SHE DID IT!

We didn't have the camera handy but today was the day our baby took her first steps. She's been walking with our help and getting more and more stable. Nevada was just saying how impressed she was that Gemma was walking while only holding on to one guide hand. Today she was standing up against her blocks and all of a sudden turned towards mommy and just went for it. Then I called her over and she left mommy and took about three steps in my direction. It was thrilling. I was so proud and she was so happy. Although her new found mobility makes me a bit busier and more worried I do feel this opens up a whole new world of play. I'm excited to go to the park and watch her walk around and explore. I'll try to capture some video of her new skill sometime in the next couple of days.

New Trick

I could probably write a post every two or three days with that title but today's new skill was particularly momentous. For a while now we've been able to set our living room up as a large playpen using furniture and these cubes made of foam tiles. It's worked great. She has her toys and a few little places to explore but she can't get in much trouble or danger. It's the place I put her when I need to do things around the house and can't watch her every move. She's been pushing the boundaries lately by trying to squeeze out small cracks in the wall of this makeshift playpen...she's succeeded a couple of times with brute force. But today she finally figured out how to climb. Nevada and I were in the dining half of the room chatting and having lunch when all of a sudden Nevada saw that Gemma was on top of one of the cubes. We took some pics and helped her off. This will add a whole new dimension to supervision in our house.

a birthday party!

Gemma was invited to her first birthday party last week. A friend from school's son turned one, and so we went over for a little get together. The total count for people was 3 babies, 3 toddlers, 3 school aged children, and then 8 parents. The mom had games planned for the younger kids, and prizes, and it was a nice afternoon. Note to self; 2 hours is PLENTY of time for a first birthday party!

Unrelated note; yes, you can put prunes into icecube trays. Even though they stay sort of mushy, they will hold their shape in freezer bags.

Baby Food

So I made my own baby food this week. And it was easy, and cheap, and fun too. (I love making stuff, and since I don't have so much time for crafts and stuff making baby food sort of fulfilled that need). My firned came over with her babe one night and it was great; one set of hands for baby watching and one for working. I had a pretty extensive menu planned, so it took me three nights but I think with more friends it could go faster. Here's what I made:
1) beef/potatoe/carrot: Brown some ground beef. Chop it up. Bake some potatoes. Scoop the middles out and chop.(Can you use the peel? Maybe.) Boil some carrots. Chop. Blend in the blender. Sppon into ice cube trays.
2) Chicken/brocolli/rice: Baked some chicken breasts, steamed the brocolli, cooked some brown rice. Chopped and blended. Scoop into trays. It looked like glue, and tasted very gritty. I think it was the rice that made it gross, so not sure if I'll do it again. Although Gemma eats it fine.
3) Apple/plum/nectarine: This one was yummy! Carve an x with a knife onto the side of nectarines and plums. Steam until tender. They are quite thick, so it takes a while to get the middle tender. Keep the water you cook them in. Then peel them, it sort of scrapes off with a knife. Messy job! Then I peeled and chopped some apples, and cooked them in the plum water. They turned a yummy purple color. Then I chopped it all up, blended it and ta da! Aplesauce stuff.
4) Heather brought prunes, and they are yum! (I love prunes!) Just put them in a bowl and cover with boiling hot water. Let sit until they puff up, then chop and blend. Keep the water for other griut stuff or making cereal or just as juice. NOTE: prunes don't freeze solid, so don't put them in ice cube trays. I just put them in a tupperware, and when I need some I just spoon some out.

What did I learn that I didn't already know? 1) Blending stuff takes lots of water. Otehrwise its too thick and the blender makes an awful sound. I always tried to use as little water as possible when cooking, but then I had none left for blending, so go ahead and use water. 2) You need to chop stuff up before you put it in the blender. They are not as strong as you think. Hmmm...that's it. It was REALLY easy to do, made tonnes of food, and was easily half the cost of baby food ehre (Its over a dollar a jar!!!)

Any good recipes I should try?

How do they do that?

There was a comment on how we did the underwater pictures; well, Andy has a plastic case for his digital camera. So he just puts inside and can use it like regular under the water. As far as getting Gemma under the water, we just blew lightly in her face and dunked. (Sheri taught us that; blowing on their face causes them to breath in and hold their breath for a second)

Meet the Teacher Night

Here is me and Gemma at meet the teacher night, and a pic of her and members of her after school club. (Check out the jelly sandals; Thanks Allie!)

Fun with Hats

This was soo funny! Chris would put the hat on her, and she would try to pull it off. But every time she'd grab the hat and yank, her head would go along with it, so she was just pulling her head around in different directions. She loved it too, she thought it was funny, maybe because we were killing ourselves! Chris put the video on his facebook, so go there to check it out.

Under the Sea

Here is a smapling of picturs from our weekend retreat at Green Bay. We had a staff getaway at this incredible resort, with an indoor pool, two outdoor pools, on the beach, a spa, billards, arcade games...It was awesome! We had a buffet supper and breakfast the next day. The pool was the highlight though. It was so big and beautiful, with so many options. There was a current river you could float through, fountains, a little kiddie warm pool. Gemma had a blast and even got her face wet for the first time.

Tickle Time with Fangs Magee

The purpose of this tickle session was to get a good shot of the fangs. I have to hurry up and publish this post because she will not be fangs much longer, the middle front one popped out this week.

High Chair Yoga

...or maybe it's ballet. Or aerobics :)

First Word?

She is a chatty cathy, always with lots to say and lots of passion in her voice. I think I may have caught the first word. She was crawling around the music room and got under the shiny black piano. When she looked up and saw her reflection she said, "baby". She hasn't said it since, but it was so clear. Hard to tell if its for real or not. Other things she is close to saying is wa-wa (meaning water) and dada, and mum mum mum mum. She is also getting to be a good waver, waving hello to people and goodbye. Its funny because when she wants people to go, like when she's been held by others too much and she's back in my arm, she'll wave at them like, "My mommy's here now; buh bye!"

Into everything part II

So what do you do when you live in an apartment and have to eliminate the bottom 4 feet of storage space? The object I have the hardest time relocating is the toilet brush. I mean, who likes to keep their toilet brush up on a shelf at eye level?

The Gemma Fan Club

Everyday after school I go home, feed Gemma, and bring her back to school so I can get a bit more work done. There is always an entourage of kids waiting to play with her (no jokes, on Friday there eight kids in there all trying to play with her, carry her, walk with her, etc.) I am grateful for the help, they manage to keep her occupied for an hour or so and I can get a lot done. PLus Chris get an hour of alone time after his day of daddy-ing.



p.s. Brenda, good thing we kept that outfit. It is so cute, and fits her perfect now!

Are napkins a food group?

Into everything... I was standing two feet away from her, and I thought I had my eye on her as she was rummaging around the shelf in the kitchen. Well, I looked away for as second and when I looked back she had a handful of tissue with a huge bite out of it! It was hilarious to see the ripped off tissue coming from out of her mouth, and I would have liked to take a picture but I thought it was more important to get it out of her mouth before she swallowed any (or any more than she already had).

Ha, so funny I wrote that because looking back at our pictures, Chris DOES have pictures of her eating tissue! Hee hee.

Thanks for all the food advice! I appreciate it and have consulted back to it several times already.

Cherish!

What is it like being a mom? It means every day when I hold my baby girl, I pray that I would remember that moment forever.

Food

The solid food thing is going pretty good. It is probably the most complicated part of having a baby so far. (Maybe because I forgot to ask my peeps about what on earth to do, and so its the only part of parenthood I've done almost on my own.) I haven't done a tonne of reading, but one book I've been looking at is the Super Baby Food Book. It is huge and bright purple, and has lots of good information but a tad excessive for our style. She is a huge advocate of making your own everything, cereal and baby food and adding all sorts of funny things to it (healthy extras) like wheat germ, dried liver powder, brewers yeast and all sorts of other funny things that I wouldn't know how to find even if I lived in Canada. She is also a huge advocate of using ONLY organic produce. Other produce has pesticides on it and and pesticides kill living things. And then she goes on, "LET ME REPEAT THAT; PESTICIDES KILL LIVING THINGS". And so on... What has been helpful from it is that it is divided into month by month chapters so you you know what foods to add each month with lots of options and serving ideas. For example, things like shredded cheese. I wouldn't have thought of that, or shredded apple. Or making mashed potatoes into little balls for her to pick up but will mash in her mouth. I also tried cutting the mango into little spears, which she liked. They slide in and she mashes them up with her gums but if she accidently swallows they will just slide down like little noodles. So that's been good. Gemma really enjoys table food and so we are trying to give her what we can from our meals. Her favorite so far has been rotisserie chicken. Not the saucy outside, but little piece of the yummy white breast meat. She at that up. My question to you all is when to introduce wheat, and when to introduce dairy.

p.s. I just read some more of that book, trying to learn about meat, and she says that if we knew what she knew and read the books she read none of us would ever eat meat again. She has like three pages about meat and thats it.:)

Sleeping Beauty

I was doing dishes one night this week and every time I looked over at her, she was in a new position. I left her sitting on the floor, washed a bowl and looked over at her again; she was flat on the floor on her back. Wash another dish, look over, sitting up again. Look over again, standing against a chair. She is getting braver, too, and will crawl to other rooms in the house even if we are not there.

Her sleeping is getting better, only up once or twice at night which is good. Her bedtime is about 10:30, then she sleeps till 9:30 which is great for Chris, bad for me, but we'll try and negotiate that a bit this week. Speaking of sleeping, check these nap time photos out.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

This was taken our last day as Uncle Nate was sneaking us into RUH to try and catch the first glimpse at Baby Hickey. (Unfortunately she hadn't been born yet!) Maria made her entrance to the world as we waited in the airport. Congratulations Tom and Erin!

YA YA YA YA YA

Gemma spends a lot of time of her time saying these words really loud. Maybe she is going to be a preacher like her daddy! Sometimes she changes it up and it goes BA BA BA BA BA WA WA GA GA. She usually does it standing up at the footstool, waving one arm.

We've done pretty good in the falling department, none for a few days, until last night. Then she did a double; she fell backwards on her head but hit her chin first on the way down. Yikes!

No!

What a hard lesson to teach: No. Everytime we say it she looks up and grins, like its a game. I feel like to her, trying to figure out what is 'no' and what isn't is like those goofy party games, you know where you tell your name and what you're bringing to the it person and they tell you if you can or can't. (Does anyone know what I'm talking about??? The it person makes up some sort of rule before the game starts, for example, you must bring something that starts with the second letter of your name, so I could say 'My name is Nevada and I'm bringing bagels, and the it person would say I couldn't come, but if I said My name is Nevada and I am bringing eggs' I would be allowed... anyway, I digress) I guess the difference is we are more consistent; our rules don't change too often, but I feel like to her it is a very complicated system. What are some things on your NO list? We have (so far) remote controls and keys and most recently paper.

What is it with eating paper???? I am constantly squeezing her little cheeks to get paper out. I even found a sticker in there two days ago. I hate taking it away from her because she loves ot crumple it and tear it and shake it around, but as soon as you turn away, into the mouth it goes.