8 Months!

On Saturday Will turned 8 months old! He has really started to do some really fun new things too. Of course, with every milestone I just think, "He's never going to get it!" and then one day he just does it. When he was tiny, I thought he'd never lift his head. Then I thought he'd never start cooing. Then it was rolling over... rolling the other way... getting onto his hands and knees... sitting up... eventually he has done all of these things. I had starting thinking he would never do the army crawl thing, but about a week ago he finally figured it out! Now if we could just crawl and start some consonant sounds... I know, I know.... be happy with him just where he is! I have to tell myself that every day!

He sits really well and can lean to reach for things and then get back onto his bottom. He can get from his bottom to his tummy without completely face planting most of the time. He can really cruise in his walker! You really have to watch your feet and shins b/c he will ram you. He chases Dex all over and can get basically anywhere that there isn't carpet. We think he is starting to wave and trying to say, "Hi". It sounds more like,"Ha", and he isn't very consistent, but he's working on it! Also, we think he's learning the hand sign for "eat". Just last night he finally starting making a "b" sound! I was really excited b/c I've been a little worried about him not making any consonant sounds yet. I know I'm nuts! He wants to walk everywhere all the time- holding our fingers of course.

His most fun game lately is yelling, "Ah" and then waiting for us to "ah" back at him. We will go back and forth for a long time. He just thinks it's so much fun! We think it's quite cute.

These were taken in the morning when he was still in his jammies.

He finds that paper way too fast now.

The past 8 months have been so wonderful. We were just saying last night how much easier things are getting now that he is just a little bit more independent now. I can't wait to see what fun and exciting things this little guy is going to learn this month.

Our love for this boy is beyond explanation!

What's red, white, and super scary?

SANTA!

Blah

Just wanted to let my 3 committed readers know I'm still here, but not able to post. We've had a lot going on and now we have a baby who is sick with his first cold. Sinus infection to be exact. Very stuffy noses mean not able to eat well, sleep with paci, or use paci to stop crying... basically just misery around here.

Anyway, will post again as soon as our little nose stops blowing green bubbles.

Conan Baby Jesus

This is our Nativity Set.

This is our baby Jesus...

..who looks a lot like Conan O'Brian.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

We spent this past Saturday fixing up the house for Christmas. It's always so exciting and also exhausting! We still have one of those trees that you have to put together branch by branch. In all, it took about an hour and a half just to put the branches and lights on. Whew! We don't have a ton of Christmas stuff, but it never fails to look like a bomb went off in our house. Then we moved outside and put lights up on the house. Will amazingly slept through almost of it and was very interested when we brought him out of his room. I'm so lucky to be married to someone who loves Christmas as much as I do. We played Christmas music and put Will in some new Christmas jammies.

*We even had snow yesterday (which didn't stick) and should be getting more on Friday!

The tub we keep the branches in is so huge and heavy, it's just easier to bring the branches down in a few bunches at a time.

Steven trying to put on the star.

Will in his Christmas jammies was very excited about the tree!

Please ignore the junk all around.

"You could even say it glows! "

When You're Married to a Musician..

...you find guitar picks all over the house. This is ridiculous. I have found more since these pics were taken & even found one at my Mom's house. Out of control!

Eating My Words

Thank you to whoever fired the the director from Twilight and hired Chris Weitz! I can't believe I'm saying this, but I really liked New Moon! I didn't even want to see it because I thought I'd be so disappointed, but I did and am so excited about how good it was. MUCH better than Twilight! Better quality, better special effects, better acting.

I love being surprised by something being more than I expected. Now I can't wait to see Eclipse!

The First Thanksgiving...

..as a family of 3! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year and were thrilled that Will got to spend his first Turkey Day with both sets of grandparents. We spent the holiday in Belton at Steven's parents' house and my parents joined us there. We are very fortunate to have families that get along so well. Here is a recap of the trip, not necessarily in order.

Some Thanksgiving Day backyard football.

Will with his Uncle Brian & cousin Kyler.

Playing the piano with Daddy.

"Perusing" (or eating) the Black Friday ads.

What a shame, my pie slid right off my plate.

Not quite sure of his first bite of turkey.

A feast of baby turkey and sweet potatoes!

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Steven about to dig in.

Will & Mommy

I just love the holidays and besides spending time with family, the best thing about Thanksgiving is that it really kicks off the Christmas season. Yes, we are those people who start listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving and decorate the house as soon as possible. I am so ready to experience my first Christmas as a mom. Lights are up outside, the tree is up, and Will has already been sleeping in Christmas jammies. Pics to come of this soon, once the decoration chaos has been cleaned up!

Once A Month Cooking

So a couple friends and I are trying out this idea of "Once a Month Cooking". We really only made 7 meals (this month is mostly an experiment) so obviously we'll have to cook more than once this month, but it will be nice to have some pre-made meals in the freezer for when I need something quick. They are all chicken recipes and should only require dumping the ingredients into a dish and baking it. We split up the shopping and then spent about 4-5 hours on a Saturday afternoon assembling the meals. Each meal is put into a freezer bag with the cooking directions on the outside. So far I've tried two of the meals and they weren't too bad. It did take some time to assemble them, but I really love the idea of having dinners on hand when I'm just too pooped to do anything else. The idea and recipes came from Recipezaar (although I just found a new site dedicated to this idea- see button in left column) Each of the 'cooking sessions' is already planned. It's really great b/c there is a master ingredient list that you can remove items from if you already have them. A detailed step-by-step plan is also included to help you stay organized and on track when assembling the meals.

Here is a list of the meals we made:

.

Baked Honey Mustard Chicken

Herb Wine Chicken

Honey Sesame Chicken

Golden Honey Chicken

Sangria Chicken

Chicken Bruschetta Casserole

Monterey Chicken

A couple pics from the day

My cooler full of dinners!

Super Quick

So it's 12:30 and my son is just taking his first nap of the day. He has been fighting it all morning and been quite a little bear. I'll probably only have about 10 minutes until he wakes up with my luck, so this will be quite short. I just have a couple of things on my mind that I need to send out into the universe.

1. What's the big deal about Susan Boyle? I know this makes me sound like an awful person. I'm sure she's a wonderful person and doesn't sound terrible, but really? I guess maybe she's inspiring and it's not really just about her voice...

2. (Now I'm really going to stir things up...) The Twilight books are excellent. The Twilight movies are terrible. Yes, I said it- terrible. They are cheesy and cheap and an insult the novels. Maybe it's the directing, maybe it's the acting, maybe it's just me and my literary snobbery. However, I'm also quite a hypocrite because I'll probably break down and see the dang thing.

So there they are, my two cents. or would that be four cents since it's two cents per thought...

Go ahead and judge me.

7 Months!

Our Will turned 7 months old today! He has started doing all kinds of big boy things too. His bottom two teeth are working their way in. It's going to be so cute, but I'm a little worried that he's going to be a biter... and I'm still breastfeeding... yikes! He is sitting up all by himself now and is still working on getting up onto his knees. He really likes standing up and holding onto my hands to "walk" around. He loves to bounce on his knees and still screams at the top of his lungs when he's really excited.

His meals consist of avacado (his favorite), sweet potato, acorn squash, pears, bananas, apples, green beans, oatmeal, and brown rice cereal. I'm not sure yet what we're going to try next, but I have no doubt he'll eat it right up. He is so impatient when I'm getting his food ready and can hardly stand waiting for the next bite. He makes the mmm, mmm, mmm noise the whole time!

Best of all- the last two nights Will slept until 5:30 and 6:00 before waking up!!!!! We're praying tonight will be the same or better. I've been doing better about not letting him sleep with me. I can't help it, sometimes he just looks so precious I can't stand it and need to cuddle him.

We just love him more than we could have imagined!

Hey, there's that paper...

..I'm going to eat it..

..hi mom...

...oh, Dex, maybe I'll eat you too...

... hey, get off me...

..oh, a kiss...

...eww, that was sick.

Trip to Belton

We took a trip to Belton this weekend for some Lentz family pictures. I didn't take near enough pictures at Steven's parents' house and missed some good shots of Will with his Mimi, Pa, Uncle Brian, Aunt Kendy, & his 3 cousins- Kyler, Brandon, and Kaden. I'll have to make up for it at Thanksgiving. Anyway, I can't wait to see the shots from the photographer, but I did manage to get some good ones of my own at the creek. Will sure loves yanking out grass and eating leaves! (of course, what doesn't he like to eat?) I only let him put a couple in his mouth long enough to take a picture, it was just too cute!