Solid Foods

Its a milestone, and it happened this week. Sarah began eating solid foods. She's actually caught onto the concept pretty well, and it seems the biggest challenge has been getting her to wait for me to bring the spoon to her mouth rather than launch herself forward, mouth open, to try to get the spoon herself. Its pretty darn cute. Anyway, the grandparents requested some video, so here it is.

Sarah's very first bites of her first ever meal--rice cereal.



Sarah's very first bites of her first meal with FLAVOR--pureed sweet potato!



Having trouble seeing either of these videos? Go here.

Happy Birthday Dad!

It was my dad's birthday a couple of days ago, and while its a poor substitute for celebrating together with him in person and getting my a tie or something, I did manage to send him an e-card. Actually, it was pretty cute! Hallmark.com has this new program you can download called "smilebox" that lets you make custom e-cards using your own digital photos. You can send the cards for free, but they appear slightly smaller on the screen of the recipient and include an advertisement. Or you can send "premium" cards for a couple of dollars that have no ads and can be saved to your hard drive or uploaded to the web or burned to a disc or whatever. Anyway, I sent the free kind, so I can't post the whole card here. BUT, I can show you the cute photos I took of Sarah wishing her grandfather a happy birthday. Enjoy!





I like this one because you can see my hand grabbing onto the paper in the bottom corner--a little mommy/baby tug of war to try to keep Sarah from eating the paper. :)

These last two really highlight Sarah's constant drooling issues. Sigh. They are still cute. :)

A Little Ditty

. . . 'Bout Jack and Sara-ah,
Two American kids growin up in East Asia!

Back to My Journalistic Roots

Last week, my sister asked me to be a "guest interviewer" on her husband, Josh Rosenthal's, blog. My brother-in-law is a musician, and he's been inviting close family and friends to interview him on his blog for his fans! It was late at night, and let's face it, its been a while since I did any real hard-hitting journalism. As I started to think of some questions, I thought to myself, "Those sound like beauty pageant contestant interview questions!" I started to get down on myself, but then thought--just go with it. So I googled, "Beauty Pageant Contestant Questions" and found this link:

http://thetiara.blogspot.com/2007/04/frequently-asked-questions-in-beauty.html

Its a blog for a pageant consultant in India, of all places, and the questions are hilarious. I chose some serious ones and some funny ones for my brother-in-law's interview. If you'd like to see how he answered them, go here:

http://joshrosenthal.net/

Escape Artist

Sarah is getting so big! The other day I put her in her bouncy seat to play because she was bored of playing on the floor. This was the result:
I actually don't think she was trying to escape, exactly, but just to chew on the metal support of her bouncy seat--not exactly the way you are supposed to use it. Looks like she may be getting too big for some of her things! I can't believe it . . .

Sarah Update

Sarah is five and a half months old. Can you believe it? It is cliche to say, but she really has changed so much in her short life. Even though David and I see her mostly every minute of her waking life, we still feel like the change is staggeringly rapid! Just a few months ago she was a sweet warm little lump, and now she is this energetic little girl with so much personality! So what are some of the things she is up to these days?

Some of the things Sarah loves to do include squealing, cooing and making various odd animal/monster noises. These noises inspired our most common nickname for her these days: "Beast." "Beast" is usually preceded by an adjective that describes her mood of the moment, i.e. "Sleepy Beast," "Hungry Beast," "Silly Beast," etc.
Sarah LOVES to go for walks outside and have her five senses stimulated, so we try to take her out in her stroller at least once a day. Thankfully, our city provides plenty of stimulation--lots of smells (good and bad), music and traffic and people sounds fill the streets, plenty of faces to inspect in the crowds, as well as interesting colors and shapes of cars and shop windows, etc. She'd love to touch and taste everything on the street as well, but thankfully her stroller keeps her pretty well strapped in so that's not really an option. As you can see above, sometimes the stimulation becomes too much and she gives in to the soothing vibration of her stroller on the uneven pavement and drifts off for a nice mini-nap.
Sarah is into touching things, especially interesting textures. She loves to scratch our sofa, scratch the pillows, scratch David's scruffy face, and touch everything she can get her hands on. Her toys are little by little ceasing to hold much interest for her; there are too many other objects in the world she has yet to explore!! Also, she has developed her first form of transportation: rolling. Even though she can't sit up yet, she can roll clear across the room. The other day she rolled from her playmat on the floor all the way over to our entertainment center and began playing with a DVD. Hmm. Looks like David and I are going to have to begin thinking about baby-proofing!
We are anticipating some big milestones soon: sitting up on her own and beginning to eat solid foods. Exciting, yet at the same time a little sad--our baby is growing up TOO FAST!!!!

Buddies

Last weekend David and I had some wonderful buddies, Graham and Ashlei Warren, come and visit us from a nearby city. They reminded us what a precious blessing friendship is! It had been a year and a half since we'd had any concentrated time with them--back then none of us had kids! Now they have a one year old little boy named Grady, and we of course have Sarah! So our lives are a little different, but the friendship is as enjoyable as ever. Before they got here, David and I kept saying, "What will we do while they are here? How can we entertain them?" But when they were here, all we ended up doing was sitting around the apartment, talking and talking and talking, enjoying some great food, telling stories, laughing and enjoying wonderful fellowship. With good friends, you don't even need sightseeing or planned entertainment! Although, we did have some fireworks. Ok, so it was just a fire. Here's a photo of the aftermath:
Basically, we have this charcoal grill on the balcony of our apartment. Or I should say HAD. We use an inexpensive local brand charcoal when we grill, but the darn coals are just so hard to light. Every time we light the thing, David has to make a teepee of wooden chopsticks and cardboard and paper, use a ton of lighter fluid, and put a small box fan nearby to blow air into the thing to get it to light. So while our friends we were, we decided to grill some steaks, and David went through his usual routine. Although this time he decided to be "clever" and rest the fan on the edge of the grill. Naturally, when he walks back to the grill 2 minutes later, the fan has fallen into the grill and our whole balcony (almost) is engulfed in flames. Thankfully, David was able to put out the fire by simply closing the top of the grill, smothering it. We really believe the Lord was looking after us that night, because here are some of the other things stored on our balcony: 2 cans of lighter fluid, 3 cans of paint, several cardboard boxes, and some extra lumber leftover from the renovations of the apartment. Seriously. Here is a photo of the fan motor up close in the grill:
Sigh. So no more grill for a while. However, we did learn how to make delicious pan-fried steaks that night. They really were quite good. On to some photos of our friends and the cute kiddos.
Here is a picture of Graham and Ashlei holding Sarah. We meant to also get a photo of David and I with their little boy Grady but my camera ran out of battery before we could make that happen. Below are our multiple attempts to get a cute photo of Sarah and Grady together. Despite the 7 months of additional life experience he has on Sarah, Grady seemed perpetually just a little afraid of her, so he kept scooting away when we tried to take the picture:
So Graham tried holding Grady upside down next to Sarah, which at least insured they'd be in the same frame.
Finally, Ashlei stepped in to hold Grady, but he was still more interested in her cell phone and Sarah was being her usual silly, wiggly self:
Alas, perfect cute baby photo eluded us. However, I kind of think these "imperfect" ones are pretty cute, and VERY true to life!!!