Sunshine and sunbonnets

We have been sooooo cooped up...

But no more!  Nice weather is here and I think it's here to stay!

What a gorgeous weekend we had!  Finally, finally, we have been able to spend some real, solid time outside.  Sure, there have been walks, runs, a handful of nice days here and there, but this weekend was the start to some serious outdoor time.

I made sure Rosie spent basically as much time outside as I did.  Since her arrival in November, I can pretty confidently say she knows exactly what each of the rooms in our house is like.  She's seen it all!  It's time she started learning about the great outdoors.

I found her a couple cute new sun hats over the weekend and Saturday afternoon she donned one of them and helped me plant some flowers...

Are you familiar with Sunbonnet Sue?  The old quilt pattern?  I have a Sunbonnet Sue quilt from when I was a little girl.  I think Rosie looks like a Sunbonnet Sue in the photo above.  Compare Rosie to the pattern here...

I also think it's quite appropriate that Rosie is playing with her giant ladybug while helping her mama garden!

Here she is modeling her new, cute hat...

We didn't spend as much time outside today.  She did, however, get some experience with lying in the grass.  She seemed to really love it.  She stayed very still and relaxed for quite some time.  I love how loung-y she looks...

Her legs, which are ALWAYS moving, were still - for several minutes...

Todd said I needed to move her around so she could mow the yard...

The poor dogs have been particularly cooped up.  They've done a number on our yard - brown spots, dead spots, bald spots - and Todd has worked hard to try to fix it.  This means the dogs have been quarantined to the house or the back "yard" which they hate.  Yard is in quotes because in its current state it can hardly be considered a yard.  It's just concrete.  No wonder they hate going back there and love to lounge like this instead.  Oh, Lulu...

Not to be outdone, here's Rigby posing for his lounge lizard shot...

Everyone is enjoying our nice weather!  

Big girl food

Rosie is getting to be such a big girl!

We've started experimenting with something more than formula and oatmeal.

First up on the menu...peaches!

I loved watching Rosie's first tastes of the food.  You could just see the wheels turning, taking note of the taste, texture and overall experience of something different.  She sits in her bouncy chair while I'm in the kitchen cooking and I will bring foods to her nose to smell.  She has always stopped what she's doing to really smell what I put in front of her.  I'm hoping this will somehow make her an open-minded eater!  

I've read when starting new foods you should only offer one kind for at least three days to see how your baby does with it.  In three days we successfully finished one container of peaches and she started to act like she really loved them.  Yesterday, she began taking my hand with the spoon in it and directing it toward her mouth.  Today, with daddy, she had a death grip on the spoon, not wanting him to take it out of her mouth long enough to get another scoop!  

Next up are sweet potatoes.  If liking a food is at all based on what the baby's mom ate while pregnant, then Rosie should go bonkers for sweet potatoes.  I couldn't seem to get enough of them when I was pregnant!  

For these first experimental bites I've used the go-to Gerber foods.  In the future, however, I have aspirations of making a lot of Rosie's baby food myself and have already read through one yummy sounding cookbook we received as a baby gift.  It doesn't seem that difficult, but we'll see!