Happy Valentine's Day and 6 month check up

This past week Brody and I have been super busy getting ready for Valentine's Day. We have been doing lots of crafts and baking. Brody made his own Valentine's this year using melted crayons into a heart shape. I used to do this same project with my students when I was teaching so I thought it would be fun to try it with Brody this year. He was a very good helper and liked peeling the crayons. We also bought some Valentine's with one of his favorite characters on them "Cars Queen" (Lightning McQueen). He "wrote" on them himself and decorated them with stickers. Brody really enjoyed finger painting this week and making heart collages and his Valentine box.

Brody now knows all the words to the Iowa Fight Song and sings it daily. It is so cute to hear him sing it because he says Iowa "I-Wa-Wa". He still loves singing Frosty the Snowman and Jingle Bells and even though Christmas is over I think we may hear this song throughout the year. He also loves to sing his ABC's and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Brody now knows how to spell his name and can recognize places where his name is written. We are going to start working on writing it as well. He is still very into art-coloring, painting, stickers, etc. He is always eager to learn and is picking up so many new things each day.

This week we let Brody and Briana take a bath together for this first time. Briana was starting to out grow her baby tub so we thought it was time. She really loved watching Brody play in the bath. She is so fascinated by him! He is still very much into doing his own thing, but he can be very affectionate with his sister when he wants to be. Lately we have been getting out some of Brody's old baby things-walker, jumperoo, etc for Briana and now he thinks he needs to sit in them or climb inside of them. Pretty funny to watch as he manages to get in and out of there on his own.

My parents got me a sewing machine for Christmas. I just wanted a simple one so I could sew elastic for the tutus I make Briana, and just to have around for various things. I decided I had better take a class to learn how to use it and to complete one project from start to finish. I choose to make a summer dress for Briana. I did about 50% of the dress in the class and then the other half on my own at home. I will say it was extremely hard and I know that I just don't have the time for projects like that (not to mention the materials cost over $30) but it feels great to have accomplished it and I think it turned out really cute. It is pictured above in the flower pattern. I think I will just stick to sewing elastic for now! :) Maybe when the kids are grown I will have more time.

Briana had her 6 month check up yesterday and she is doing great! She weighs 17 pounds, 7 ounces (67 percentile), she is 25 1/4 inches long (22 percentile) and her head measured at 44 cm (which is the 86 percentile-must be her big brain!!:) She is right around a pound smaller than Brody was at this age. You would not think it by looking at her though because she has much chunkier little baby thighs than he did. Unfortunately she inherited that from me as I had the chunky baby thighs too. Things are going so much better with her eating and she is taking two full bowls of cereal with baby food for me a day now. She has tried green beans, peas, squash, carrots and sweet potatoes and this weekend I will introduce her to fruit. She is sitting on her own now for a few seconds at a time. The doctor says everything looks great which is of course what we want to hear! She had two shots yesterday and literally cried for two seconds, she did way better than I did!

We had a pretty low key Valentine's Day this year. Tim and I went out to a kid free lunch on Sunday and went grocery shopping together for the first time since Briana was born. Very romantic I know but we very rarely do anything alone so it was fun and exciting for us. On Tuesday we got a heart shaped pizza from Happy Joe's and gave the kids their Valentine gifts. We both agreed there is no one else we would have rather spent the day with! Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day!