sara without an h

do you love me?

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5 months.

my dear sylvie, yesterday we celebrated 5 months together as a family of three. it was our busiest month so far! we spent much of it in our future home of houston, texas. you met your cousins, tessa and sam for the first time. they were quite taken by you! they spent much of the time bickering over who got to hold you, sit by you, and cuddle you. we celebrated your first christmas and new year. you even helped to open your presents on christmas morning! you are getting more coordinated everyday. you are very lucky girl! we got to spent the holidays with both my family and your daddy's. you were spoiled rotten and loved on by everyone around you for two straight weeks! i'm so happy that we got to experience this day with everyone we love. this month you have hit three huge developmental milestones. first of all, you have started to cut some teeth. this makes you a little cranky sometimes, but so far you are taking it in stride. you love your wooden teether and your vibrating teether best of all. the second big milestone is that you can now sit up unassisted for short periods of time. i can't wait until you're capable of doing this long enough to play! it is so fun to watch you take in the world around you from this new perspective. this new found coordination led to your third big milestone of the month--spoon feeding! you now eat one meal of brown rice cereal a day. we've only been doing this for about a week, and you're already so much better at it! i used to have to force the spoon into your closed mouth. now you lean forward and open your mouth when you see food coming your way. we've also given you a few bits off of our plates. you love had mashed potatoes! i'm so excited for this next chapter in your development. food is a big deal in our home, and we hope you are an adventurous eater. i ordered a few books on the subject, as well as a baby food cookbook. our plan is to introduce vegetable purees after another week or so of plain rice cereal. i hope you like peas! you have become the master of tummy time this month. you used to hate tummy time with a passion, but now you tolerate it just fine. i think you like it more because you're finally getting strong enough to look around. you still prefer being on your back or sitting up, though. you are growing and changing so quickly, baby girl! we measured and weighed you on christmas eve. you weighed 13.5 pounds and were a hair over 25 inches long. you weighed 6 pounds 5 ounces and measured 19 inches at birth. that's a gain of over 7 pounds and 6 inches in less than 5 months! holy smokes! you have a pediatrician appointment coming up on january 17th. i can't wait to see what your measurements are then! every single day is an adventure with you as we fumble through our first time as parents. sometimes it feels overwhelming, but most of the time it is just plain FUN. you are getting happier, funnier, and more smiley with every minute. i can't wait to see what month 6 has in store for our little family! we love you so much, boo bear. love, mama

sylvie sits!

sylvie can sit up unassisted for short spurts of time. just before i took the following video, she sat on our bed for almost a full minute! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15vCpNVI3Wc] this amazes me because just the day before she couldn't sit up for longer than a second or two at a time. it's incredible how fast she learns and adapts. we started spoon feeding her brown rice cereal just a few days ago, and she's already so much better at it. i must say, a face full of rice cereal makes for some awfully cute pictures. i can't believe my little bean will be 5 months old tomorrow, but more on that in my next post! here's a picture of day two of the red lips challenge. i wore them to go to goodwill, target, and barnes and noble. then i cooked some dinner. this is a small town and my bright lips got me quite a few strange looks. oh well. i love them and that's all that matters! i hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

one month red lipstick challenge.

a few years ago i stumbled across an article on red lipstick in one of those mainstream fashion magazines. elle, i think. at the end of the article was a challenge to wear red lipstick everyday for 3 weeks. supposedly, wearing a bold shade of red on one's lips can help to boost both confidence and mood. i certainly could use a mood boost in the middle of this grey, dreary midwest winter. i'm taking the challenge, but am upping it to a month. i love red lips, and often turn to them for special events. i've never worn them as an everyday make-up staple. today was day one. it's kind of amazing how such a small (and admittedly superficial) change informed how i carried myself and what i chose to wear. it got me thinking about my day to day wardrobe. i'm very much a t-shirt, jeans and flats kind of girl. i very rarely wear skirts or dresses. it's even more rare to catch me in a pair of high heels. it gets boring. i've decided to up the ante on the red lips challenge by putting more thought into what i wear for the duration of it. just because all i did today was cook dinner doesn't mean i can't look (and feel) great doing it. travis got me these amazing suede pants for a surprise christmas present. i love them, but worried i would never have an occasion to don them. sometimes you just have to create your own occasion! i think that being a stay at home mama can give even the most fashionable lady a case of the style ruts. i don't know whether or not dressing nicely and wearing red lipstick will change my overall well-being, but i can attest that i did feel good about myself. i love reading new blogs and discovering where my readers write down their thoughts. if you're so inclined, post a comment linking to a picture of you in a favorite outfit! or do the red lips challenge with me!

but there ain ' t no coup de ville hiding at the bottom of a cracker jack box.

i think what meatloaf is oh so eloquently trying to say here is make the best of what you've got. noted, sir. i'm not generally in favor of new year's resolutions. i don't think most people keep up with the arbitrary ways they decide to better themselves at midnight on january 1st. after a few glasses of celebratory bubbly, it's easy to get all gung-ho about losing those last 5 pounds, eating healthier, etc. that said, i do have a resolution for 2k11. i vow to cut back on whining about our current situation and make the best of the last few months we have left in indiana. i REALLY did not want to come home from texas. i loved every single minute of our two weeks there, and this trip further reinforced that this move is the best thing for our family. after 14 days surrounded by family, delicious food, and warm sunshine it was extremely difficult to get excited about going home. our apartment is still too small for us. the midwest sky is still grey. the temperature is still hovering below freezing. BUT i can't change any of that right now. i can, however, use the next 5 months to get things in order, save up money, pack, and house hunt. so that is what i'm going to do. i hereby declare 2011 to be the year of not whining about things beyond my control. also, i'm calling it as the year of the awkward length skirt. you just watch. i already bought two so far this winter.

happy new year!

we're currently hanging out in aledo with some family friends. they have a zip line in their backyard. travis, his brother sam and i took turns. sam hit the tree at the end, travis gracefully dismounted and i bit it...hard. enjoy! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF7fHrArqHM&feature=youtube_gdata_player] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrr8Li9G9BM&feature=youtube_gdata_player] [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGQ8mnlDNss&feature=youtube_gdata_player]