Bath Time and New Pajamas

Liliana has always loved her baths. Since the very first bath we gave her at 2 weeks old, she has always enjoyed bath time and playing in the water. When we got to the new house we did not have Lily's infant bath tub with us. Since she has been sitting up now for almost two months, we decided to try baths in the big bath tub with some toys. She loves her baths even more now! She slaps the water and plays with her small yellow ducks as she is bathed. Here are a few pictures from her bath before bed tonight.

The other day while I was picking up a few things from Wal-Mart, I decided to browse the baby section to see if anything was pajamas were on sale. Liliana still fits into most her 3-6 month clothes, except for pajamas. Her legs are too long for the 3-6 month, but the 6-9 month are extremely wide on her so I have been on a hunt for new pajamas for her. I saw a two piece Faded Glory set on clearance for $3, which is so much cheaper than anything else I have found so far including the Carter's Outlet. It is has a short sleeve top with long pants and...they are made of organic cotton! I picked up a pair and gave them a try. We love them on Lily! It is so much easier to change a diaper with separate pants and she looks so cute in them. I went back today and bought three more sets in larger sizes!

Liliana's New Pajamas!

Amanda and Matt's Visit

Last weekend Christina's sister Amanda and her friend Matt came to stay with us for a few days. Although we were still living in an empty house, we loved having the company! Their visit was a little short, but we were able to take them to a few places we have discovered since living here. We took another trip to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park while they were here. This time we were prepared with layers of clothes, bottles of water, and a packed lunch. We took a drive on Trail Ridge Road and stopped for photos and to eat lunch on the mountain. We also went on a 2.5 mile hike on Horsetooth Mountain and showed them around Fort Collins. We checked out two of the local breweries in Old Town. Matt took some really great pictures of us at the State Park. Here are a couple of the photos he took of us. We will post more as soon as we get the rest of the pictures!

Lily and Matt at Horsetooth Falls

Meal Planning

When I was pregnant with Lily, I started to plan out our weekly meals. We found that it saved us a ton of money on grocery shopping when we planned ahead. I try to spend around $50 a week on groceries when I meal plan. This includes dinner, lunch, breakfast, and snack items. We also make almost everything from scratch which helps us to save as well. Over the last month or so we have been eating out a ton and grabbing quick stuff to make at home because of the move. This has resulted in us not eating as healthy, but it also has been getting expensive. Even though we do not have our kitchen stuff yet, I decided we needed to get back on track with our eating habits.

I used to meal plan on Mondays, but I have now switched to Wednesdays because my new favorite store, Sprouts Farmers Market, runs sales starting on Wednesday. If you shop on Wed. you get the previous week's sales plus the upcoming week's sales. I love everything about this place! It is actually an indoor market similar to Trader Joes on the east coast. They have just about any produce you could possibly think of and their prices are awesome! Today I picked up a ton of produce and 3 packs of organic chicken breasts for just $20! I was excited about the 49 cent avocados and cantelope. In addition to Sprouts, I have also been picking up a few groceries at the new Super Wal-Mart by our house. There are a few things that are always cheaper at Wal-Mart.

I am going to attempt to post my meals every Wednesday (this is for you Amanda) on the Weekly Meal Plans page on my blog. You can get to it by clicking here or on the link to the right under pages. Most of my meals do not have recipes online, however if you ever need the recipe just ask! Although I only had to plan 4 meals for the week, it was a little more difficult than normal since we only have one pot, one pan, and a handful of plastic utensils in our kitchen right now.

My next kitchen adventure may be to try OAMC (Once a Month Cooking)! I can't wait to have my "kitchen" back!

6 Months

Liliana is 6 months old today! It's hard for us to believe that she is already half a year old! Now that we are almost settled in our new house, (we are still waiting for our furniture) Liliana is back on track with her sleeping and eating habits. Last month was tough with all of the traveling and moving. Liliana slept horribly waking almost every two hours for a while. She is now sleeping through the night again and we are so happy!

Here are some of Liliana's 6 Month Milestones:

* Liliana talks non-stop! She loves to babble mmm mmm mmm, na na na, and da da da.

* After unsuccessfully trying a few fruit and veggie purees with Liliana, she let us know that she prefers to nibble of small chunks of food instead of purees. Her favorites are banana (which she hated mashed!) sweet potato, prunes, and applesauce.

* Lily is on the move! She is starting to crawl (but only backwards) and loves to dance. She bounces up and down and kicks her legs as she listens to "Toddler Radio" and Jack Johnson on Pandora during playtime.

* She is now on a two nap schedule. She naps once in the morning and again in the afternoon.

Here are some recent pictures of Lily at 6 Months!

Playing with toys in the Living Room

Watching Baby Einstein with Uncle Vinay

Getting excited over the bananas at the Melting Pot on our Anniversary

Having fun in the "car seat sling" at the restaurant. At least she was a happy baby during our dinner!

Rocky Mountain National Park

Last weekend we took a drive out to Estes Park, CO to check out Rocky Mountain National Park. We actually went to Estes Park back in May when we went house hunting, but the National Park was closed for the evening when we were there so we really wanted to go back to check out the park.

The drive to Estes Park was about an hour long. It was very scenic driving into the mountains. Once we got to Rocky Mountain National Park, we (actually Varun and Vinay) chose to take the road less traveled. Christina was not a happy camper during the drive climbing the windy, steep, guardrail-less dirt roads up to 12,183 feet. The views were absolutely stunning during the entire drive up. Once we reached the summit via Old Fall River Road (which actually had us cross the Contintental Divide), we stopped at the Alpine Visitor Center to snap some photos and grab a snack. The thin air and cooler temperatures were very noticeable to all of us. We chose to take the road more traveled on the way down to keep Christina happy. Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved road in the United States and displayed even more stunning views on the way down (including clouds below us).

The road less traveled - Old Fall River Road


Views from Old Fall River Road

Totally unprepared for the cooler temps - note the flip-flops and shorts

Notice the snow on July 31st!!

Varun's artistic side - Vinay's back side

View from Trail Ridge Road - Highest paved road in the US - 12,183 feet

Our Journey to Colorado

Day 1: We left our home in North Carolina on Wednesday, July 21st. We packed up both of our Madza 3's and began our drive out west. It was a easy scenic drive through Greensboro, NC and Charleston, WV. We found a pet friendly hotel in Huntington, WV for our first night's stay. Once we checked in, Varun and Vinay went out to pick up dinner in town while Christina stayed in to give Liliana a bath at the hotel. We ended up ordering dinner from a delicious Indian restaurant called Nawab Indian Cuisine located in downtown Huntington near Marshall University. We had a quiet night in the hotel with our Indian food followed by a game of Rummy (which has now become our favorite form of entertainment since we still don't have our household goods).

Pilot Mountain: Mt. Airy, NC

Marshall University: Huntington, WV

Downtown Huntington, WV

Day 2: We continued our journey the following day by traveling through Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Much of the drive was pretty rural with the exception of Lexington and Lousiville, KY. It was nice to drive at a steady 75 mph without hitting any traffic. We stopped for the night in St. Louis, MO. We stayed at our friend Tien's downtown loft for the night. Tien was actually out of town but it was so nice of him to offer us his home for the night. We enjoyed the downtown experience in St. Louis. We walked to an outdoor restaurant for dinner and margaritas and we were happy that we could take Finnegan to eat with us. We were sad that we were not able to see Tien, but we hope to make it back to St. Louis soon for a longer visit!

Driving in Kentucky

St. Louis Arch

Dinner Downtown St. Louis

Day 3: We began our third day of travel with a great breakfast at the London Tea Room located below the lofts. They had a great selection of coffee, tea, and breakfast bakery items. Once we hit the road, our luck with traffic was over. We were stuck in traffic for a while as we drove through the suburbs of St. Louis. While we were stopped in traffic, Liliana started to get sick in the car. It wasn't quite as bad as the Emergency Room incident, but it was enough to soak her shirt and car seat. As soon we got out of the city traffic we were able to stop and clean her up. We pulled off at a restaurant called the Saint Louis Bread Company. From the outside it looked just like Panera Bread. As soon as we entered we realized that they are actually the same company! Panera is actually headquartered in Missouri but goes by the name of Saint Louis Bread Company in the metro area.

The rest of our ride after that was pretty easy. We drove through the rest of Missouri and into Kansas. Eastern Kansas had gorgeous views of green rolling hills. We were actually surprised since we all thought that most of Kansas was flat. We stopped for the night in Salina, KS. When we arrived at our hotel we saw at least a dozen restored classic automobiles in the parking lot. We later found that the Salina Car Show was occuring over the weekend. For dinner, we ordered a family style meal from Martinelli's Little Italy. We had Chicken Marsala with a bottle of wine which was great!

Saint Louis Bread Company

Driving in Kansas

Day 4: On our final day of driving, we traveled though the rest of Kansas and into Colorado. It was a pretty uneventful drive. About an hour after leaving Salina, the gorgeous green hills turned to completey flat farmland. After about 400 miles, we began to see the Rocky Mountains as we drove closer to Denver. We were so excited once we reached our new home. It felt like we had been driving for much more than 4 days. We took some pictures of our sold sign in front of our house before checking everything out on the inside. We had pizza and beer for dinner and played Rummy on our first night in our new home.

Western Kansas

Yay! Our new front yard!

Our first visit to the ER

A few days ago, Liliana had her first visit to the Emergency Room. It was a scary experience for us all.

Wednesday was a pretty long day for Lily. After sitting in a car for 7 hours on a trip back from Maryland we all got ready to head over to a friend's house for dinner. We thought about leaving Lily at home with Grandma since she was in town, but we decided to take her. She was a little more tired than usual, but we thought it was related to the long car ride earlier in the day. She also didn't seem to be eating much all day, but again we figured it was due to traveling.

Although tired and a little thrown off, Lily was still quite playful and happy when we got there. After our dinner, Lily was smiling and resting in my arms when all of a sudden she spit up. More than a typical spit up, but nothing too strange. About 5 minutes later it happened again. However, this one was pretty large and forceful. Lily continued to get sick for 2 hours.

We thought about putting her to bed, but we were so worried she would choke while sleeping since she was getting sick so much. Finally she reached a point where there was nothing in her stomach, but she continued to dry heave and her face and lips looked pale. We then decided to take her in to the ER.

We were pleasantly surprised with our care in the ER at Womack. Lily was seen right away and was set up on a IV to receive fluids. It was so hard for us to watch our baby girl get an IV and blood drawn. She was such a trooper! She fussed a little during the process, but never cried. After 3 hours at the hospital, an exam with the doctor, and a few blood tests, we were told she had a virus. We gave her pedialite and took her home to get some rest. We were so happy to see that in less than 24 hours she was feeling better!

Here is a picture of our sweet baby girl sleeping on her hospital bed.