Chisum–8 months

Chisum, your little personality is just bursting with joy, tenderness, a touch of orneriness and just pure boy.

At 8 months old, you are:

A little charmer and love muffin. You can catch any woman’s attention and love to grin at them. You truly just love to cuddle with anyone, hug and give your mama big, wet kisses.

   

I got to celebrate my first official Mother’s Day with you. We enjoyed the day with Nana and Papa Joe, then brunch with the Bailey and Riley families. The next day at daycare, we got to have “Muffins with Mom” – it was our first date!

You’ve discovered your tongue and realized how to “brrrrr” your lips to make car noises while playing with your cars and truck. Seriously, this how do boys just know how to do this!?

You’ve been crawling/scooting for a good month and have mastered the “downward dog” pose.

You started really crawling one hand/knee forward motion after another in Kansas City with mama and Nana (May 20-23). Once you got home, you gave your mama an ornery look, then turned and crawled all the way from your room to the living room.

Your bottom two teeth came in…both at the same time! Now you’re working on your top two.

An ornery little love.
 

You’re starting to each more solid foods. And you’ve decided you’d much rather feed yourself than have mama or dad feed you with the spoon. Besides your pureed baby foods, you tried your first chicken and beef.

You’re such a joy, we love you!
         

Chisum–7 months

Chisum, at 7 months you are:

• Sitting up on your own.

• Just starting to get in a crawling position

• Starting rocking back and forth on all fours (4/18/2014)

• Love jumping in your ExerSaucer

• Tried out the Johnny Jumper for the first time and loved jumping

• Chewing on your toes

• Eating peas, pears, apples, oatmeal, pumpkin, apricots, plums, bananas, carrots, squash, sweet potato and pumpkin.

• Celebrated your first Easter

We love you!

 


 

Beauty Swap, purple-style!

I participated again in the #ccbeautyswap with Crystal Cattle and got paired up with the lovely Anna Wastell. She is a born & raised Kansas girl, but is now a Nebraskan lifer and ag gal so we had a lot to chat about. Regardless of her love for Nebraska and all things red, she sent me some awesome beauty products in the purple-theme!

I’ve already dug into my fun stuff, using the hairbands, loofa and eye shadow. Oh and she had some awesome grape-lemonade gum that I took with me on travel last week and it’s pretty much gone. :) I also received some flat iron spray, plum lip gloss and sparkly purple nail polish that will be great for summer (and footballs season!). Thanks, Anna!

This was my second beauty swap and I’ve really enjoyed the friendships and connections I’ve been able to share with these ladies. Since Anna lives so close, hopefully we can meet in person sometime soon!

Read about my winter beauty swap and go check out Crystal Cattle’s blog and Twitter {@crystalcattle} to find out about the next beauty swap.

Baby bonanza Twitter party!

It’s been fun to join the “mommy-blog” world of resources. There are some really great bloggers out there who write about real-life stuff that I can relate with. Thank goodness, because Chisum didn’t come with a “how-to” book! I’ve also relied very heavily on my family and my new-mom friends, too. But just with the everyday stuff, it’s nice to know that there are other moms who have gone through it too.

I’ve connected with some other bloggers via Twitter, and one such mom connected me with an upcoming Twitter party that I wanted to share with all of my other new-mom and mom-to-be friends.

They will be asking several questions of those in the party like, "best advice you've received as a parent to be?" and "worst advice?". Best baby gadget you can't live without? Whoever joins in and answers questions is automatically entered to win a $1500 gift card for Young America furniture through Nebraska Furniture Mart. I’m all about that! ;)

Hope you can join me this Thursday, March 27th at 7pm-8pm CST. Use #babybonanza!

Hunk of Meat Monday: Pizza Casserole

If you’ve ever eaten at my Grandma Bailey’s house, then more than likely you’ve eaten her famous Pizza Casserole. It’s a family favorite and kids and adults both like.

It’s easy. So easy a Husband can do it. (No Ronny, I’m not suggesting you’re a caveman!). The other night I had all of the ingredients for Pizza Casserole and when he asked, “What do you want for dinner?”, I told him I had all of the ingredients and he willingly said he would make it.

So while I got to spend some more time with our little man, he made my favorite casserole. He doubled the amount of cheese it needed, but I won’t blame him for that!

{Pizza Casserole}

Ingredients
1 (12-oz.) bag wide egg noodles
2 lbs. hamburger
1 onion, chopped
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans tomato soup
1 (6-oz.) pkg. pepperoni
8 oz. mozzarella cheese
½ tsp. garlic salt
Sliced black olives, optional

Directions

1. Cook noodles to al dente.
2. While noodles are cooking, brown hamburger and onion together, then drain.
3. Mix soups and hamburger mix together.
4. Spray a 11 x 15 casserole dish (or make 2 smaller-sized casseroles – this works great in the freezer!) with cooking oil, then add noodles to the bottom of the pan.
5. Layer meat mixture on top of noodles, and top with cheese.
6. Generously layer pepperoni slices on top of cheese. (Add black olives if you want – or add other veggies to make it “supreme”!).
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until cheese is bubbly.

Enjoy!

Chisum–6 months

Half of a year has gone by and we couldn’t feel any more blessed.

Chisum, at 6-months you are:

• Rolling more
• Starting to stay sitting up on your own

• Eating more solid foods and really loving them. (brown rice, oatmeal, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, bananas)

This is your, “Mom, I’m-focusing-on-eating” face.
 

• Took your first “selfie” on my phone.

You think “Patty Cake” and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” are pretty funny.



Had a fun play date with Morris.


You “blew” through all of your outfits at daycare, and when you came home with big-boy clothes on, you looked SO big! Stay little.


We’ve had some cold days, so we’ve got some great, warm snuggles in. 
 

We love playing with you!