Dear Miss Leyba,

Oh my goodness, you are half a year old already! I can’t believe it. In 18 years you’ll be heading off to college. The time is flying by.

Month six has been all about movement. In the last few weeks you’ve morphed from a squishy, soft baby to a very muscular young lady with places to go and things to see. In fact, you converted so much baby fat to muscle in the first half of the month that we started bringing back clothes we had already packed away because they had been too small.

Then you hit your 6 month growth spurt and I’m happy to report that your beautiful, gigantic cheeks are back! (and those 3-6 month t-shirts are packed up again.) Your outfits are still super baggy, but you’re filling them out a bit more every day. Way to go, my voracious eater!

Here’s what you’ve been up to this month:

You can now sit beautifully by yourself. You are also very close to being able to sit up by yourself from lying on your back and you sit up fairly easily when you push up from your side. You like to go from sitting up to the crawling position too.

You are constantly trying to crawl, rocking back and forth on your hands and knees. You scoot yourself backwards around the house on your tummy; so far, you have only ventured around the living room on your own. We know it’s only a matter of time until you’ll be cruising the joint.  We really need to baby proof the house as we didn’t realize just how much baby proofing would be needed until we saw how you reach for everything we touch and will put anything in your mouth.

You love standing up by yourself and only need minimal support from us now so you don’t fall over. You are incredibly proud of yourself for this achievement and give us giant, toothless grins while you’re standing. It’s adorable. You have every right to be proud! What a momentous achievement! Now stop growing up so fast; I can’t take it.

This month you’ve been expanding your vocabulary and love to chat with us. You still are very quiet in public and mainly just talk to daddy and I, but sometimes you surprise us and chat it up with total strangers. For the most part, you are speaking gobbletgoop, but you frequently mimic what we say. You’ve repeated “meow” (once!) and mimic the intonation of things like “hi” after me… we’re still holding out for mama and dada! I listen carefully to everything you say and are ready for you to astonish me with those big words.

We still read together, but now you have less patience for long books, so we mostly stick to “baby books” with just a few words on each page so you can practice turning the pages and, of course, eating the book. Everything goes in your mouth!

You are tremendously fascinated by food and reach for what we’re eating. We haven’t given you any solid foods yet; we’re holding out as long as we can on that. Now that you are six months old we plan to introduce all sorts of yummy vegetables and fruits to you.

You reach for, toss, and drop your toys. Over and over again. I like seeing you make choices and develop preferences. (Of course, I can say this NOW.)

And you enjoy riding in your jogging stroller.

Of course, you enjoy it even more when our runs are over and we hold you, but we really can’t blame you for that.

We’ve been hanging out together for 15 months now. It’s been such fun. Happy Half Birthday, sweetie!

Love, Mama

Baby in the mirror from Carrie on Vimeo.

Tired of spending $6 a pint on the most delicious vegan ice cream on the planet, Coconut Bliss? We certainly were, so David bought me an ice cream maker for our anniversary and I’ve developed a vegan coconut milk ice cream recipe that could rival the professionals.

This isn’t just for vegans, this recipe is for everyone. Coconut milk is extremely creamy and delicious, even if it is not exactly figure friendly. (At least it’s good for you coconut milk fat! Perfect for breastfeeding mothers!) You’d never know there wasn’t any dairy involved.

Here’s our recipe:

Mix together:

28 fl oz (2 cans) original coconut milk (none of the low fat mumbo jumbo)

1/2 cup raw agave nectar (perhaps a little less… please let me know what you think!)

2 tablespoons vanilla extract and/or as much of a vanilla bean as you can afford (I typically use 1/3 of a bean)

Pop it in your ice cream maker for 25 minutes, then chill in the freezer.

Remove from the freezer and allow it to soften for about 10 minutes before serving.

Yield: approximately 1 quart

Enjoy!

The ever lovely Tracey tagged me. It’s only taken me over a month to post this. Sorry, Tracey!

Here we go…

What was I doing 10 years ago:
Just graduated from high school and spending lots of time at the beach with friends before moving to Ohio for college.

5 things on my to-do list today:
– Write thank you notes
– Do laundry
– Go for a run
– Bake bread
– Update blog
(1 out of 5 accomplished! typical nowadays.)

Snacks I enjoy:
Here’s what I’ve been snacking on lately:
– Rice cakes with almond butter and jam
– Fresh mango with basmati rice and homemade vegan coconut ice cream
– Tortilla chips with homemade guacamole

Things I would do if I was a billionaire:
– Buy land, build a cob house, and grow a giant garden!
– Buy a summer house on Mappleton Street in Boulder, Colorado
– Buy two hybrid vehicles and another bike
– Donate to charities (especially environmental and human rights causes)
– Pamper ourselves a bit more: buy some new clothes, treat ourselves to massages, buy more books, travel with family and friends, and I’d never hesitate when buying smoked salmon, truffle oil or heirloom tomatoes again.

Places I have lived:
This list is getting long:
– New Jersey (born and raised)
– Ohio (college)
– Arizona (graduate school)
– New Mexico (for a summer)
– Colorado (David’s graduate school)
– Northern California (where we currently live)

People I want to know more about:
My twitter pals and four incredible women whose names all begin with S:
Sara, Sarah, Sarah, and Stephanie

It’s so fun watching our daughter’s personality come out! For the most part, she is the same sweet soul since she was born, she is just much more assertive now!

She loves things that we are into: typing on the computer, clicking on the mouse (or type pad — she has both down!), pushing buttons on the remote control, turning door knobs, drinking water (she likes to hold our glass with us and put her mouth to the rim — no water has been consumed yet!), talking on our cell phones (they evidently taste so good), and she always wants to read (i.e. drool, chew and suck on) our books:

In the last few weeks she has mastered sitting up and can now sit up confidently on her own:

She has also discovered the joy of scooting herself backwards across the floor to new and exciting places in the house, like under the ottoman in the living room. She frequently backs into areas where she gets stuck and after a while makes her “little mammal noises” that signal it’s time for me to come get her and save the day. (I try not to help her unless she asks for help as problem-solving her way out can be just as fun (and mind-building) as getting in the situation to begin with.)

She continues to fight going to sleep and rarely nurses when she’s sleepy as she knows it will put her to sleep. Once she’s asleep, however, she loves to eat. She can even latch on with her eyes closed and with no help from me. Babies are amazing.

She continues to love bath time. She kicks her legs and smiles and basically tries to squirm out of our arms (or off the changing table) when she sees us setting up the bath tub. It’s so fun splashing, running fingers through the water, playing with water toys, and moving around in the bath:

Daughter, you are such a happy baby, always full of smiles, cheers and laughs. You are so sweet, and loving, and fun!

Some morning moments with Miss Leyba:



Here she comes reaching for my glasses…

Oh, yum. Mama’s glasses are so delicious.

See those metal mixing bowls in the background? They are such a huge hit with her right now. Banging, licking, turning over, dumping out, throwing. What fun.

We love our jogging stroller!

We packed a bunch of toys in the jogger for her, but she was only interested in chewing on the straps and sucking on her fingers! Whatever floats your boat, sweetie!

Here they are flying by me! Go, go, my Leyba loves!

We love (and count down to) our weekends. The past few have been a whirlwind of activity—we celebrated our anniversary and David’s birthday over the long weekend—all with a common theme: delicious food. We’ve lunched at Mustard’s Grill, made dairy and non-dairy contraptions in our new ice cream maker (our anniversary present!), eaten all sorts of fresh produce and delicious fruit from the farmers market (oh, the mangoes and avocados are heavenly!), splurged with root beer floats (and strawberry chiffon shortcake), and rolled sushi rolls at home nearly every night this week for dinner (it’s been WAY too hot to cook!). I love summer eats in Northern California…

What I don’t like: summer wildfires and the resultant air pollution. We haven’t been able to exercise or even leave the house much lately because of the smoke, though it finally looks like the worst is behind us. So, today we picked up our jogging stroller and are now drawing up a training schedule for our runs… I can’t wait to get out there. I know it’s going to be hard work, but I feel so motivated! Yesterday we walked our route and, wow, I felt phenomenal. I can’t wait for the real endorphins to kick in.

What else have we been up to? While we’ve been holing up inside Miss Leyba has been perfecting the art of crawling backwards!

More on that soon…