6 months!

Rose is 6 months already (well, actually, last Friday, but what can I say? Life's a little crazy around here:). I cannot believe how fast the time has gone by. She is a super sweet baby, and I just want to freeze every precious moment in time. I know that soon she'll be a potty training 2-year old who I've seen running around the house naked a few too many times this week (not that that actually happens around here or anything), or possibly a vocal 4 year old, singing at the top of her lungs at the dinner table (we're wondering if you can install one of those sound guards like you see in limos over the dining room table??). Rose rolls over proficiently, and has been trying to push her way up to her hands and knees lately. She smiles frequently, but is a little slower to laugh. She is learning how her vocal chords work, and has been making this crazy growling noise lately, prompting Dad to ask after dinner the other evening who had invited the exorcist over. I think her favorite sibling is Ellie, who loves to get in her face and talk to her. She's not sleeping through the night yet, but we're working on it; and she's so cute I don't really mind seeing her in the middle of the night, anyway. She hasn't started solids for real yet, but she's filling out 6-12 month clothes no problem, which makes me wonder why I can't get these last few baby pounds off. Oh well. I'd rather be chubby than send Rose back!

A couple new blogs to go check out...

I've got a few new blogs for you to go peruse (because, like me, I know you all have tons of time to spend reading on the internet):

The first is the blog home of our church's church planting ministry, Clear Note Fellowship. The posts that are already up there are great, and I'm looking forward to an upcoming post by one certain philosophy Ph.D. candidate.

The second is a companion blog to the first, The ClearNote Ladies Blog. I'm very excited about this one, and proud to call the women writing my friends!

New Cookbooks!

I was very excited to get two GF cookbooks for Christmas this year:


It is a bit of a slow process to get started in gluten-free baking because of the expense of the various flours and other things that you have to buy. I have been having David stop at the local health food store every Tuesday (their 10% off day) for the past few weeks, getting just a few ingredients every time. I finally have a critical mass of ingredients to start baking things, and Ellie has been my happy food critic. Actually, she's not much of a critic. Here's how the conversation goes:
me: "Ellie, I made you some chocolate muffins!"
E: "Really, that I can eat?"
me: "Yep."
E: "How many can I have right now?"

I've also made a GF sourdough starter, though haven't tried making bread with it yet, and tonight we'll be having corn muffins with dinner. The chocolate chip muffins were actually delicious, I would have no trouble passing them off as normal. I froze most of the dozen, after letting the other kids split one, and she gets them when the rest of us are having some dessert that she can't have.

My other fun new cookbook is something that I just decided to splurge on and buy for myself:

I've been using their whole wheat basic recipe for a while now, which can be found for free here. We have enjoyed it, so I went ahead and bought the book, which promises healthy, and even some GF recipes. The UPS man brought it from amazon today, and I've been using every excuse to nurse Rose so that I can sit and read it for a few minutes. So far, I'm loving it! There will be many breads coming from our kitchen this winter!

Solids!

I've never been very excited about baby food. I find it a little disgusting and either expensive or very time consuming to make. With Laura, we skipped "baby food" almost entirely, and instead just gave her stuff from our meal, either mashed or cut up really small. So, I was very excited to realize this afternoon at lunch that the red lentil, sweet potato, and carrot soup I made last night easily converts to baby food! Rose and I shared a bowl at lunch(with me getting the vast majority of it), and she seemed to like it. But then I remembered my one rule about solids: wait until they don't spit up anymore to give them real food! I had to change her outfit shortly after lunch after watching her regurgitate a combo of milk and soup. Yummy!