Eight Months

Stella is 8 months old today and life has drastically changed in the last few days here in the Frisby home. My little baby who would lay there and play with her toys, rolling here and there, staying fairly contained is no more. She has now figured out how to scoot and it's game on! All of a sudden, she is here, there, and everywhere. And fast. She hasn't figured out how to crawl quite yet. I expect she'll do that tomorrow since she seems to always hit a major milestone the day after I blog. For now, she just pulls herself with her arms while pushing a little with her feet to help the process. When she's on the kitchen floor, which has no carpet, she moves pretty fast since she slides so easily. But, she's learning to get around pretty well on the carpet, too. With her newfound mobility, the possibilities for discovery are endless. She's particularly interested in what's under the couch. There isn't much really. The DDR mats for the Wii and a lot of dust. But, to her, it's a whole new world. Yesterday she scooted over to the couch, pulled a dust ball out from under it, and popped it in her mouth before I could stop her. And her favorite thing to do is pull out the cords on the DDR mats and eat them. I figure it's okay since they're not plugged in to anything. I did Swiffer under the couches yesterday after the dust ball incident. All of a sudden I find myself vacuuming all the time and cleaning in places that I wasn't worried about before - like under the couch. And I told Mr. Frisby that I want a steam mop for my birthday. The times, they are a-changin'. Sing it Bob Dylan.

Scout, bless her heart, is beside herself now that the baby can get around and into things. In fact, she's a pretty decent tattletale. If she thinks that Stella is getting into something she shouldn't, she usually lets me know. And she's very aware of what's hers and what's Stella's and she does not like Stella getting into her stuff. She's okay if Stella gets one of her toys because she thinks maybe she'll play with her. But, the other day we were at my parents' and we had a bag for Scout with some of her things in it. Stella was cruising around checking things out and decided to investigate Scout's bag. Scout did not like that at all. First, she tried to take the bag away from Stella. But, that didn't really work because she couldn't get a good hold on it with her teeth. So, she tried to swat Stella's hand away with her paw. But, that didn't work either. Finally, she went over and started nipping at Stella's ponytail and just generally freaking out until I went over and took the bag away from Stella. It was hilarious. Scout and Stella remain good friends and it will be fun to see how Scout reacts to Stella crawling and standing and getting into more trouble.

Besides her increased mobility, Stella has also branched out in her eating this month. In fact, she had her first meal at a restaurant. We went to Marie Callendar's on Saturday and when I looked at the menu, I saw that kids eat free on Saturday. So, I looked at the kids' menu, decided she could eat some pasta and garlic bread as long as we cut it up really small for her, and ordered her first meal. And she LOVED it. She could have sat there eating for hours, but I got bored with it. Her meal even came with a free slice of pie. I got her Apple because she loves apples and I gave her a couple bites. She would've eaten more, but I decided that wouldn't be a good idea. She does love to eat and is learning to feed herself a little bit too. I give her some freeze-dried yogurt drops and cereal puffs that she can pick up and eat herself. It took some practice, but her pincer grasp is improving and she's getting really good at getting things in her mouth. And she loves being able to do it herself. Scout also loves it when she feeds herself because she misses or drops things a fair amount, too.

In my last post, I mentioned that Stella was spitting up a lot less. This was, apparently, a lie. She must have just been having a good couple of weeks. She is now back to her usual ways, spewing spit up wherever she goes. And, it's even more fun now with all of the different foods she's eating. Here's some photographic evidence. She spit up over my shoulder as I stood up with her from this chair. And this is only what made it past my shoulder and back. I think twice about buying red, orange, or purple food and I think twice about buying her white clothes.

She has her bottom two teeth now and I think she may be working on another one. We'll see if anything pops up soon. Her favorite toy right now is probably her Fisher Price Xylophone. She LOVES that thing. She's still figuring out how to bang on it and make noise, but it keeps her busy for awhile. Like, maybe 15 or 20 minutes. That's awhile for baby, right? I feel like it is since her other toys keep her occupied for, like, 15 or 20 seconds.

She's a very busy little girl and we love watching her discover the world around her. She continues to be happy in general and very easy going. She's even showing signs of getting over her anyone-except-mom-anxiety. If you feed her, she'll probably let you hold her.

I was looking through Stella's baby book the other day as I was adding some more information and I was looking at some of her newborn pictures. Those first days with her seem so far away and so long ago and, yet, 8 months really isn't a very long time. It amazes me how much she has changed and how quickly those changes happened. I won't lie and say I enjoy every minute of it. I enjoy most minutes, but not all. I could do without all the minutes of changing diapers, cleaning up spit up, etc. But, I try to savor the far too few minutes of being able to just sit and watch her be her. And, with that, I hear her stirring and waking up from her nap. Time to see what she'll be getting into this afternoon. We love our little Stella!

Stella's New Do

Stella got a haircut on Saturday. I figured it was about time since I couldn't even feed her without pulling her hair back first since it was so in the way. I was getting my hair done and figured it would be a great time to get hers done, too. Here are a couple pictures of her right at the beginning. You can see how long and out of control her hair was.

Overall, she was a champ. I held her so she wouldn't freak out and she was distracted by my picture and video taking. She squirmed a bit and was pretty curious about what was going on, but all in all, it was a raving success.

And, here she is after it was over.

I didn't realize it would make as big of a difference as it did, but it was a pretty awesome change. She's cuter than ever and no longer has hair constantly in her eyes.

Easter 2012

Happy Easter, everyone! As I mentioned before, we took lots of pictures on Easter. It was Stella's first Easter. What choice did we have? We started the morning off by going to my new nephew's baby blessing. I didn't take any pictures of baby Hank because I didn't know they were taking them right after Sacrament Meeting. But, he was super cute and the blessing was beautiful. After the blessing, we headed back to my sister's house to hide eggs and get the food ready while the kids were still at church.

Since we were in a rush that morning to get to the baby blessing, we decided to wait until after church to have Stella check out her Easter basket. I think she liked it.

After she checked out her Easter basket, we went outside to take some pictures.

I had envisioned some beautiful pictures of Stella sitting on the bright green grass in her cute Easter attire. The pictures would have evoked feelings of happiness in the lovely spring weather. Then we set Stella down on the grass and she started screaming. This is when we learned that she is terrified of the grass and does not trust it one bit. Cute grassy pics were out and we moved on to Plan B.

We just held her for pictures.

Obviously she's still cute, but the grass would've contrasted with her dress nicely. She did enjoy checking out the springtime blossoms on the tree, so I decided that would make cute enough Easter pics.

When everyone else got home from church, it was time for the Easter egg hunt.  We didn't get many pictures because I was helping Stella get her eggs and Mr. Frisby was doing something inside for most of the hunt.  But, he came out with the camera just in time to catch Stella striking it rich by finding the 10 dollar egg.

Her daddy had to help her get the egg out of the tall tree, but she knew that money was hers! After that, we ate and relaxed for the rest of the day and enjoyed lots of time with family.

Happy Easter from the Frisbys!

Road Trip

As I mentioned in my last post, Stella went on her first road trip.  Since the wee one is growing up quickly and has lots of family yet to meet and my brother was going to be blessing his baby on Easter, we decided it was time to head out to the Jell-O belt for a visit.  We headed up to Idaho first and spent a few days in Rexburg with the Frisbys.  It was a good visit.  Stella got to meet family and be showered with love.  She also tried out a jumper for the first time.  She loved it, as you can see from the pic.  I know the picture is blurry, but I chose it anyway because I love how excited she looks.  She jumped and jumped and jumped.  Apparently she wore herself out because when I looked over at her after she had been quiet for a few minutes, her little head was slumped over and she wasn't jumping anymore.  I thought she must be getting drowsy, but when I walked over to get her, she was full on asleep.  I got her out of the jumper and walked her upstairs and laid her down and she never woke up.  It was awesome.

Just when you thought things couldn't get more exciting than that, we headed down to Utah.  We spent one night in Logan with Jared's brother.  It was fun to see their house and visit with them.  And their dog, Griz, enjoyed pilfering Stella's rice cereal - cardboard box and all.  Haha.  Joke's on you, Griz.  Good luck getting that out of your beard!

From Logan, it was on to SLC.  We met my parents (who were also there for the baby blessing) and my sister at the Conference Center.  Jared had arranged for a friend of his who works there to give us the backstage tour of the media stuff there.  It was pretty awesome.  After our Conference Center tour, we checked out the new City Creek Center.  It's a very nice mall.  And, after we were done there, we stopped on Temple Square on our way back to the car.  I decided we needed a money shot of the family in front of the temple.

While taking pictures, I convinced Mr. Frisby to pose for some cheesy shots with the wee one.  He was reluctant when I told him what I wanted him to do, but I told him it would be so cheesy that it would be awesome.  I was right.

The rest of the week was great.  We caught up with some friends that we haven't seen for awhile, we spent time with family, we bought a nightstand for Mr. Frisby's side of the bed and a rug for our entryway, and we even enjoyed a pretty good snowstorm.  It was both Stella's and Scout's first time seeing snow.  Stella didn't seem to notice as much, but Scout was completely caught off guard.  She woke up in the morning and stepped outside to do her business and stopped when she looked around and saw the snow.  She didn't know what to do.  Her grass was totally covered, so she didn't know where to go.  Mr. Frisby went out with her to try to convince her that it was okay, but she wouldn't go on the snow.  Finally, he picked her up and set her down right on it.  She immediately ran back onto the patio.  So, he did it again.  He had to do it several times before she figured out that it was okay to walk on and do her business on.  Then she had a great time running around, digging in the snow, and getting little snowballs caught in her fur.

And, of course, Easter and the baby blessing were great.  But, I have far too many pictures of it to add to this post, so that will have to be a separate post.  It was a good trip, though.  Stella was a great little traveler and we had a good time with family and friends.

Seven Months

I'm behind on my blogging.  This has been a busy month for us.  I was tempted to combine everything that happened into one post, but there are way too many pictures so I'll do separate posts.  So, this is Stella's seven months post.  I'm a couple days late.  She only got one comment on her last post, though, so I figured it wouldn't be missed for a few days anyway.  I was tempted to skip it altogether, but it's been a big month for her, so it's time to document.

In true Stella fashion, she hit another milestone right after I did her last post.  This time, she got her first tooth.  It went well.  In fact, I didn't even know she was teething until one day I noticed a little more drool and she was biting on her paci a lot instead of sucking on it.  I felt her gums the next day and sure enough, her first little tooth was just poking through.  That was about a month ago.  Sometimes now I think she might be working on her second tooth, but then sometimes I don't.  We'll see.

As I said, we've had a busy month.  Little Stella took her first long road trip.  We went out to Idaho and Utah to visit family and to be there for the baby blessing of my brother's baby.  I was pretty nervous about the trip.  I didn't know how she would do in the car for that long and I didn't know how she would do sleeping and such in a new place.  As always, she was a champ!  She did very well in the car and she slept great in her Pack n Play.  We had a good time visiting, but I have decided to save the trip for another post because there was a lot going on, including Easter.  In fact, I may have to make a separate Easter post.  I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

We also had visitors this month.  Mr. Frisby's brother and his family came to visit and we had quite the schedule of activities for the week that they were here.  We didn't take many pictures, but we did get a few of Stella's first visit to Alcatraz.  She enjoyed the tour from her Baby Bjorn and also enjoyed a great view of the city from the island.

Stella has also been trying new foods.  She does pretty well for the most part and doesn't seem too picky.  But she has her favorites - bananas, apples, sweet potatoes.  And, she has a few foods that she doesn't seem to care for.  Here's her reaction to refried beans:

Pre-taste

The new taste and texture registers

And, that's enough of that

She sits great now and rolls all over the place, but she has yet to really start scooting or crawling.  She loves being outside and we're enjoying the lovely weather we've recently been having.  She doesn't trust the grass, though, and only wants to touch it on her terms.

Her hair continues to amaze and has gotten long enough to have a pony now.  Her hair looks a lot lighter when it's in a pony.

Evidence of her distrust of grass.  But, as a bonus, you can really see how chubby her legs are in these pics.  A couple of ladies at church were noticing her chunkiness one day and commended me on my apparent success with feeding her.  They then made the comment that this is the only time in life when being chubby is cute.  I definitely concur that her chubbiness is super cute.  As is her distrust of the grass.

She loves her daddy and I'm pretty sure he loves her.  They have fun together and she didn't even stay mad at him after he put her on the grass.

But, she remains a mama's girl.  There are still times - when she gets really tired - when even Daddy won't do.  She's happy to meet people and say hello... as long as mom is holding her.  Sometimes it gets frustrating when she won't let anyone else hold her.

But, sometimes it melts my heart.

The time flies by and our little Stella keeps growing.  She's spitting up much less now which is so fantastic.  She's learned to drink through a straw.  We tried to introduce a sippy cup to no avail.  She taught herself to drink from a straw when she started sucking her vitamins out of the dropper.  She's been perfecting the art over the last few weeks, so we ditched the sippy and now she drinks out of a straw cup.  She developed a snort laugh while on vacation and it cracks us up.  She's a happy little companion on all of my errands.  And she thinks Scout is the funniest thing.  We continue to be of the opinion that she's the cutest little thing we've ever seen (and the nice lady in San Francisco that we'd never met asking to take her picture only fueled the fire).

Happy Seven Months, Stella!