A Busy Seven Month Old

My, how time flies!!  It's hard to believe it's almost Christmas, and it's hard to believe that Grace is already seven months old. 

We have been extremely busy the last few weeks.  The first Saturday of December our church always holds a bake sale, and the day before the sale everyone gets together to make German pretzels.  This year Grace was able to come - she didn't help roll any, but she provided the entertainment!  She even had a front row seat - in a few years she'll be a professional pretzel roller.  She spent her time finding out what would happen if she dropped her toys in the container of flour :) 

She's gotten so good at sitting by herself that we stopped using the baby sling in the bathtub and now she gets to sit in it like a big girl.  She looks so stinking cute sitting in there with her chubby little legs balancing her!  I'm not sure if there's anything cuter than a baby in a bathtub or a baby sleeping!

We put the Christmas tree up two weeks ago, and I thought Grace would be more impressed with it, but she doesn't seem to care too much.  She was able to put her "Baby's First Christmas" ornament on the tree (with daddy's help!) that we bought for her in Frankenmuth.  Even though I was surprised at how little interest she showed in the tree, I have a feeling this is the last year that this will be the case!

Her favorite thing to do these days is spit all over the place.  It's cute, until she starts doing it while we're trying to feed her :)  She says "mamama" and "lalalala" but still no "dadada", much to Jeff's disappointment.  She also rolls all over the place, and she's started to kind of play peekaboo.  I don't think she necessarily knows what she's doing, but she'll hold her burpcloth above her head and then pull it down.  We think she's starting to wave some too.  When she sees me or Jeff she'll hold out one of her arms and kind of point/wave it around.  I have to say every day just gets better and better with her.  I read somewhere that colicky babies turn out to be good problem solvers when they are adults, so I figure Grace will be a genius :) 

Yesterday was a big day for me - it was my official last day as an employee of Visteon Corp.  I've decided to be a stay-at-home mom.  It was a scary decision to make, but it really wasn't necessarily a hard one.  It's scary to walk away from a decent job that pays well, especially in this economy, but I can't say that I have missed the job at all while I have been on my leave.  The only thing I've really missed is the people.  But in the end, I know being Grace's mom is the most important thing I can do, and after everything I went through to have her I can't imagine leaving her with someone else all day long.  I don't want to miss a moment of her life!  There have been days when taking care of her seems impossible and never-ending, but I know that every job in life feels like that sometimes, and I don't know if there's any other job that is more rewarding than watching your baby grow.   

I've been taking a Wilton decorating class at JoAnn's the last two weeks.  I had done some cake decorating in 4H when I was a kid, but that was more years ago than I care to think about!  I'd been wanting to take these classes for years, but with work schedules, etc. I never had the time.  I figured this could be "mommy's evening out" and I could finally take them!  I just finished the basics class and will be taking the fondant class in January.  What do you think of my final project (ignore the non-smooth icing!!)?

Hopefully I'll have a chance to post at least one more time before the end of 2010.  Lord knows I'll have enough to talk about - this Saturday we're having my niece's first birthday party at our house, Jeff's birthday is on Christmas Eve, we have two places to go on Christmas Day and the 26th, and we're having a New Year's Eve party at our house.  I'm not going to know what to do with myself once the holidays are done!!

Grace's First Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!  Grace had her fair share of celebrating - we had the Holleran Thanksgiving on Thursday, Thanksgiving at my mom's on Friday, and we hosted the Weidmayer Thanksgiving on Saturday.  It's been a busy weekend!  I thought it was interesting that the turkey we cooked for the Weidmayer Thanksgiving was bigger than Grace :) 

She had her six month check-up on the 15th, and she's still a tiny thing!  She weighed in at 15 lbs, 4 ozs and was 25 1/2" long.  Both were in the 37th percentile. 

Grace has changed a lot in the last few weeks.  She is starting to try to figure out the whole crawling thing - she likes to use the carpet to pull herself forward.  She mainly gets to what she wants by rolling - once she decides she wants something, she goes for it!  She is also super-fast at grabbing things.  It amazes me how quickly she sees something and then grabs for it.  We call her "Quick-Draw McGraw" :)  I think I won't have to diet once she starts crawling - I'll probably lose ten pounds just chasing her around!!

My sister, her husband, and her daughter were able to come up from North Carolina for the holiday.  Her daughter, Eliana, will be one on 12/24, so she and Grace are only about 5 months apart.  We haven't seen them since July when both girls were baptized, so it was great to see them, and to see the two girls play with eachother.  They still don't interact too much, but Grace was interested in Eliana's hair!!  Grace was also not intimidated that Eliana was bigger than her - if Eliana was playing with a toy and Grace wanted it, she just took it.  I think we'll have to work on the sharing thing once she's a little older! 

We tried to have the girls pics taken together in their Christmas dresses, but it was like they had planned on making it a disaster.  When one was happy the other was crying, and then they would switch roles.  We got a lot of pics of them crying!!  To be fair, they are both fighting colds so neither of them was at their best.

Grace has also started laughing more.  I had been disappointed at how little she laughed, since there's not much better than hearing a baby belly laugh!  I discovered that she's ticklish in her armpits, and she also cracks up when you throw food (like grapes or popcorn) and catch it with your mouth.  The other day Jeff and I were playing tennis on the Wii and she thought daddy was pretty funny looking when he played tennis! 

She's started making more word sounds - she says baba, lala, and sometimes mama.  She still doesn't have any teeth yet, so sometimes when she makes these sounds she looks like a little old man!! 

She is eating more solids too - she still prefers the vegetables over the fruit.  We also learned that bananas are a great cure for constipation in babies :)  And the biggest news of all - Grace has now slept swaddle-free both at night and during naptime for a week now - HALLELUJAH!!!

On Sunday we took my sister and her husband to the Red Wings game.  Her husband is in the Marines, and we've been to games before where they will show the names of all the servicemen and women that are at the game on the big screen.  We let them know that he would be there, thinking that they would put his name on the screen.  I'm not sure if that night there was a special tribute or if they've changed what they do to honor the vets that are there, but they lined all of them up and announced their names and showed their faces on the screen - it was awesome.  And the crowd is great about it, too - they all stand up and clap and scream.  I think my sister's husband thought it was pretty cool. 

Well, that's about it for now.  Hopefully I'll be able to post more soon - I just went through our plans for Christmas, and right now our next free weekend is in 2011!!