Josiah is 6 months old! My how the time flys!

My baby boy is 6 months old!
So for this occasion we celebrated his birthday at my parents house. But mainly this was more of an excuse for a BBQ with family. :)
He had so much fun! Unfortunately he was really tired so he wasnt able to have a little taste of his cake.

He did get some new awesome toys from the grandparents though! A walker from my parents and a toy from my husbands parents. Josiah LOVED both the toys very much, he played and played like crazy. The toy that grandma and grandpa Barrows got him made him shriek so loud with delight it made us all laugh hysterically. I have never seen him that excited over anything. It was a great day.

Enjoy!

Kind of last minute decor, but it still turned out great!

My happy Josiah, playing with one of his new toys

Grandpas and Josiah 

Grandmas and Josiah

Sitting up so well in his walker

This picture is so precious

Why did I do a 1/2 year b-day party? Well look at it this way, he'll never have another 1/2 birthday party, a good oppurtunity for family to get together too. Also my last reason, his birthday is in February, and I don't know about you, but I know that it's a little bit more limited celebrating birthdays in winter than in the summer. We all had so much fun and I don't regret it for anything.

Anyway back to the normal stuff...

Update on Josiah...he is very mobile. I put him on the floor on one side of the room and I go downstairs to switch laundry really quick. I come back upstairs and he's already in the middle of the room making his way to the other side.
This morning, while I was still sleeping Ben was getting up for work. Josiah was already up at that point, playing and cooing in his crib. Ben has the bright idea to put him in our bed with me. As soon as he puts Josiah down on our bed I finally wake up and Josiah is rolling everywhere! I had to put my hand on the kid so that he wouldn't fall off the bed.
I"ve also noticed that he is nearly crawling, he is growing up too fast for me. I just want time to stop so that I can enjoy his infantcy just a bit longer.
He LOVES to eat, esspecially applesauce. He eats that up like a champ, constantly opening up his mouth for more, and if I'm not going fast enough for him he nearly starts throwing a fit! So funny!

Why do I make homemade baby food?...Why not!?

It's so easy!
I mean of course you need to make sure that the food that you do make for your infant dosen't make his tummy hurt, gassy, or is not a common known allergen. When you go into a store you can see some examples of food that is already made, but think to yourself, that would be so easy to make and SO much cheaper.
So alot of the things that I tried to make and worked out AMAZING are:
Squash (butternut squash in the winter is the most nutrient)
Fresh Grean Beans (these are a hard to blend)
Carrots (also difficult to blend)
Peas (I did frozen but because they contain salt with the frozen peas I just rinsed them off really good, which is something you should do anyway with ALL fruits and veggies that you and your baby eat.)
Zuccini Squash
Just steam the chopped veggies till soft, then put the whole thing (steamed water and all) blend them in a blender. I got a super great one from our wedding 3 years back that I am finally using :). I have come to find out that the food is MUCH brighter and you know exactly what is going into your baby's food.
Also, if you want to make alot at one time, cause most of us mommies don't have the time to make it every meal, so to make ahead of time take one of the ice trays in your freezer or buy new ones just for food making, and put your food in the clean and sanatized trays into the freezer. Takes about nearly a day to be all the way frozen.
After it's completely frozen I usually pop out the food into little baggies to store in your freezer better.
When you are ready to use it, just throw one of the premade cubes in the microwave, til its soft enough to stir. Make sure you check the temperature of your baby food before serving, so that its not too hot for your baby.
Trust me, you'll enjoy the results and if too watery just add baby cereal till it comes to your desired thickness.

Here some others things that I recommend NOT buying baby food in the little premade containers:
Ripe Bananas (If they are soft enough, they are easy to mash with a fork)
No Sugar Added Applesauce in the BIG container (those little baby food containers cost much more than just buying the bulk, I end up eating some of it anyway :))
So there you have it, affordable and easy to make baby food!
Enjoy!

Love,
Jess

There goes Josiah's Daddy! To the Rescue!

So last night was...well I guess you could say that it was interesting. For never in my life would I have ever expected it.
First of all Josiah has been teething again, with his second tooth about ready to pierce through poor little guy is in pain and is constantly chewing on everything that you give him. When this does happen, he dosen't sleep very well at all, wakes up at 3am then 5am until he gets maybe a little bit of food to calm him down.
Well last night was very different from every other night, just because I'm the one that always gets up with Josiah. Ben works nearly 50+ hours a week so it only makes sense that I get up with our son to tend to his needs. Which I am totally ok with.
At about 3am last night I heard a very loud scream coming from Josiahs bedroom. Even with my worry I didn't even have any time to react when Ben was already in Josiah's bedroom calming him down. Josiah's daddy was holding him, rocking him back to sleep before I could realize what our son needed. So we gave him just a little bit of tylenol for the pain, daddy put him back to bed and he slept til about 5am. Then I woke up to feed him.
While I was feeding Josiah, I realize how blessed I am to have such a wonderful husband and father. So caring and loving for his family that even though he had to work at 6am the next morning he still jumped out of bed so fast that I didn't have time to say "What's the matter?"

I love you Ben my love, my best friend.

My nights, truly are a blessing.

Hello fellow friends, family and bloggers!

...and these are how my evenings are. With my husband quiet time, no baby. Well you know what husbands and wifes do when the kiddo(s) are in bed ;). Josiah goes to sleep at nearly the same time every night at around 8:30-9. He dosen't stay up past 9 though, the little guys gets so tired out. My mom and I recently got him this little seahorse to sleep with as at the same time I'm getting him to not use his binkys anymore all that and his second bottom tooth is coming in.  He sleeps so well til 7:30-8 and then time to start my day. I love being a mommy and I wouldn't trade anything in the world for it!

Excuse the way that he is positioned, he moves around alot before he goes to sleep and his bed is usually closer to the wall and he can't reach the electrical plug, no worries there moms. I just had to move his bed out for the time being to get something that was wedged in the back corner, and i forgot to move it back. :)

Sweet baby Josiah at 5 1/2 months!

On a nice hot day like this...

So finally, it seemed to take forever but I believe that summer has officially arrived. All the cloudy days have been a downer to me and some sunshine was just the cure to my blues.
Recently things have been going quite well, getting the house in order, doing some summer arranging, attempting to clean up the front yard outside my town home. Yep, its busy as always but good.

Not to change the subject too much but...
Just til about a couple of weeks ago, I have been trying to decide whether or not if I still want my manager McDonalds job. I only work one day a week and that single day seems to always dread me, I 'm getting more and more to the decision of quitting permenantly and just be a true stay at home mommy. With all the things that I need/want to do and no time to do it, has been stressing me out. I do just want to be laid back, happy, and always ready to lend a helping hand to those who need it. Maybe I do need to take a step back from that single Saturday job to do what I want. Be that person that I want to be.
I feel like I'm missing the highlights of my day by not being with my son, I don't feel happy being away from him for 9+ hours in one day just to work to get just a little bit of money that dosen't go very far anyway. My relationship status with my husband is still amazing! But I miss him so much cause we are both gone all day on Saturdays working.
Weekends have become the hardest for me because of working, and I always thought that weekends are suppose to be relaxing...
Oh well, more than likely I will stop working.
I always find things to do around my little townhome, for example my wonderful mother-in-law sells blueberries in big bulk and she gave me a HUGE 5lb bag at not cost to me!
Which is totally awesome so I then made some blueberry jam, I just finished making them and the jars are cooling now.
I've never done this sort of thing before (canning) but I have always wanted to try.



Here are the results

I'll let you know how it tastes, I guess you want it to sit at room temperature for 24 hours before eating any of it, to make it thicker. At least to my common knowledge, I think that's why.



Josiah is getting incredibly bigger, I'm putting clothes in the 'save box' nearly every week. I'm desperatly stretching some of his onesis to still fit him...most the time on hot days I just leave him in a diaper--which is less laundry to me! whot! whot! haha.




All smiles here, he is such a happy baby, I am a blessed mommy to have a happy beautiful boy!

And this is what we do when its hot and I don't mind messy.

I just lay out a little bit of rice cereal and he goes to town.

And the results

5 months old today!

Oh yes, here he is at 5 months old well almost, technically on Sunday the 17th he is.

 How fast time has flown! He is learning so much that I can hardly keep up with him. Ben and I just looked at him the other day and swore that he grew like 2 inches overnight. He has grown out of all his 0-3 month onesis and most of his 3-6 month onesis are getting quite tight. However most of his pants still fit him, which is a little odd, I think.

My favorite thing with Josiah is in the morning. I am woken up to the wonderful sounds of Josiah talking to his toys up on his mobile. Then when I finally decide to come and get him to start our day(around 7am or 8 am) I realize that his entire bed is soaked. Already I realize that this is going to be a wonderful start to a clean-up day. His diaper is soaked and his PJ's are just as bad. Crazy kid, I hope that you stop this wetting the entire bed every morning so that mommy dosen't have to do tons more laundry than I already have to. Oh well, welcome to mommy hood I guess. Recently it dosen't take him much to laugh, just a funny sound or in this case Ben's coughing just does the trick.

I was looking through Josiah's clothes and I realized that most of all his clothes were from 0-9 months, and at 9 months this kid won't have any PJ's. So I have been clothes shopping for him, more winter stuff than anything. Nearly everything is 50-70% off or super cheap, so for a money saving idea for kids clothes I thought, I should just buy everything a year early! BINGO! So I found some super cheap stuff that are of name brand quality that are for 9 months and up. So that's the update of Josiah, enjoy the pics.

Josiah and Daddy

He looks a little troubled here, he just now got used to liking being on his tummy.

Daddy making Josiah laugh video, sorry for the poor quality of holding the camera steady. It was just incredibly histerical to me.

4 months and experimenting on solids

So I decided that it was ready to start Josiah on solids. He seemed ready, holding his head up well, showing a good interest in food while mommy and daddy eat, and he dosen't spit it out(most the time.
I have now realized how incredibly patient you have to be with this task, I have to catch him at just the right time to attempt to feed him rice cereal day by day.
But so far so good, he is fussy about it sometimes but he does really well with it I think. He likes to try and grab the spoon and he puts it deeper into his mouth nearly choking himself. :) It nearly a miniature wrestling match with the spoon.
We have been trying a little bit of peas, carrots and some sweet potatoes and boy does he make a HUGE mess.
He puts his fingers in his mouth and then he rubs his food covered fingers all over his face, so now its all up in his hair and he needs a bath! Well, at least he loves bathtime, he just splashs and coos like crazy. Then its off to bed for the little one and mommy gets a little time to herself.
Tonight is a very mellow night, Ben is sick in bed early and Josiah and I walked around alot in the sun today and so he's in bed an hour early and he probably won't be up til 7am or so. So now I'm sitting here, updating my blog with a glass of red wine. Yep, this is the life!

Josiah before eating.

Josiah after eating

He really did enjoy he sweet potatoes.