Omaha Zoo

On July 24th, we headed to Omaha to visit the Henry Doorley Zoo!  We had beautiful weather!  Lydia was a trooper, and even took a few catnaps in her stroller.  We had fun with my family and Lydia got a kick out of watching the monkeys and penguins!  Can't wait to go again when she's older!

Attacking Asher at the train stop :)

All aboard!  Not sure where Daddy was looking in this pic, but we did see some fun animals while on the train!

The hippo is going to eat Lydia!

And Lydia is going to eat you!!!

Fun with Asher & Seth

Monkeys!

The Aquarium!

Loving the penguins!

Seven Months!

It seems impossible, but we have a seven month old in the house!

We're thinking Lydia is around 19.5 pounds and about 28 inches long.  She seems so tall lately!  Lydia is thoroughly enjoying her baby food!  We've started sweet potatoes, green beans, peaches, peas, pears & bananas this month!  As long as the green veggies are hidden with some other flavor, she'll eat them!  She's still getting about four bottles per day.  Lydia is also starting to get the hang of drinking from her sippy cup at mealtimes.  

 Our biggest accomplishment this month was starting to teach Lydia how to put herself to sleep.  We started this two weeks ago.  We read books, sing, and rock, and then lay her in the crib.  The first few times she fussed about an hour (torture for me!), but now it's usually not more than 5-15 minutes.  Lydia takes 2-3 naps per day, depending on how long they are.  She's now sleeping through the night, but sometimes decides to get up already at 6:00 AM.

Lydia is always moving!  She's started to rock back and forth while on her hands and knees, so maybe we'll have a crawler soon?  Who knows!  She is frequently babbling or grunting, too.  She can be quite loud!  :)

Lydia still loves books, music, playing "Pat-A-Cake" or Peekaboo, eating her feet, eating the tags on toys, being outside, being "thrown" in the air, and seeing Daddy come home!

Some highlights from the past month:

-swimming for the 1st time & loving it!

-having her toenails painted pink

-First bruise

-putting herself to sleep

-trying lots of different foods

-visiting the Omaha Zoo

We can't wait to see what the next month has in store, Lydia!  But you can stop growing so quickly!  :)

Life Lately!

First 4th of July at Yankton!

Taking a bath in Grandpa & Grandma Moss' kitchen sink!

Lydia's starting to rock back & forth while on her hands & knees...getting that much closer to crawling!

Good morning!  We've been working on teaching Lydia to put herself to sleep this week...it's going fairly well (so far!)!

Lydia's 1st bruise (above her right eyebrow): she hit the corner of our bed!  It wasn't too bad, and she obviously wasn't very affected by it!

Swinging in 65 degree weather in July!  :)

Yummies!

There's been some great-tasting things coming out of our kitchen lately! For Yankton, I made corn dip and cheese spread!  When we got back, I had a container full of fresh strawberries from Getting's Gardens!  There's only one thing to make with that: fresh strawberry pie!  Here are the recipes I used:

 Corn Dip

2 (12 oz) cans shoe peg corn, drained

4 oz. shredded Cheddar cheese

1/4 c. Parmesan cheese

1 c. sour cream

1/2 c. mayonnaise

1 Tbsp. onion

     Mix all ingredients together and serve with crackers or tortilla chips.  Keep refrigerated.

Cheese Spread

1 jar Old English Sharp Cheddar Cheese Spread

8 oz. cream cheese

1 stick butter

     Use mixer and blend all ingredients until smooth.  Keep refrigerated.  Serve with crackers (Wheat Thins are our favorite!).

Strawberry Pie

(The original recipe makes a baked pie crust, but I used a store-bough graham cracker crust.)

Cook until clear:

1 3/4 c. water

1 c. sugar

2 Tbsp. cornstarch

Add:

Pinch of salt

Vanilla

1 (3 oz.) pkg. strawberry Jello

     When cool, add 1 quart sliced strawberries and pour into crust.  (There will probably be a little too much filling for a graham cracker crust!)

ENJOY!!!

Yankton!

The annual Vermeer get-together at Lewis & Clark Resort in Yankton, SD, was July 3-6.  Lydia & I headed out on Thursday with my parents.  Dan was able to come up on Saturday morning.  Like every year, we all had a great time!  We didn't get much of a chance to get out on the boat or play many games this year (let's just say vacationing with a six-month-old is way different than by yourselves! Surprised?)  We did somehow manage to eat lots of delicious food and on Saturday we took Lydia to the pool for her first time "swimming."  (Don't mind our ghastly white complexions...)  I was prepared for lots of tears.  While Lydia loves bath time, I wasn't too sure how she would like pool water.  She was all smiles before...

 We took it nice and slow and just did some toe-dipping first!

When Dan took her further in, Lydia loved it!  We stayed in for 20-30 minutes!

After some hesitation, Merritt started jumping in the pool and loving it, too!

And Seth loved being thrown by the two human catapults!

 Seth was always "loving" on Lydia this weekend.  She loved playing "Patty-Cake" with him!

Swimming with Grandpa!

More Patty-Cake!

It was fun to get away, and Lydia was a real trooper!  She slept all night the whole time (can't say that happened the next few nights at home!!!) even though she decided morning started at 5:30 am :(  So much for the sleeping-in part of vacation!  Can't wait for next year!

Lydia's 6 month pictures

Here they are!  Isn't my sister-in-law super talented?!  I love how they all turned out, and I'm so thankful she was willing to go along with all of my crazy ideas!  We took these on a very hot and buggy night at the end of June at Hills Park.  The baby buggy pictures are special because that was Grandma Ten Clay's buggy that she used for all of her kids!  What a precious picture!  Enjoy!!!