An Unexpected Easter....

It's a little late for an Easter post. I realize this, but still wanted to share our experience this year. Things never go as planned, do they? That is a lesson I learn over and over and over it seems.

Luke 24:6 proclaims wonderful news, "He is not here; he is risen!" Isn't it great that we can celebrate the resurrection of Christ every day of the year and not just on Easter Sunday? Easter is a great day to remember, and we did -- just not in the ways we expected.

On Good Friday, Sadie Beth had a really rough day. She was abnormally fussy, which I thought she was either teething or just being a big stinker-butt. However, it continued and later that afternoon I realized that she had a swollen mass on the back of her head. To make a long story shorter, it turns out she had some sort of infection on the back of her head - the doctors think it was probably a staph infection. Poor thing had to go on 2 really strong antibiotics. It was a rough few days, and worrisome to these 2 first-time parents. We had to keep her pretty secluded for about a week...so no trip to Indy for our family Easter gathering for the Balzer's.

We had an unexpectedly great Easter at home with our little family. My mom brought us the DVD from Southeast's Easter service, so we had "church" in our PJs. Then, David's parents were so thoughtful to treat us to a beautiful Easter Stargazer Lily and a yummy dinner from the Honeybaked Ham store. I also made "Grandma Balzer's Company Potatoes," which turned out pretty yummy if I do say so myself. It was our first family holiday dinner at home with just us.

Here is Sadie Beth hanging out and observing in her high chair while I am working on dinner. Despite the fact that the infection caused her some pretty bad pain, she was in such sweet spirits...which made it much more bearable for all of us. My pictures are kindof fuzzy, but I'm not sure why.
Here's our "spread." Sadie Beth is usually asleep when we eat meals at home, so it was fun having her with us for our Easter dinner.
You might notice - the company potatoes recipe calls for Corn Flakes. The best deal at the store was for the Meijer brand box, which was ginormous. We decided to cover our other side dishes in cornflakes too! It made a nice topping.
Aren't our flowers pretty? Sadie Beth enjoyed dinner with the family.

Snuggle time with Daddy!
Sadie Beth has started to crawl backwards, but cries almost the whole time she does it - which I find sort of funny.
I'm not really sure, but she's funny...
Grammy stopped by when she got back from Indy with lots of Easter goodies from family and a special belated Christmas present from Sadie Beth's Great Uncle Joe. He made her a cradle, which was absolutely beautiful. She really liked it, and I did too!

Thanks Uncle Joe!!!!

Here's the boo-boo. This doesn't show how big the spot was. We had to keep it covered with a bandaid and give her baths with bleach in the water twice a day.
It was a busy day for the bug!! Now she's a sleepy bear.

Pre-7 Months

Here's a few pictures to catch us up to the Saturday before Easter. I will have to do a separate post from Easter on.
We are still adjusting to solid (pureed) foods. Some days Sadie Beth likes it more than others. She goes on "food-strikes" while she is teething. Her poor little mouth just hurts her so much that I guess she just doesn't feel like eating.
One day I was doing some "straightening" and picking up and I heard Sadie Beth laughing from the other room. I walked in to find out what was funny and this is what I saw:

She LOVES tags and zippers. She is fascinated by the zipper on the boppy - it entertains her endlessly.
I can't remember why I went into her room one night but I couldn't help but take a picture of this. David thought it was mean of me to have the flash, but it didn't even phase her.
I guess we will call this Sadie Beth's "very excited" face.
YAY!!! Spring weather is here. This was one of the first pretty days we had and it was great getting to go out for a walk. I think Sadie Beth really enjoys getting to be outside. We walk around and look at the flowers and trees.

Excuse the mess - usually it isn't this bad, I promise. I was trying to go through the 6-9mos hand-me-down box. Anyhow, Sadie Beth really doesn't roll from her back to her tummy. At least not often. However, she can bend in some pretty impressive ways.

One morning before her nap, Sadie Beth was playing in her crib while I was straightening up her room. She was so tired that she was falling asleep sitting up like this. The giant bear in the crib was to keep her from knocking her head against the back. We don't keep it in there all the time.

I put her on her tummy for a few minutes and this was one of the first times she actually was mobile on all fours....don't get me wrong, it was only a few inches, but hey she still moved.
Poor little bug had an infection on the back of her head about a month ago. It's gone now and the doctor said that it has healed up nicely. We have been given the all clear, but it gave us a bit of a scare. One of the things we had to do was soak the back of her head in water. We decided to try giving her a bath in the big tub to do this. She wasn't sure what was going on.

For awhile, any time we gave her a bath, her sole objective was to get the sink faucet in her mouth. It was pretty funny because she would try and do it even if the water was running. She was successful once, which resulted in a bit of sputtering.


More to come - hopefully soon!

I love it.

I found this extremely funny, especially since it pretty much describes my days since September 18, 2007. More to come soon, I promise...I have so many pictures ot put up now it's kindof overwhelming. Probably more than most of ya'll care to see, but the Oregon fam love it!

My Husband....

My new project is making Sadie Beth's baby food. I am amazed at how easy it is-- so much so that I've actually considered going into some sort of baby food making business for my friends/people that I know if they'd be interested, but I don't know that it would be worth it. More than 1 lb (16oz) of some veggies (peas, green beans, etc) cost only $.77 to make, where as a jar of the same baby food (2.5oz) cost anywhere from $.33 (on very good sale) -$.50 each. I'm sticking with the basics and not really doing any off the wall foods, but I'm totally into it.
So, on to my story...today I made my first batch of baby food peas. David comes in from work, looks in the refrigerator for a snack and gets out a piece of leftover Tombstone Pizza. He then sees the peas and says, "What are those?" He opens the lid as I'm telling him that they are peas and how gross I think they are. Peas are about at the top of my gross foods list. I can't stand them!!! While I'm rambling on about how I despise peas, my husband, who will eat anything, takes a big spoonful of the cold pureed yuckiness and exclaims, "Delicious!" After consuming several spoonfuls, he then proceeds to pour some of Sadie Beth's peas all over his slice of pizza and eats 2 slices this way! He thinks it's great. Many of you know that I'm blessed to be married to a man who is very easy to please when it comes to food. I'm actually a pretty good cook, but every now and then I have experiments that turn out not so deliciously. He will eat just about anything and he will eat the same things over and over and over again. Before we were married and he was living in Texas, most of his meals consisted of what I lovingly refer to as "1-Pot Wonders," where he put something from every food group into one large pot on the stove and let it cook. A few that he has described to me are pretty hideous. And so today we can add this new strange food experiment to the list...pepperoni pizza with pureed peas. How funny is this? He cracks me up.

Six Months Old!

My, how the last 6 months have flown by! Our little Sadie Beth is so much fun as she is learning and doing new things all the time. She now has 2, possibly 3 teeth. Either she has 2 coming in right now, or it is 1 tooth that is partially cracked - I guess time will tell. Sadie Beth sure does love her daddy. She lights up whenever he walks in the room. One of her new tricks is that she will "growl" back at you. She will do it for both of us, but especially for David. Sometimes, if I start laughing really hard, she laughs too....I find it really fun, so we laugh a lot!

I went in to get her from a nap one day and saw this - adorable little baby feet - minus the socks she originally wore. One day we were playing in bed and I was wrapping Sadie Beth up in this blanket. She thought it was real fun.

She's still a little wobbly sitting on her own, but has gotten drastically better in the last few days. She's getting good enough that I don't worry if I leave the room for a few moments.

During her independent play time I will often open our bedroom window. Sadie Beth LOVES watching what is going on outside. It's so cute watching her play in the pack and play.
She managed to get her leg out of the tub one day during bath time when I had my back turned. She was pretty proud of herself.

So, my baby who will have NOTHING to do with a bottle decided she was a big fan of sippy cups...for, oh, about 3 days...and then she decided to forget how to get the liquid out and realized how much fun it was to chew on them. Here, however, is proof that she was drinking from them. We have a soft-spout cup that she will drink out of sometimes still.
Very surprised Sadie Beth...in the midst of one of her favorite activities--feet chewing.
We got this fun mirror to put in Sadie Beth's crib, h0ping it would coax her to turn her head in the opposite direction. During one of our visits to the pediatrician, he commented that she has some neck tightness and her head is flatter on one side. I think it has gotten better and she enjoys the mirror very much. This is about the time she really started to enjoy some tummy time.
Yucky, yucky, yucky vitamins. They are disgusting. I gag smelling them, so I can only imagine how she feels about swallowing them. Most of the time she is a pretty good sport about it. Unfortunately I'm not very consistent about giving them to her - bad mommy! Check out those chubby little baby legs!

Sadie Beth still won't roll from her back to her stomach - I think she is probably perfectly capable of it but has very little use for doing so. :)
Doesn't she look like a cute little puppy with the sock in her mouth?

Chewing on things...
...makes me very...

... happy! (says Sadie Beth).
Sadie Beth's first big snow! It's hard to see it in this picture, but she has a huge smile on her face...until I had her touch it...and then she just looked perturbed with mommy.
So, Sadie Beth ate her cereal great for about a week and a half, and then she decided no more. Are you noticing a trend? She pretty much just likes Mommy's milk - from the original source too. Right now we are on a solids hiatus, but will resume our efforts pretty soon.
Happy girl bear!

Look how little...here she was just 2 days old! She's growing up too fast.