This moment - chillin with one of my puppies.

{this moment} – A Friday ritual from Soule Mama.  A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment.  A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your “moment” in the comments for all to find and see.

Dogs on Thursday! We sit for momma!

Hope you are all having a great Thursday!  Since CGR has been getting so much attention on here I figured the pups needed their day back!  They are doing great!  They have been so good with CGR and also just in general.  Their only issues is that it's the season for Abby to be itchy and Jackjack is getting more and more grey hair!

They are still my precious babies!  Here they are sitting and waiting to go out tonight!  They like to run around the yard but they wait patiently before they bold out the back porch door.  Love their faces!!

Happy Dogs On Thursday!!

Knitting, what have I done to you?

I have not been having good luck with my knitting.  I won't go into the whole ordeal but lets just say from cardigan yokes that are too long to casting on and twisting stitches it's been a mess!  I don't know what to do with the cardigan at this time.  I know I'm going to frog but what to do with the yarn.  I'm thinking I might do a vest but I haven't really decided I want to do that either!

So, I pulled out a project I had on the back burner for a while to give me some downtime knitting before I could figure out what my next project is.  I'm not sure any of you will remember but way back before I was even pregnant I started a blanket for my unborn child from the Barn Raising Quilt pattern.  I called this the Barknknit Raising Quilt.  I have knit many squares but have so many more to go that it was sort of put off for a while.  My knitting group recently knit one for a friend and it came out so great that I think I am going to finally get around to finishing it for Carmen.  That does involve actually finishing more squares though.

After starting to work on the squares and regain my faith in knitting, I cast on a skirt for Carmen.  I'm using the pattern Caiden's skirt by Yumiko Sakurai. This is the project that I couldn't get started right for some reason.  I decided I would knit it in the round because I can't see knitting this in two pieces for a skirt that could easily be knit in the round but the problems started there. First I cast on WAY too many stitches for it to fit her in the next three years I felt and then I twisted the stitches when joining in the round and had to frog AGAIN!

I finally cast on again last night with 108 stitches and it looks like it's going to work out great!!  I am not a huge fan of this yarn because I feel like it sheds a ton but I had it in my stash and with my yarn budget to below zero I had to make due with what I have.

I think this will be a quick knit and if I run out of red I just plan to finish the top part with the white cotton yarn.  Can't hurt right?

Well, hope you are all having a great Wednesday!

Happy Knitting!!

Carmen meets solids the baby led solids way!

Ok, it's official!  We are officially starting solids when Carmen is 5 1/2 months old. I posted about Baby Led Weaning or Baby Led Solids as it's starting to be called in the US back in this post.  Back then I was still not ready for her to actually "eat" anything but she was showing signs of readiness so we were giving her tastes of apples and pears.  Well, last week my girl decided that she was going to sit up on her own and this was the last sign I was waiting for before officially starting.

Check out these sweet sheepie pajamas!

 So, last Thursday while I was at my sister's house, we pulled out a banana and let her eat it!

This is actually the 2nd time I've let her have banana but the first time I wasn't ready and when she got a big bite and spit it out, I stopped giving her more.  I really think she liked the banana but she didn't like the fresh banana as much as once it had been a little manhandled.   When she would taste the new banana piece she would shake her head a bit.  The banana was VERY messy and like my sister said she smelled like banana pudding but she seemed to enjoy it and she was able to get a good handle on getting it to her mouth.   A couple times she squeezed the banana pretty hard and broke it up but as she kept trying she seemed to start getting it.  I think banana is a good start and I plan to give her more bananas.

Our 2nd food this weekend was Avocado!  This was so fun!  But how can you resist this cuteness!  And check out those pups who didn't know what was coming there way! :)

 She got super messy but I knew she would so I just put her in her booster chair in only her diaper.  I'm not big on bibs and I only think Carmen has had one or two bibs on and one was for a picture.  She got a bath right after this experience with Avocado.

Since then she has been so interested when I eat anything...thinking she will get a taste but I haven't given her anything.  We haven't had time when she is not already sleepy and we are home.  Hoping to be able to give her the other half of the avocado before it goes bad.  And I have a sweet potato to bake to give her too.

Well, I hope you enjoyed these videos.  Other than daddy not being too excited about the mess it makes, we are having a GREAT time watching her figure things out!

Oh and a quick recap:  Both Avocado and Banana are a great first solid food but are very messy and takes some skill for them to be able to pick up and get to their mouth without them being mush! :)

Happy Eating the BLS way.

This moment - the best seat in the house! We need this for our house!

{this moment} – A Friday ritual from Soule Mama.  A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment.  A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your “moment” in the comments for all to find and see.

Happy Mother's Day! My First as a mom.

Mother's Day has always been a bit of a sad day for me.  As many of you may know, my mom passed away when I was 6 of breast cancer.  She was an amazing person and so many people have told me so many wonderful things about her. I don't have many memories of her as I was so young but I love hearing stories about her. Here is a picture of my mom pregnant with me.  She was making a cake with my sisters.

I also found a fantastic picture of my mother breastfeeding me, however, I'm just not sure I want to post that on the internet for all to see. :)  I do want to make sure I have pictures of my daughter and I breastfeeding because someday she might want to see them.  One of my favorite pictures of my mom and me is this next one.  It's one of the few of us together that I have and I just love how happy we look.

 On Mother's Day, I always think of my mom and the fact that I haven't had her with me on Mother's Day for 24 years.  In the past, I've gotten through this day in thinking of the women in my life who stepped up and mothered me.  When you don't have a mom of your very own, often times your friends share their moms with you.  This isn't always an easy process but I did spend a lot of my childhood at my friend's houses with their moms.  One in particular is my friend Lynley's mom.  I remember so many weekend's of my childhood spent as their fourth child and 2nd daughter.  When I was in high school, I spent lots of time with my best friend Annemarie, and hence spent lots of time with her mother as well.   Even though, I think Annemarie did her own mothering of me. hehe...just don't tell her I said that.  :) 

The ones that have been there for my whole life and have always been like moms, best friends, sisters, and so much more to me are my four sisters.  Each one of them means more to me than I could ever tell them.  They each are so special and I'm not sure how I could have gotten through all these years without them.  They have wiped up my tears, made me laugh, taken me along on their adventures, and taught me how to be a mom.  They were bridesmaids in my wedding even when they all said that they didn't want to be and pleaded with me to ask my friends...but they gave in when they realized how important it was to me.  They were there when I gave birth to my own child and helped me get through those tough first weeks at learning to be a mom.  I will forever be grateful that my parents had each and every one of them and for teaching them the skills they needed to be there for me.  Here is a picture of us with my hubby and dad at my wedding.

Today's Mother's Day was both bittersweet at usual but was more sweet than bitter for the first time ever.  This year, I am a Mother to the most amazing little girl I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.  It's my very first Mother's Day I got to focus on what it means to be a mom and not what it meant to be without my mom.  My husband wrote out two cards to me.  One from himself and one from our daughter.  They were the sweetest cards and made me tear up.  I enjoyed my day spent with my girl and my family.  She made me laugh a lot and just watching her explore the world makes me so happy.

She also will forever remind me of my mom because when it came to naming her...only one name came to mind for me and that was my mom's name Carmen.  My sister Cristina gave me a wonderful present this Christmas and until I opened it I had not thought of myself this way.  She gave me a necklace with two charms.  One charm says "Carmen's daughter" and the other "Carmen's mom."  It's kind of amazing that both my mother/daughter relationships in my life are with a person named Carmen. :)

I hope that everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day and that you think of all the blessings in your life.  Thanks for stopping by my blog and hope you made sure that you celebrated all the "mother" relationships in your life...even your furbaby ones! ;)

This moment - watching the pups as a distraction from our teething.

{this moment} – A Friday ritual from Soule Mama.  A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.  A simple, special, extraordinary moment.  A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your “moment” in the comments for all to find and see.