Nicola and Jeremy

Friday, December 28, 2012

Christmas and Sophia is 8 Months Old

Christmas was this past week and it was Sophia's very first Christmas. She seemed to love the wrapping paper and bows much more than her actual presents - the opening of presents wasn't that exciting apparently. We celebrated the holidays over three days and there was quite a lot of time in the car, which Sophia didn't seem to mind too much (she slept through most of the car rides). The day before Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve were spent in the west valley with Jeremy's family and Christmas Day was spent at home with my family. Later in the day on Christmas, we stopped by to visit the Martin family, where Sophia met June for the first time (Julie and Michael's little girl). We also took a nice, albeit brisk walk around the Fountain Hills lake.

This past week also marked Sophia turning 8 months old. She is crawling everywhere and is now trying to pull herself up to a standing position on any object/person/dog that she can. She smiles all the time, showing off her sparkly new bottom front teeth (yes, just in time for Christmas, she received her two front teeth!)

Wishing you all a happy 2013!

Sophia with her Bestamama

Sophia, always on the move

Trying out her new puzzle, courtesy of her Great Auntie Jean and Great Uncle Bernard

Sophia unfortunately couldn't partake in the Christmas feast, but seemed quite pleased with pureed banana and squash

Emma and Toby anxiously awaiting turkey remnants

Sophia meeting June

Michael, June, Julie, JP, Sophia, Jeremy and I

Family time by the Fountain Hills lake

Happy 8-month old!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Seven Months and the Start of the Christmas Season!

Sophia is officially seven months old! This past month has brought lots and lots of change for her. About 2 weeks ago, she started crawling and now is an old pro at it, speeding across the living room and attempting to get into all sorts of things that she is not supposed to (like trying to crawl onto the bottom shelf of the coffee table). We have also been trying several new foods - fruits are a big hit (she loves pears, apples and prunes) but vegetables are pretty much a no-go at the moment (peas are tolerable, avocado brought a significant gagging response and sweet potatoes are blah). The last few days, Sophia has been exceptionally fussy and today, we realized that it was because she appears to be cutting her first two teeth. We can just about see the little baby incisors appearing underneath her lower gums. We hope that they completely appear soon, as we would like our happier baby back!

Christmas is just around the corner, so we spent the day reorganizing the house and decorating. We had a water heater leak a few weeks back so things have been a little unorganized while things were being repaired. We had no idea how much damage a broken water heater could do - we had to have someone come out to make giant holes in the wall (in our third bedroom and the garage), then have very noisy heaters dry things for three days, followed by a repair crew to repair/repaint the walls and then a carpet person in to replace carpet padding and clean the carpet. Needless to say, we were happy when that was all over! Sophia was fascinated with us decorating for Christmas, especially the Christmas tree lights. We can't wait until later this month and spending time with everyone!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Six Months Old and Halloween

Sophia turned 6 months old on October 27th. She is growing so very quickly and at her 6 month check-up she was close to 17 lbs and was measured in the 96th percentile for her height! We started her on some solid food in the past few weeks - sweet potato, banana and peas were met with not much enthusiasm (in fact, the first time she tried peas, she acted like we were trying to poison her). This week, however, pureed apples were met with a slightly more pleasant response. Sophia has also made drastic changes in her mobility - tonight we witnessed her first few crawling "steps", as she made her way across a blanket on the floor towards her toy stoat. She can sit up for quite a while unassisted also. This week also brought the first few nights that she slept in her own room, rather than the bassinet in our room - yay!

Halloween - unfortunately, I didn't finish work until 6pm, so I didn't really have much time at home before Sophia had to get ready for bed. Jeremy and his brother, Chris, did a good job decorating the house and started to hand out candy when I got home. Sophia's costume is below - we think she looked pretty cute :) We will take her out trick-or-treating next year, when she is a little bit older.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Maui!

We recently traveled to Maui for our friends' (Matt and Thom) wedding. Traveling with an almost six month old was a little bit of an ordeal. Sophia did fairly well on the flight out to Maui (luckily it was direct from Phoenix), since it was a daytime flight. The flight back was a different story, as it was a night flight, leaving at 10:30pm Maui-time and arriving into Phoenix at 7:30am. Sophia was overtired and fell asleep on my lap. However, whenever I moved more than a few inches, she would wake up crying... We were sitting next to the bathroom in seats that didn't recline also. Needless to say, we were all exhausted when we got home later that morning. Oh, and we forgot where we parked the car at Sky Harbor Airport so we ended up wandering around for about 45 minutes until we found it...

Anyway, now onto the trip itself. Maui was wonderful. We spent the first day (Thursday), getting settled at our villa, which was located on the Ritz Carlton property in Kapalua, just north of Lahaina. It was a great deal - we got a villa with two rooms, a kitchen, washer/dryer, living area and patio for a really good price (cheaper than some of the hotels we were looking at, and much more convenient with the amenities). Our villa overlooked the golf course, so we had a very peaceful view. It was only a 10 minute walk down to the beach, which we did quite a few times with Sophia.

On Friday, we went into Lahaina to wander around the shops, have lunch and then get some shaved ice (delicious!) In the evening, we had a quiet night with some takeout back at the villa. On Saturday, we visited a farmer's market and coffee plantation in the morning, then went for a hike in the Maunalei Arboretum in the early afternoon, followed by dinner at Hula Grill with Cathy, Amanda and Andria (my coworkers). Sunday was the day of the wedding, which was absolutely lovely. The ceremony took place at the Sheraton and overlooked the ocean. After the ceremony was a beautiful dinner cruise aboard the Pride of Maui. Monday brought some downtime, where I learned to paddle board and we had some beach time. In the evening, we went out to dinner in Lahaina. Tuesday was our last full day before our flight back to Phoenix, so we visited the Maui Aquarium and Sophia made a fish friend.

It was a wonderful trip and we packed in a lot more than we thought possible with a baby! A big thanks to Matt and Thom for inviting us to celebrate with them!!