The sheep says, "Hi!"
Auntie Jess gave Stella this cuddly little sheep (or is it a lamb?). Stella adores it. She usually wakes up first thing in the morning and starts playing with it in her crib. All we can hear is some mumbled jabbering and a few "Baaahs" breaking in every now and again.
The cheapest type of baby walker.
Fun at the dinner table.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Exactly one year ago today, we were having a baby
I remember exactly what we were doing the moment that I felt my first contraction. I was preparing a delicious BBQ salmon dinner to share with my lovely husband and our even lovelier friends, Sara and Dan Buri.
Dan didn't believe that I was starting labor, but I knew. I continued to cook, eat and clean up our dinner all the while reminding Nick to time my contractions as they came.
I can't believe what an amazing experience we had in store for us. Nick and I spent MONTHS and countless hours at home practicing, learning and mastering our knowledge of natural childbirth and went in to Stella's birth with excitement and dedication to our gentle birth plans. I am so thankful, 12 months later, that I had such a wonderful pregnancy, labor and birth partner in Nick. If it weren't for him, I would've have believed in myself enough and I'm sure this story would've been written entirely differently.
We have had an amazing time getting to know our daughter over the last year and we can't wait to see what the future holds in store for us.
Happy First Birthday to my most dearest Stella!
At one year old, here are some interesting Stella-factoids:
• What she eats: Everything that we eat plus lots of Mama's milk. No baby food in our house!
• Her favorite things to say: Hi Dad! Hi Mom! Bird, Book (minus the k), Ball, Dadda, Mama, Papa (Grandpa).
• Her favorite things to say in sign language: Bird, dog, milk, more.
• How she gets around: Walking while holding on to furniture/walls/people and speed-crawling.
• Her favorite toys: Cooking utensils, books and shoes.
• Weight & Height: 30 inches tall, 20 pounds.
• She has visited 9 countries already: USA, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium and Croatia. Coming soon: England - for a well rounded 10.
Stella's birthday slide show:
Dan didn't believe that I was starting labor, but I knew. I continued to cook, eat and clean up our dinner all the while reminding Nick to time my contractions as they came.
I can't believe what an amazing experience we had in store for us. Nick and I spent MONTHS and countless hours at home practicing, learning and mastering our knowledge of natural childbirth and went in to Stella's birth with excitement and dedication to our gentle birth plans. I am so thankful, 12 months later, that I had such a wonderful pregnancy, labor and birth partner in Nick. If it weren't for him, I would've have believed in myself enough and I'm sure this story would've been written entirely differently.
We have had an amazing time getting to know our daughter over the last year and we can't wait to see what the future holds in store for us.
Happy First Birthday to my most dearest Stella!
At one year old, here are some interesting Stella-factoids:
• What she eats: Everything that we eat plus lots of Mama's milk. No baby food in our house!
• Her favorite things to say: Hi Dad! Hi Mom! Bird, Book (minus the k), Ball, Dadda, Mama, Papa (Grandpa).
• Her favorite things to say in sign language: Bird, dog, milk, more.
• How she gets around: Walking while holding on to furniture/walls/people and speed-crawling.
• Her favorite toys: Cooking utensils, books and shoes.
• Weight & Height: 30 inches tall, 20 pounds.
• She has visited 9 countries already: USA, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium and Croatia. Coming soon: England - for a well rounded 10.
Stella's birthday slide show:
Friday, July 16, 2010
The power of words.
Words are very powerful. Much more so than many people believe. I have been dying to write this post, but figured I will wait until I have a solid 12 months as a Mom under my belt :)...
This post is for all the women who are pregnant, want to be pregnant or will be in the future. This post is also for anyone who does or will ever come in to contact with a pregnant woman.
It is often discussed in Advertising and Marketing classes that word-of-mouth is one of the strongest forms of Advertising - both positive and negative. In the same way, the things that are said to a pregnant woman are incredibly important.
Throughout my pregnancy, I heard an endless array of negative stories regarding our choices for childbirth and parenting plans (natural childbirth, cloth diapering, organic/natural lifestyle choices...to name a few). Even people whom I thought should be supportive, were not always as I expected.
12 months after my daughter was born, I can say with pride that we have, in fact, parented and raised our daughter the way that we said we would: We was able to bring her in to the world gently and without any medical interventions, we STILL use cloth diapers (and love them), she STILL breastfeeds (and will until she is at least 2) and I STILL am a happy and thankful stay at home Mama.
For all the women in the world who have high hopes and big dreams for their labors, births and parenting plans, I would just like to say: Don't listen to the negative comments regarding your plans for your child(ren). You know what is best for you and your family.
And for people who will come in to contact with expecting parents, consider how impressionable these people are at that time in their lives. Keep the positive energy flowing for these people and surround them with love and support. That is the best gift you can give.
This post is for all the women who are pregnant, want to be pregnant or will be in the future. This post is also for anyone who does or will ever come in to contact with a pregnant woman.
It is often discussed in Advertising and Marketing classes that word-of-mouth is one of the strongest forms of Advertising - both positive and negative. In the same way, the things that are said to a pregnant woman are incredibly important.
Throughout my pregnancy, I heard an endless array of negative stories regarding our choices for childbirth and parenting plans (natural childbirth, cloth diapering, organic/natural lifestyle choices...to name a few). Even people whom I thought should be supportive, were not always as I expected.
12 months after my daughter was born, I can say with pride that we have, in fact, parented and raised our daughter the way that we said we would: We was able to bring her in to the world gently and without any medical interventions, we STILL use cloth diapers (and love them), she STILL breastfeeds (and will until she is at least 2) and I STILL am a happy and thankful stay at home Mama.
For all the women in the world who have high hopes and big dreams for their labors, births and parenting plans, I would just like to say: Don't listen to the negative comments regarding your plans for your child(ren). You know what is best for you and your family.
And for people who will come in to contact with expecting parents, consider how impressionable these people are at that time in their lives. Keep the positive energy flowing for these people and surround them with love and support. That is the best gift you can give.
"Grandpa" sounds like "Papa"
but don't let that confuse you. Stella only refers to Nick as "Dad", so we know that she is saying, "Grandpa". Ah, the littlest milestones are so amazing with little ones. I can't wait to see what she learns next!
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Mrs. Independent
By Liv
Stella has decided that she can not only feed herself by hand, but with a spoon. This just happened this morning. We normally don't feed her anything that requires silverware... no baby food, no mushed up bananas... we just give her little piece of what we are eating and she picks them up and eats them. Until today. She decided that the 1/4 teaspoon was HER spoon and that she needed everything that she was eating to be placed in that spoon so she could feed herself. Awesome!
Oh, and if you're wondering what's up with the new headband - that's to hold back her fro while she eats :)
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
A shmorgishborg of photos from this week
By Liv
Our daily lives may seem uninteresting, but in all actuality they aren't. We have at least one minor emergency, laughing fit, crying-induced-breakdown and tickle attack every single day. That makes for a very interesting life.
This week's photos are not really related to any specific topic so much as just a peek in to our daily lives.
Stella has become amazingly interested in her closet, and unpacking it. It does get a little tiring to refold and arrange her clothes every day (and sometimes twice a day), but she has so much fun doing it, we can't take that away from her!
We've learned that our little bambina has some type of dairy allergy. You can see in her photo below that she gets a rash on her face (and swollen red eyes) whenever dairy products come in contact with her skin. We took her to a local Pediatrician and asked about this and the Doctor said that this is actually pretty normal for babies and that she will likely grow out of it. We sure hope so. This visit to the Doctor was our first encounter with Socialized Medicine and it was really fantastic. We called at noon and were seen at 12:30. The care was wonderful. The Doctor took her time with Stella, she had a lovely office that was decorated in bright colors and decorations for her little patients, and she gave us some samples of mild soaps to take home with us. We are relieved to have had such a great experience!
Some other exciting news that we would like to share is that GERMANY IS GOING TO WIN THE WORLD CUP. That's just a quick FYI. We've been watching all of the games on tv and after the most recent game (Germany kicked Argentina's brown a$$es 4-0... ahem), Nick, Stella, Lilli and I took to downtown to get spaghetti ice to celebrate. What is spaghetti ice, you ask? Well, it's ice cream that is put through some type of contraption that makes it look like spaghetti noodles. Then, they top the ice cream with a "sauce" that is usually red, to look like spaghetti sauce, and then top that with shredded nuts of some kind that look like parmesan cheese. Lilli ordered hers without all the toppings, but you can get the general idea. It was delicious and fun to eat. Poor Stella didn't get any, though.
There are a few fruit trees/bushes here at the house. My favorite so far is the ginormous cherry tree. We have all eaten our weight in cherries already, I'm sure, and the season is just beginning!
Besides cherries, there is another German delicacy that I feel the need to share. It's called Waldmeister and it is a green syrup that is added to a specific beer - Berliner White Beer (from Berlin!) and it creates a green beer that tastes kind of fruity, not too fruity, and kind of honeyish. It's surprisingly not revolting, as I expected. But I don't expect to be drinking it very often :)
Our daily lives may seem uninteresting, but in all actuality they aren't. We have at least one minor emergency, laughing fit, crying-induced-breakdown and tickle attack every single day. That makes for a very interesting life.
This week's photos are not really related to any specific topic so much as just a peek in to our daily lives.
Stella has become amazingly interested in her closet, and unpacking it. It does get a little tiring to refold and arrange her clothes every day (and sometimes twice a day), but she has so much fun doing it, we can't take that away from her!
We've learned that our little bambina has some type of dairy allergy. You can see in her photo below that she gets a rash on her face (and swollen red eyes) whenever dairy products come in contact with her skin. We took her to a local Pediatrician and asked about this and the Doctor said that this is actually pretty normal for babies and that she will likely grow out of it. We sure hope so. This visit to the Doctor was our first encounter with Socialized Medicine and it was really fantastic. We called at noon and were seen at 12:30. The care was wonderful. The Doctor took her time with Stella, she had a lovely office that was decorated in bright colors and decorations for her little patients, and she gave us some samples of mild soaps to take home with us. We are relieved to have had such a great experience!
Some other exciting news that we would like to share is that GERMANY IS GOING TO WIN THE WORLD CUP. That's just a quick FYI. We've been watching all of the games on tv and after the most recent game (Germany kicked Argentina's brown a$$es 4-0... ahem), Nick, Stella, Lilli and I took to downtown to get spaghetti ice to celebrate. What is spaghetti ice, you ask? Well, it's ice cream that is put through some type of contraption that makes it look like spaghetti noodles. Then, they top the ice cream with a "sauce" that is usually red, to look like spaghetti sauce, and then top that with shredded nuts of some kind that look like parmesan cheese. Lilli ordered hers without all the toppings, but you can get the general idea. It was delicious and fun to eat. Poor Stella didn't get any, though.
There are a few fruit trees/bushes here at the house. My favorite so far is the ginormous cherry tree. We have all eaten our weight in cherries already, I'm sure, and the season is just beginning!
Besides cherries, there is another German delicacy that I feel the need to share. It's called Waldmeister and it is a green syrup that is added to a specific beer - Berliner White Beer (from Berlin!) and it creates a green beer that tastes kind of fruity, not too fruity, and kind of honeyish. It's surprisingly not revolting, as I expected. But I don't expect to be drinking it very often :)
Monday, July 5, 2010
The blame game
Stella hasn't learned to take responsibility for her moods yet. Watch this video and you'll understand :)
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