Landscaping Efforts

I've been sufficiently busy this summer--I assure you.  One project I've wanted to start since I moved in here was landscaping the front walk area.  Finally I took the leap and decided to try something, because as I figured, anything was better than what was currently there (a lot of weeds, mostly).  I started with landscaping brick, trying to edge the sidewalk.  I went back and forth if I wanted the brick flush with the sidewalk or if I wanted a rise.  I obviously settled on flush, because I thought it looked sharper in some other landscaping I'd seen. 

The offensive area.  At first we thought we'd just section it off at the end of the porch, but the whole area is a mess, so we took it out.

A slightly different angle.  From here, right in front of my bumper, you can see this offensive honey suckle we had to rip out.  We tore out a huge root stump, so hopefully it won't come back. 

We worked the area over with our tiller, put down the black cloth, set the bricks, and waited.  My father generously offered to buy our rock and bring it in his truck... just to hit a deer the day he was going to help with it!  Once he got it back, he and I unloaded two tons of red granite (it looks really gray in the pictures, but it's because it's so dusty.  As I've been rinsing off the rock to water, it's started to turn pink). 
I also did a lot of research for plants.  I found a great website that I really like that gave helpful tips about what plants work in what areas and also provided pruning or winter care information for them.  I'm working with a full sun flower bed (some areas get a little more shade, but I'd hardly say it was good enough for a part-sun/part-shade plant). 

Work in progress--don't have all the border plants put in yet, but you get the idea.

I created a wish list on my phone so I could shop with confidence that I wouldn't buy something I didn't have plans for or hadn't read fully about.  Then the free plants started rolling in!  I had a sort of outline of where I wanted to fill in with what sizes, with some simple substitutions just in case I found them.  I got six free yucca plants (not all in the best condition.... and one MIGHT have gotten stomped, but they're apparently quite difficult to kill, so I'm hoping they'll rebound next year).  I bought four salvia plants, one butterfly bush, and one hydrangea.  The salvia was on sale, so I was excited and bought an extra one.  Then I also got day lilies and hostas (full sun tolerant variety) from my dad's yard.  I've also got to go over and get some ornamental grass and something called a live-forever.  Guess why I like that plant.

Here you can see the gap where my big flowering bush is not planted yet.  The hostas remember are transplanted from a huge plant, so they look a little weird, but they'll fill in quite nicely.  And I always think it's better to have something from a well established plant in the area, then hoping something grown in a green house will like my yard!

The plan is basically to have three different sections of border plants--salvia (will have purpleish flowers), ornamental grass (dark green), and hostas (mid green).  Then behind right in front of the bushes I put four of my yuccas.  They'll sprout big spikes of flowers that will give the garden height, so I wanted them in the back.  I took two of the worst looking ones and put them on the front corners, which might seem stupid to put them up front, but I did it so if they don't work out I can either fill in the gaps with more of my trimming plants, or perhaps find something else on the wish list to balance out and look pretty.  Smack in the middle I planted the butterfly bush, surrounded by day lilies on the sides and behind.  I figured it would make for a pretty center piece with the purple and yellow flowers.  On either side of the center piece I wanted a big flowering bush, so the hydrangea is there.  I've never been confident about these, but our neighbor has one in the same light as us and it looks great, so I'm hoping I'll have the same success.  The other side doesn't have a big flowering bush yet.  I haven't decided if I want to do another hydrangea or something different.  For now I'm waiting and watching the first one to make sure it takes. 

The little tiny store-bought plans.  They look so pitiful all alone out there, but I'm not going to be tempted in to buying more--that bush will become massive at some point, the trim plants are also going to grow much larger.  Always important to work with a "final" result in mind and not put the plants too close!

The plan is to fill in extras (from my list, of course) this fall and also early next spring, that way I can ensure I have something blooming for spring, summer, and fall in my flower garden.  But for now, I think I have a pretty solid start and I'm hoping it looks much better than our messy weeds.
(oh, and I have a new electric trimmer for the bushes... so guess what I'll be working on next week!)

Claire's Baptism

We finally had Claire baptized today.  It was a little bit hard for me to decide to stay Catholic or go rogue, but in the end, tradition and upbringing swayed me.  Then after making the decision, I found the biggest challenge was finding something for Claire to wear. 

The Baptism Crew.

I'm not a big fan of most baptism gowns.  I find them ugly.  They have big puffy sleeves, or lots of frilly lace, or (the best of the worst perhaps) lace with crosses embroidered in with extra frills plus sleeves plus random ribbons hanging off... all for around $70.  I wouldn't have minded paying that much for an important keepsake, except I was embarrassed to dress my kid up like that, so I decided to modify a pattern and make my own.  It's hard to tell in the pictures, but I totally didn't screw it up.  I just miscalculated how hard it would be to hold an eight month old in a giant satin dress. 

Eric, Yvette, Anne, Matt, Claire and I, and Father Greg (who performed my first communion, btw)

The changes I made to the dress pattern were pretty simple.  I left off the sleeves (okay, won't lie, that was a hard part, but I figured it out), I didn't use traditional lace, I added a sash plus flower to the front and back.  This was the first time for me to use buttons, the first time using a blind hem stitch, and the first time I worked with most of these fabrics.  So, to have the dress turn out at all, well, I felt pretty good about that.
Claire was excited to go to church today.  She seemed to know it was all about her.  She blew raspberries throughout the ceremony, and jerked her head around to check out the priest every time he said her name (so now we know she knows her name... ;)  )  Also, just before she got the water to the head, he said her name so she twisted to look and totally dunked her head.  A lot of people laughed.  I laughed.  It was funny.  She also tried to take her baptism candle, still lit by the way. 

Claire attempting to baptize herself.

We were lucky to have such a wonderful crew of God parents, too.  Our friend Anne has been a good friend since high school.  We've always been around each other and Matt and I felt that she best represented who we were, so she was a natural choice.  We also asked my cousin Yvette and her husband Eric.  They've always been a wonderful strong couple and they have two amazing little boys.  We know that they'd love Claire like their own, so it was easy to ask them!  Also, my father is Yvette's God father.  So I thought that was cool. 

Claire showing us all a thing or two about hand chewing for nice pictures.

Claire seemed to know everything was about her and really enjoyed sitting in the front in church, so perhaps I'll start sitting closer with her.  We took flowers to the cemetery behind the church to visit Claire's Great Grandma Kelly and Auntie Megan, then we went back to our place for a get together.  I made cupcakes... and I forgot to take pictures!  Rats!  We had a great time socializing and hanging out and Claire even made out with a few thoughtful gifts from grandparents, friends, and new God parents. 

Matt's parents, Greg and Katie; my mom, Paula, Matt, Claire, and I; my father, Larry.

All in all, after all the stress (for me), this was a beautiful baptism and a great family get together.  We had a wonderful time!  Now the next big event for her will be her first birthday!  Scary to think about!

8 Months Old and Fourth of July

Claire's "fake" smile... sort of.  Look at those chompers!

Happy 8 months Claire!  I can't believe she's getting so old!  We celebrated big since her 8 month birthday was the day before the 4th of July.  Claire, of course, knew it was all for her so she was extra special good all day. 

She was very excited when we gave her a flag of her own.  Of course, she's never had a flag before, so, she had to check it out.

Here's what Claire is up to now:  Still can't crawl, tries valiantly.  I am about 50/50 for believing she's one of the kids who never crawls or she'll start tomorrow.  She's that close.  She's just either not coordinated enough or too stubborn to believe her methods are not the best way to do it.  She is getting super frustrated though during play time because she wants to travel, she wants stuff out of her reach, and she can't get there.  Doesn't help when Momma doesn't know what she wants! 

This is her lovely hair bow from my cousin, Misty, who hooked us up on many adorable head ornaments that you will be seeing on her until she gets enough hair for me to style.

Speaking of "momma", Claire now regularly calls out "mama" and "dada".  We were skeptical (even after the "mama" incident a couple of weeks ago) that she really knew what she was saying, but now we realize a lot of times she'll call for us when we leave the room.  By name.  When I'm doing my hair in the bathroom I hear her calling "mamamamamama" over and over, and Claire has on more than one occasion started crying for "dada" when he left us together unattended.  It's quite sweet.  I'm thinking thanks to our excitement, she knows she's doing something right, which keeps her doing it.  She's become quite the mime, so us repeating the names and pointing is helping quite a bit.  She also will mimic "hi" or "hey" and she is starting to wave. 

You may have also noticed, Claire now sits up.  She just woke up one day and sat.  How crazy is that?

She points at everything now.  She's always pointing at our books, so I tell her lots of extra stuff to explain what she's pointing at. 
Also on the food front--she's been sipping out of her cup a little bit.  We started giving her watered down juice and that seems good enough for her to get excited to want to drink something.  She's been eating meat for a few weeks (some of mine, some store bought).  We have been trying more solid foods, like bread (disaster) and those little puffs.  Sure those are for "crawlers"... but Claire WOULD be crawling if she'd just pay attention to my instruction ;)  She's started eating those pretty well off her table waiting for her meal to be prepared.  She gnaws on them with her front two teeth and it's so cute because you can hear her chomping away.  It took a while to get her interested though; she made a whole lot of faces and gagging noises when we first introduced them.  She's a big texture girl, apparently. 

She balks at fruit puffs, but she'll eat a flag, no problem.

She watches a little Sesame Street now with me (I know, bad mommy letting her watch TV) but she likes it so much, I can't help it.  She laughs and points and looks at me like she wonders if I think it's just as amazing... and I was a big Sesame Street kid, so it's fun for me to watch, too.  I sing the songs with the show and she looks at me like I'm Taylor Swift or something. 
So, for the fourth, we went downtown all day walking around.  Claire was vibrant and happy and smiling THE ENTIRE TIME.  She let us each lunch.  She let us shop (and snag free books galore).  She took one nap finally, but I think if she could have stayed awake, she would have.  We also took her to see fireworks, and she was so excited to be out late with us.  She was going nuts!  Unfortunately, she started to poop out at about 9:45--and the fireworks started at 9:50.  It was a pretty big failure.  Of course, once we had her back in the stroller, she was fine.

This is what happens to hair bows... lucky she didn't let go and hit herself in the face!

I also invested in a new jogging stroller.  Claire LOVES it.  We used it for the 4th and I've been using it around the neighborhood.  Of course, I'm not sure what I was expecting--a self-propelling stroller apparently, MAN that thing is hard to use when jogging!  I look like a drowned rat every time I go running!
What we're looking forward to in the coming months: Crawling (so bittersweet, but at least she won't cry because she can't anymore!), pulling herself up on things (she's trying), more talking!  I'm also going to revert to some store-bought food for her, just to see what the textures and mixes are.  We already tried some yogurt and that was a HUGE hit.  I hate to stop making her food, but I'm worried that I can't keep up with where she should be on the types of food, plus with school starting in a month, I am going to be kind of busy to keep researching.  We'll see what I figure out for myself and then perhaps I'll start up again.  For now, we're finishing off the ton I have already and mixing in some different stuff to see what she likes and can handle!
See you next month!

New Homemade Purees!

Claire's adventures in eating are really stretching my creativity.  She's mastered carrots, peas, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, bananas, and plums with blueberries (my new masterpiece). 

I'm planning on trying more "exciting" foods as she's almost 8 months old (can you believe it??)
I read in one of our baby books a good first "finger" food is simply a piece of wheat bread.  Of course, Claire plays with it a lot, but when she does put it in her mouth, she acts like it's the most disgusting food ever.  Kind of funny.

My freezer has been overtaken by frozen baby food!  I swear we have real food for us, too.

So what have I made and what am I planning?  First, what I've made:
I've already discussed the traditional veggies.  I made apples out of Gala apples which were incredibly sweet and delicious (trust me, I took quite the sample).  I peeled them, cored them, then steamed them.  Worked great!  Very smooth!  I added water right from the steamer to keep as many nutrients as I could.  I did the same for pears, although I read you can mash up without cooking a ripe pear.  I peeled, cored, and steamed them briefly, just to soften them.  I barely needed water to get it pureed.  For the bananas, I was really nervous because I've had bad experiences with ruining bananas thanks to sticking them in the fridge.  But I'm not the kind of person who's going to keep these on hand fresh just for her (I'll eat all of them, I know me).  So I threw all the bananas in the food processor (with just a dash of lemon, in hopes of stopping any browning).  They did turn dark, but not really much different than the color of the processed ones at the store.  I mix it with her oatmeal and it's sooo good.  I tried that too.  I'm a flavored oatmeal girl, I love those microwave packets.  This beats that any day!  They froze just fine, too. 

Like you can see, they are a little brown, but if you think of other banana snacks not loaded with preservatives, you get the same color, so I'm okay with that.  And it tastes SO yummy right out of the microwave!

Now for my planning!  My newest creation was plums with blueberries.  I have no idea how I thought that up.  I was originally going to throw strawberries in, too, since I don't know anyone in my family with an allergy to them, but then I freaked out (and the food processor was full, so I felt like it was a sign).  I couldn't find organic plums (let alone plums at all for the longest time!) at the time, so I boiled them, peeled the skin, cut around the "nut" and threw them in the processor.  Then I cleaned the blueberries (I swore they were organic, but I threw the package away without confirming) and threw them in raw.  It made quite the pretty purple ice cube!  Matt ate one this evening and I tried it--delicious.  Good flavor, healthy, no sugar!  I left some in the fridge and it definitely jelled up (natural pectin, I suppose), but I mixed it with rice cereal no problem.

Look at that color!  I always feel like more colorful food must be better tasting--in this case, I'm just about right.  Soo good!  Claire agrees!

The last frontier to try has been meat.  I honestly waited until almost 8 months to give it to her simply because I was so undecided about how I wanted to approach it.  I am very leery of antibiotics and hormones and Lord knows what else goes into regular meat in the store (I remember a time I was at a fancy grocery store and couldn't find the processed giant chicken breasts and had to ask--I specifically ASKED for the ones that were pumped full of hormones and steroids because you get more for your breast... ew!).  I bought some jars of Gerber baby meat/gravy.  I wasn't pleased they added cornstarch to it (since I wouldn't have done that), but I figured I'd give it a go.  Of course, they do not advertise the quality of their meat (at least, not on the tiny jar).  After I realized they were 92 cents a jar, I figured perhaps I could research a little more.  And guess what I found!  Organic, free range, no antibiotic/hormone chicken breast, at Wal-mart of all places!  So I bought the chicken breasts, baked them, and pureed them.  It turned into a chicken mousse sort of (gross... so gross) but I imagine if you make chicken salad, it's close to that consistency?  I don't eat chicken salad, so I don't know.  I have that in the freezer now. 

My frozen chicken vs Gerber baby food.  About the same serving size, but I made 24 servings for $6, instead of almost $1 a serving!  And I know this chicken was well cooked--because I did it!

I've been trying to duplicate what a normal baby  might be offered eating off store shelves, so I have the options of turkey, beef, chicken, and ham (that's disgusting).  I don't know what I'll do from here, but I do have some roasts from my dad's cows that I know are of course organic, free range, no hormones/antibiotics since they live on his farm.  That might be next, because I know it's safe.  As for ham, I don't eat that, either, so I don't know how you find true ham without a ton of salt.  I'll have to look.  You'd think she could just have regular pork, like a chop, but then I worry about cooking it enough.  As for turkey, I'm going to have to get creative and start calling around.  Look at those giant frozen turkeys at your supermarket, then look at proud turkeys running wild... I don't want to feed Claire the Schwarzenegger of turkeys!

She's doing great with the food--but we definitely have every poo problem they warn about!  Grainy for pears, stinky (so bad) for meat.  Too much fruit gives her terrible rashes, so bad we even had to ditch cloth for the last few days just to slather her with creams to clear it up (we're back on cloth tomorrow though, all healed!). 

The freezing process!

Her spitting up also seems to be getting better.  She's definitely replacing her meals with solids--a bottle just doesn't cut it anymore!  I always mix cereal (oatmeal or rice) with her veggie/fruit/meat.  It seems to be the easiest way.  Usually when we test new foods we give it to her plain, but a lot of times she's just not ready for that full flavor and she'll make awful faces.  I've been trying to get away from that so she gets a stronger palate, but when you feed her and she doesn't like something, well, you are fighting a losing battle!  Just ask the lonely frozen half of the avocado still in the freezer.  That was awful (and I tasted it, and yes, it was so awful even I gagged and she laughed at me).  So we'll have to see where we go next! 

Seven Months and Swimming!

Well, Claire turned seven months old on Friday!  Can't believe it!  We had our "six" month photo session earlier in the week, hoping Claire would have mastered sitting up on her own, but unfortunately she's still pretty unpredictable.  If she wants to, she can, but a lot of times she'd rather be slithering around on her belly, and to get there she hits pretty hard if we aren't there to catch her. 

"I'll sit when I'm ready, right now I'm ready for lounging in the pool!"

Now that I'm a stay-at-home mom for 4 days a week by myself, we've been trying to find activities to do.  Unfortunately, Claire goes to daycare on Wednesdays, and it seems the best activities I can find like story time all happen on Wednesdays (and they're ageist and say it's 3+, but whatever).  So, on Friday we took a trip to Walmart and found a cheap little inflatable baby pool.  Turns out it's a big hit!

Another Walmart hit?  We found a cloth swim diaper!  I've been researching them and struggling to find them online in stock, and low and behold Walmart had a stock of them for $5!  I don't know how the little swimmers disposables work, but this isn't meant to catch the tinkles, just keep the poo out of the pool.  Luckily I haven't been peed on yet dragging her to and from the pool, but I'm waiting!

Awesome cloth swim diaper!  I'm glad I found this--I was not happy about the prospect of buying disposable!

So what can Claire do at 7 months?  Well, she can splash!  She also has been talking up a storm.  I swear she can say "hey" and "dada" and "baba" but she isn't really identifying with the words she says yet, so I hesitate to call these her first words.  I fully think "dada" will be  her first word, but I'm waiting until she is looking at him and says it to declare it. 

Claire shows off her mad kicking skills!

Like I said, she's still fighting the sitting up thing.  She can.  So I'm not worried about development.  She just really really wants to crawl.  Just this past week she's started to pull up her knees under her, but she's having trouble coordinating that with lifting herself up with her arms, too.  So, she's kind of like a see saw right now.  One end up, one end down.  I'm sure she'll get it.  I keep being warned that this is one milestone I don't want to wish for prematurely. 

Grandpa very graciously invited us over to swim today--of course, he got his Claire time in!

Claire ate straight veggies (and cereal and formula) for an entire four weeks.  I had planned that.  We started apples last week, but that's the only fruit so far.  No, I take that back, we tried avocado too.  And she HATED it.  I don't know that I'll try that again.  I have pears and more apples to cook up and another batch of sweet potatoes.  She definitely likes orange veggies better than green, but I'm afraid she'll turn orange so I give her green veggies every day.  She eats three square meals, plus two extra bottles a day: usually fruit is just for breakfast, unless she's been a very good girl, then I'll throw in a cube for dinner, too.  She eats 2-3 cubes plus a serving of cereal per meal.  It seems like a lot, but she's never satisfied!  We never finish a meal because she's full. 

Claire chews everything.  We still have just the two teeth, but I swear those two on top are ready to pop out any day now!

Her spitting up is getting a little better.  I've noticed improvement, but it might also be because we're getting better at catching it.  I won't say she's not still spitting up (she is, a lot) but usually when she's on her belly it's a disaster and that's been improving.  Also, now she usually burps about 30 seconds before it happens, so we have a warning.

Look at that smile!  Claire laughs and smiles all the time now.  We have a very happy baby!

Everything else is going well!  I'm a little nervous to spend the summer alone with her, but I'm confident that I can be entertaining enough.  *fingers crossed*

See you next month!