dinner all at the same time- I give Evelyn a spoonful while Steve has a bite, then Steve gives her one while I eat, etc.  After dinner Steve goes to work, Evelyn takes a bath and then she and I either take a walk or have a story and then bedtime is between 5 and 6.

It is lovely.

Well, that is all for tonight from Flynnland.  We love you!

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February 15

When I just have random things to say the date makes for a decent post title, I suppose.  This really is a journal, after all.

I hope you had a beautiful Valentine’s Day yesterday.  Ours was rather low-key, but we had a good time.

Awhile ago, Steve saw this picture somewhere and told me he liked it:

For those of you who can’t tell, it is a Walker (from Star Wars) drinking out of the toilet.  So I decided to embroider it on a t-shirt for him.

This was a lot of work, but fun work, and it turned out pretty well, I think.

I used tear-away stabilizer, which ended up making some of my lines crooked, but perhaps that adds to its charm.  And my husband likes it, so what more can I ask for?

My Valentine gave me a copy of Beauty & the Beast and some mystery gift that hasn’t arrived yet… Evelyn got a copy of this book:

She loves it and is attempting to put to the test all of its guarantees of indestructibility. I’m thinking we may need to buy some of the other titles.

We spent the majority of our day at the Student Union building on campus for a Russian Club Fundraiser, selling cookies.

I’ve had more successful fundraisers, but we had a good time.  After we left, Steve took us to see Gnomeo & Juliet, which was fun.  Evelyn stayed awake for the whole movie, and even enjoyed dinner during the show.  Once home, we enjoyed a late dinner of  Blackened Tilapia with Secret Hobo Spices, one of our recent favorites.  I also attempted to recreate my favorite side dishes from the local Dakota cafe.  The sweet potato fries turned out delicious, but I’m going to have to do some tweaking with the kale to get the same result they do.  Delicious dinner.

And that brings us to today.  Just a normal Tuesday that feels like a Monday.  Evelyn and I spent the morning doing laundry, which is always a blast when Steve isn’t home to help.

Someday we’ll have our own washer & dryer. But until then, I’ve figured out that I can take two baskets full on the stroller at a time.  Don’t let the scowl on Evelyn’s face fool you, she was giggling and laughing the whole time.  She seemed to enjoy our walk in the rain immensely.

And now she is napping and it is time for me to pull out the ironing board and sewing machine.  Hooray!

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

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My 3 hour Shopping Spree

I had so much fun this morning.

Our local Albertson’s store is going out of business, and the other day I heard the store manager whisper to an employee that today they would be marking almost everything down to 75% off.

And it was true!!!

If you don’t run into me at the grocery store for the next couple months, this is why.

Steve, Evelyn, and I filled 3 shopping carts.  We knew they were going out of business and had decided to save up our money for the occasion- that and we’re pretty happy with the income tax refund we’re getting this year. Steve had to take Evelyn and I home and then drive back to pick up the rest of our groceries because they wouldn’t all fit in the car.  We spent 3 hours filling our carts with food storage, things we use all the time, and a few things that would be considered luxury items- things we’ve always wanted to try but were too pricey (Steve bought caviar,  I bought lemon curd…).  I nearly filled an entire cart just in the baking aisle.  It will be a lot of years before I need to buy chocolate chips, salt, sweetened condensed milk, or baking powder again.

Take a look at our living room when we got everything unloaded from the car:

I can’t comprehend ever needing to buy cream of chicken soup ever again.  Or hemorrhoid cream.  Besides what you see above is everything that went in the fridge or freezer, we put those away before I got pictures.  We also got a few cases of diapers that didn’t make it in the picture.  $2 for a package of newborn diapers- I know too many pregnant people to pass up that deal!

In fact, when we got home we realized just how much we had stuffed in our car:

Okay, well that probably isn’t why my tire went flat, but still… (I sure hope I didn’t drive all the way home from Yakima on a flat tire last night.)

A more accurate picture of what 3 carts worth of groceries looks like is this:

Our receipt was 14 feet 8 inches long.

So, how much did we save?

Just a measly $1,473.38.  No big deal.

It was quite a rush, we had a fun time.  I’m going to do my best not to go back, though.  We’ve been fairly creative at coming up with places to store food, but even we have limits.

 

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What we’ve been up to

Surprise! I still know how to type!

We’ve been busy, and yet I really haven’t had anything to say.  I think I finally learned how to set down my camera for the first time since Evelyn was born.  Sorry.

Evelyn had her 5 month birthday on January 25th and tried her first solids- good ol’ rice cereal.  You can watch her “enjoy” those first bites and watch me subconsciously make faces as if it is helping her know what to do at this link:  Evelyn’s First Food

In other news, I’ve been playing with my embroidery machine and my Cricut.  I finally finished the jacket that goes with Evelyn’s Christmas dress, and yes, I forgot to take a picture while she was wearing it, but I’ll put her back in it soon.

I made some custom baby shoes for a lady in Selah and I’m happy with how they turned out- I hope that she is too.

She asked for white shoes to be used when her baby is blessed, and for soft pink shoes with a flower and a button.  She is expecting in March and doesn’t know yet if she is having a girl or a boy.  If she has a girl I told her to let me know and I’d personalize the bottom of the blessing shoes with the baby’s name and birthday.

Lots of fun!

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