Day 316: Playing outside

A beautiful day for a hippo ride.

Day 271: FNG Welcoming committee

"Auntie" Krista and "Uncle" Joe got quite the welcoming committee at Friday Night Group this week. Even more amazing was that most of the parents managed to stay past 9 pm tonight, and we even worked in a game of Settlers of Catan. I should add a picture of Krista holding the newest member of the FNG, Kelly and Phill's baby Michael.

Day 244: Baby shower

We had a little baby shower for my cousin Leslie today. She's due in late July with her second child. Her other child is a boy named Tristin (pictured below) whom Zaria enjoyed bugging. She was feeling much better today and enjoyed making the rounds. She thought that Tristin's paying attention to a video game was a great reason to stand right in front of his face and babble to him. It was probably good practice for him to be an older brother soon.

Day 102: Making cookies and baby shower

Sadly, I don't have any pics from Angela and Barry's baby shower. I was in charge of games, so I ended up being a little too busy between heading stuff up and keeping an eye on Zaria (or making sure Jamin or someone else was). It was a lot of fun to get a baby boy name game together and hear everyone try to think of songs with "baby," "born" or "birth" in them. This was a variation from a shower the Friday Night Group did for me. I thought it would be a little easier to have the 3 words to think of since they're in a lot of Christmas songs, but I think I only heard 5 or 6 Christmas songs. We only made it around the group 3 or 4 times, but it was a pretty big group so that's understandable. It was pretty funny that Pastor Matt ended up winning the game with "Baby Got Back." Angela & Barry are cloth diapering, so we got them a bunch of Fuzzi Bunz, and the last game was a diaper-changing contest that Jamin won. (=

I also baked cookies today with my mom, which was really fun. I made some pretty complicated cookies-- Bittersweet chocolate cream cheese cookies which you coat with vanilla flavored candy coating and sprinkle with peppermint candy bits. I also did some cinnamon and some spearmint for color and taste preferences (there's a couple of people at the cookie exchange that don't like mint). I ran out of vanilla candy coating, so ended up finishing my bag of chocolate chips and using the melted chips for topping. They looked beautiful and Christmasy, but it was a LOT of work. I was glad to have Mom's help to take trays out of the oven and watch Zaria while I had fun making candy cane, snowman and Christmas tree shapes out of the dough.

Day 64: The long journey home

We left at about 9 am EST and arrived home at about 11 pm Central. For those of you that aren't math wizes and are as confused as I get about travel time changes mixed with daylight savings time changes, that means we spent about 15 hours in the car. With a baby. Long, long day. But we had this short respite in Milwaukee by Lake Michigan. We took a short walk by the beach, wondering why there weren't more people out on such a lovely (if cold) evening. We sort of figured it out when we smelled the dead fish nearby. It was still very beautiful. We bundled Zaria up in this cute little bundler that looks a bit like a starfish. I had almost gotten rid of it because I thought she wouldn't fit in it this year, but my mom rescued it and it was nice to have along.

Day 53: Beautiful day for a walk

Jamin ended up having the day off with me today, and we both got to take Zaria out for a walk. It was pretty cute how she kept looking up to see us and smile at us. Maybe not so cute how she kept taking her sunglasses off and then whined whenever the sun got to her eyes.

Day 51: Blessings from "Auntie Jen"

I mentioned last week (or recently) at Mother's Fellowship that I was in need of some 12-18 month girl clothes. I took a photo so I could remember which clothes I got from Jen-- she handed me quite a stack, and may need them back if they have another girl, so I wanted to keep track. What a great blessing!

We were sharing in our Mother's Fellowship group how we became friends and the strange circumstances of us knowing each other's husbands before we had met them. We realized that was also true for Nikki, Jen's sister-in-law, who is also in our mothers group. Both their husbands went to Bethel, my alma mater, and Jamin went to the U of M Twin Cities where Nikki and Jen went. I met Jen at the U of M's Campus Ambassadors group, which I believe no longer exists. I came with Jamin, and that week they had decided we should all pick accountability partners. Jen and I were the only females, so we ended up together and hit it off really well. We've been accountability partners now for about 8 years, I think. It was a little harder while I lived in Portland and we had to just talk over the phone, but we always kept in touch, and our friendship has been an incredible blessing over the years.

Day 44: Zaria is 10 months old

Ten months old today. She's now about 22 lbs, has her first tooth just poking through, and currently enjoys pulling herself up on things, like my DNA painting. She's got one foot on the primordial soup, and she's grabbing at the scripture on the side to help herself up. Actually, maybe that's a good thing.

Day 35: Infant sleeping changes

We helped in the nursery today and I couldn't get Zaria to go to sleep. I wonder if she might've gotten to sleep if I hadn't been there. Judy, the nursery worker knows her pretty well and has had success in the past. But we had similar troubles at the Walker yesterday trying to let her sleep in the stroller-- she has trouble sleeping anywhere but in her own bed, it seems. I had to laugh when she finally did fall asleep in her bed this afternoon with three pacifiers, as you can see here.

Day 29: Home from Grandma's

My mom loves being a grandma and takes Zaria home with her any chance she can get. Lately, she's been taking her for a few hours in the evening so that I can get some studying/work done. I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to depend on this, but it will definitely free up some more secure time to be able to work at home if it can continue. So this is a familiar scene right now, Mom coming in the front door with a sleepy Zaria in her arms. Zaria will usually get to sleep in the car on the way home and be pajamaed and bleary-eyed when she comes in the door. She loves having time with Grandma and is often quite tired after playing with Grandma and Grandpa in the evening.

Day 28: Our little Vikings fan

Both Jamin and Zaria wore purple today! I think it might not have been intentional on Jamin's part, but it was still fun. I'm a huge home team sports fan. I'm not sure where this comes from, but I do get pretty excited cheering for the Twins or Vikings or the Wild or my old high school or college teams. Jamin's never been a big sports fan, so as you can see I'm trying to let Zaria in on my fun by helping her be a fan. She enjoys clapping her hands lately, so she's off to a great start. We went to my mom and stepdad's place for the game, which the Vikings lost to the Green Bay Packers, so this is some post-game fun, hoping that our little cheerleader can help them into a victory next time.

Day 15: Laundry and snot

This adorable nose produced a lot of snot today. But that didn't stop her from having fun riding a hippo.
Laundry is happening a lot more often now that we have cloth diapers. I'm really enjoying the Fuzzi Bunz, but again, lots of laundry. I'm starting to figure out a better system for taking care of poopy ones. Oh Zaria, please don't grow out of this size for a while!

Day 13: Picnic

This is the Oriental Market, a store nearby where we bought some deli food for us and for our friends that just had a new baby. Congratulations, and welcome to baby Claire! Too bad I didn't have the camera with when we went on the picnic or seeing Claire, she is absolutely adorable. We ended up using Zaria's table-attaching chair on a park bench at the Walker Art Center, and since we forgot to bring a stroller we used the chair on Jamin's shoulders as we walked through the park.

Day 5: Anointing my baby's head

I'm finally doing what Z's doctor recommended and anointing her head with oil. They recommended vegetable oil. Baby oil smells much better. Here she is in her yellow Fuzzi Bunz diaper on the fun driving rug I got at a garage sale. So I put oil in to loosen her skin and then wash her scalp so we can get rid of her cradle cap. It's not bad and it doesn't bother her, but I felt it was time I got more proactive about it.