I  love this fabric... you can't really tell in this picture but it has tiny little flowers all over it.  Kind of reminds me of Little House on the Prairie... a dress they'd wear or something.  I really feel like in the past couple of weeks, Gia has completely turned a corner- personality-wise.  She is much better with people, meaning she doesn't cry when a stranger looks at her.  (Though she did this once this week, but it was a guy at Wal-Mart who was talking to her and, well, he was scary.)  She is letting a lot of people at church hold her, and is especially taken with my friends Caitlin and Heather.  Though she has been teething the past couple of weeks, she is still generally happy.  One of the top teeth poked through last week and the other one is still (painfully) working its way out.  Her giggles are the best and she is giving us kisses more and more!  She's expanded her vocabulary beyond "Mamammama" and is working on a wide assortment of other sounds, most notably "da."  I know I am testing fate by typing this, but she's even been sleeping a bit better.  But that's all I'm gonna say about that until its happened more consistently for a longer period of time.  :)

This has been a busy week for all of us!  It started off Friday morning with a first for Miss G... a bloody nose.  :(  Poor baby was standing up in the kitchen, holding on to a chair when she fell flat back and the chair came down on top of her!  We called her dr. who told us just to watch her, and thankfully, she was fine.  But it was so scary/sad for all of us!  Her little nose was purple and red for the day, but that was about it.  Saturday was Whitney's birthday.  She would have been two years old.  Its so hard to believe its been that long.  It seems like just yesterday and a lifetime ago, all at once.  We went to a friend's birthday party, then planned to eat out at Olive Garden (our usual "Whitney" spot), but Miss G wasn't having it.  So, we got OG To Go for dinner... not quite the same.  I was a little sad we weren't in Fresno on this day, just because all of our memories with Whitney are there.  But, it was still an ok day.  On Sunday, Gia and I took off on a plane again, this time headed for KC.  My mom is in the States this month for my grandpa's 80th birthday, so of course we had to go see her!  Sunday morning flights are the way to go, let me tell ya!  There were less than 50 people on our plane, so not only did I get to bring her car seat, we also got a whole row to ourselves.  After the 4.5 hour flight to Phoenix a couple weeks ago, 1.5 hours was nothing!  We had such a great time there!  We went down to a store call Pryde's of Old Westport... its a really neat kitchen store on the Plaza that is very unique.  We also ate at Cheesecake Factory.  Gia was great the whole time.  She remembered my mom and warmed up to Grandpa & Momma Suzie really fast.  It was so great to see my mom, and we even got to see my sister and nieces when they came into town on Wednesday!  Instead of the girls chasing Gia, she was chasing them around the house!

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.

I know I'm a little behind on things here, but I just had to write about our fun down at Super Bowl village in Indy.  We went with our friend, Lindsday and had a great time!  The weather was beautiful and there was a decent amount of people there, but not too crowded.  Though we didn't get to go to the Super Bowl, it was fun to be downtown amidst all the buzz.  I was hoping to see someone really famous but the only people we saw were Jordyn Sparks and Maria Menunos.  Womp womp. But it was still a lot of fun!

40 weeks old!  She's been out of my tummy exactly as long as she was in it!  This week has been all about the teething.  Sleep has been iffy at best (for all three of us!), but even with multiple wakings at night, Gia's personality is blossoming like crazy!  She is getting more and more at ease around new people and she is talking ALL.THE.TIME.  Gia even got to go to Girls' Night with me on Tuesday, and she did great letting my friends (mostly Caitlin) hold her.  And she is on the go constantly... which explains why this picture isn't the greatest... she was moving like crazy, as usual! 

Here's a cute outtake from this week:


And btw, that's Sean's hairy arm holding the very hungry caterpillar, not mine.  :)

Length: 27 inches
Weight: 15 pounds 9 ounces... she is now in the 10th percentile for weight and going up!  She's growing perfectly along her curve and the doc was happy!  Yay!
Clothing Size: 6-9 month... I haven't gotten out anything bigger yet.
Fave Toy: My sister had one of those stand up play tables and she LOVED it.  A friend has one that I am going to borrow!  Gia loves to stand up these days.
Fave Outfit: By far, my fave outfit this month is the ladybug shirt I got her at Tuesday Morning.  It is a 3-6 month size, so I knew she'd only be able to wear it a few times, but I didnt care... its so cute!
New Moves: She is crawling lightning fast now, and standing/pulling up on everything.  She is even standing on her own for a few seconds at a time.  Just this week she has begun to move between pieces of furniture... walking is on the horizon.
Teething: Still just the two bottom teeth... I think the other top ones have been trying to come in for over a month now.
Eating: She's backed off of her love for baby foods but she's trying new finger foods like carrots, green beans and white beans. 
Sleeping: Still a challenge.  Though her doctor said that its not unheard of for breastfed babies to need to eat during the night through one year.  I guess I can make it three more months...I think I can I think I can I think I can.  Just reminding myself of all the money we're saving by not buying formula.  And really, sleep?  What's sleep?  Who needs it?
Talking: She is babbling like crazy!  It almost always sounds like "mamamamamamam mamamamamamamama"... I love it!  She gets more and more vocal every day.

We had Gia's 9 month appointment yesterday and I could not believe how fast time has gone by as I was making her one year appointment.  Crazy, I tell you!  We also had a follow-up appointment at the children's hospital with the eye doctor.  Praise God, all is well!  Her pupils are still a little different in size some times, but its far less noticable now.  The doctor gave her a clean bill of health, and sees no need for further follow up!  Yay!

Fave Pics:





 

Seriously? 39 weeks? That's almost a full pregnancy! This was quite a fun week for me and little G... we spent the week in Phoenix with my sister and two nieces.  Gia had a great time playing with her cousins, but mostly she just watched everything they did.  She loved playing with their toy kitchen and kitchen utensils.  She did pretty good on the flight home, too... except for the part where she got really hungry before we even got on the plane, because our flight was delayed 20 minutes and messed up her eating schedule.  She was screaming bloody murder in the airport while we were waiting to board... I could see the people getting nervous!  Thankfully, it wasn't a full flight so I got to have her car seat with me on the plane, and once I was able to feed her, she did great.  She made eyes at everyone around her and even smiled at them!  She caught a cold, so her sleep has been interrupted by a runny nose and not being able to breathe very well.  But during the day, she is just such a ham!  She really was a great traveler.  That's a good thing, too because we are heading to KC in just a week and a half to see my mom and grandparents!  Compared to the 4 hour flight to Phoenix, I'm hoping the 1.5 hour flight to KC will be cake.  :)  Oh, one more side note... these pictures are getting so hard to take!  Hence, the blurry hand here!  I took so many pics and had maybe 2 useable photos!!  Sheesh, this girl is moving!

I cannot believe Whitney's second birthday is just one week away.  I hope to write more on the subject, but I just wanted to get this post up to remind everyone that we are going to do another RAOK day, and would LOVE to have you all join us!

You can read about all of last years' fun HERE.  There are some great ideas on Random Acts of Kindness HERE.  And soon I will have the printable versions of this year's cards up.  (Hopefully tomorrow (Sunday)).

So... will you guys please plan to join us next Saturday in sprinkling our world with a littl RAOK love, in memory of Whitney?  I am so excited to share her birthday with you all!  Feel free to share this invitation with others, too.

I saw these adorable bean bags on Pinterest a while back and pinned them to my "Gift Ideas" board, all the while having my two nieces in mind.  They are 2 1/2 and 4 1/2 years old, so I thought these would be perfect for them! 


The original blogger at The Crafty Cupboard who posted the bean bag project has a great tutorial on how she made them, and I pretty much did the same.  I bought 6 fat quarters in different fabrics, then cut them with a rotary cutter into 5-inch squares.  (The fat quarters were less than $3 each.) Then I cut the letter stencils out of freezer paper with my Cricut and painted them on the squares- upper and lower case!  Then I sewed them all together, ironed them out, and filled them with beans.  I got a huge bag of pinto beans at Sam's Club for less than $9.  I still have a few beans left over.  I top-stitched to make them look more finished and, voila!  Hours of fun and learning!



This was a super fun project, and definitely helped me brush up on my sewing skills.  Simple, straight lines, but lots of practice!  There were a lot of steps involved, and I had to do everything 56 times (each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, upper and lower case, plus two extra letters so my nieces could each learn to spell their names with the bean bags = 56 letters), but like I said, all simple stuff.  All in all, I estimate this took about a week's worth of nap times, which is roughly 10-14 hours.  I didn't really keep track.  A great, fun project that will hopefully make for hours of fun and learning for the girls!