Great Vacay!

We're nearing the end of our week long hiatus from work and let me tell you...it was a much needed break for us! We started off by spending July 4th at one of the local beaches. It was a perfectly sunny day without being too hot. We set up camp in our sun shade, let Parker play with the sand (which we soon realized was a big mistake since "playing" = trying to make it her afternoon snack) and hopped in the water. Parker absolutely loved the lake. She was kicking her feet all around and had a great time people watching.

Here we are trying the sun shade out in the house. I was so excited to get this thing and had to open it immediately. Yes, things like sun shades get me excited now. We had fun playing in it for quite a while :) I'm truly a kid at heart! As you can see in the photos, Parker is trying her hardest to crawl. She has everything down pat and has for a while--the up on all fours, moving her knees and hands...it's just coordinating everything together so that she goes forward. We've had some movement that is borderline crawling, but no racing across the floor just yet. She gets around though on her butt and tummy. Crawling will come soon enough though!



















































































































































I had to dig out my point and shoot for the beach. I didn't want to risk getting sand in my DSLR plus the heat isn't good for the camera body so I left it at home. The wanna-be photographer in me cringed at the thought of leaving my lovely camera at home but I still got some cute, though low quality, shots of my wonderful family! We have some shots of Parker eating toast with a mango spread, us in the water, and some self portraits ;)

























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































I have much more to post later on about our time in Hocking Hills and Athens. Stay tuned!

Happy 4th of July!!

Too Big

I need to get better about when I publish a post. I was looking through my blog dashboard and came across this one from a month ago!

I wrote in the 8 Month post about how Parker has outgrown many things this past month, the Rock n Play being one of them. We realized she was too big when, instead of laying back and relaxing like you're supposed to, she started to sit up in it!

Daycare Thinks I'm Crazy

And so does Kris most of the time. But that's a whole different post ;)

Up until a few weeks ago I have been bringing a mix of purees and mashed food for Parker to eat at daycare. While we do baby led weaning 95% of the time at home I wasn't comfortable yet with Parker self feeding at daycare. There's always a chance that she could choke, though very slight, and I didn't want to put Parker or daycare in that position when I wasn't around.

One teacher at daycare has been bugging me for weeks to allow Parker to have Cheerios. I get that most babies out there eat Cheerios. I really do. Call me crazy, but I don't want Parker's little belly being filled up by Cheerios at the moment. I'd rather have her eat something a bit healthier, like bananas, apples, avocado, etc. So I've been declining the offer to have Parker shove Cheerios in her mouth. The teacher mentioned that she thinks that Parker really wants to have Cheerios because she sees the other babies (older than her) self feeding so she wants to do the same. So I said fine, we'll start BLW at daycare!

The next day I brought in broccoli florets for Parker. She's a champ at eating broc so I wasn't worried about anyone needing to practice their CPR moves. When I saw the daycare teacher the next morning at drop off the first thing she said to me was, "I thought you were crazy yesterday when I saw those broccoli florets!" She thought there was no way that Parker would be able to self feed and not choke. Both teachers said that in all their years of experience they have never seen a baby so young be able to self feed, use their mouth to chew the food, and not gag. Proud mama moment right here! I love how shocked the teachers are each time I bring in a new BLW food--potato sticks, carrot sticks, avocado slices, baby sized omlettes...they can never believe that Parker is able to do it!

Parker loves broccoli. Loves it. Tries-to-shove-as-many-pieces-of-broccoli-in-her-mouth-as-she-can loves it. It's such an easy baby led weaning food because Parker can grab onto the stem of the floret and nom on the top. BLW people say to put whatever food in front of the baby and let them choose how much they want to eat. Ha. Yeah right. If I keep a plate of broccoli in front of Parker she goes nuts. She grabs onto the florets with both hands and tries to shove them in her mouth before chewing all the food that's already in there. Since I don't want to practice any sort of baby Heimlich I have to keep the tray out of her reach.

Here are some pics and videos! Can you tell that Parker loves her broc? :)