6 Months Already!

April 18th, 2011 marks Morgan's official 6 month birthday!  I can't believe how fast the time has flown and how big she has already gotten.  She is sitting up like a champ and while I expected her to be crawling already, she is getting really, really close. 

Like we have done for her newborn (9 days old) and 3 month landmarks, we headed to Picture People this past weekend to get some pictures done.  I am sorry that I didn't do more family shots or shots with Matt and I somewhat in the picture for her newborn shots, so I was determined to get some family shots this time.  We did two different outfits for Morgan.  The first was in her Jack & Janie dress from Grandma.  The second was to honor our trip back to Illini country with Morgan in her Illini onesie, jeggings and a white headband.  Below are my favorite pictures of the three of us!

While I absolutely LOVE the Jack & Janie dress, you can sort of see my problem with getting clothes on Morgan.  The dress she has on is actuall a size 3-6 months, but she is practically swimming in it!  But, if you were to see her standing up you would notice that the dress is too short!  She is so long and lean, like her dad, that baby clothes are a tough fit for her.  She will appreciate this body once she is a teenager and older.

The two pictures above are my absolute favorites from the shoot and we got a LOT of great shots.  I think the reason I love these pictures are because I am really able to see a lot of me.  I have a picture from when I was around 6 months looking almost exactly the same.  I am going to try and find the pic, so I can post them side by side and allow everyone to see that my daughter finally looks like me!

In honor of Easter, we decided to take a couple of pictures with the bunny ears.  Unfortunately, the ears were a little big for her head, but I still think they turned our pretty well.  It would have been great to have had an Easter basket next to her, but I really wasn't planning ahead on this one. 

During a recent one year old photo shoot of the daughter of someone I knew in high school by another girl I knew in high school (I'm not trying to be difficult here), the little girl took pictures in a tutu and pearls.  I loved the idea and figured we would try it out with Morgan.  I fully expected her to stick these straight in her mouth, but actually did a pretty good job just playing with them!

This is her "model" pose.  The lighting is a little darker than all of the other pics and she isn't giving her full on smile, but it's still pretty cute!  Of course, I am entirely biased and think all of these pictures are pretty cute!

I really do love these last two pics as they showcase our beautiful girl and nothing else. 

I have been super emotional this past week.  No, I don't think I'm pregnant (Matt asked), but I do think I am getting really sentimental about Morgan growing up.  I've probably said this before in the blog and to a million different people, but I never thought I would love being a mother as much as I do.  You really have no idea how much you can love one single person and what you would be willing to do for them until you have a child.  Every day with Morgan is different and I feel incredibly blessed to have her in our life.  Matthew and I are so lucky that we have such a beautiful, smart, health child.  While I have no desire to be the Duggar family with 19 or whatever kids, but I can completely understand wanting to have a big family.  It is amazing watching this person growing up and exploring the world.  While I am very excited about the possibility of adding on to our family, I cherish every moment I get to spend with Morgan. 

Grilling with Morgan

This past Friday the weather was beautiful and I am ALWAYS in the mood for burgers, so we decided to make our burgers and grill out!  One of our goals is to try new veggies, so we got to try out parsnips this week.  Thanks to a recipe I found on a friend's blog, we made parsnip fries.  Not Matthew's favorite, but definitely well liked by Morgan and I.  We also made some guacamole to use as a burger topping!  The avocados were soft, so perfect for guacamole but not so perfect for Morgan since every time she grabbed one it would split in half.  It made for quite a mess.  As you can might be able to see from the pics below the avocado was smashed all over our "picnic" blanket on the family room floor. 

Even though Morgan loved the parsnip fries, she was not a fan of the burger and had way too much trouble with the avocado.  This meant that the plate held much more appeal.  She pretty much wiped the remnants of food all over her body while she attempted to chew her way around the plate.

This last picture is actually from Friday's lunch.  Morgan wasn't really feeling the tomatoes or pears we gave her, so I gave her a rice cracker with some yogurt.  One of the many reasons I prefer to feed Morgan in her diaper is slightly evident here by the yogurt all over her face.  You can't tell but the yogurt ended up all over her legs and body as well.  I'm thinking this week we may give her some yogurt in a bowl with a spoon.  Can't wait to see how messy that gets!

Plums & Crawling

I always feel bad when I publish a post without pics because I feel like the biggest reason people would chekc out my blog is to see Morgan with the second biggest reason being to check on how she is doing.  I am hoping I can satisfy both cravings with this post.  As many people know we are doing a baby-led weaning approach to solid food.  I have found that with this method, getting Morgan down to her diaper for meals helps with clean up TREMENDOUSLY!  With that in mind, Morgan is in her diaper for her lunch of cold chicken, green peppers and plums.  This is the second time she has had plums and it was a big success. 

Here she is, sucking away on those plums!

This is an after shot of the plums.  She doesn't have teeth yet, but she has some pretty fierce gums and she really gets the juice and meat out with those babies!

By this time Morgan was tired of me taking pictures, but I wanted people to get a view of her almost crawling.  I really think it is going to happen in the next couple of weeks.  It will be exciting for her, but really scary for Matt and I.  We are not really baby-proofed yet!

Accepted Offer & Teething?

It's only Thursday and we have had a lot of ups and down this week.  First, towards the end of the weekend Morgan started developing a runny nose.  Unfortunately, it has only gotten worse and she has gotten even more fussy than usual!  We asked the doctor about it and they chalk it up to teething.  No other sign of teeth yet, but we keep giving Morgan plenty of things to gum and try to keep her as happy as possible. 

We also took Morgan for her 6 month check up and she is now 26.5 inches, which is the 75th percentile for height, and weighs in at 14lbs and 3oz, which is the 25th percentile for weight.  Our little girl is growing up so fast and is already starting to resemble a string bean like her dad!

The most exciting news this week has been the accepted offer we now have on our house.  A couple, who had expressed interest a couple of weeks ago, presented us with an offer on Monday night/Tuesday morning.  We countered and they accepted our offer on Wednesday afternoon.  Everything is contingent on the home inspection, which is scheduled for April 20th, but we are pretty excited.  This makes our moving a little more official and gets us even more excited for our next step!  Now that we know how much we will be getting for the house, it gives us a better idea of what we may want to do when we get down to the Champaign area.  We are still leaning towards renting, but may branch out and look at a couple of houses to buy.  We feel with the down payment we now have, we can get just as good of a deal, if not better, on a house as we could on a place to rent.  Oh well, more to come soon!

Chi-Town Here We Come!

It was a crazy weekend for our little Siuta family.  Morgan and I flew back to Chicago to spend some time with my family and to participate in Caroline's bridal shower and bachelorette party.  The bridal shower was really beautiful and the food was fantastic.  The bachelorette party was a lot of fun, but just reiterated the fact that I have NO business being out late anymore!  I ended up with a sore throat and have a very hard time functioning on 3 hours of sleep!  In the end, it was worth it because it was a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure Caroline had a good time as well. 

Morgan also had her first overnight trip with Grandma and Grandpa up at the cottage.  Grandma and Grandpa have watched her before, but I think she has become even  more of a Mommy's girl since the last experience.  Even Matt has trouble getting Morgan to go down at night, so it wasn't a huge surprise that she was incredibly difficult.  Apparently, Grandma and Grandpa finally got her to go down around 1am by driving around.  Yikes!  Good news is that she is usually very happy and doesn't need to be by Mommy in the morning!  Of course, this does worry us a little for Caroline and Tommy's upcoming wedding.  Right now, my girlfriends are scheduled to watch Morgan the night of the wedding, but we don't want them to have the same experience.  It may scare them off of children!  We are going to work on getting her to go down a little better, so keep your fingers crossed for us!

While Morgan and I were living it up in Chi-Town, Matt and his dad went on a golfing extravaganza.  Their ultimate goal or bucket list item is to golf in all 50 states together.  They used this past weekend as a way to knock out 4 states.  Connecticut on Friday, Rhode Island and Massachusetts on Saturday and finally Pennsylvania on Sunday before picking Ellen, Morgan and I up from the airport.  Whew!  That's a lot of golfing, but every day is a good day to golf according to Matthew!

Cherry Blossom Festival

Since this is our last spring in DC, we decided to head down to the cherry blossom festival this past weekend.  While it wasn't the peak weekend, it was probably the warmest weekend we have had thus far with most of yesterday ranging in the mid to upper 50's with some mild wind.  The weather was nice, but the sky was a little gray, so it didn't lead to the best shots.  Still, below are some pics of our trip.

Morgan and Mommy right before Morgan expressed her desire to get out of the stroller.

Morgan and Daddy after Morgan got tired of the stroller.

Morgan exploring the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin.

Group shot with Nain and Grandpa

Morgan and Real Food

Tammi, my cousin's wife, introduced us to the idea of baby-led-weaning as a way to start solids for Morgan.  Based on her suggestions, I bought the book to read a little more about it and really liked the idea.  Basically instead of starting Morgan on purees, we start her on solid food right from the beginning (6 months).  We were going to wait until Morgan's official 6 month birthday, but one of the things that the books mention is that your child will let you know when they are ready to eat solids by reaching for the food on your plate.  Morgan has been doing this for the past week, so we decided to let her join us for dinner last night. 
Below are some pics of Morgan emjoying her dinner of pork roast, broccoli (her fave pasrt), asparagus, carrots, and potatoes.

Broccoli really was her favoriteAchew on.  The cats preferred when she had the pork since she seemed to drop everything she ate on the ground!

Asparagus and pork in one hand!