where is the time going?!

seriously. we need to stop this now. my baby can't be 7 months old already!

but anyways, i think it just keeps on getting more and more fun as time passes.



i caught her singing in this month's pic. singing is pretty much her favorite thing. our household is getting kind of noisy! haha.

she loves to play and laugh all the time! the toys that just sat around the first few months and getting lots of attention now!

baby girl has cut 2 teeth, and is getting pretty close to a crawl! she is able to move backwards, but hasn't quite gotten the forward motion coordinated yet. which is fine by me! i'm not ready for this kind of mobility!

she also has had a cold the past couple weeks...so she's gotten very used to the saline and nose sucker. so much so that she's pretty much a pro and just lays there quietly and let's me take care of it!

she's trying out new foods now. i'm doing a combo of baby led weaning and purees. so far mama's milk is still her favorite...though she's having fun tasting new stuff, when she's hungry she wants the milk! so far the chocolate her papa snuck her is her favorite new food though. go figure! :P

bath time is splash time now. everyone gets wet, but it's lots of fun!

changes are happening so fast now...it's hard to even keep up with! each day is like a new adventure!
this kid is such a blessing!

one home related improvement i've decided to tackle in 2013 is to finally do something about all the shiny brassy hardware in our house. it's definitely not my favorite look.

all of our door knobs look kind of like they stepped right out of 1993.



however, i'm too cheap to buy new hardware...and i kind of hate replacing something unless it's worn out anyhow.

but changing the finish on all our knobs is going to be a lot of work...that's why i've just been staring at them for almost 4 years now.

these days i've been hearing about brass making a comeback though...which makes me a little nervous. i'm hoping it's not the case...but if it is then i'd like to know for sure before i expose myself to hours of work and chemical fumes! :P

right now the options i have in my mind are to spray the hardware all oil rubbed bronze like this:



most of our light fixtures in the house are oil rubbed bronze.

or the other idea i'm playing around with is trying to remove the lacquer from the brass to get an aged brass look like this:



what would you do?
has anyone successfully attempted any of these things?
has anyone else heard rumors of brass making a big comeback?
if you wait too long to update something, is it better to just wait until it comes back in style? ;)

so last night i finally finished up jia's crib wall.

while i was prego, i was inspired by this image on pinterest.



they just took doiles and cupcake wrappers, and made a cute organic 3D wall feature!

so i just went and started throwing some up on the nursery wall when i suddenly had my doubts...

we didn't know if we were having a boy or girl...and even though i nixed the doilies and was only using the cupcake wrappers, it was reading pretty girly to me. maybe a boy wouldn't appreciate it.

plus the whole shebang is held up by thumb tacks. and i had my reservations about combining thumb tacks with a baby's room.

but alas, june came around, and we were blessed with a baby girl!

then last night in a sudden spurt of inspiration, i decided to just go for it and finish what i started. as far as the tacks go, i figure that by the time she's pulling up and could possibly get anywhere near reaching any of them, her mattress will be dropped down and put them way out of grasp. most of them are really very high up. plus they would definitely be a challenge to get out of the wall. my sore thumb can testify. my thumb hurt, and i ran out of yellow tacks, so my interpretation is more spaced out and floaty than the original, but i still like it.

ta daaaa!



i think jia likes it too...and that's what really matters! it gives her something fun and textural to check out.





any it's always nice to create something so impactful in a room for a total cost of about $3, and a 15 min time commitment! can't complain about instant gratification!

by the way, all those pillows aren't in the bed if it's being slept in...but they're nice for playing babies to tend to bonk their heads! :P



we still need to put up her book ledge and her wall hooks, but this room is almost done! but since it took this long just to do a 15 min fix, i'm just hoping we'll finish the rest by her first birthday!

ps- forgive the bad pics. it's dark and rainy today, so there wasn't much natural light, and i was too lazy to get out the real camera. :P

wow, i'm behind! or maybe i've just been in denial about christmas being over. :(

anyways, this year was of course our first christmas with a little one, and that was pure joy! jia is in this phase where she's obsessed with tearing paper too, so that worked out well.

in my whole 30+ years of christmases in texas, i had only experienced one white christmas before this year...and that was just a couple years ago. so my little munchkin was lucky enough to have the once in a blue moon texas white christmas on her first one! (too bad she won't remember it!)



she's a cold weather girl like her mama, so jia loved the snow!



anyways, christmas was adorable. i'm looking forward to starting new traditions with her over the next several years.

a couple days after christmas, jia experienced her first conference...which was an awesome one! but one thing i learned is that conference schedules don't always work with baby schedules! thankfully jia was still pretty off schedule from our trip to india anyhow! :P



in other news, over the past 3 weeks jia has cut 2 teeth, and had 2 colds! we've been passing one back and forth between each other. :( poor baby. it's a snot fest.



someday i will sleep again. some day.
in the mean time, i'm lovin' my baby snuggles.