Mama has been busy!

Whew! I have be incredibly busy lately with school, church, working out, life. School is still going great. I am giving my first test tonight, so I have my first dose of grading this weekend. Matt has been working eight hour shifts the past two weeks, so Lauren hasn't had much babysitting to do. He has also been taking care of her when I tutor on Wednesdays and will usually go visit my brother Michael during that time. We then head off to church to eat dinner and go to our class, Growing Kids God's Way. I have been so busy this week that I haven't worked out at the gym at all. Matt and I were supposed to go for a bike ride on Tuesday, but he decided to go in to work. Michael was going to watch Rachel for us, but I decided that Michael and I would just go together. I loaded up Rachel and our bikes in the truck and we drove to my parent's house to drop her off. We rode around town for an hour and had a great time! Wednesday (yesterday) I spent the majority of the day with my friend Katie making baby food. I went to a fruit stand and spent $18. Rachel has some great foods headed her way. We made bananas, kiwi, strawberries, mango, pineapple and some mixtures of those foods. She also will be getting peaches at some point. For veggies, we made sweet potatoes, acorn and butternut squash, regular potatos mixed with the sweet ones, and carrots. I have some avocado that weren't quite ripe yet, but I will be making that in a few days. We made a lot of food and I am currently working on freezing them in ice cube trays and them transferring them to ziploc bags. We made a huge mess, saved me a lot of money, and had a good time together! So far, Rachel has tried bananas, butternut squash, rice cereal, and applesauce. She can say Mama, which of course was so sweet but I know it means nothing other than she can make her m sounds. I have always heard her make the d and g sounds too. I expect her to babble sometime in the near future. Now if I could just get her to roll over... Everyone says to enjoy her being stationary. She gets heavier and heavier, but I have no idea just how heavy she is. That carseat is becoming more cumbersome to carry with her in it.

On a really victorious note: About 1.5 years ago, I read the Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and loved it and all he had to say. I really wanted to do it, but Matt wouldn't read the book so he didn't completely understand everything I wanted to do. We did it halfway, which is better than nothing. For whatever reason, he actually read it a few weeks ago, and we have really been using his strategies and sticking more and more to our budget. We have paid off all of our loans including cars and owe nobody any money except our mortgage. How awesome is that! I totally recommend this book and it is such an easy and practical read. We have more to go on our money makeover, but I am so excited to see where we end up!


What a gorgeous girl! If she has to be on her tummy, she seems somewhat entertained by the beeping sound of the camera. She is doing much better with tummy time. I started putting a timer in front of her for 5 minutes. It beeps and then I help her roll over. I am trying to get her to learn that the beep of the timer, not her crying, signals that tummy time is over. She went 5 minutes this morning with no crying. She has yet to roll over either way. She just doesn't seem to care.

These next two pictures are her the second time around eating the squash. She wouldn't keep her hands away from her face. She normally does well, but that day she kept rubbing by her nose and made a huge, huge mess. She went straight to the tub after this one.

Can these cheeks/face get much rounder?

What an adorable picture. Matt was in charge while I was at work and she took her catnap on our bed. She doesn't always suck her thumb, espcially while sleeping. How precious!

This next grouping of pictures are all chronologically backwards, but oh well. I don't have the time to fix it. This was Rachel's first taste of butternut squash. She seemed to like it better the second time, but didn't mind it.

She has really started putting mostly everything in her mouth. If you try to get her to wrap her hand around one of your fingers, she takes it up to her mouth because she wants to now suck on your finger.

She is becoming very adept in holding her bottle. She notices a bottle and if it is coming closer or further away from her. This helps me out a lot in the morning because she can feed herself and I can do other things. She is now finally helping me get to the gym on time.

We found these overalls in a bag of clothes from Lauren. I thought they were too cute and we had better wear them before she outgrew them. Well, she had outgrown them already because the snaps wouldn't stay snapped. Oh well. She looked so darn cute that I took her to church in them anyways.