The Griesbaum Family

Monday, July 8, 2013

Catching up with Alli J.

Babies grow SO fast the first year of life. One moment they are these tiny, helpless, squinty-eyed, squirmy little bundles of eat, sleep, and poop. The next thing you know they are twisting the caps off your water bottles and pouring the water everywhere. Twice.

Allisyn Jan, our little girl, is miraculous. She is easy-going, sleeps well, eats anything I put in front of her, and will give you her big smile any time of the day. Right now some of her favorite things to do are:

- Sit up and play with toys
- Eating like a big girl in her high chair
- Take baths with her big brother Gavyn
- Go for walks outside
- Swinging outside
- Belle, and the chickens, and any animal she lays her eyes on
- Taking naps in the Mae Tai carrier
- Get tickled, especially by Daddy!
- Get toted around by Mama!

When Alli turned 6 months, I started giving her little samples of the food we were eating. Her first food was avocado. We are doing what they call "Baby-led weaning", where you skip mushy foods all together and go right to table foods. Let me tell you, it is incredible. It is so easy and stress-free! If she get some, she gets some, if she doesn't, that is fine too. It is about the experience, and she LOVES the experience. She will mash, throw, and every once in a while, get some food in her mouth. She has loved everything I have given her - especially cucumber, banana, sweet potatoes, and cheerios. She is still getting almost all of her nutrients from breastmilk, but that is just as it should be, in my opinion.

Sweet potatoes and Green beans

Yummy Cheerios!

Zucchini

Avocado - with a spoon too!

Nummy banana

To go along with this eating, she has popped out two teeth! Within a week of each other, her two bottom teeth have come through. They are causing her quite a bit of pain, and so we keep a constant supply of icy teethers in the freezer and she nurses a little more often to calm the pain.

See it?

She can definitely get from one side of a room to the other, but no crawling yet,. THANK GOODNESS. I'm not ready. I'm SO not ready. She can stay this slow as long as she wants. I love plopping her down on her butt too and letting her play while I work around the house.

Alli absolutely loves singing. When I can't get to her right away, all I have to do is sing a little "twinkle twinkle" or "Itsy Bitsy spider" and she calms down. Something she doesn't like are loud noises and getting scared. She frightens easily!

Some other fun milestones she has reached are putting her foot in her mouth, something Gavyn never did, and babbling. Her favorite thing to say is of course, "Dada! Dadadada! Dada!". She is also getting so good with her fine motor skills.

She is out beautiful, strong, smart little girl. I love watching her grow.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Brookfield Zoo 2013!

I headed to my Mom's this past weekend with the kids for our much anticipated Zoo trip! I get more excited about the zoo every year because Gavyn gets older and wiser and more interested in these things. It was also Alli's first time at a zoo! Gavyn had a great time. We saw so many animals and Gavyn was so excited about all of them. We saw the dolphin show and Gavyn picked up a little dolphin toy and has been doing "Whale Shows" for us ever since. He talks about the frogs a lot too.

We also had fun hanging out at Nana and Papas for the weekend. Papa has the spoiling part of being a grandparent down pat. He is always ready with new and fun things for Gavyn to play with! Nana cooked us some yummy food and helped a lot with the kids.

Getting clean for the Zoo the night before!

Using their new stroller too!

Lets go!

A baby!

The Living Coast was a big hit

Penguins!

This is the best one out of about 20 pictures like this my Mom took

At the dolphin show!

As good as I could do for a group shot

Having lunch - Gavyn passed the time by using the picnic table as a balance beam

He was looking at the big Dinosaur that moved!

Butterflies!

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Our First Summer Vacation

Being a stay at home Mom is the toughest job I have ever done. Really, there are no vacations. Going to work would qualify as a break. There are lots of perks though. One of them is being able to go anywhere I want whenever I want! I take my job on the go and we are able to spend lots of time at our family houses in the North land. John has decent vacation too, so we were able to take two weeks to go to Lescher Woods in Wisconsin - my Mom's woodland property, and Black Duck Lake in Minnesota - a place I own with my brother handed down from our Ol' Man. Both these places are very special and I'm so glad I can spend so much time there. The kids love exploring new places and learning new things.

I'll go through the rest of the trip in pictures - because as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.