My Baby Bookworm and her Milestones

The last couple of weeks have proven to be very exciting for David and I. We have had the pleasure of watching Chloe do so many new and amazing things. All of the sudden she decided to wake up and start showing off her amazing talents. It's so funny too, because when she does something new, David and I stare at each other then start screaming with excitement.

Only a parent can understand the excitement you feel your baby rolls over for the first time, or when they accomplish any milestone for that matter. You are just so proud of your little one!! David was hysterical when she rolled over for the first time. He got to see it first, of course (even though I am home with her all day, haha). All of the sudden I hear, "BABE.... BABE....., Chloe just rolled over. Oh my Gosh Chloe, good girl baby, good girl!! (in a very high pitch tone). So cute to see such a proud daddy. Among rolling over in the last couple of weeks, Chloe is also holding onto and shaking her rattle (and any other object she can get her hands on, including mommy's hair), holding her bottle, making lots of new sounds, jumping around in her bouncer, and my mom claims that last night she picked up her own paci and put it in her mouth, all by herself.

Chloe just starting to roll over

After she rolled over and landed on her belly

Holding her own bottle. She is even starting to understand that when she drops it there is no milk. She is learning to put the bottle back in her mouth.

In her P.J.'s playing in her bouncer.

I have also started taking Chloe to a baby bookworm class at the Highland Library with a bunch of my girlfriends and their babies. We sing, read books, learn sign language, and have playtime. The babies just kind of stare at each other, but it's soo cute. I think Chloe is crushing on baby Landon and baby Dominick. We also started a playgroup with my Alpha Phi sisters and had our first play date on Thursday. I am having so much watching Chloe explore the world and discover the new things that she can do. We are making the most out of every day that we have together before I unfortunately have to go back to work.

Chloe at baby bookworm with baby Dominick and baby Landon At our Alpha Phi play group. We dressed the kids up and tried to get a picture, but this task was just impossible.

Gettin in the Halloween Spirit!

This year Halloween is definitely more exciting now that we have our precious little Chloe. I have felt more inspired than ever to create and continue holiday family traditions. Now, I understand that she is only 4 months old (almost), but I assume she will appreciate it when she is older and looks back on the millions of photos I take to document her life. (Hopefully she does not get mad at me when she sees all of the crazy bows and flowers I put on her head, haha).

We started all of the Halloween fun on Saturday when we took her to the pumpkin patch. She did not really know what was going on, but she loved looking at the farm animals. Only in Cali it would be 95 degrees on a mid October day. Oh man it was HOT!! I ended up de-clothing her along the duration of the day to try to keep her cool. Off went the shoes, off went the socks, sleeves got rolled up, and her pants turned into shorts. The day was fun despite the weather and we ended up bringing home a family of 3 pumpkins.

Family pic! Here shirt says "Too cute it's scary"!

Me and my baby

Daddy and his little angel

Playing around at home, she was not feeling this photo shoot. She is still super cute though.


So we continued the Halloween fun on Sunday and carved our pumpkins. David carved the pumpkin on the left and I carved the other 2. We had soo much fun doing this, but my hand hurt like crazy when I was finished.

I then proceeded to make and decorate Halloween cookies to Boo my neighbors with. My friend Holly gave me the idea and I thought it was so cute I just had to do it. You leave cookies or sweets on your neighbors door anonymously and they must do the same to two other neighbors. So fun! The baking was no fun though. For some reason my cookie cut outs expanded so big when I baked them that you could not even make out what they were. I really enjoyed decorating them though. I need to figure out the baking part before Chloe gets old enough to realise that I have no idea what I am doing.


Here are just a couple of the cookies. Time for a new cookie sheet, lol. I am really excited to dress Chloe up in her Halloween costume and take her to a few houses on Halloween. It's so fun having a baby, I truely am loving every second of every day with her. I cannot imagine how fun this stuff will be when she is actually old enough to know what is going on.

Beautiful Baptism

Our sweet little angel Chloe was Baptised on Sunday, October 11th at the First Unitied Methodist Church in Riverside. Chloe was baptised into the Christian religion and her baptism will be recognised at any Christian church. We chose this church as it has become very special to us. David's father and stepmother have been members there for years, and David and I started going prior to my pregnancy.

This day was so special for us. We invited all of the grandparents, Godparents, and siblings to join us on the stage. When the ceremony was over, the pastor took Chloe down the aisles of the church to show her off to the congregation. She was our little star as always. She was awake for the entire church service, and did not cry once. Everybody headed over to our house afterwards for yummy pulled pork sandwiches and lots of fun! We will hold this special day in are hearts forever.
Our little Angel. Grammy Striegel made her Baptism dress, bonnet, and matching white blanket. She did an amazing job!

With the Godparents, My sister Courtney, and David's best friend Lorenzo

The beautiful cake that my mom made. She is one talented women!

This blog is for you Heidi!!

Okay, I am dedicating this blog entry to one of my best friends Heidi. She is the most creative person I know, and has inspired me to complete a few projects while I am out on maternity leave. (Katie, you give me inspiration too!) You can check out Heidi's stuff at the craft monkey blog at http://thecraftmonkey.blogspot.com/ . I still have several projects that I am working on, but with a baby, it gets a little difficult to be crafty. So here you go Heidi, thanks for motivating me to do something with my spare time.

These are the flower pots I made for Chloe's Baptism (more to come on that in a future post). I made really cute ones with crosses in the middle but I gave them away before I got a good picture of them.

I found this frame at Marshalls for $5.99 and fell in love. It has the same kind of design as Chloe's nursery, but it was the wrong color. So I used the same color that I used on her walls, added brown to the scrolls, and it matches her room perfectly!!

Heidi, I took this picture so you can see that I use the wipe box you made me, haha.

These are the famous mercury pumpkins that everybody was making this year. Thanks Heidi for guiding me the right direction on the paint.

This is probably my biggest accomplishment, only because my husband said that I could not do it. I originally tried stenciling a border in Chloe's nursery with regular paint and no knowledge on what I was doing. It was a disaster. With Heidi's motivation, a little research on how to properly stencil, whaaa la, I figured it out! Oh, and I totally bedazzled my wall with rhinestones, do you see them?? When David saw it he was like "I know you did not just bedazzle our wall". I was so proud that he even knew what bedazzled meant, haha. PROGRESS!!

Bad picture, but there is one on each side of the "you are a dream come true". Heidi, do you like my new rug?? It took me forever to find a rug that matched her room perfect!

Current projects I am working on is a door hanger for her room, a thanksgiving banner (very different from anything I have seen), and some odds and ins Thanksgiving projects. Of course this all depends on how much SPARE time I can really squeeze in.

Stroller Derby

Who would have ever thought that navigating a stroller through the very heavy crowds at the fair would have been so hard???? I never did. I told my husband "I got this, piece of cake" after he offered to push. I should of just let em. I think that was the most painful experience a mother has to go through for the first time. Oh, I am so ready for next time, but my first experience doing it was quite an adventure.

It all started at the entrance of the fair, where the exited mommy's & daddy's had there very own special line for the STROLLERS! When I saw how long the line was, that should have been my first clue that there were going to be TON of strollers (and people) there. Now, keep in mind, this was our first BIG outing where we had to go through a stroller check, so this was all new to us. When the security guard asked us to take out our diaper bag, I about fainted. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I wanted to ask him, "Do you know how long it just took us to get it under there, secure it, and make sure nothing was falling out?" But I kept my mouth shut and started tugging and pulling away until it finally came out. If you have seen my bag, you know what I am talking about (see pic below if you have not). It's huge and barley fits as it is. But we successfully made it through the entrance and on our way we went.

(The bag that does not fit under the stroller without an enormous effort)!

Things were going great, we visited the farm animals, which Chloe LOVED! But after that, the entire city decided to come to the fair at the same time. OMG, I was afraid to push the damn stroller. There were people EVERYWHERE! My sister and her husband were walking in front of us, kind of clearing the way. I was trying to enjoy myself, looking at all of the vendors, but they had to keep stopping, and I swear I must have ran into my sister at least ten times. (Note to self for next time, you cannot look anywhere but in front of you or YOU WILL hit the person in front of you). You would swear that all of the mommies were in a race, which resulted in them cutting us off left and right. The funniest part was when I hit another stroller. You should have seen the look on the ladies face. If looks could kill, I would have been dead. Come on lady, like you have never hit another stroller, give me a break. I begged David, my sister, even her husband to push the stroller and they all laughed at me. Talk about new mommy initiation! Here are some fun pics from the day, I wish I would have taken a pic of the crowd that I had to navigate through, but I was not exactly thinking straight.

Little Miss Photogenic

Our little princess did great at her 3 month photo shoot! She is a little ham in front of the camera. She had way to much fun taking these pictures. I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that her mommy has a camera in her face 24/7 (she has had lots of practice posing).

Funny story about her flower. I swear I need to go to bows anonymous. I have a serious problem with buying them and plastering them on my daughters forehead. It was so bad that I had to have my step mom drive out to my crack, I mean bow dealers house, all the way in Rancho before our 10am shoot. I am now calling her my bow dealer, because basically bows are like crack to me, and you gotta have a dealer. She made a custom flower to match her dress that I was willing to do anything to get before her pictures. Thankfully Ginger came through for me. Thanks for supporting my addiction!

We did have an outfit change, and yes, it was in her Halloween costume. By this time Chloe decided that she was done hamming it up for the camera. So no smiles in those, but still adorable!

It is only fitting that she is a flower for Halloween!

By this point she was so tired she was leaning and we could not get her to hold her head up