Pumpkin Patch 2011

We are really, really, really enjoying having Adam home this beautiful, fall, Saturday morning.  Can you sense my enthusiasm?!  This is the first Saturday he has been home (and not working) in quite some time and it feels so sweet! We all dressed in our Hawkeye best this morning and visited the pumpkin patch with my mom.  This year we visited the one that is less than 10 minutes from our house and free.  I am excited to visit some of the pumpkin patches with more activities in the years to come, but if Amaia doesn't care I am all about not spending the money!  Actually, I guess it's not even technically a pumpkin patch, but all I really wanted to do was take pictures of my little pumpkin amongst a bunch of other pumpkins and that we did!  We took lots of pictures.

Amaia is just over the two feet mark this year.  It will be craziness to see how much she grows in the next year.  This week I was looking at the outfits she wore when we first brought her home from the hospital and I can't believe how much bigger she is already!

 I promise this was not posed!  Adam is just a good photographer and captured us in our natural element :)

 Amaia has learned to have hi and bye!!  I think it is so fun!  I love that she is starting to communicate with us a bit more.

Love

We have been really, really lucky to have a couple of fun photo shoots lately.  I am excited to share more pictures soon, but here is just one for today - taken by Aunt Ashley!!  I love, love, love this picture!!  If I still worked at a desk, it would be framed where I could stare at it all day long!!  Okay I will stop my over-use of exclamation points now :)

8 Months!!

My sweet Amaia,
Wow you are 8 months old!  Yet again, another month has gone by so quickly.  Your daddy and I love you so much.  We are always talking about how precious you are and how we are so, so thankful that we get to be your parents.  You are such a joy to us!  One of my favorite new developments is how you fall asleep on my shoulder.  You get very sleepy at the end of your nighttime feeding and after we are done I bring you up to my shoulder and we cuddle for a few minutes before putting you to bed.  You just lay your head on my shoulder and I rub your back and cuddle with you. I don't know if you love this time of day as much as I do, but I love it SO MUCH.  I love holding you and cuddling you and just thinking about how thankful I am to have you in my life.

You are still growing, growing, growing (17 lbs. 7 oz. now!) and your personality is emerging more and more all the time.  I am always trying to figure out your personality.  So far, you seem to be a very observant little girl.  You love to watch people and your eyes get so big when you are watching something.  Whenever we go somewhere new it seems that you like to sit back and observe before getting too comfortable.  After a few minutes your smiles come back and you are ready to play.  It just takes you a few minutes to warm up to new situations - much like your mommy.  You still love music.  I wonder if this means you will love music when you get older too.  You love "I'm a Little Teapot" and "You are my Sunshine" - those are our songs.  You also love to have daddy play his guitar for you.  If you are upset it is almost the only thing that is sure to help you calm down.   You also love the bath.   I get you clean as quick as I can and then I help you sit up and let you splash to your hearts content.

We have been working on eating a variety of foods this month.  You have come a long way in a month's time.  You are now eating rice cereal, oatmeal, green beans, peas, squash and applesauce.  Surprisingly you seem to really like your veggies, but are quite opposed to applesauce.  I am also trying to get you to try carrots, but you are not a fan of those right now either. You don't seem to like anything the first few times you try it - but you are very good sport about it.  I can tell that you don't like something when you make your "mom, this is disgusting" face and roll it around in your mouth.  However, you will usually take at least a few bites of something that I can tell you don't like before totally refusing it.

You are also getting so strong!  I am amazed by how sometimes it seems that you might be stronger than me!  Ha!  Is that even possible?? :)  You are getting close to crawling.  You get up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth.  You don't last too long yet.  I'm sure that is quite the big workout for you!  On the day you turned 8 months old your strength also got you into trouble.  I was holding you and you jerked yourself back so suddenly that I dropped you and rolled down the stairs.  It was truly the scariest moment of both your daddy and I's lives.  We are beyond thankful that you are okay.  I am still emotional about the whole ordeal.  Needless to say I am now very careful to hold onto you tightly now and we will be getting gates very soon in anticipation of you crawling!

You are so precious to us little girl.  I love spending my days with you and your daddy and I just love you so much.  Keep being cute and loveable, because you are awfully good at it!
Love,
Mommy

Amaia's First Trip to the ER

As the title of this post suggests, last night was one of scariest moments of my life.  My sweet, precious girl had quite the fall and we had quite the scare.

After dinner Adam and I were standing at the top of a half flight of stairs that goes down into our entryway.  I was holding Amaia and Adam says that she suddenly arched her back to lean backwards.  To be honest, I can't remember how she fell - it was a blur to me. She feel from my arms to the floor and then rolled down the stairs landing in our entryway.  Adam immediately leaped down the stairs to try to catch her, but she was just out of his reach.  She immediately started crying and we called 911.  The medics arrived within 10 minutes.  They looked her over and thought she looked ok externally, but thought we should still take her to the ER to have her checked out.  The poor girl cried and cried and cried all the way too the hospital. I think she would have gone to sleep at this point, but I was trying to keep her awake out of fear of a concussion.  At the hospital they checked her out and thought everything looked fine, but wanted us to stay for another couple hours just to observe her.  At this point I feed her and shortly after she was her normal self again.  She cracked a few smiles, started talking again and was playing -- Adam and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  She slept on my shoulder for awhile at the hospital which was even sweeter given the circumstances and they sent us home with instructions to let her sleep, but check on her every couple hours through the night.  She slept peacefully all night.

The scene keeps replaying in my mind and I feel sick to my stomach every time.  I know that it was a total accident, but I just can't believe that I let it happen.  I honestly feel so guilty. But I did learn some things last night.  I learned that Amaia is my heart living outside of my body. I feel like my whole being just wants to guard her from every bad thing.  It's a feeling I haven't experienced before. And I learned the kind of father Adam is.  I witnessed his first instinct of absolute courage and protection.  He was amazing.

I am just so thankful that she is okay.  I am so thankful for the Lord's protection of her and I am so thankful that He has specifically designed little ones to be able to take these types of falls.  And I am so thankful for the many, many family and friends of ours that prayed for Amaia and just cared about us.  Clearly, I am not the only one that loves this little girl.

3 Years!!

Adam and I celebrated our THIRD wedding anniversary yesterday! Three years sounds like a good chunk of time to me, but it has gone by fast!  I am so blessed to call this man my husband.   I can easily say that I love him more now than I did on our wedding day.  He is such an honorable, wonderful man.  He works so hard and loves Amaia and I so well.  It is easy to have a lot of respect for him, but he is also the best friend I have ever had without a doubt.  We had so much fun together this weekend!

We had a two day celebration of our anniversary.  We got to spend all of Sunday and Monday together! This is what I woke up to on Sunday morning....beautiful, unique flowers.

On Sunday morning we did our usual routine of sleeping in, picking up breakfast and coffee and relaxing with one another while Amaia napped.  Then we went to a park with Aunt Ashley and took some family fall pictures.  I am so excited to see them and share them soon!  After that we watched the Hawkeyes beat Northwestern! 

Sometimes I wish that Adam and I were the type of couple that enjoyed biking together or hiking or running....but actually our favorite pastime is eating :)  So the rest of our anniversary celebrations included lots of yummy food.  On Sunday night we went out to a nice dinner.  It was a new restaurant that we were not particularly impressed with, but we still had a great time together.  We came home, put Amaia to bed and then I made Adam watch our wedding video together while eating dove chocolates - yum!

On Monday morning, Adam blindfolded me to take me to a surprise breakfast spot.  It was La Mie!  Very good choice!  Best scones in the greater Des Moines area in my opinion.

Here is our little family on our anniversary day.

And is Amaia not the cutest thing ever??  I love that hat on her.

The rest of the day we relaxed, had a mini Office marathon and ended our day with dinner at Zombie burger and bible study.

It was just a lovely, relaxing day.  And it is always nice to have a helper around the house to hang out with and feed Amaia her peas.

This morning we are just playing and missing him.  Amaia wanted to wear her I love dad shirt!

AND last, but certainly not least we got a wonderful anniversary present last week -- Adam put in his two week notice to quit working his second job!!  We had been praying about this for a while and God made it clear that it was the right decision.  I am obviously so excited about this development!!  But it was also really exciting to see how clearly the Lord answered our requests for direction on this situation. I found it so amazing that God cares for us so much to give us clarity in a such a seemingly small matter.  I am so excited for him to have time to other things than work and of course to be home with us more!!   

Wonderful Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend!  It was relaxing....yet not boring, which makes for a great weekend in my opinion.

Adam does not work on Friday nights anymore, which makes Friday night feel a little more like Friday night to us :)  This Friday we joined my parents for dinner at Mama Lacona's for some yummy Italian food.  I didn't snap any pictures.  I have found it challenging to keep Amaia from grabbing anything on the table AND take pictures at the same time.  I would rather hold her any day, but I want to get better at recruiting others to take pictures for me.  The worst part of the weekend came when we got home on Friday night to find a LARGE spider on our kitchen floor.  I may have gotten a little worked up, but I did manage to take care of the spider.  Adam was a bit concerned that my shreiks would alarm sweet Amaia, but she was unphased.  She just looked at me as if to say "Mom, seriously?!  You are scared of that little thing?? "

On Saturday morning Amaia and I got to go to La Mie with Aunt Ashley and Grandma Deanne.  In case you didn't know - I am semi-obsessed with scones and La Mie has the best in town!  Then we came home and I cleaned while Amaia slept, we went to meet Adam for lunch and then watched the rest of Iowa game....possibly the low point of the weekend.  I sneaked in a nap too.  Sometimes I think that a 10 minute snooze on the couch is the best sleep I get. Saturday night Aunt Ashley came with us to church!!  Have I mentioned that Amaia and are really enjoying having Aunt Ashley back in town!! :)   Amaia did really well at church too.  A couple weeks ago I finally relented and changed Amaia's bedtime to be a bit earlier, but Saturday nights are our exception to that rule.  Being at church together is just too darn important.  But, I have been nervous about how she would do at church since it is technically past her bedtime.  However, so far, so good!

I did get one picture of my beautiful girl before we left in the morning on Saturday.


On Sunday we slept in, which was much needed!  In the afternoon we went to the world food festival downtown.  It was a very popular destination which made it difficult to manuever with a stroller.  We ended up eating at a new resturaunt downtown that we have been wanting to try - Zombie Burger.  Adam had a burger that had two grilled cheese sandwiches as the bun.  Ugh SO unhealthy!  But I guess Sunday is our "cheat" day, so I allowed it :)

Amaia says "hi" to you!


In the evening we relaxed at home and watched the Green Bay Packers beat the Atalanta Falcons!

Amaia watched part of the game with us too!

She got pretty excited at some parts.


Adam worked on teaching Amaia to crawl!  She is oh so close!  She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth.  It doesn't usually last too long and there has been no forward motion yet, but any day now I have a feeling!

Fall in Our Home

Have I mentioned that I LOOOOOOOVE fall.  I love the open windows and cool air, I love wearing layers and scarves, I love pumpkin spiced lattes, apple cider, apple cake, candles, being cozy on the couch....i even get excited about football season.  Now if only the weather would remember that it is fall :)

This is what fall looks like at our house....

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins!

 Sqaush, nutella (with cinnamon graham crackers!), lasagna, tea, candy corn and of course pumpkin all speak of fall to me.  I am semi-obsessed with this new Kashi cereal and I also should have included apples in this picture.  I tried a honeycrisp apple and a sweet tango apple for the first time this year.  I know everyone loves honeycrisp, but the sweet tango was about 1,000,000 times better in my opinion.  So good!

 And I finished my yarn wreath!!

What is your favorite thing about fall?

Photo Shoot

Aunt Ashley came over the other day to use up the rest of a roll of film on Amaia.  They turned out so well!!  I didn't even know about her hidden talent!  I will definitely be trying to get her to bring her camera over more often. Here are just a few of my favorites...