Kissy face

And since this is her baby book, I'm a bad mom for forgetting to post that Piper gives kisses now! The first one was last Thursday (December 10). I was sitting on the couch burping her and she leans into my face with an open mouth, smashes her lips on me for a second and makes a little "mmmm" sound. Absolutely adorable. Of course I melted into a puddle on the floor. When Reid got home, I told him about it and I don't think he believed me until she did it to him the next night. It's super cute too because she gives a kiss and then leans back with a gigantic smile on her face. She is simply the best!

And her first experience with snow was on December 5. I'm not sure she really enjoyed it all that much since she slept through most of the walk, but here we are when we got back from her walk through our winter wonderland ...


I'm also going to try to do more of these mini posts versus waiting to have a good chunk of time to actually write. Especially with the holidays, those are hard to come by, but I'm definitely going to miss lots of fun things if I only post every 18 days ... she's changing so quickly now, it's unbelievable.

Since she is still taking a little snooze, there's one other super cute thing I wanted to note. She curls her toes over all the time. I'm not sure if she's trying to keep her giant feet from looking big or what, but whether in socks or in bare feet, those little toes are crammed right over. And maybe it's because I'm her mom, but I think it's the cutest thing in the whole world.

Tummy to back roll complete, finally!

Most babies roll over from their tummy to their back first ... but not Piper. She's been rolling over from her back to her front for a long time now, but until this afternoon, seemed to be completely opposed to rolling over the "easy" way. In fact, she would put her arms out straight to her side if you tried to help her to prevent the roll. Reid has said many times this will help her if she wants to be a wrestler later ... great. Well this afternoon she finally rolled over on her own to complete the back to front to back roll series. Great job, Piper!

And here she is with her favorite pooch, Zoe. I think Zoe's her favorite because she has all of this fantastic fur to grab onto and yank. Luckily, Zoe doesn't seem to mind :-)

Adventures in eating

Picture this:

Piper's sitting face forward on my lap. Just in front of her is a bowl of Chocolate Trifecta ice cream with rainbow sprinkles that I am stirring around and around (I prefer soft serve, so I make it myself with some elbow grease). Piper is staring at the bowl. She's talking ... mmm's, and ga's. Even an ah-goo here and there. I take the spoon and put some ice cream on it and bring it up to my mouth. As I lift the spoon from the bowl, Piper opens her mouth in anticipation and talks even louder. She does this with every bite I take.

Oh yes, our little one is all of a sudden VERY into food. Everything we put into our mouths is interesting - and she wants some.

As far as what Piper puts into her mouth, I decided about a month ago that I wanted to make her baby food and ordered a Beaba Babycook. It arrived last week, and with last Thursday also being the king of all food holidays, we decided that the grownups shouldn't be the only people living out gastronomic fantasies and broke out the mini appliance to make Piper applesauce to mix in with her cereal. In short, she loved it. It's hilarious because when she's into what she's eating, she makes lots of noise. That's how I could tell that she liked the oatmeal and multi grain cereals way more than the rice cereal ... she tells us all about it. With the apple added to the cereal, her noises grew louder! Yesterday we added pureed pears for the first time, and so far, I can't tell which she likes better, but she definitely likes them both. And even though it may not look it from this picture, she's getting a lot better at eating. She knows to open her mouth when the spoon is coming in and way less is coming back out. She's an eating machine.

And with all that eating, she's doing a great job of maintaining the back fat rolls and butt cheek cellulite. Bananas are next and then we'll be onto veggies! Honestly I enjoy every minute of feeding her since it's so blatantly obvious how much fun she's having throughout the process :-) I'm also almost done a great book on raising an adventurous eater - Hungry Monkey - and am really looking forward to when she can eat what we eat, just mashed up. For those with little ones, and little ones on the way, I highly recommend it. Not only is it a quick/easy read (perfect while pumping!), but he ends each chapter with recipes. I've yet to try them, but am looking forward to it!