Lydia: 6-7 Months

Our baby is seven months old. She is quite possibly the cutest little seven month old baby in the history of the world. (Biased much?) Seriously, every day I think "Oh my goodness, look at how cute she is!" at least one hundred times. This month could probably be summed up in two words: solid food. Our whole routine revolves around feeding her. (Right now we are just eating solid foods two times a day, after the noon nap and then again around six o'clock.) It has been quite the adventure for us. At this point in time Lydia loves sweet potatoes, apples, bananas, prunes, carrots, and peaches. She doesn't really care for peas, but if she is anything like her mama (or her grandpa) she will learn to love them soon. Like pretty much everything in life, she is such a great little eater. We are so lucky to have this little Lyddiebug in our lives. 

Lydia didn't have a seven month checkup so I don't know her stats, but she is growing every day. She is a little on the petite side, which is great - because I just found a bin of six month clothes that hadn't been labeled and they are SO cute! She still fits great in those six month outfits (and I just put away some 3 month ones that still fit pretty well, but had to be moved out for the new clothes to come in.) She is still in size two diapers, although I think that next time we buy diapers we might move her up into size threes. Her little feet still fit into her size one shoes, but they are a little snug and we are going to have to move up a size there as well.  Thats about all I have as far as stats go.

Like I said above, L is a great eater. Plus, she looks so cute, even with rice cereal all over her face. 

Other things that Lydia has been up to this month: 

--She is just so interested in everything around her. I love to watch her as she examines things closely. She will look at it, play with it in her fingers, put it in her mouth, then pull it out and look at it again. She is so curious and excited about everything.  She concentrates so hard, and it's darling. 

You can see her concentrating on a kitchen spoon in this picture.

 Lydia is a champion sitter now. She can lean over to pick up a toy, turn herself to the side, or bend over to eat her toes and still pull herself back up. It doesn't even phase her anymore. (This is one of my favorite little outfits - she just looks too darling with the orange and zebra print!)

--She LOVES ribbon. She was playing with a piece of ribbon from a present at my parents house, and she loved it so much we tied it on to her rattle. Now it's her favorite thing to play with. Then when we were at the Peaden house - she was in 7th heaven with all of the ribbon from Sue's birthday presents. She couldn't get enough. 

--Lydia still can't roll over from her tummy to her back. It's the silliest thing. She won't even try. She will roll over from her back, and then when she gets tired of being on her front she just flops down and cries. She will high center by flinging her arms and legs out, then collapse back down, but she doesn't even pretend to try to roll herself over. She is definitely strong enough - but she doesn't know that she can. If we ever try to help her roll, she just gets mad. It makes me laugh so much. I'm not really worried, because I know that all babies develop at their own pace. But honestly, I think that she will crawl before she can roll back over. 

--She has been sleeping much better in her bed the past few weeks. After Thanksgiving, we really started in with the sleep training and it definitely seems to be helping. We still haven't had a night where she sleeps all the way through, but now we have had several nights where she only wakes up once at 3 or 4 or 5. That is SO much better than the three times a night that we have been working with. 

--Naps have been varying a lot as well lately. Sometimes she still takes three naps (9,12, and 3), but other times she will sleep for longer during her nine nap, skip the noon nap, and take a pretty good afternoon nap. It's nice to have just two naps for a little longer than an hour, because I can get more done and I feel like she is more rested and ready to play when she is awake. 

 --She is still so good at traveling places with me. I take her grocery shopping, to the library, visiting teaching, and all my other errands and she is always so happy. We just stop periodically for a little food (Yay for nursing - I seriously love it.) and she is good to go. I'm grateful for such an easy going baby. Here is a picture of us at our house - posing for yet another picture with her crazy parents.

--Sometimes after we are finished eating, I will walk away to get a rag to clean her off and when I turn around she will be sucking the extra food off her bib. It kills me.

--Some of her clothes were getting a little tight, so I finally decided to switch out the 3-6 month clothes for the 6-9 month clothes. (We have been so blessed by so many people who have given us clothes that we have bins all the way up to 12 months, and we haven't hardly had to buy anything!) Then I found an extra bin of just 6 month clothes and they are seriously SO cute! This little hat came out of one of those bins and we just thought she was so sweet in in. I seriously am SO excited about all of the new clothes and can't decide which ones to put her in first because there are so many cute choices. 

-- Lyd LOVES tags. I don't know why, but if you give her something with a tag on it she will always find the tag and stick it in her mouth. Blankets, toys, clothes, and even her little changing mat. She is just so curious and can spend such a long time just inspecting the tags on her things. 

David was changing her into her pajamas, but was interrupted when she found the tag on her little mat. Then she totally stopped cooperating with him until she felt she had fully explored the little black tag. 

 --I had just changed Lydia's diaper, and had stood up to go wash my hands when I came back to this:

Serves me right for leaving the wipes container open. She was having so much fun. All smiles and giggles for me. Even when I pulled out the camera she kept playing because she was so pleased with herself. 

--Oh my goodness, the funniest thing - when we first started feeding Lydia, she would insist on feeding herself. She wouldn't open her mouth if I tried to feed her, but she would insist on grabbing the spoon and putting it in her mouth herself. It made life really easy for me, because we eat dinner at the same time. I get dinner ready for David and I, then stick L in her high-chair. Then I would scoop up a spoon for her, let her grab it, then eat a couple of bites myself while she was sucking all of the food off the spoon. She doesn't do it anymore - I think that she realized that it goes faster if I just feed her. But before she stopped, we were able to get a video of it - but I can't load it. I'll try later.

I know I say this every time, but we are so lucky to have this little girl in our lives. She brings us so much joy and happiness. We love you Lydia!

Kazakhstan 2012

Here are a few of our pictures from my adventures in Kazakhstan. You will notice most of them involve food since we work late and then try to find a good place to eat. However, I tried to include a few pictures from our weekend excursions as well.

This was our only fast food outing of the trip. We thought we would give SFC (Southern Fried Chicken) a try. Let's just say KFC does not have anything to worry about.  

This is from the restaurant Alasha, where we had a really traditional Kazakh meal. I am holding up the horse meat sausages. They were not nearly as good as the bread on the table in this picture. 

Here is the rest of our traditional meal. Most of it was really delicious, some of it was not worth blogging home about.  

While we were waiting for our food, I kept hearing chirping and had no idea where it was coming from. Then  one of my coworkers pointed out the cages (wrapped up) hanging from the chandeliers. You could hear chirping as the cages swung back and forth. Apparently if you order whatever bird is on the menu, they climb up and let you pick out which bird you want for dinner.

On Sunday we got to go to the only branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Kazakhstan. The whole meeting was in Russian, but it was still really enjoyable. I was impressed, they had about 80 members there.  

My favorite traditional Kazakh meal is Shashlyk. This is my favorite restaurant, the Venetian. We had some delicious chicken and pork Shashlyk. It is very much like Shish Kebabs, they season and then cook it on a fire (usually a wood stove) and it is fantastic. 

My co-worker Brian and I visiting one of the beautiful Russian Orthodox Cathedrals. 

We did manage to find the "American Bar and Grill" for a little taste of home. However, it really served pretty much the same stuff as everywhere else, including the poor attempt at a good hamburger. There really is not any place to get a good burger and KZ. However, they do a pretty good job with....

banana splits. This was absolutely delicious. 

Here is the finished product.

I am really grateful for such a great job that allows me to support my family. It is hard to be gone from Shantel and Lydia for so long, but great to get to experience another culture and travel the world. 

Friday Things (Three of them)

Here are five three of the things we have been up this week:

1- Christmas season means Peppermint season at our house. Today I went to the store and came home bearing gifts of Peppermint Kisses and Peppermint ice cream. David was so excited. (I believe his exact words were "These are the best. kisses. ever!" Which he quickly followed with "But they aren't better than your kisses." Bonus points for him.

2- We had the walk through for our house on Wednesday. We met up with the Superintendent Contractor and we went through each aspect of our house, room by room. It was awesome and we are even more excited about living in our home. (We were also super grateful that David's Dad, Cal, took the time to come to the walk through with us because he caught several things for them to fix that we never would have thought about. It was nice to have him there.) The builders have now finished their insulation and are getting ready to sheetrock the walls, but are going to wait until after the weekend so we have a chance to go over and put in our own insulation in the interior walls. (Post to follow!)

3- We have been working on a pretty huge project for our callings in our ward. We are in charge of creating a ward map. It doesn't sound too crazy, but when you consider the crazy shape of our ward (spaced out over a ridiculous amount of space) - it's proven to be a challenge. Things are finally looking up though, and we are just putting the finishing touches on everything. It's going to be awesome.

This was going to be a Friday Five post, but David is waiting to eat his Peppermint Ice Cream while we watch the last episode of Psych Season 6. So just consider #4 more peppermint ice cream, and #5 Psych season 6.

Other things that almost made the Top Five Three: Lydia is sleeping better during the night (although still not sleeping all the way through). We set up our Christmas Tree (separate post to come). We switched out Lydia's clothes for her 6-9 month clothes, and found a whole box of insanely cute 6 month clothes that we had forgotten about (good thing she is small and will still fit in them). Oh, and this SNL Skit about Hidden Valley Ranch taste testers, that was suggested to us after our last post. So funny! Thanks for the recommendation Lauren. (I'll embed the skit below:)


There's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my mouth! HVR. HVR. (I can totally relate to Linda. Soulmates really.)

Happy Friday!