Food and sleep, what else?!?

Dear Life,

It's been awhile. I know. I have just been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Seriously. Why do I do this? It's summer. Summer is meant for sipping a lemonade sitting by the lake with your feet in the water and a floppy hat on your head. Right?? Emberly's got the idea... since coming home from Colorado last week, we spent the day in Jamestown with Jordan's family at the lake AND a day at the lake with some fantastic friends of ours.

Well... like I said, since updating last, Emberly and I went to Colorado. Again. This time for a family reunion in Breckenridge. It was all kinds of fun with my 24 family members in one house. Emberly wasn't quite as willing of a passenger on the airplane this time. She just has this little movement bug that gets her going all.the.time. She cannot stop. But on the way home there was a saint of a lady sitting behind us that played peek-a-boo with E for more than half of the flight, I kid you not. People - if there is an unwilling baby-passenger on a plane and you are near them, take note from this lady and be awesome. The mother will love you forever.

So anywho - we spent most of our time in Breckenridge at the cabin we were staying at and let others do the outings like climb a 14,000 ft mountain. Yeah... E and I sat that one out. We did go on a nice little 3-4ish mile hike one day though and I considered that a fantastic accomplishment.

Now we are home again and I am absolutely loving the fact that we are finding our "normal" again. The nap schedule has been seriously lacking and that makes for a very tired mama and a very tired E. Do you have any suggestions for making a child take longer naps?? E is really good at 30-45 minute naps and she is absolutely beat by the end of the day. I have recently figured out that naps need to be at the same time every.single.day for little E's mind, body, and soul... and that seems to be helping. I also just let her cry for a good 7ish minutes when she woke up too early from a nap and we are now going on an hour and a half which is all kinds of amazing. Maybe I need to do that more. Other suggestions and advice are always welcome. {Have you noticed that 93% of my blog posts are about sleep and food for my small child?? I have yet to figure out why children don't come with manuals. I will ask God about that when I get to heaven.}

Speaking of food... E is over baby food. She is onto table food 100%. The only problem is that she has a terrible gag reflex and often forgets she's eating and lets the food just sit in the back of her mouth...

I won't go into the rest of the details. You probably get the picture.

But let me just say that it's kinda frustrating to feed your child little tiny bits of watermelon for 35 minutes while saying "chew, chew, chew" to have them take one more bite, gag a little, tip their tummy... and it's all in vain. Ei!

So since I'm in the buisness of asking for advice, if you had any solutions for me for that, that'd be kinda awesome. I cut the food very small, give her one piece at a time, wait until it is chewed and supposedly swallowed, have her take a drink between bites if at all possible...

I'm at a loss. Tell me good baby finger healthy foods too while you're at it. (Please. I don't mean to be bossy.)

Ok I think that's all for now. I have 10 month pictures floating around my camera somewhere... but she'll be 11 months in a week. Call me lazy, but I'll probably just post them both together.

That's all!

Molly

P.S. All of the pictures below were from our trip to Colorado and were taken by my amazing cousin, Lydia of Lydia Thomas Photography. :)