We've got a tooth!

It's finally here! Just one so far but I'm sure the other one is close behind. Here is my attempt at getting a photo.

Being my smiley baby

...more smiley

You can see it really well in the next two photos if you know where to look. I wish I could point to it.

As you can imagine she's teething like crazy. I bought this teether/feeder you put liquid in (I used breast milk) and freeze...she loved it!

New tricks!

In just the past week she has added a lot of new tricks to her line-up. She is sitting up by herself for longer stretches -even grabbing things around her and not falling over. And also doing a version of the army crawl...and FAST. You look away for one second and she's across the floor going to put something in her mouth that she shouldn't...like sand...eekkkkk! We spent all weekend at the beach because it was like 100 degrees here, no joke. You put her on the biggest towel you can find and within minutes she has "crawled" over to the side, grabbing handfuls of sand. I remember never taking Caiden to the beach at this age because it's just not worth the effort...but it's the best place to take him now...Grace not so much.

Grace: 7 months

This month snuck up on me way too fast! She is still wearing mostly 3-6 month clothes with the exception of the full pieces with feet because they are getting too short and her poor legs can't stretch out all the way. Weight wise she fits into all the 3-6 month clothes perfectly but we have started rotating them out to add in some new 6-9 months.

She is sitting by herself a little better every day but still not full on sitting up. She leans forward pretty far and still topples over pretty quickly. But she is on the move. I put her in one spot of the living room and a few minutes later she will have rolled and scooted her way somewhere completely different. I found her stuck in this corner on her knees trying to push off on the table. I'm totally not ready for a crawling baby yet!

She is seriously the most smiley baby -compared to Caiden anyway. It's just so weird how different he was at this age. It took a lot to get him to laugh and smile but you just look at her and she smiles so big. Here is a perfect example. This is both of them at the same age. Caiden loved the swing but he didn't feel the need to express it by smiling -seriously he never smiled on the swing but always wanted to be in it. Grace on the other hand is all smiles the second you put her in there.

I love to see Marc interact with her. I'm so glad we had a girl because it's just the sweetest thing ever seeing them together. I've taken these photos the past few weeks in the middle of the night when we put her in our bed. He is so tolerant of her when she's fussy and kicking and not wanting to sleep. He ALWAYS finds a way to get her to sleep. He says, "She loves when I breathe on her." (the first picture) Hahahaha -annoying to me, not to Grace! In this second photo I woke up to hear him snoring so loud and her sound asleep on his chest...again, annoying to me, not to Grace!

She is not really able to put herself to sleep yet...something we totally had Caiden a champ at right now. She is either being held in the rocker and laid down, falls asleep in the car or takes her naps in the swing. I know the longer I do this the harder it's going to be, but I just don't have it in me yet to let her cry it out until she figures it out on her own. Sigh...a disaster to come for sure.

Still no teeth popping through. I really can't believe it because she's so grabby and has to constantly put things in her mouth. And if I rub my finger along her gum line she just loves it and stops moving entirely.  She is also a tag baby...loves, loves, loves the tags on anything. If she eyes the tag -she's going for it and putting it in her mouth.

I think it's time for the play-mat to be packed away. Today she had it upside down, not sure it's serving the purpose it was intended for anymore.

OH! And this happened last weekend, too!

We found out that Sara and Dustin are having a BOY! That's right, I'm going to be an AUNTIE and Caiden and Grace are going to have a cousin come mid-June! 

We have a new family member!

...no, we didn't get a dog. My sister got married! And now I have a brother! This was our longest road trip we've taken with the kids. We had a four hour drive up to Santa Ynez (of course four hours is with no LA traffic and no pit stops for the kiddos). We left Thursday morning. The plan was to get out of the house by 9:30 but it didn't end up happening until 10:45. We stopped about an hour and half in and had lunch. Then we got back in the car and Grace fell asleep after about 30 minutes and slept the entire rest of the way. Caiden was up for about an hour and then fell asleep. It was really a pretty easy drive -they were both as good as they could be and we didn't hit any traffic!

We were real happy once they were both asleep!

This was the road to the house a couple of miles out. It was so beautiful. Nothing but horse farms and wineries.

The entire weekend was so much fun. We stayed in a huge house where the wedding also took place. There were horses, goats and sheep on the property which kept Caiden busy for many hours of the trip. As you can imagine, my Dad was in heaven too!

On Friday they rented a bus and we went wine tasting in the area. We went to three wineries with the kids in tow. They were great! Marc and Caiden even took a nap on the bus about half way through. I have to say that it's so much better when Caiden takes a nap. He was in such a good mood and able to hang all night long. On Saturday he didn't take a nap and was a pistol about half way through the wedding dinner. Needless to say we missed about an hour of the fun dancing time while putting the kids to bed.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner of sorts. Not really a rehearsal dinner but more just an excuse for whoever was there for the wedding to come hang out. There were only 25 total people coming for the wedding and 20 of them made it for the taco bar Friday night. There were also some awesome margaritas -which, as you can imagine after a full day of wine tasting, made for some very hungover people Saturday morning.

Speaking of Saturday morning -they coordinated one of their friends (also the officiant) who is a cross fit coach to do a session at 9am. Then, another friend who's a yoga instructor did a session after that. I'm not sure what I was thinking doing the cross fit session...I'm still so flippin sore I can barely walk down the stairs, then during the yoga session my down dog turned to this pretty early:

Saturday afternoon was the wedding. Here are some photos:

So let me explain this photo. Sara and Dustin didn't have anyone standing up with them. However, a few minutes into the ceremony Caiden got off his chair and went up there to stand next to/in front of Dustin. He did this all on his own. Just stood up there with his hands behind his back, smiling and looking at the crowd and then back to Sara and Dustin...just like he knew he was supposed to be there. It was so cute.

The weekend was so, so great. There was such a good group of people and everyone had a blast. Welcome to the family Uncle Dustin!