Mmmm....

Maisy experienced her first bites of solid food, avocado.  And.......

She LOVED it.  Like she gobbled it all up!

She acted like she had done it many times before.  Opened her mouth and swallowed.

She was so good at right it right off the bat, her sis and bro even got to help out.  Which they were thrilled about of course.

 

And when it was gone, she begged and cried.

I just can't resist this avocado smeared face!

 

So introducing foods to Maisy makes me a bit nervous.  Actually a lot nervous.  I was so excited to do this with the other two.  But now I've read a lot.  Maybe too much.  But knowledge is important, so I try to balance real life with my fears.  I won't bore you with all the research I've done, but there are some studies that show introducing foods at an early age, especially foods like grains, can cause GI problems.  Like intestinal permeability (leaky gut) that Mara was diagnosed with.  Because Mara had this condition as such an early age, it makes me think the early foods she was introduced to may have been a major cause to this condition.  So for now, we are not giving Maisy any grains.  She obviously has already been exposed to some through my milk.  Our pediatrician said the only reason for giving infants baby cereal is because it's fortified with iron.  Since I am making her baby food, I can easily naturally fortify her food with iron.  I plan to give her the most easily digestible foods at first.  And pray that her little tummy stays healthy!

 

Sunshine

Our library is great, and our librarians are even better.  Miss P and Miss L make story time each week so much fun.  Our kids love the library, but they love these ladies even more!  The most recent addition to the library are these reading activity tubs.  There are like 20 of them to check out.  They each have a theme.  They come with a pile of books plus hands on activities to go along with the theme like puzzles, craft ideas, games, coloring pages, toys, and more.  Our latest tub is the imagination tub.  "Sunshine" came with that tub.

 Sunshine is a game.  There are cards that tell you where to hide Sunshine, and then someone gets to find her.  Or him.  Mara thinks Sunshine is a girl and Micah says he's a boy.  Sunshine hides under beds, in doorways, in drawers, on boxes, under blankets, and lots of other places. 

Micah is waiting while Mara hides Sunshine.  This game has provided hours of fun!

Can you spot Sunshine?

Maisy - 6 months

Our baby girl is 6 months old! 

And just perfect in every way.

She's happy all of the time.  Seriously.  If she's fussy, she's tired or hungry.  She rocks to sleep easily or willingly goes to sleep in her crib after being put down awake.  She sleeps through the night.  This is a first for us, so we really don't even know what to do when we don't have to battle her over anything!

She is entertained with just about anything.  She loves to watch her siblings play.  She is getting a bit tired of her baby toys, so sometimes we find some safe big kid toys for her.  This makes me a bit nervous as I'm afraid the big kids will give her anything when I'm not right there.  So far so good.

 She is still practicing these hilarious faces she learned from Grandpa and Grandma while we were in Costa Rica.

 

Maisy girl, you brighten our days!  We love, love, love you!

 

Sledding

3.5/5 people isn't too bad for a sledding selfie!

Only a few tears after the bumpy ride threw him off!

 

 

 

Doesn't she look bummed she didn't get to go down the hill?

 

 

Costa Rica - Zip Line

*The videos on this post are quite blurry.  Not sure why but that happened after I uploaded them.

Lance talked me into going on a zip line canopy tour.  And I'm glad he did.  It was quite an adventure!  Unlike anything I've ever done before.

We had a choice of course:  regular or EXTREME.  After watching the videos, I thought the regular would be extreme enough.  Not Lance, so he signed us up for extreme. 

 

Ready or not!

 This truck took us up...and up....and up.  I think we were going 1 mile an hour up most hills because that's all the faster the truck could go up the hills.  It was steep.

 None of these pictures really do the height or scenery any justice at all.  But in the picture above, you may be able to spot where we were headed.  It's a beige platform about in the middle of the picture just above where the zip line disappears.  It was a LONG ways away.  

I can't find any stats about the length or height of the lines or approximate speeds.  But my guess was that we probably reached speeds of 30 miles an hour.  There was no chance of surviving a fall.  I feel the most comfortable when I'm in control and know what's going to happen next.  This was WAY out of my comfort zone. 

 Just a couple cable lines wrapped around some trees.  And not the biggest, sturdiest trees I had ever seen either!

The EXTREME version meant that we'd have longer and faster lines, and that we would "fly superman style!"  Sitting on a platform and zipping sounded just fine to me, but my superhero was ready for flight.  The first line was tandum, so we got to fly together.

We were also a bit disappointed that this video doesn't do our run justice.  It looks pretty slow, but trust me, it wasn't!  Apparently, we had a pretty rough landing compared to the others.  You can see the stoppers at the end of the line that look a bit like corks.  There were guys on the end waiting to time our landing just right by pulling on a rope to slow us down.  We were given the instructions to fly until an orange flag and then drop our hands to our sides and put our head down.  The only thing you can see when you're coming in is a tree.  And I truly thought we were going to head straight into it!  You can see the rough landing at the end of the video.  My whole left side went numb, and I thought my shoulder and back were rammed out of place.  But thankfully, I felt much better pretty quickly.  I did end up with quite a bruise on my shoulder from the impact!

 The next two were singles.

 After our last line, we landed on this platform in a tree.  Next we had to basically free fall down a line.  I thought this was much worse than the zip lines!

After we were hooked up, we had to step off the platform and then wait for them to drop us.  Stepping off may have been the hardest part!

Can you spot Lance up in the tree ready to jump from the platform?

 Our last feat was a Tarzan swing.  My brave hubby even went upside down!

Lance may have been a bit embarrassed of my scream because he gave me the award for the loudest shriek. 

We also got to see lots of monkeys!

Costa Rica - Snorkel and Sail

We went on a 6 hour snorkel and sail excursion.  I forgot to get a picture of our catamaran. 

 Our captains and guides were very friendly and a lot of fun.

 We got to see some water snakes and several dolphins!  We were hoping to spot some whales but that didn't happen.

 I'm not a fan of swimming with creatures, so I watched from the boat.  Can you spot Lance giving the thumbs up?

 

One of our guides brought up a puffer fish! 

Costa Rica - Beach

Costa Rica continued....

 The beachfront was public, so that was different than the other resorts we've been to. 

 The beach "sand" is actually billions of crushed shells.  Right in front of our resort it really looks like sand because it's a high traffic area.  But if you walk down the beach a bit, it becomes filled with tiny, whole shells  In those areas, it actually hurt to walk on it barefoot.

 The water was clear, blue and just beautiful.  I bit chilly for me, but Lance did take a dip.

 On the weekend, the locals flock to the area.  It was fun to see the kids enjoying themselves in the natural "wave pool" and making sand castles.

 We walked down the beach to a town.  I finally had to drag Lance away after he tried to make small talk with a local who only spoke Spanish.  He had the guy confused, and he thought we were lost so he did manage to get out "Taxi?" 

Sometimes even through the loud, craziness around here, I can see hear the crash of the waves.  And they're calling my name.  This momma is still kinda running on vacation high!