Saturday, August 31, 2013

8 months old


She's eight months old, and just about officially army-crawling!  (Still not very fast, though!)


Still no teeth, either.  :)


She's a little babbler now!  She has said "ya" and "ga," but she really loves saying "ba ba ba!"


She's sleeping a bit better, too, thanks to some nighttime help from Daddy.  


Other than that, she's round and roly and blue eyed and getting some more very blond hair!  And nursing is still her favorite.  :)

Someone else is still two-and-a-half, as far as she knows (though she's nearly two-and-three-quarters, to be precise!).  She is learning like a little sponge!  I taught her to sing "Happy Birthday" while she washes her hands, and now she goes around the house "singing" it all the time (though "birthday" sounds more like "burping").  :)  John taught her that when she has her next birthday, she'll be three.  So, now, she says "Soon it will be my burping.  I will be free!"  One time, I casually remarked that maybe we will have a Little Bear party, so now--without fail--she addends "we will have a yiyyo Bo burping!"  I'd better follow through on that!


When I say "singing," I don't mean that she has found different pitches yet.  Here's to hoping she eventually does.  :)  But even her monotone singing is darling because she bellows deeply and seriously and still mispronounces most of the words!  Some of her favorites besides Happy Birthday are Holy, Holy, Holy and the B-I-B-L-E, which she learned in Sunday School.  She's also picking up on songs we haven't explicitly taught her, like one of the songs from her Rain for Roots album, and the closing line from the Sovereign Grace song "I have a shelter in the storm"--she surprised John one day by bellowing "take me home to heaven!" for the first time.


She's also turning summersaults!  We have no idea where she learned that!


Gemma would be thrilled if Ruthie would rough-house with her.  Despite these pictures of them sitting calmly side-by-side, Gemma now frequently comes up behind Ruth and puts her arms around her (darling!) and then tries to pull her back and roll around.  As long as she's gentle, Ruth loves it.  There's hardly anything sweeter to a mommy than to see her girlies grinning at each other!


It's gotten a bit easier to take them both grocery shopping now that Ruth doesn't automatically fall asleep when I'm wearing her!  We try to stay home for naps, since she hardly sleeps in her infant seat anymore.  Gemma can sit in the cart and she can be on my chest, and there's plenty of room in the cart for food.  No one wants to lug around an infant seat with an 18lb+ baby in it!

In other news, we're on our third cold of the summer . . . and that's all I have to say about that!

Monday, August 26, 2013

Supper this week

How has another week gone by already? I have half a post started that I meant to finish last week, but here's this week's super quick meal plan:

Monday: Pizza and salad (the dough is already rising!)
Tuesday: Chicken and veggie stir-fry with rice 
Wednesday: {Thai}
Thursday: Hamburgers and sweet potato fries
Friday: Chicken Marsala with cacio e pepe
Saturday: Chicken tikka masala from the freezer 

Looks like a chicken-heavy week! Last week's spaghetti carbonara was pretty yummy but a bit globby, and reminded John of macaroni and cheese. I have some work to do on it, but I'm looking forward to improving it! And the beans I ended up having on Saturday...well, I didn't start them until about 5:30 PM (hadn't even soaked them, so I had to do the quick-soak method), and they were still a bit chewy when we finally sat down to eat at 9:30. John asked me why I hadn't just used canned beans, and while I'm not ready to admit long-term defeat with dried beans, at the moment I was sort of wondering the same thing myself.

I am so excited for fall! (Who is surprised? :)) But for now, I'm hoping we can make the most of the warm weather by doing a bunch of end-of-summer grilling! I really want to try grilling pizza, but I'm a little afraid to. Have any of you tried it?

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Supper this week

Well, it's Tuesday and I'm only now getting up my weekly menu post! Yesterday was extra-busy because we had some old friends over for dinner kind of at the last minute, and making blueberry pies and picking some extra things up at the grocery store was just more important than blogging. ;) We had a great time together, though!  Anyway, we just fed them what I was already planning on having for us, only in larger quantities (they have seven children!!). It worked out really well, and here's the rest of the week:

Monday: Oven tacos, Mexican rice, corn, melon, blueberry pie 
Tuesday: Spaghetti alla carbonara (haven't gotten to this yet, so tonight is the night!)
Wednesday: {Thai}
Thursday: Tilapia and rice
Friday: Black beans and rice
Saturday: Macaroni and cheese

We always have some form of salad or veggie (usually broccoli) or both...tonight will be kale. :)

What's in your kitchen this week? 

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Fabric Scrap Tutu

I'm filing this post under "sewing," even though the sewing truly is minimal!  A while back, my sister Heidi (aka Hockey by Gemma Grace!) pinned this idea on her adorable "muskrats" board:

Fabric tutu...a little less girly than the tulle kind and use up scrap fabric


Well, a blogger came up with her own copycat tutorial and Hockey picked up some cute fat quarters to recreate it.  She ended up leaving them at our house at Christmas, and I in turn brought them to my mom's in July to use her pinking shears on them!

Though I liked the pointed strips of the original pin, I ended up following the tutorial pretty closely and decided they were fine as-is.  :)


Little one was getting sick when I took these photos . . . poor thing . . . 


"How are you going to keep it from fraying when you wash it?"  Excellent question . . . I'm intending it to be a dress-up tutu and am going to try hard not to have to wash it!  But I suppose you could spray some fray-stop or something on it.  

Another fun thing is that I cut the elastic out of one of my cami's to make it more nursing-friendly, so the entire project cost me nothing!


She loves it, Hockey!  Thanks for the idea and the supplies!

Monday, August 12, 2013

Supper this week

I think it's time to re-inaugurate sharing the weekly meal plans! It's always satisfying to have a plan in place, even though I will happily set it aside when my husband says occasionally at 5 pm, "Let's walk to Moe's!" Here's this week:

Monday:  Refried bean enchiladas
Tuesday:  Not-sagna pasta toss (a Rachel Ray favorite)
Wednesday: {Thai}
Thursday:  Chicken Paprika and rice 
Friday:  Tilapia and rice 
Saturday: Spaghetti alla carbonara (this will be an experiment! I love a good carbonara and plan to consult Southern Living and a recipe online that I pinned).

What's going on in your kitchen this week?

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Instagram July

If we're already following each other on Instagram, this post will seem like a repeat. :)  Nevertheless, here are some of my favorite instants from July!


Homemade Popsicles...


And first tastes of cantaloupe...


There's no place like home...or Stewart's :)


She slept through this entire visit with great-Grandma on her bed at the retirement home.


Some of my mother's cooking :)


There are no words...


First "ife peam cone" at Dairy Haus


A very special first birthday party!


...And a very special reunion :)


Some fun new shoes...


Outdoor loveliness.


My mother's beautiful pantry...


Communists make scrumptious ice cream ;)


...And mothers-in-law make scrumptious breakfasts.


A new tutu, and pretty as a princess :)

There were many moments we didn't capture, but it was fun capturing these!