Zach's 9 Month Stats

My baby is 9 months old!  6 months ago, I was joking that I only had 9 months to plan his 1st birthday party and now it is only 3 months until his birthday!!!  I don't think that any mom can say enough how fast the time flies by.  It really has hit me hard lately now that he is crawling all over the place and cruising on all of the furniture, that he is really getting big.

I suddenly understand why woman get this crazy urge to have another baby....since the little newborn is gone now and you miss all of the sweet moments of having that brand new baby.  But "luckily", the waking up all hours of the night and terrible napping, reminds me that I can just enjoy every single moment with Zach that I want before I think about having another little newborn.

How he's shaping up:
Weight: 18lbs. 10oz (31st percentile)
Height: 28 3/4 inches (67th percentile)
Head: 44cm (21st percentile)

Where is his other hand in all of these pictures?  Scratching his back.  We have been asking about his dry dry skin for awhile now and the doctor has just been saying "lotion" (because I've discovered that doctors are THE WORST and always think that you are making more out of something than you are).

I should of taken a picture but it is sad and gross.  

His skin, especially on his back, got so bad that he has some prescription cream and we have to use a special soap for him.  He has to be lotioned up at least 5 times a day.  His head used to be pretty bad and he would cut it up trying to scratch at it so not only was it dry but it had scabs all over it.  

He doesn't seem to disturbed by the whole thing though so I know that this too shall pass.

He is turning more and more into a little person that is full of personality and love.  I'm loving being a stay at home mom and I feel so lucky that I get to play and snuggle and giggle and read books and give kisses and sing songs all day long.

Zach is such a fun little person and he is enjoying being a little scientist and listening to the sounds of things banging against other things and splashing in the bath and discovering textures.  We have a wonderful life.

Early Spring Sunday

It has been so warm in Utah this winter (you know...relatively speaking) and I feel bad for people in the East coast who are having to deal with this crazy "polar vortex" because over in Utah, we are like, "Bring out the tanning lotion!"  At least, that's how I was feeling today.

Aaron had to finish up some projects for his calling and that required being outside today.  He asked Zach and I if we wanted to go outside too and, of course, we did!

Okay, watch this...when Zach is just sitting around...he looks like this:

When I wave at him and say his name, he looks like this:

He has a HUGE crush on me.  And I LOVE IT!  I'm eating it up while I can because someday he is going to be like, "Mom?  Ewwwwwwwwww!"

I wanted Zach to be able to have some freedom outside but we have concert and mud at the moment.  So I set up his play mat.  Last time he used this, it was when he was starting to enjoy tummy time and so I set up a three by three area for him to have tummy time outside.

He saw me taking pictures and crawled over to me.

Pretty soon he decided that he wanted to do some outdoor exploring.  He found some mud and decided to do some digging.

I got a little container of water thinking that he might like to play with his hands in it...but he immediately dumped it out to make better mud.

His dad got a little irritated about the dirty pants and dirty baby.  Zach's mom doesn't care as much about these things.

Once again....Zach just sitting and chilling.

When he sees mom and hears her say his name!

In closing, I can't WAIT for summer time.  I'm so excited to put in some grass and enjoy our yard this summer!  It is going to be awesome.  Everything is better with a kid to share it with!

If You Give A Mom A Muffin

I haven't written a blog post in FOREVER!!!  Seriously, I'm so grossly behind that I don't even know what to do with myself.  Losing all those pictures and videos from my old phone really messed with my mind.  I'm still so sad about it but I just figured out a way to back up my pictures and it is, oddly enough, using Google+. Who would have thought?

Anyway, I wanted to write about last week when I had some Activity Day friends over at my house!  These sweet girls have a school teacher for a mom who was having a full week of afternoons at parent/teacher conferences and so she asked if I would play with her daughters for a day this week.  I was a little nervous with what I would do with these girls for a whole afternoon!  I mean....WHAT IF I WAS BORING?!?  I would be mortified.

My little buddy and I waited at the door so that the girls would see us on their way home and remember which house was mine.

They came in and started working on their homework first (because I'm a responsible adult!) and they quickly finished.  Then they asked if they could work on their friendship bracelets from Activity Days, which was perfect because I was thinking the same thing!  We talked about different things while they worked.  The oldest girl said that she wanted to be a pastry chef when she grew up.  I asked her what she wanted to learn how to make next and she said, "Crepes!"

That sounded like something that was do-able.  So I told her, "Yeah, once Zach goes down for a nap, we can make crepes!"  He went down for a nap and we found a recipe.....unfortunately it called for milk...which was something that I had run out of that morning.

The girls were disappointed so I pulled out some cookbooks and said, "Find something in here that doesn't need milk and let's see if we can make it."

They found, "Nut Torte"....which was something that I had ever heard of or had the desire to make....but it didn't need milk and I had all of the ingredient....which were my only two stipulations and so we began in earnest!

As you will see, the girls did most of the work.  I think the only thing that I touched was grating an orange...and that was just because it was so small and soft that I was scared the girls would grate their knuckles.

I learned that a "torte" has little to no flour and is instead made with nuts or breadcrumbs.  By "little" flour it means like 2 table spoons of flour and 2 1/2 CUPS of nuts...so yeah...very little flour.  We had to add almonds since I didn't have enough walnuts in the house....and it turns out that almonds are VERY hard to hand chop....so....two words for you if you are going to use them; food processor.

Also, it turns out that I don't have ANY round cake pans.  I remember selling them because I didn't make enough cake to have a reason to keep them.  Oops.  So we decided to make mini tortes.

I also didn't have what we needed to make the frosting and so luckily, I had some cream cheese frosting from something else left over.  We decided to have orange (since there was a hint of orange peel in the recipe) and white frosting.

It came out a beautiful sunset orange/pink.

When the tortes came out of the oven, I flipped them over so that they were less like cupcakes and more like little personal cakes.  And luckily, I have decorating tips and bags from days gone by so they girls got to use those.  I showed them a couple tricks that I knew from my Wilton Cake Decorating Class days.

Didn't they turn out amazing?!  These girls have some skills!

While they were decorating, I thought, "These would be so fun to have at a dainty little tea party!"  And so I got out a tea pot and some tea cups and started warming up some water for some hot cocoa!!

This was my favorite personal creation.

We put on some Disney princess music and tried to eat and behave like princesses...while singing the songs at the top of our lungs.....and that is how Aaron found us when he got home.

It was a great afternoon and not a bit boring!  I love how one thing just lead to another and we ended up doing something fun, making something that I'd never made before and got some great memories with these wonderful girls.