All Amaia wanted for Christmas...

...was her two front teeth.  I promise they are there if you look REALLY close in this picture :)

 We had a wonderful first Christmas as a family of three.  I always leave Christmas feeling so blessed by our families.  More details to come on Amaia's first Christmas.  Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Week Snapshots

We are slowing down a bit this week and enjoying the week leading up to Christmas!!!  Does the excitement for Christmas ever fade?!  I will be 30 in a month (yikes!) so I would say that qualifies me as an official adult, but I still get a little bit giddy inside for Christmas.  This year I am excited to observe Amaia's first Christmas experience and watch her reaction to everything, I am super excited to see my sister and have extended times with our family and eat wonderful food!  

I'm also really enjoying that this week seems be a little less busy for us.  Here are a few snapshots of what we have been up to this week....

 Adam I went on a Christmas date night to Centro.  In my mind there would be a snow on the ground and twinkly lights in the trees downtown and it would be oh so Christmas-y and romantic.  Well... there is still no snow around here and no lights BUT it still was wonderful.  Honestly, Centro pretty much never disappoints.  We both ate brussel sprouts for the first time and discovered that they are awesome!   At least they are awesome when prepared well. AND i ordered this wonderful marshmallow brownie sundae dessert - yum!  Adam had a hazelnut creme brulee that was even better.  If anyone knows how to make creme brulee I think I need to learn.  It just might be the way to Adam's heart.

Amaia and I had a playdate with Oscar and Julie this morning.  I had a really cute picture of both the babes in which they were both actually looking at the camera, but I accidentally deleted it.  She is so happy and cute. I love her smile. Oscar and Amaia actually played together this morning. This is a big development!  They seemed genuinely interested in one another and I think that Oscar was motivating Amaia to try crawling a bit more.  He needs to show her the ropes.

Orange tea and english muffin with peach-mango jam while I worked this afternoon.  Yum.  I guess I was feeling a bit English :)  One thing I love about this time of year is just being "cozy" -- sipping warm drinks, lighting candles and wearing slippers....

Only 4 sleeps until Christmas!  Merry Christmas everyone!  

10 Months!

My Dearest Amaia,

You are 10 months old and more fun than ever!  You make me laugh incredibly easily and often with your adorable faces and sounds.  Your dad and I love you SO much.  I love spending my days with you and your Daddy is constantly telling me how he misses you and wishes he could spend more time with you.  Sometimes, I ask him if he thinks that we should ask someone to come over and watch you when we have something to do at night and he says "No, I want Amaia to come with us.  I miss her!".  He loves you :)

You seem so old all of the sudden!  If you look closely at the picture above you can see a couple teeth just starting to peek through.  You have also become much more vocal over the last few weeks.  You are making new sounds loudly and often!  Your favorite thing to say is still "ga, guh, guh" but you have also developed an affinity for "da, da".  Your daddy sure hopes that you are working hard at calling him daddy soon.  I love this new development.  I just cannot wait until you can talk to me and tell me what you are thinking!  You crack me up without saying a word, so I can only imagine how much fun we will have together once you can talk too.

On the day you turned 10 months old you officially slept 12 hours un-interrupted for the first time.  You have been sleeping through the night since you were about 2 months old, but you had been sleeping 8-10 hours.  So proud of you baby girl!

You have also developed a very strong preference for standing.  You often resist sitting down when I put you down, you are happiest standing and you are always trying to pull yourself up on whatever you can get your hands on.  You are also becoming really good at taking steps while we hold your hands. I am beginning to think that you are going to skip crawling all together.  If you are on your tummy you don't try to crawl very much and you would always prefer to be standing.  You also still love your jumperoo and for some reason have taken quite the liking to the tomato on your jumperoo.  You love to stand up and just hold onto your tomato.  When you start talking you are going to have to tell me what it is about the tomato that you like so much, ok?!

You are turning into a great eater.  You have been eating more and more table foods and you can handle soft chunks of food bigger than I would think.  You still love your cheerios and you are also now consistently eating, oatmeal, bananas, applesauce, chunks of carrots (pureed carrots currently disgust you), tuna, tilapia, green beans, peas, mixed veggies, yogurt and you have had tastes a variety of other things too.  I made homemade chicken noodle soup last week and I gave you some of the carrots from the soup and you liked them, but you LOVED when I let you slurp some of the broth.  I am glad that you like my cooking.

Your personality is showing itself more and more all the time.  Your are goofy and silly and all kinds of fun.  We love you so much baby girl.

Love,
Mommy

Christmas Traditions

I fully plan on having many, many Christmas traditions as Amaia gets older and we add more children to our family (Lord willing!!!).  I am still brainstorming on potential Christmas traditions, so we don't have very many built into our family Christmas celebrations YET, but we do have one!!  Every year for the last three years Adam and I have gone to Starbucks to get a warm drink and then we drive around looking at Christmas lights and listening to Christmas music.  I was so excited to take Amaia out this year!!  We ran into a few bumps in our Christmas merriment road, but they did not deter us.

Bump # 1:  Last year we found this crazy, wonderful house in Grimes. It was decorated with a million lights and huge blow up lawn ornaments.  It was cheesy and festive and wonderful.  They even played music and you could get out and walk around and look at everything.  I have been REALLY looking forward to taking Amaia to see it.  I cannot say this with absolute certainty, but I think it was quite possibly the #1 thing I was looking forward to experiencing with Amaia for Christmas.   Well, we found the house last night and they apparently are not doing it this year.  Insert huge sad face here!!  Needless to say I was a bit dissapointed.  However, Adam did a find a consolation for us.  I really wanted somewhere that I could take Amaia out of the car and show her the lights so we did find the Grimes public library.  It wasn't nearly as crazy, but we could still get out of the car and walk around.

Isn't she a vision in her new winter coat??  I decided that she just must wear it even though it was 50 degrees in December at night and Adam was wearing flip-flops :)

Bump #2: Amaia did not particularly enjoy our tradition this year.  And by that I mean that she cried almost the entire time that we were in the car.  She has to enjoy it more next year, because I don't think that she could enjoy it any less :)

We do have one other tradition - we attempt to watch Home Alone 2 every year.  It is one of Adam's favorite movies and I honestly have never seen anyone laugh so hard at a movie before.  Typically he laughs at the movie and I laugh at him.  It is great fun :)

What Christmas traditions does your family have??

Friends

Please meet my dear and awesome friend Julie.

Julie has been one of my dearest, if not the dearest friend in my life over the last five or so years.  My heart is often overwhelmed with thankfulness for her.  Our lives have been very much on the same path over the past few years.  Julie and her hubby, Ryan got engaged a couple weeks before Adam and I.  Adam and I actually got to decorate the bridge where Ryan proposed and watch the whole thing from a distance, which was super fun.  The above picture of the four of us is from that night. Ryan and Julie got married a month before Adam and I. They also had their little boy, Oscar just a couple months before Amaia came into our lives.  Clearly, God is trying to get us to be friends :)  In fact, Julie told me that she was pregnant on the exact day that I took a positive pregnancy test and she was the first person (other than Adam of course!) that I told I was pregnant.  Thus, Julie has gotten to listen to my many thousands of questions about all of these major life changes.  It is an amazing blessing to have such a caring and authentic friend.  Also, she makes amazing cheesecakes and other treats.  But the reason I say all of this....

Today we got to celebrate Oscar's first birthday!!  

The birthday boy, in his birthday hat...

Julie and I are (not so secretly) trying really, really hard to make Oscar and Amaia bff's!!  They currently interact mostly by stealing one another's toys, but we are working on it :)

And I would totally be okay with it, if they wanted to get married someday....

but I know I need to stop talking about that or it is bound to get awkward for them.

But we just love this family!

Side note: Adam is now officially a huge Tim Tebow fan!!!  We watched the end of the game at Oscar's party and Tebow pulled out the win at the very end AGAIN!  Ryan and Adam were maybe a wee bit excited about this.

Amaia was very tuckered out by the time we got home.  Clearly, she had a great time!

thanksgiving

We had a wonderful but fairly uneventful Thanksgiving.  Uneventful in a very good way of course.  I only say that because I don't find myself having a lot of things to say about our Thanksgiving this year, but I just had to have a reason to post this picture...

If ever there was a cute turkey, here she is :)   Do other people ever get over how cute their kids are??  Because sure do not.  

We had two Thanksgivings to attend on the actual day of Thanksgiving this year.  I was quite proud that I paced my eating well and I was actually hungry for our second meal of the day. First, we went to my cousin's house, and then Adam's parent's house, both of which happen to be within 5 miles of our house.  I am not sure how we got so lucky! 

I wanted to get a family picture taken, but it didn't happen, maybe if you can imagine that these two pictures mashed together....

Adam did learn to carve a turkey this year.  He claims that it is easy.

We let Amaia try a few foods.  She seemed to like pumpkin bread and rolls, but she was a bit skeptical of mashed potatoes.

And now....as of last night it is officially Christmas season at our house!!!  Woot!  Woot!  I am excited. I have to admit that I am ready for it to snow a little bit.  Due to Amaia's jumperoo taking up limited room in our living room I was considering not putting up a Christmas tree this year.   Adam's mom ended up lending us a slim tree that she had and I have to admit I am really, really happy that we put it up.  I don't think it would feel quite right without it.  There is something wonderful about relaxing in the evening with the tree lit up and candles burning.

Amaia doesn't seem to notice the tree unless I bring her right up next to it.  She reaches her hand out to touch the tree, but then retracts and soon as her fingers touch the needles, then repeats the whole process.  So dainty and cute.

Thankful

I have approximately five-hundred-zillion things to be thankful for.  But obviously I don't have the ability to write down five-hundred-zillion things, so here are just a few....

The most amazing husband who is simultaneously my bff and the most loving and fun dad.  He is also an amazing provider, servant heart and loving/fun to be around guy. I mean I can't say enough good things about him.

A beautiful, healthy and fun little ball of joy whom we like call Amaia Ruth or pookie or Amaia the papaya.

The knowledge and reality that God loves us!  He isn't a big, unknowable God looking down upon us.  He wants us to know him.  He has gone way out of his way so that we can know Him.  He orchestrates events in our  daily life so that we would seek him and be in relationship with him.  I think that is amazing.  I come back to this verse time and time again.  I love this truth.

"From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us."  -Acts 17: 27-28


Did you want to read a super cute story that Adam showed me last night that illustrates my point?? Click here

AND I am thankful for the little things.  Like these gorgeous flowers (leftover from my sister's wedding) gracing my table and the fact that someday I will have to be a big girl and cook my own Thanksgiving meal, but this is not that year!   So...I guess I am thankful that we have amazing families that love us and bless us with so many things and that is not a little thing :)

9 Months!!

My sweet Amaia,

You are 9 months old!  I can hardly believe it.  I feel like you are officially an old baby and now we are just on the countdown to your first birthday!  You are an absolute joy.  Your dad once said to me, "Amaia brings joy to all who are around".  That is so true.  So many people love you so much and so many people comment to me how beautiful you are.  You are the definition of precious.

You are up to a lot of new things!  Sometimes it seems like you do something new practically every day.  I love to watch you learn new things and see how happy it makes you.  A few weeks ago you started to clap and you have loved it ever since.  You figured it out all on your own and you do it all the time.  It brings you so much joy.  You clap on your own and you clap almost any time that we sing, "pattycake, pattycake" to you.  You are making lots of new sounds.  Specifically, the "G" sound.  You are also pulling up to stand all the time and waving to a select few people, most of whom are strangers :)

You are thinking about crawling and have been for a while.  You get up on your hands and knees, but then you typically decide that is waaaay to much work and you roll to your desired location.  Your doctor predicted that you will skip crawling and go straight to walking.  We will see!

This is my best attempt to capture your new face where you squint your eyes and smile really, really big.  It is so cute!!  You love to make your face at strangers when we are running errands.

You have also started eating some finger foods.  Cheerios seem to bring you much joy!  We have cheerios with us at all times.   I have also been giving you little pieces of banana and other soft foods that we are having for dinner.  I find it so fun to give you "big people food".  You don't have teeth yet, but you do chew and you seem to enjoy having pieces of food.

You are still a growing girl.  Here are your official stats:

Weight - 17 lbs. 14 oz. (32nd Percentile)
Height - 27 1/2 inches (47th Percentile)
Head - 18 1/4 inches (96th Percentile)

I can't describe to you how much I love you.  I have been thinking about what a blessing it is that I get to be at home with you every day to take care of you.  I am really excited for the next month.  You will get to experience your first Thanksgiving and your first Christmas season.  I have a feeling you are going to love it!  Lots of pretty lights to look at, new foods to try and wrapping paper to rip into pieces!!  I love you girl!

Love,
Mommy

Little Sis Gets Married

My baby sister got married this weekend.  I failed to take even a single picture.  Of course there were many great things I could have taken pictures of...the really cool, modern hotel that we also got to stay in, the fun decor (leaves, lanterns, apples and candles) and of course the BRIDE! My mom came to the rescue with a few pictures and I guess that is why you hire a photographer for these occasions.  I might just have to do another post once we have pictures from the photographer.

The day went really well.  We were really thankful for good weather.  Cloudy but in the 40's which is really, really good for the end of November if you ask me.  I still wore a very warm sweatshirt the majority of the day.  I really enjoyed getting to know some of Jessica's friends and just having some girl time while we got ready together during the day.  I even got to have my hair done.  Woot! Woot! If someone wanted to do my hair for me every day I would be quite okay with that.

Me and beautiful bride.

Also, this is kind of off topic, however if you know me well, you know that I am semi-obsessed with scones.  I just love them.  This all started with a scone that I had from a place called Lazy Janes in Madison, WI.  The best scone I have had ever.  Well, Lazy Janes has some serious competition in Iowa City.  If you are in Iowa City you need to go to the Bread Garden and get a scone.  You just must.  Adam seconds my opinion and he is kiiiiiiind of particular about food, so you know this is legit advice.

Okay, back to the wedding!!

Here is a fun picture of the bride and groom and their first sight of one another.

And now for the second most beautiful girl of the evening....lil' miss Amaia Ruth!!  She was just a vision in her pretty dress.  I think this is quite possible the fanciest dress she has ever worn in her young life.  Ashley (Adam's sister) came to take care of Amaia during the wedding.  I could not have asked for a better person to take care of my little girl.  It was such a blessing to not have to worry about her AT ALL.

True to myself I was stressed about the weekend.  Mostly about giving a speech and about how Amaia would do.  Honestly, you would think that I would learn to not stress, because things always go better than I expect.  Amaia did have a little trouble getting to sleep in a new place, but all in all she did very well.  I think my speech went well too.  I made Jessica laugh, so that has to be a good sign :)  It was a wonderful weekend and I was really happy for my little sister!  Congratulations Jessica and Steve! 

Sewing 101

Until recently, the extent of my sewing skills was the locker caddy I was required to make in middle school.  However, I have really been wanting to learn.  There are about a million cute things that I would love to make for Amaia and other sweet kiddos in my life and I think it is just a good life skill to have.  So Adam's mom also known as Grammie gave me a lesson this week.  I was SO excited!  My first project was baby leggings out of old knee-high socks.  Of course, the inspiration came from my current favorite website, Pinterest.  This was my inspiration:

And here is how they turned out.  I had a very cute, yet very squirmy model :)

 Don't worry - I won't really have Amaia wear these with just a shirt and diaper.  Not out of the house anyways :)

 And yes she is playing with my bottle of pre-natal vitamins - a strict-supervision, but favorite activity of hers.

 Super sweet baby feet

I actually made four pairs and I think they turned out super cute!!  And they look way cuter on her any day.

Grammie also helped me make a pillow cover.  She made a pattern and helped me every step of the way, but it was much easier than I expected.  Plus, there is something about working with my hands that is just enjoyable to me....maybe that is weird.  But I digress...we made a sweet pillow for Amaia.

These pictures are funny to me, because they also show several things that Amaia is very into as of late: sticking her tongue out, clapping, and rolling around on the ground.  Amaia discovered that she can clap last week and now does it on command if you sing "Patty cake, Patty cake...".  We think it is pretty much the cutest thing ever.

We also had music 101 today.  Kidding.  Sort of.  I don't know if every baby is like this, but Amaia loves all things music, so I let her play the guitar with today.  She requires supervision due to the fact that she plays the guitar more like a drum than a guitar.

And here are a few outtakes that prove that babies take after their parents.

Exhibit A: Mommy opening her mouth wide trying to get Amaia to smile and Amaia just opening her mouth.

 Exhibit B: Mommy having weird crossed eyes and Amaia doing the same.

Yes, I just put two very weird pictures of myself on the internet.  Oh well :)

Family Pictures, 2011 Edition

I am rather behind the times on this post, BUT the amazing and talented Justin Meyer took some family photos for us a few weeks back.  They turned out so well (of course!).  My favorite thing is how they capture some of the sweet and funny faces Amaia makes all the time that my camera isn't quick enough to catch.  Obviously I am biased, but I don't really ever get tired of looking at these pictures.  Without further ado here are a few of my favorites...

Mommy & Amaia....oooh my heart is melting

Love him so!!!

This is soooo a face that she makes. ha.

Not sure that I will ever tire of taking family pictures

Love, love, LOVE this one.  She is just precious.

If you are interested in looking at the rest (and there are a lot more) you can see them here.