Stella's 6th Month: Half-Way Through Her 1st Year!

March ended quickly, and we were ready to head into April.  The main thing that I was looking forward to in April was Spring Break!  I still wonder if students realize how much teachers LOVE this "holiday."  I was looking forward to it because it meant a whole week to be with Stella.  It also meant that Steve's monthly visit was upon us!  There were many things that made this visit special: the visit would be for a whole week, my parents would be in LA, and this would be Steve's last visit before he moved to Reno for good!  To say the least, I was very much so looking forward to Spring Break.






Steve flew in on Friday; the perfect was to kick-off our break!  We started the trip with a visit out to show Steve the house.  It's difficult for a lot of people to fathom that Steve and I would choose a house without the other person seeing it, but we have had to do this before; Steve picked our last house in Albuquerque while I was still up here in Reno.  Granted, we were only renting that house, so the idea of me buying a house with Steve only seeing pictures made everyone a little nervous.  Thankfully, the visit out to the house only made him love it more!  Pictures and a short video can only show so much, so I was thrilled that when he got the tour he was okay with this being our first home.




To add to Steve's visit we also had another actual holiday to celebrate- Easter!  We opted out of having any egg hunt or activities for Stella, mainly because it would be enough of an event to be in a house full of people.  My parents typically have all of the family over at their house for Easter, so we knew that there would be more than enough activity to occupy Stella.  The day was gorgeous, and it gave Stella the first opportunity to show off her legs!  Seriously, the cold Reno weather has kept this little girl in two long-sleeved onesies and pants since she was born, so it was odd for her to be showing some skin :).  She was the perfect little lady in her first Easter dress.

  Right after Easter, my parents headed off to LA to visit my sister for the week.  This left Steve, Stella, and me alone together!  We had never had this opportunity since Stella was born, so it felt like a week to play house before we would be doing the real thing next month.  It was so nice for us all to have time to just be "us."  More than anything, we were looking forward to time together.  Steve had been watching Stella via iPhone, so he was excited to see the real thing.  We were lucky because Stella decided to save a few firsts for her daddy to see! Steve and I filled the week with many things that we had been putting off or didn't have time to do, but we also tried to schedule a few activities specifically for Stella.  To start, Stella's 1st baseball game!





 Back in March, I was blessed to hear that one of my favorite sorority sisters would be headed back up to Northern Nevada!  I was thrilled at the idea of having one of my Vegas people here in Reno, let alone two people that Steve and I both love.  Gretchen and Zac were coming up to Reno for an Ace's game, so we decided to join and have Stella's 1st baseball game!  In true Reno fashion, the weather was not optimal for a ball game, but I bundled Stella up as much as I could, and I loaded her into the Bjorn covered in blankets.  I cannot say that she thought much of the baseball game because she was very quiet.  I think she was a bit overwhelmed by all the noise and people.  I gave her the best play-by-play I could and explained how pitchers choose their pitches, all right behind home plate.  In the middle of my analysis, I looked down to find my little girl had fallen asleep.  I'll have to try again when she's a little older!  We ended the night early for a night game, but someone had a bed time.

On the same day as our baseball venture came another first, Stella's 1st word!  Now, as I mentioned before, Stella had been rattling off things that sounded like words, but this day brought something new.  Out of nowhere, she said "Momma" clear as a bell!  She seemed pretty proud of herself that she had actually said a word, so this word became her whole vocabulary.  She no longer tried to mimic "I love you" or "hello," her sole focus was "Momma."  For the rest of the day (and Steve's visit) we were all Momma: Steve, Gwen, Trigger, objects in the room.  If she wanted something, she would reach for it and say, "Momma."  All other words were on hold (and frankly still are) but we were all pretty excited to hear the first official one! 




In addition to talking, Stella continued to be little miss active!  She continued to be a huge fan of rolling over, mainly when she was in her bed.  She would roll over from side-to-side, back to front, etc.  It became a bit of an issue when she started clocking herself in her crib and getting her legs tangled in the railing.  Now, everything and every doctor will tell you not to buy bumpers for your baby's crib, but I was having trouble watching my poor little girl injury herself due to her nighttime activities.  I finally caved and bought bumpers for her crib.  Her injuries subsided, and the only issue I had was listening to her pet the bumpers as she falls asleep.  It seemed a fair trade off for me!

 She was sitting by herself and enjoying playing with her toys.  But, this month brought a big change that none of us saw coming.  Typically, you have babies that like to be on their backs, then they transition to their stomachs, and learn to crawl from there.  Our little lady decided that the back and stomach were okay, but she wanted to stand!  While Steve was here, he taught her to use her arms to pull up on our fingers to sit up.  We were pretty pleased with this because we would help her sit up, and then she would sit all by herself.  The day after Steve left, she decided to change the game a bit.  While I talked to my dad, I helped her to sit up from a nap.  I wasn't really paying attention, but the look on my dad's face told me that she was doing something.  When I turned back, she had used my fingers to stand up!

And thus started the new game for Stella- standing up!  She now could care less about playing sitting down or lying down; she always wants to be standing.  I even bought her a sit and stand toy that she could stand behind and push.  Our games now consist of practicing standing, standing and playing with her toys, and her favorite- dancing.  She has not taken any official steps on her own, but the girl is always standing up now!  I honestly think that she might just bypass crawling and start walking. 

The last big piece of news that came in the month of April were the appearance of Stella's 1st teeth... yes, teeth, not tooth!  After becoming even more of a chatterbox with her new word, Stella all of the sudden became very quiet.  We could tell that she was struggling and playing with her gums, but little did we know that her teeth were what were keeping her from talking.  It was almost overnight, but I woke up one morning to see two little tops of teeth staring back at me from her bottom gum.  Those two teeth came together, and they came with a purpose!  She has become even more invested in her mouth, and seems to enjoy the sound her teeth make on everything.  We shall see the direction the rest of her teeth take, but it is pretty cute to now see two little teeth when she gives us a big grin.




This was a big month of new things for Stella.  The craziest for me to believe is that she is now six months old!  Can it really have been six months since we met our sweet little baby for the first time?  It is amazing to me just how much she has grown and changed, even month-to-month!  Well, here we are at the half-way point of Miss Stella's 1st year with us.  She continues to surprise and entertain us every day, and I can't imagine life without her.  The best part is that Stella hitting the six-month mark means that we are extremely close to our little family all being together!!!  As soon as we hit May, we have nineteen days until Steve officially moves to Reno!  It's incredible to think that we have made it this far, and how close we are to being together again.  Here she is, Miss Stells at six months:

April 28, 2012

Stella's 5th Month

I'm getting bigger!

This month brought warm weather, some more firsts, another trip for Dad, and the biggest thing on our agenda... HOUSES!  Stella started out the month with her four month check-up.  As of March 5, Stella now weighs thirteen pounds, four ounces, and is twenty-four and one-half inches long.  As her doctor says, she is "fifty, fifty, fifty"- meaning that she is in the fiftieth percentile across the board.  I could have sworn that she was bigger, but it is still nice to hear that she is progressing.  I have to remind myself that this is the little peanut that the doctors were concerned about gaining weight.

Mmmm... rice cereal!

The trip to the doctors also brought the green light to start Stella on eating food!  This is something that both Steve and I were really excited to start.  We wondered which foods she would like, how much of a mess she would make, and of course, what funny faces would the poor child make as she tried the new tastes and textures.  I promised Steve I would wait, so we did not try anything new until he came to visit the day after her doctor appointment.  To start, we went with the tried and true: rice cereal.  To say the least, we were both impressed that Stella did not spit everything out and make a huge mess.  Mixed with milk, the cereal was nothing too magical, but it was a very different idea from how she had been eating.  We stuck with the cereal and kept coaxing her to enjoy her timeouts from her liquid diet.



Steve's visit was not all about baby food; it was all about house hunting!  We both realized that we were getting closer to Steve officially living in Reno and no longer visiting, so this meant that we needed to get serious about looking for a house.  This meant that his trip to visit his girls ended up turning into a business trip.  Steve was only here for four days, so we tried to squeeze in as many viewing as we could.  This meant that every minute I was not at work, we were scouting out potential homes.  We were determined to find a house that Stella could grow in, that we could have another baby in, that was in a location that we liked, that had the right features; the list went on and on.  Let's just say that by the end of Steve's visit, we were both discouraged.  We could not find a house that fit the description we were looking for in the location we wanted.  In a stroke of luck, we did find a house we were willing to buy on the last day of Steve's visit!  We literally viewed the house and took him to the airport!  But, he left happy because we had found a house.  We put in a bid and crossed out fingers for good news.

Learning about trees with Dad

Go Rebels!

The viewing of houses, stress and strain of choosing and losing them, and a mixture of odd weather brought a delightful treat- I got sick.  This in turn only meant one thing- so did Stella!  Thus, we were hit with Baby's 1st Cold.  It is the saddest thing to have a little baby sick because there is nothing you can really do for them.  I had a happy, sweet, little baby with a snotty nose and a cough.  It was amazing what good spirits she was in for not feeling well.  But, to say the least, neither of us were getting much sleep.  In addition to this, Stella's teething hit an all-time low, so she was definitely struggling through every night. 

Ohhh... can I have some?

Speaking of teething, we found out a new trend for Stella.  On St. Patrick's Day, I decided to have a Guinness to celebrate the holiday.  I could see little eyes following my every move I made with the glass.  I held the glass out to her to let her feel it, and the next thing I knew she was itching her gums on the rim of my beer glass!  This started Stella's new thing- sharing glasses!  If you had water, beer, anything in a glass... she wanted it!  You could actually see her little teeth when she would itch them on our glasses.

And the gums are on ice :)

Between her cold and the teething, I decided that something had to give.  I finally broke down and bought her an amber necklace.  I don't know if this cute little accessory truly does work, but her drooling has gone down and she seemed to be sleeping easier, so I won't question it! Unfortunately, with one success came a failure.  We heard that we had been outbid on the house.  After looking at the appraisal, there was not reason to go any higher than our original bid, so it was time to move on.  And so, we were now onto house hunting for Stella and Mommy, without Daddy :(.  We decided to open up the areas of the city we were looking to try and find the type of house we were looking for.  Stella and I were just starting to recover from our colds, so we got back to searching the internet.

Morning, Mom!

Just as Stella started to feel better, she also started to expand on a previous skill- rolling over!  In the past, I had only see her roll over on her play mat.  She would roll over from her tummy time to get back on her back, but this only happened a few times a week.  Then, she started to look at me or the dogs and roll from her back to her stomach, but again it was something that she only did a few times a week.  However, all of the sudden Stella decided that she loved being on her stomach!  I discovered this new love one night in the midst of our cold recovery.  I was hearing Stella in the monitor, but she sounded a bit off.  Upon entering her room, I found her rolled over, just looking up at me smiling.  It's a bit unnerving to find her in this position when you check in on her, but she sure did look cute!  This became her new thing during the month; every time you came into her nursery, she would be looking up at you from her stomach! 


As the month went on, so did our trials with food.  Let's just say that Stella was not a fan!  Rice cereal was still our main sampler, but she was stomaching it because it was mixed with milk.  The only place to go was into actual baby food.  After doing my research, I found out that we had quite a few foods to choose from.  I decided to start with something that I personally adore and that is fairly bland- avocados!  I figured it would be easy to mash and a taste that wouldn't be too shocking, so I had high hopes.  Stella had other thoughts about one of her mom's favorite foods.  She made faces and sounds I had never seen or heard from my little girl, and it was quite clear that she was not a fan.  The next food we tried were carrots.  I steamed and blended them, but again Stella was less than impressed.

We repeated these two foods, but nothing improved; I decided that I would call in an expert.  One of my coworkers has a daughter that is about ten months, so I figured that he might have some insight.  He suggested that I should mix the foods into the cereal/milk mix that Stella seemed to like.  So, with high hopes I headed down to the grocery store to buy a sweet potato.  I also decided to purchase a Baby Bullet to help me get a texture that I think Stella would be more likely to eat.  After making my first batch of "sweet potato surprise," it was time to see what our tiny critic thought.  Bless my coworker for his advice because it did the trick- Stella ate!  She ate more than I had ever seen, and she actually seemed to enjoy it!

Beautiful day for a run with my beautiful girl!

Stella final change came throughout the month; her little voice started to really come into its own.  We had all heard Stella babble and make little noises, but all of the sudden she was actually repeating us!  Stella would hear tones and repeat the sounds we were making.  The words that she really took to were "hello" and "doggy."  I can't say that either of these would be considered her first word, but man were they close!  She started by mimicking the tone that we used when we said words, then she started forming them into words.  As the month closed, she would even say "doggy" when Gwen and Trigger came into the room!  On a side note, she also became a HUGE fan of both of these dogs :). 





The month ended with excellent news- we got a house!  On a whim, I went looking at three houses on the twenty-second of the month.  By a complete stroke of luck, the first house I went into was perfect!  It was everything we were looking for in a house (minus Steve's three-car garage request) and it reminded us of the houses we loved back in Vegas.  Unlike the last house, we decided to look a bit further away from my parents and branch out to a new area in Reno called Damonte Ranch.  We loved the area and the new development coming up around the house, so we decided that the longer drive to Nonna and Grandpa's house was worth it!  We put in a bid on Friday and heard back on Saturday that it was ours!  It was a bit of an adventure because I had picked out the house and put in a bid without Steve even stepping foot inside.  But, he said that between the video I took and the pictures online, he was definitely on board.

And so, we ended March with many big successes: Stella was eating, talking, and rolling over with ease, and Mom and Dad had found her her first home!  We all felt blessed that she had survived her first cold, and that our hunt for our first home was over.  This meant that we were one step closer to the half-way point in Stella's first year, and one step closer to her dad being with us for good!  Here is our beautiful little giraffe at five months:

March 28, 2012