Spicy Jalapeno & Cheddar

We always joke about how my baby girl will eat ANYTHING. Seriously. Anything. And we found out the other day how true that was.

We had gone up to gorgeous Whiskeytown Lake with some friends and sat and grilled some yummy food. Someone had brought along a loaf of Jalapeno and Cheddar bread from a local bakery of deliciousness. There was one slice left on the table when John had set Sophie down. She spied the piece of bread immediately and proceeded to make her way towards it. She grabbed it, stuck as much of it in her mouth as she could and then ate it. ALL OF IT! Within a couple of minutes. We all cracked up as we watched her wolf down this fairly spicy bread like it was nothing! This girl never ceases to amaze me. She really loves her food.

According to my mother-in-law, I can attribute it to John, as apparently he was a really eager eater as a baby. I'm so glad, because I was not. I would only eat meat, and spinach was the only vegetable I would eat. I'm hoping Sophie continues to stay open to eating and tasting and loving all foods. Here's to our baby girl, who eats well!

Cousins

My niece, Isabelle, and my baby girl, Sophie, did this all by themselves. At the same time. It was pretty cute. I'm glad I was able to capture it. They also both were licking the metal part, but I was only able to get a pic of Sophie doing it. I just love watching what these babies do, especially at this stage when they're exploring, grabbing things, finding things, putting EVERYTHING in their mouths, stopping crawling to pat their heads or to clap their hands together. Too much fun to be had. Babies are seriously the funnest!

Tiny Dancers

John, Sophie and I had the pleasure of going to our nieces' ballet recital last weekend. They were soooooooo adorable! They did a fairy dance and a rock'n'roll medley, where all the songs were from Grease (one of my all-time favourite movies to which I know almost ALL the words!). It was really fun to see them do their dances - they were really cute!

Having done 9 years of ballet and around 5 of modern, I've really loved seeing my nieces take ballet (the three of them old enough to do so are in ballet classes). I like to think that they got my little dancing/ballet gene, though I do know that a lot of little girls just love ballet and want to be ballerinas! It makes me wonder too if Sophie will be into ballet or sports or reading like I was, or into whatever John was into when he was a kid (when I asked him, he said "Fire, destroying things, I don't know..."! ;) We can't wait to watch her personality develop and see her giftings, talents and hobbies emerge.

Anyway, once they were in their costumes and make-up, the girls happily came outside and posed for me so I could take pictures. They showed me some of the dance moves and, well, just gave me some of the cutest pictures ever! Enjoy:



     



     



    

Milestones and Milestones

One thing that I never thought about while getting ready to have a baby was how fun each and every milestone would be! And how quickly they all start to happen. How exciting it is when Sophie first reaches out and grabs something. And how proud we are when she first starts to pull herself up. Every new little thing she does just amazes me, as I see her becoming more and more mobile, and active, and interactive. I love that I get to see all these things with her every day.

Sophie is 9 months today. It is so hard to believe that 9 months ago (minus 9 hours or so), I gave birth to this beautiful baby girl. I can't believe she is 3 months shy of her 1st birthday. As everyone warned me, it really does go by so fast once you have kids!

Her recent milestones (from the last week or so):

- clapping her hands
- shaking her head "no"
- pulling herself up to standing
- crawling
- sleeping through the night (from 7pm-7am). It is amazing to no longer have a night feed!
- sitting herself up from a lying down position
- saying "dadada" and "nenene" constantly. She was saying "mamamama", but hasn't done that as much lately!
- first big girl bath-time

Since I started writing this post, we have come to the conclusion that she may be cutting a tooth today. We'll see! It feels like she's been teething for months now but it may finally be coming through.

And lastly, we went to the lake yesterday to celebrate Father's Day, and Sophie had so much fun being walked around in the freezing water. She's definitely a sweet little water-baby!

Here are some pix from the last few days of milestones and from our Father's Day yesterday at breakfast and up at the lake:

     
     

The Baugh Family

How can I express how much this family means to me? I first met them when their oldest, Haddie, was around 5 months old. She is now 9! Jim, Kelly and I staffed a school with YWAM in Brussels, Belgium and we became best friends really quickly, bonding over silly things like Ace Ventura quotes and Gollum impressions. We would stay in almost every Friday, while Haddie slept in the corner, and watch The Fellowship of the Ring over and over again.

From there, I went on to staff with them in Kosovo, took care of Haddie during the birth of their son, Gideon, in England, and visited them twice in Fort Collins when they moved back to the States and I was living in the Mid-West. Kelly was my maid of honour in my wedding and helped us get our first apartment after we got married, hence our move to Fort Collins (we lived in her nana's basement apartment). We lived there for two and a half years and loved, loved, loved being an honorary member of the Baugh family, as well as an extended member of Kelly's family, the Fonfaras. Spending Easter, Thanksgiving, July 4th, and other holidays together while our own family was far away truly made us feel at home and well loved.

We've laughed (lots) together, cried together, prayed together, shared our dreams, worries, fears and hopes together. They are like an extension of my own family. They are those people on my list of "People Whom We Want To Have Live Close By" (so the title is awkward, but you get the idea!).

Here's some photos of their shoot:




     

I Heart Faces: From a Distance

A photo of my friends' cute kids, Gideon & Haddie, from a recent family shoot:

Summer Days

I've been super excited to swim with Sophie. Our house back in Redding has a pool, but it just didn't quite warm up enough before we came to Fort Collins, so we weren't able to jump in with her yet. Yesterday, it finally hit a decent temperature here, and we were able to give Sophie her first pool time. We had just bought her bathing suit over the weekend, a yellow polka-dot, ruffly, super-girly, bathing suit.

She LOVED being in the water. She started splashing around, and did well when she got water in her face. John and I took turns holding her and walking her around. It made me even more excited for the summer and swimming with her lots and lots in the days to come.

Fort Collins, Colorado

If you've never been to Fort Collins, Colorado, then you really should try and make it there some day. I don't know if it's because we lived here for the first two and a half years of our marriage, or because we have so many friends here, but we just love this town. Home to Colorado State University, it has a super fun Old Town with really good restaurants and yummy ice-cream and coffee shops. It's climate is mostly reasonable, never getting too, too cold in the winter, or too, too hot in the summer. And it's SO green. I think it got some award for having a certain amount of trees. We love, too, that it's two hours from snowboarding, one hour from a decent international airport and the fun city of Denver. It's also supposedly a great city to raise a family. I think we'd love to end up here again one day.

We're house+dog-sitting for our friends' neighbours for a few weeks. We figured since my husband can work from anywhere, we might as well take some time and enjoy it out here for a while and get to see lots of friends. We're looking after a Maltese for three weeks and two Siberian Huskies for one week. It's been nice and relaxing so far, and John's been able to get lots of work done as I'm distracted with hanging out with friends!

Some pix from our time: