Life's little lessons.

I've only been alive all of 24 years. I feel like it's long enough to learn a few of life's lessons that are sometimes hard learned.

I have learned.........

... life if absolutely NOT fair. It never will be, and that's just how it is. We often blame God for this, but he has nothing to do with it.

... that family is, and will always be, there for you in your time of need.

... babies, they cry. A lot.

... To never under estimate the reaching child around a hot bowl of soup. ( This was a sad one to learn)

... Never go to bed angry.

... Drive the speed limit.

... Don't buy a RED car!

... You have to do what works for you and your family, no matter what others say or think.

... Trust your gut. Always.

... (REAL) good  friends are hard to come by. Hang on to the few you have.

... Even when we think our prayers that are long over due are falling on deaf ears... They aren't.

... It's ok to wear heals and pink lipstick to the local grocery store.

... It's ok to wear yoga pants and tennis shoes to the local grocery store.

... The shirt on my back often becomes a large burp rag. And it's alright.

... Mom's recipe is always the best. Period.

... I will always be judge no matter what I do. So why not do what I know/think is best?

... Money will never buy happiness.

...  If I don't take care of myself, then no one else will.

... A hot bath and a good book will fix any bad day.

... To relax- things really will work themselves out.

... To take time for myself, and know that IT'S OK AND I'M WORTH IT. ( I hope this is something that I can pass to my kids) We become so busy with " life"  and blink and our kids are grown, with their own kids, we have grey hair and wrinkles, and life has passed us by. As if this process doesn't happen fast enough. Slow down, and enjoy it. Everything else, it can wait.

... I can't thrive off hamburgers and pop.

... Our bodies are the most incredible thing. We are designed to do such amazing things. I will always do my best to take care of it. For myself and my kids. I want to be around when they are doing the important things in life!

... Life really is like a box of chocolates! You have to bite in to them to figure out what's inside. Sometimes we like it, sometimes we dont.

... My opinion really doesn't matter, and that I've worked on keeping it to myself.

...  I can't always fix a bad haircut.

... I've learned that love is the hardest, most rewarding job out there. Ive said it before. Love is hard. But it's so worth it.

... Things are JUST things.

... WORDS can and will hurt- even worst than sticks and stones. Guard your tongue.

... I can never take too many pictures.

... Food really is the way to a mans heart.... :-)

... I can find anything on the internet!

... This is a big one....Independence is such a hard thing to teach and allow their children to grow in to. But how accomplished do we feel when they are able to survive and have the life skills to be sucessful in life. To make their own decisions and the right ones. ( Another thing that I hope to instill in my children) I think it's so very important to have this.  I can understand as a parent why parents hang on and want to be their sole source of " survival" But I know even with Anisten, we were so proud the first night she slept in her bed, all the way across the house at only 2 months old! Now she will fall asleep on her own and is learning great sleeping habits. This is just the 1st of her little life lessons! (( It wasn't easy for me to take that first step of " letting go" it was very hard! But I know in the long run it's worth it and already is!))

In my whole life I've learned half of what I've learned since I found out that I was going to be a mother. There are so many life lessons that we are taught once we become a parent. I was just thinking today that everything in the world is so SMALL compared to the things that really matter in life.

** I like to MOVE IT MOVE IT!! *

Little missy prissy is definetely on the move these days! She can flip from front to back, and even double roll to get to where she is going. She was doing this until she learned to scoot. She is now doing what we're call the " army crawl " she uses her elbows to scott around.

Some times she will scrunch her body up like a worm, and spread out!

She also things that whatever is on the floor is yummy!

She's really getting close to hopping up on those knees. I think if we had carpet instead that she probably would be already. It's a little slick on the floor where she is trying.

But never the less, she is all over the place. All the(fancy bouncy swinging etc..) toys are rubbish to her right now! She is spending 60% of her awake time on the floor now. She will wiggle out of my arms to have me put her on the floor. So I just keep blankets ( not like she stays on them) down in all the rooms with her toys. She will lay there for 30 minutes and play and talk to her toys.

She can definetely get to where she is going...... even mama's feet!

It's so much fun, but I'm in NO hurry for her to start crawling and walking. I don't have the man power just yet to keep up with her. She's SO curious! I know that this is a sign of intellegence.

Food Food, and more FOOD!

Well I've been a cooking maniac! I love it though and really enjoy it! I've been steaming and cooking lots of food for the baby! The other night when we made pumkins, I decided to get a pie pumkin and cook it and make some for the baby. We haven't tried it yet ( we're giong to today) but it was fun to make. I just backed the pumkin, and then scooped out the " meat " and then mixed in a little butter, and cinnamon, and pureed it with a little milk. Melissa and I ate what was left over. ( minus the milk of course!)  I love making her food! To know that she's getting the purest freshest food, mixed with the best milk in the world for her is the greatest feeling! And what we don't freeze for her I eat. hehe.

So here we have pumpkin, sweet potatos, pears and squash in the bags. And in the popsicles I just pureed blueberries with milk, and some kiwi's with milk, and just milk by it'self . These will be a yummy treat for her, and are great for teething days ( especially when she won't eat!) 

On most days I just feed her fresh food for breakfast like avacado  and i've started mixing it with some of the other things like, pears as you see here! That way she's getting all of the benefits of the avacado, but the pears just make it taste yummy! Pears will also help keep her regulated :) When starting solids this is always a concern! I will also hard boil her some eggs and scoop the yolk out of them and mix it with her milk and she loves that! It's a little harder on her tummy so I only do this every few days for that much needed iron, and protein.

She absolutely loves eating her new foods!
MMMMMMMMM.....

 Opening wide for another bite!!

 forget waiting I'll go for it myself!

 What's funner than playing with my food?!

 I can even do it myself!!!!!

She is definetely getting the hang of it. She knows when it's time to eat, and gets very excited! She will get frustrated if you don't get her the bite fast enough. And as you can see in the photo above, if you wipe her mouth, she will try and eat it as your trying to wipe her mouth, it's so funny!

So besides baby food, I've been making lots of other things that I don't usually make. I will soon be attempting to make some pumpkin pie cheesecake from a real pumpkin, and I can't wait! I made home made veggie soup ( alot of it ) and it was SOOOO yummy. I didn't even have any to freeze for later!

I bought these cookies from the neighbor girl, they are chunky chocolate brownie fudge cookies. I'm not sure what is in them exactly but I know that we made 2 dozen, and this was all that was left that same day

No really, I think I ate like 10 of them! O M G! Can we say TUB-TUB???

My husband loves pumpkin seeds from the pumpkins that we carve.

so I told him to call his mom ( who always makes them for him) and get her recipe and I will make some. So he gave me the jest of what she does, and I did some research and decided how long to cook and all that. They turned out really yummy BUT for the 1st time since we've been married for 4 years, I got the " They aren't like my mom's" line. Well I was under the impression that they are suppose to be crispy ( like they are when you buy them!) so I cooked them for about an hour on 250. Well the next day he tells me that he ask his mom and it's suppose to be on 325 for 20 minutes. Well YEAH that's gonna make a difference in the texture of them. So. No more pumkin seed cookin for me! LOL.  But we eat them anyways. :-) And it was fun, but too much work!

All in all, I enjoy creating and learning new meals. I'm constantly calling my mama for recipes ( which hubby LOVES) There's nothing like " mama's cooking"

lil punkin' eater!

Oh what a FUN week we had. Jonathan, Melissa and baby Collis' came over to carve pumkins with us this last week. We had a great time. I made some home made veggie soup ( Thanks MOM!) and some cookies

And we dug in and got our hands dirty with some pumpkins! Well, I didn't actually get to do one, but everyone else did, and it was still fun!

Our pumpkins before carving.

 She can already tell this is going to be so much fun and we haven't even opened them yet!!!

 Not yet!

 

We decided that she would really LOVE to play in the pumkin guts! Oh, she loved it!

Guess what all this pumkin gut playing means? Yep you guessed it! A nice long BATH!

She's decided that she isn't going to be conventional and sit in the tub seat like she's suppose to. Why not make it a nice lounge chair??

Finished products. Transformers- Jonathan (surprise??) Baby binky, Ghost- Melissa, and the skull was Scott's.

We've decided that we're going to make this a annual tradition! I'm so excited that we'll have another 6 month old next year to join us. ( NO NOT MINE!) We are also going to do gingerbread houses in December. Melissa and I will do this and make the boys watch the baby this time!

MMMMy first food! ( Kinda)

Well we got OK'd by the doctor to start Anisten on solids. I haven't went to the whole foods store yet to pick her anything up yet, but we had some baby cereal here. I don't plan to give her this normally. I'll do avacados, and egg yolk with her mommy milk in it. These are whole fatty (in a good way ) foods. She could use them! We will start with those once a day, and then go on to add a second feeding a day with veggies. I will start with carrots, squash, maybe some sweet taters. And just add these in and mix them up. We aren't going to do fruits too much now. Babies end up liking the fruits too much and wont eat anything else after that. So we'll do veggies and next month I will start doing some chicken puree, and from there add fruits on a regular basis. I will however mix in some apples or bannanas every so often with her avacados, b/c atleast then she is still getting alot of the SOLID part of it.

So here is my disclaimer, which I will be sending out in an email to all my family etc. I don't mind if you feed her fruits and such, b/c I know that you all will be excited to feed her too. I do ask that if you plan to give her something that you puree it ( unless it is something like a bannanna that's soft and can be mixed with her baby milk) and I ask that it's atleast preservative free. The whole reason that I'm not doing jarred baby food is b/c I would like to keep her from having the preservatives that are in them. So it kinda defeats the purpose of that if we just go and grab some fruit from walmart that is loaded with horomones, dyes, and perservatives. Since we're starting her on this new journey, I want to be able to control what goes in to her little body! And to know what she may or may not be allergic to incase she has a reaction. So that being said it should be fun now. I will make some batches of baby food and freeze them and send them with her anyways when she comes to visit!!!

So last night we mixed her up some cereal and milk, and she loved it! We gave her a few bites and then after that, she decided she didn't want any more. So she played in it.

Reaching for more!

 She can hear and kind of see the tv, we were still mixing it up for her. I decided to give her her own spoon so that she wouldn't try to take the one out of my hand!

 oh yeah! That's good stuff!!

Well she got the spoon from Mommy's hand! I put some on her tray so she could try it out herself. 

 mmmmmmm

 This is where she started spitting alot of it out.

 She really likes to do it herself. Miss independant! 

 This is my favorite picture!!!!!!!!- We're nearing the end. It's all coming back out and it's alllllll over her face!

 Bath time!

We captured it on video too. It's so cute. We look forward to doing all these new things with her. We're also teaching her sign language. Now is a great time to begin!