A Lovely Summer Day

I interrupt my baby posts to bring you something resembling my old blog content.  We had a nice day today so I thought I'd share.  The weather was in the low 80's in Charlotte and after a leisurely morning involving blueberry pancakes and playing the baby and dog for awhile, we ventured out to check out a place I've been wanting to try for a long time- Pinky's Westside Grill.

That is a VW bug on top of the restaurant :)

We arrived dead in the middle of lunchtime on a Saturday (not that smart) and actually brought Clyde with us too, not knowing if it was dog friendly or not, and figuring if we had to we'd get the food to go and find a park to eat at or something.  They have outdoor seating at Pinky's, and while technically, it's not dog friendly, they allowed us to have Clyde outside the fence next to our table.  We were also seated in less than five minutes, which was impressive.

This was one of the better lunches out Allie has had lately.  She hardly got fussy at all and was able to stay in her car seat the entire time, which rarely happens these days.  Pretty soon we'll probably be able to put her in a high chair, and maybe that will help.

Pinky's is a burger and hot dog joint, with some other stuff on the menu as well (I was actually tempted to get fish tacos), but what makes them extra exciting is that you can get veggie burgers and veggie dogs there, which is pretty much heaven for Greg, since he leans towards vegetarian much of the time.

We started with a small order of fried pickles, which was enormous.  

They were hot, salty, and tangy.

I opted for a cheeseburger, since let's face it, I still haven't lost my cheeseburger cravings since pregnancy.  I pretty much got the standard burger with lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo and ketchup, except with pimento cheese.  It was delicious :)

 

I also got a side of sweet potato fries, which were good, but we ended up taking at least half home since we were so full from the fried pickles.

Greg had a veggie hot dog with chili and coleslaw and loved it.

We got a kick out the fact that when feeding Clyde bites of stuff, he immediately could tell the difference between the meat of my burger and the veggie dog.  Smart dog.

Allie took a little nap on the way home.

Back at the house, I thought about what to do for the rest of the afternoon and then decided to get out our outdoor blanket and do some playtime with Allie outside in the fresh air.

It was great to be outside for a while, and nice that it wasn't too hot today.  We stayed in the shade and I made sure to lather Allie up with sunscreen.  

The rest of the afternoon and evening was low key.  Allie tried acorn squash for the first time and seemed to like it.  I think it's funny, because she seemed to like that better than sweet potato, which we tried earlier this week.  Apple, prunes, and pears are her favorites so far.

After dinner we did the usual bedtime routine of a bath, jammies, a book, and one last nurse session for the day before Allie drifted off.  She's on her fourth or fifth night sleeping without the sleep suit now and it's going well.  She's been sleeping in a Halo sleep sack on her belly and seems to like it.

The night ended with a batch of chocolate chip cookies I made.  These have oatmeal and nutritional yeast in them, which is supposed to be good for lactating mamas.  I may have just eaten four...

Anyway, it was a great day.  I'm off to bed at a little after 9pm, because that's what mom's with six month old babies that are tired do.  Hope you guys are having a good weekend!

Six Months!

Life has been very busy around here lately, and I'm almost a week late on my six month update on Allie!  I can't believe it's been half a year since she was born.  Wow.

Allie has become quite the fun baby.  She's really in a phase where you can tell she just wants to learn and explore everything and be stimulated constantly.  She seems to catch on to things more easily now and I'm amazed at the things we're able to show and teach her.  She has learned things like opening her mouth to be fed, using a sippy cup, sitting, pulling on a toy to make it play music...  all kinds of things!

Allie had her six month well visit and we got her new stats:

14 lbs 3 oz
25 inches long
43 inches head

She's still in size 2 diapers, and her clothing is anywhere from 3M to 3-6 to 6M, it just kind of depends on the brand.

She's right on track for her stats curve, even though I hear about other babies that are easily five pounds heavier at her age all the time.  She looks perfect to me :)

Lots of new developments for Allie this month.  At six months here are some things Allie can do:

She can kind of sit, it's getting better every day, even though she's prone to falling over after a while, so you still need to watch her carefully.

She can scoot around on her belly, not exactly crawling, but close.  She can definitely move forward, and even moves in circles.  She'll do it if she sees something she wants- like a toy on the other side of her play mat.

She also likes practicing her standing!  

Allie had some really good times in the pool a couple weeks ago in Hilton Head.  I couldn't believe how much she seemed to like it.  Water baby!

She also looks good in her cover up!

Allie is also into grabbing her feet now, which cracks me up.  I've yet to see her do "happy baby" holding both feet at the same time, but often catch her holding one.

Allie starting taking more of an interest in Clyde recently, and now reaches for him and watches him when he's around, which is funny.  I caught her pulling his ear one day, but he didn't seem to mind at all.  Good dog :).

We've also started putting her in her strollers without the car seat finally.  We were kind of waiting til she was good enough at sitting to not be slumped over, and she's finally there now.  We still haven't done shopping cart seats yet, but probably should be able to in the next few weeks.

The biggest new development is probably starting solids this month.  We got the go ahead to start baby oatmeal cereal and first foods, so we've been doing that.  She's had avocado, prunes, pears, banana, applesauce, and peas so far.  She is totally her mama's baby and LOVES to eat.  I actually notice that she gets kind of mad/fussy if you are eating in front of her and not feeding her something now, so I have to make sure I have her stuff ready to go.

Feeding solids has been interesting.  I have always intended, and still intend, to make Allie a lot of her baby food.  The first night though, we went shopping for the oatmeal, and ended up picking up a couple jars of organic baby food, because my husband was excited about them (Mr. Convenience).  So jarred pears ended up being one of the first things we fed her, even though I thought it was kind of stupid because it's something I could easily make her, but we were raring to go and it was convenient.  I did "make" her pureed peas, but so far, that's the only thing I've actually cooked and fed her, which wasn't what I'd planned, but things have been so busy, it's been hard to make much.  I also am interested in doing some of the baby led weaning, but so far the only thing I've tried with is avocado and banana, and she didn't really seem to get it.  She's much more into opening her mouth wide and having me feed her with a spoon at this point, so I'm just kind of rolling with it.  All of us are having fun with it.

Right at the six month mark, Allie got her first cold.  It actually wasn't too terrible.  She had a slight fever and some congestion, but it could have been worse.  Timing wise, it worked out ok because my mom was visiting, and was able to watch her when I had to work, and then Greg came home from a trip and took over, so we could keep her out of daycare.  Of course, Greg made fun of my incessant calling to check on Allie and sent me this picture one day to show me how things were going...  Very funny.

It's an interesting time right now, because Allie is still very much a baby, but she's also exploding with progress so it suddenly feels very different.  She still has baby meltdowns once in a while though.

And she still sleeps on me like she did when she was hours old...

I love this girl to the moon and back, she is my world.  Happy six months baby!  Can't wait to see how the next six go!