Viva Vivanno

Meet the VitaMix 5200.

I wanted a blender to make my own baby food for miss Amaia and Adam has talked about this blender ever since I have known him.   

Apparently it is royalty in the blender world.

It was sort an investment, but I think it already paid for itself.  This afternoon I made my version of the banana chocolate vivanno smoothie (ala Starbucks) and it changed my life.  Ha.  Okay, I don't know how much life change occurred, but it was rather amazing.

1 frozen banana + chocolate protein powder + 1 cup skim milk + 1 cup ice cubes +  1 squirt of chocolate syrup = deliciousness!!!

I highly recommend making this after a long walk in the sunshine.  

And really what kind of a blog post would this be without a picture of Amaia??  A boring one!  And who wants that?!

New Poll

Who do you think Amaia looks like?  Me? Adam? Neither of us?? :)

I put my first poll up.  Let me know what you think!

4 Months: A Letter

My sweet Amaia Papaya,

You are 4 months old!   I have heard and read from many sources that this is a great age and I totally agree.  You are so sweet and smiley.  I have been trying my hardest to get a laugh out of you.  I tickle you and sing you silly songs and we play peek-a-boo, but it hasn't happened quite yet.  I can tell that you are close though because you are so talkative.  

You become more lively every day it seems.  You think it is pretty fun to lift both of your legs up and then bring them down fast to make a big splash in the bath or shake up the toys in your play gym.  You get so excited!  You are loving your bathtime more and more too.  I wonder if you are going to a little fish girl that loves the water as you get older.  Although last night you seemed to think it was pretty fun to turn your face so that it is under water.  Not a fun idea sweetie.  You also love to hold onto your foot or stick your foot through the rings on your playgym.  You have rolled over both ways and you scoot all over the place in your crib at night.  I don't even know how you get some of places I find you in.

Another new development this month is that we moved to a 3 hour schedule.  Yea! I was excited about this, but I'm not sure that you even noticed.  Here what a typical day looks like for us:

5:30 - 6:30am Wake up and nurse.  We usually say hi to daddy quick and then you go right back to sleep

9:00 Nurse

10:45 Nap

Noon Nurse

1:45 Nap

3:00 Nurse

5:00 Nap

6:00 Nurse

8:00 - 9:00 Eat and bedtime.  

Of course we do various different things during the day in there.  We love our target walks with Julie and Oscar, walks with Daddy and bathtime in the evening.  

You have also developed a bit of a seperation anxiety this month.  You aren't quite sure about people other than mommy and daddy especially when you are tired.  You are kind of breaking the hearts of your grandparents so I hope that we can make it through this phase soon! 

We went to the doctor yesterday and got updated stats on your growth.  You now weigh 13 lbs. 4 oz (50th percentile) and you are 25.25 inches long (90th percentile).  I predict that you are going to be tall!  You were a happy smiley girl for the doctors visit and the doctor says you are doing great!  Of course then we had to get more shots and you cried longer and harder than last time.  I HATE putting you through that.  Ugh.  We also got the go ahead and start trying some rice cereal and orange veggies.  I am excited to see what you think of big people food!  I haven't noticed that you are too interested in food yet though, so I think we are going to wait another few weeks.

I love you so much sweet girl.  You are a joy.
Love,
Mommy

First Father's Day!

So everyone else that says they have the best husband/father is deceived, because I have him!  Okay - just kidding.  I know a lot of other pretty amazing fathers,  BUT Adam is for sure the best possible hubby and daddy for our little family.  He loves us so much and so well.  I wanted to make his first father's day special SO badly.  I really tried to come up with something he would love.  I don't think I came up with anything super great, but we still had a wonderful day.

Amaia got a new outfit for the occasion and we gave Adam a card and a framed picture of her for his desk at work.  Here are a few highlights of our daddy/daughter photo shoot in her cute new shirt.  Don't they look good together?!  Looking at these pictures now, I do think Amaia is looking a bit like her dad.

The only slightly rough part of the day was breakfast.  We headed out to the Machine Shed and we were clearly not the only ones that had the idea.  There were people waiting in the parking lot, in the lobby, in the gift shop - everywhere!  Scratch that idea.  We tried another local breakfast spot, which was another bad idea.  We ended up at the Hy-Vee breakfast buffet, which I had heard was pretty good.  I love Hy-Vee as a grocery store, but not as a breakfast spot.  I felt so guilty, but I fully plan on making it up by taking Adam to a good breakfast sometime soon.

Then we headed to the mall to walk around and work off some of the calories ( I swear this was Adam's idea!). Then we came home to feed miss Amaia and head off for the next Father's day excursion.  I considered this to be the main part of his "present".  You see my mom had some chocolates from Chocolaterie Stam on Christmas and Adam fell in love.  I made him wear a blindfold, but he still guessed where we were going.  We ate amazing gelato and chocolates.  We just love this place.

Next up was a more eating for Amaia, some relaxing and a duece to seven lowball heads up poker tourney of course!  According to Adam I don't understand basic strategy.  That might be true, but my strategy was to be unpredictable.  Admittedly this strategy didn't work out for me.  Apparently, laughing gives away a bluff :)  The winner and his winnings:

The rest of the day we relaxed a bit and met my parents and sis for dinner.  Amaia was a trooper.  All weekend we were on the go, which meant not very good naps for our little one.  She was in great spirits until the end of dinner on Sunday night.  I knew she was tired so we left dinner for a moment to take a drive in the hopes she would fall asleep.  We drove less than a block before she was out for the count and slept through the rest of dinner.  It was a lovely first Father's Day.  I hope Adam thought so too!

The Many Faces of Amaia

The "mommy please don't leave me" face

The peaceful sleeping face.

The baker's assistant face.

The "what is that shiny thing that you keep pointing at me??" face

Updates

A few people have asked me how my foil experiment went, so I thought I would give a little update.  My theory was proved false!  It doesn't seem to have made any difference in how late Amaia is sleeping.  She still is waking up in the 5 o'clock hour.  However, I was thinking and reading and researching about this more and I don't think it is actually a problem.  My expectations of her might be more of the problem.  My sweet gal is only approaching 4 months of age, which really is not very old and she is sleeping 7-9 hours at night.   We have been following the methods of the Babywise book (which has worked wonderfully!) and according to the book I shouldn't really be letting her sleep longer than 9 hours right now for the sake of my milk supply anyways.  I am still hoping that as she gets older and as we start to introduce solid foods in the coming months that she will be able to sleep longer.  When she wakes in the morning I can tell that she is hungry so I will keep be a morning person for my little Amaia papaya.

In other news...I joined twitter.  I don't really know what to tweet or how to tweet to be honest.  So...if anyone wants to give me a lesson???? :)

I joined twitter because I had to to a start an account pinterest.  I joined pinterest in order to start gathering ideas for Amaia's first birthday party or shall I say Amaia's First Birthday Brunch and Bash.  Too early?!  Obviously I am a planner by nature.  But I am excited about the ideas I have so far!

Tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary of the day I found out that Amaia was a little growing girl inside of me (and my friend Sarah and Jed's first wedding anniversary!!) and I was so scared!!!  My how much changes in a year.  It was a little silly to be so scared, she brings me more joy than pretty much anything else in this world.

We are going to the doctor on Monday for her 4-month check up.  So excited to see how much she weighs and all her stats and to ask my many questions!!  So NOT excited for more shots.  Ugh.

Maybe someday I will write a post that is not almost entirely about Amaia....but maybe not :)

A Great Start to a Great Weekend

This morning was perfect weather for our first outing to the downtown farmer's market.  Crisp and cool and wonderful.  We had some great company too.

 Meet Grandma Jeanette and Aunt Jessica

We met my mom and sis down there for some yummy breakfast sandwiches, bad coffee and lots of perusing.  I did purchase some mango peach jam - yum!  A couple summers ago we received a gift of homemade jam for helping out at the farmer's market and I became a jam snob.  I just don't think I can go back to the store bought kind. But I digress... Amaia was her usual self for our outing: happy, then crabby and tired, then sleeping.  Technically Amaia and I have been to the farmer's market together many times while she was in utero, but I hope to go many more times.  I love it down there!  And there were some mighty cute things I might buy for her when she gets older: hawkeye everything, tyke sized aprons, strawberry smoothies.  

Amaia is a wonderful, happy girl.  She is becoming more lively all of the time and I am really enjoying being a witness to it.  I can tell that she is becoming more interested in her toys, she is trying to sit up and she has taken quite the liking to music.  She loves when I sing to her and Adam played her songs on the guitar the other night when she was starting to get fussy and that seemed to solve her problem right away.  As Adam says "Amaia brings joy to all that are around".  Ha.  That is cheesy, but she sure brings me joy every day.  Especially when she gives me her little gummy grin.   That pretty much makes any day way better.

An Experiment

Amaia is still waking up pretty early in the morning...anywhere between 5 and 6 am, after going to sleep around 10pm.  Maybe she truly is hungry.  Maybe she is a morning person.  That doesn't seem like enough sleep for a baby to me, so I have a new theory and I am testing it out!  

And...my experiement includes aluminum foil on the window.  Ha! People are going to think I am a weirdo.

Yesterday, I was walking and talking with my good friend Julie and we theorized that our babies sleep later on dark and stormy mornings.  However, being a SAHM doesn't pay super well and I didn't want to invest in heavy curtains if my theory is false.

We will see what tomorrow morning brings.

 
And here is Amaia watching me put up the foil and thinking that she has a crazy momma!  Maybe this is her first experience of being embarrased by me :)