Autosave? I need an Autoupdate too!

Ok, so I know I have been sooooooo crummy at updating my blog. I promise I will do it WEEKLY. Every Tuesday you can expect an update from now on. That means you all need to start harrassing me about it on every Sunday probably :D Ok, so I did make an awesome attempt at updating the blog one week ago from today. I uploaded and captioned ALL the pictures from the last two months. I then proceeded to write about half of my blog. All of a sudden internet explorer decided to shut down. The only things saved were the pictures I had uploaded the night before. Needless to say, I was devastated after 2 hours of work was GONE. I have absolutely no idea why all that work wasn't autosaved like it always is. Anyway, here are the pictures that I had uploaded that first night of working on the blog.

Some quick updates:
Sophia had her 9 month appt at the end of August and was 26.25" long and 15lbs 7oz. Her stats dropped from the 15th % to the 10th. Nothing to be worried about though - she is doing great! No crawling yet, but loves to roll around and push herself backwards. She is babbling up a storm. She has mastered "babababa" and is getting close to "mama" and "dadda." I could listen to her talk all day. Absolutely priceless. Sophia also really loves her Gerber Puffs. She's getting much better at the pincer motion, but sometimes she just grabs with her whole hand anyway.
At the beginning of September, Sophia and I went back to Wisconsin for about 10 days. It was great to be home and spend time with family and friends that I haven't seen in a long time. We got to meet my little niece Tanner for the first time too! We did a photo shoot with Sophia and Tanner - quite hilarious.
When I got back from my trip to Wisconsin, Sam and I (and Sophia obv) went to the Botanical Garden again. It was gorgeous weather and the flowers were absolutely marvelous too. Can't wait to go back and photograph some more of them. We still haven't been through the entire garden yet.

Cousins: Sophia (9 months) and Tanner (4 months)

I love her little toofers!

Playing like a good girl!

The girls reunite at a backyard bbq at Caitlin's house.

Steph's first time meeting Sophia!

Enjoying the water fountain at the Riviera.

Spending a day in Lake Geneva with mommy's friend Julie!

This is what happens when you put more than 1 puff in your mouth. Billy Bob teeth!

When she went in this in April, we had a pillow under her feet and a blanket behind her back because it was so big for her. It's perfect now!

Hangin' with Auntie Jaclyn!

Sophia with her Great-grandparents. 9-10-09

Lovely picture with my Grandma and Grandpa Leedle! :)

"Stay on your side, Sophia! Ugh!"

"Just sit right there, Tanney."

I melt everytime I look at her. <3

Pretty in purple with Mommy.

Swallowtail butterfly on a butterfly bush.

Just makes me happy to look at this. God is so amazing!

An attempt at a family photo. :)

We tried to let her smell the flowers, but she really just wanted to eat them.

Happy girl with Daddy.

One of my favorite shots of the day.

A beautiful sunflower. I love them!

Walking with Daddy through the Children's World of Wonder Garden.

Sophia and I at the Botanical Garden 9-13-09.

Well I hope you enjoyed my skimpy blog, but after losing all of it during my last attempt, I really lost the ambition to blog about everything that happened in the last two months! Don't forget to start reminding me on Sunday! Hahaha. Actually, I'm not kidding. Do it.

I did fall off the face of the earth...

So a lot has happened in the past two months...and I mean a lot. Sophia is doing great! She's still in her 3-6 months clothes, but is now in size 3 diapers. She is a maniac in her crib...rolls around like crazy. She sleeps through the night now, until about 5 am. I feed her, change her, and put her back to bed. She just rolls right over onto her side and goes back to sleep. No crying. She does still cry when we put her down at night and for her naps. I thought she was supposed to stop doing that?! Guess not. She LOVES baby food. This past week she's been a horrible eater and extremely cranky - I think it's because we've thrown her schedule off. We've been working on the house everyday so it really has messed things up for her. My parents came to visit at the beginning of July, and it was just in time to see Sophia get her first two teeth! They poked through her gums on July 1st and they are so darn cute. She loves to take her fingernail and click it on her teeth.

Sam and I celebrated our one year anniversary on July 11th. YEAH!!!!! I love him soooo darn much. This year we decided that since we are buying a house, we didn't want to spend much money on presents for each other. We set a $10 budget. I made Sam coupons. Some of which allow him to get out of chores, to have a guys' night at the house while I take Sophia somewhere, free massage, etc. Sam wrote me a letter as if we met in highschool and were passing notes in class. He also made me a paper fortune teller and a first year time capsule out of an old wine bottle. We are going to open up the time capsule on our 2nd anniversary. What great gifts! Our big gift to each other was treating ourselves to dinner and drinks at Bodega - our favorite little spot. This is the place we went the night we got engaged :) We got all dressed up, went to the parking garage rooftop where we got engaged, and then went to dinner. It was a fabulous night and seemed bizarre to be away from Sophia all evening.

Oh, I said something about working on a house didn't I? We bought a house! FINALLY! It was the longest, most outrageous, frustrating, ridiculous ride, but we are happy to have a home now. I won't go into details, but basically we had the world's worst mortgage company ever. EVER. If you live in the area, never choose Monarch Bank. Just don't, it will save you loads of stress. So yes, we've got a house now. It's about a half mile from my sister's house. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 1650 sq ft, brick ranch, wood burning fireplace, screened in porch, fenced in back yard. The house is awesome, and it's even better now that we've started to make it our own. We've done lots of little things to improve the house and to suit our tastes. We've painted...everything except one bathroom (the horrible bathroom with a pink sink, pink toilet, pink shower, pink floor tile, pink wall tile, and a pink floral border). We will wait to demo that bathroom until we've got more money saved up. We painted the kitchen a beautiful yellow (Behr's wildflower honey). We just ordered some tile today to do a backsplash. We are hoping to change the cabinet hardware to an oil rubbed bronze, but it's not a priority. We'll keep our eyes out for something cheap on ebay. We painted our dining room an orange color (Behr's apple crisp) and hung a new chandelier that we used our pottery barn wedding gift cards on....before we even had a house. In the living room we have painted the walls - stripes. There is no lighting in the room, so we bought a ceiling fan with lights and hopefully Mark will be able to help us install it. Sophia's room has been painted green and a white ceiling fan was installed. The guest bedroom is currently being painted a light blue and will be getting a ceiling fan put up tomorrow hopefully. The master bedroom is a wonderful, gray/brown and the master bath is a blue color. We put up a ceiling fan in the master as well. All of the doors in the house will be painted white and we've bought new oil rubbed bronze door knobs for them. We are also in the process of changing all the outlets and switches to white. There was a mish mash of painted over or ivory receptacles. They were definitely originals to the house. We put up a ceiling fan in the screened-in porch. That's a lot of changes! Everything looks great, but I'm still anxious about the house. I love our apartment and will be sad to leave it. I'm sure I'll get over it quickly. We'll be able to have a dining room table up again, have people over, we have a yard now, and our money will be going towards something that will build equity, instead of our landlord's pocket book. We won't have neighbors above us who always tend to start making noise when Sophia is down for a nap, or trying to go to bed. We'll be soooooo much closer to my sister! So anyway, it will bittersweet I'm sure. We are still not packed up yet, and probably won't move anything to the house until the paint smell airs out...because even I get a headache from it. It's pretty bad. We have to pay rent on our apartment for August anyway, so we'll just take our time and hopefully have a less stressful move. AND we may as well keep using the water here to shower etc since we don't have to pay for it. Lol.

Okay, enjoy the pictures!!!!

Sophia's teeth poked through today 7-1-09

She still loves bath time! ...but is getting a little small for her tub

In one of her cute 4th of July onesies

Dad, Sam, me, Sophia, and Mom 7-5-09

Check out those little teeth!

Out to dinner for our 1st anniversary!

Getting the keys to the house! 7-24-09

Putting our first strokes of paint on the dining room wall 7-24-09

Sam & Mark putting up the fan in Sophia's room

Our awesome kitchen

Our beautiful new dining room

The master bedroom (in progress)

Finished master bathroom

The living room stripes!

The travertine tile that will go on our backsplash

6 month milestones

My, my, my. Sophia turned 6 months old this past Friday...and I am still in shock. Last week here are some of her new developments: sucking just her thumb and hooking her index finger around her nose, wearing size 2 diapers, moving into size 3-6 months finally, trying to roll over a little bit, moving all over the place in her crib at night (thank goodness we aren't sharing a bed), and not surprising - getting cuter by the day. Sophia's fascination with kitties has also been growing. She loves to watch Mocha and Nona from across the room and tries to reach out and pet them when they come near. She hasn't quite mastered the petting yet - she tends to grab onto their hair and just keep her fist clenched. Nona doesn't mind at all but Mocha definitely is skiddish around Sophia.

We bought a tummy time mat for Sophia the middle of this month. She likes it a lot...for about 2 minutes and then she gets mad and starts crying. Hopefully we can keep working on this so she can build her muscles...even though secretly, I'm content with her not being able to crawl yet lol. Is that wrong? Hopefully we'll find a house soon where there actually IS room for her to get down on the ground.

Speaking of the house search....so frustrating. We just want to be in a house. Yesterday's sermon at church though was really good for me to hear. Doug, our pastor, talked about God answering our prayers - even if the answer is no. God knows when it's the right time and the right house for us. I think instead of praying that we find a house to move into, I should be praying for the timing - that it's the right house for the right money, etc. As much as I want to be in a house, I need to be patient. God knows best.

On Wednesday (the 20th) Sam and I got free tickets to go see Coldplay. It was an awesome concert and we really cherished a few hours of time to spend with just each other...and about 20,000 other people. We were EXHAUSTED however because Tuesday night, Sophia slept NO more than 45 mins at a time. She was extremely irritable and finally pooped Wednesday morning while I was napping...which means Sam had to change her. Hahahah. Wednesday night she slept better, but Thursday was back to another night of getting up constantly. I cannot wait for her to sleep thru the night. I haven't slept through the night since the middle of my pregnancy. While I was pregnant, I had to get up to pee. After Sophia was born and still in the NICU, I had to get up every couple hours to pump. Since she's come home, I have to get up every 2-3 hours to feed her. It's frustrating - especially when so many people are like "oh, you mean she's not sleeping through the night yet? She should be. I would ask your pediatrician what you can do to help her sleep longer." Well geez people, we obviously want her to sleep longer, but she wakes up hungry most of the time, not just because she doesn't feel like sleeping. Anyway, we'll find out this Wednesday at her 6 month appt whether or not she can start on some rice cereal or baby food. Which means, we need to get a high chair, which leads to another good point - our dining table is in storage until we find a house...and the high chair we are planning to get just straps onto the dining chair - it's not a free standing seat. Sophia will also be getting her 6 month shots. Great. It's Sam's day off, but he unfortunately has court and won't be able to come to the appointment.

Tomorrow is Sam's last day to ride with his FTI (field training instructor). After that, he'll be cut loose and on his own. I'm definitely going to be much more nervous when he's by himself, but I'll just have to keep praying for God to bring him home safely each day. I'm so proud of him!!!

Sophia on her new tummy time mat.

Notice how much drool is on the mat already.

A better view of her picnic mat.

Some pretty clematis on one of our walks.

Baby geese on our walk.

Hugging her dolly.

Off to the Coldplay concert.

Hahah. I love this picture.

At the concert.

Enjoying the great music.

After they shot out confetti.

6 months old today!!!

Playing in her jumper on her half birthday :)

"Petting" Nona.

Ready for a walk and then baseball. She's wearing her "Ocean View Mermaids" tank. If you didn't know, Norfolk has mermaids all over the city just like Chicago did the cows...but the mermaids are permanent. Can't wait to get a picture of her in her tank next to one of the mermaids IN Ocean View (where my sister Kristin lives).