Big News, Little Teeth

That's right, as the title might suggest Viana has sprouted not one but two more teeth! We discovered that she has a third lower tooth coming in yesterday, and then today while cooling off at the beach, mom discovered her first big upper tooth poking through. Woo-hoo. That might explain why she's been a little grumpy the past few days. For those keeping score that's a total of 4 teeth now.

Photo link

And for those of you who did not receive this link, it is a link to some studio photos that we had taken to celebrate Viana's six-month birthday. It may or may not work, and I plan on scanning them in for next month's update.

http://smilestore.picturepeople.com/my/images?tk=aac7d7f8-7204-4830-9fee-3b8510f72d3d

July Update

Okay, so as I've been reminded by several family members, I'm a little behind on the blog updates. So in an effort to make up for lost time this month's update covers a lot of ground. Since it's the middle of August, some of the information may not be chronologically correct as it's been confused between two months.

It's been a very exciting month and Viana is growing and changing on an almost daily basis it seems. She is starting to look less like a baby and more like a little girl. We start out this month's photos with one from the 4th of July. Viana was sporting her red, white, and blue party dress along with her very first pair of shoes; white leather sandals. We really don't see the point of shoes for kids this small, other than the cuteness factor of course.

We spent the day at our friends the Millers where we took a dunk in the pool and played with the forty-three other kids (that's a bit of exaggeration). As one of her first really big outings with lots of kids and chaos she did great and we all had a good time.

Next up was family time. Although dad's been busy at work getting ready for the new school year mom has been able to take a little break from work and spend time with Viana. As it turns out, July and first part of August provided a wonderful opportunity (especially for dad) to spend a lot of quality time with Viana. Weekends have been the best and spending three whole days off at home and with family have been great.

As you can tell by the photo, both dad and Viana are enjoying together time. And no, she's not drunk, even though the rosy cheeks and half-shut eyes may lead you to believe that.

And between planning family vacations, wedding showers, finding time for herself, mom has also been able to spend some quality time with Viana.

And although we'd like her to stay a little baby forever, I suppose she has to grow up sometime. Since mom can't be home for every feeding, dad has had to take on some of the feeding duties. However during a three day span while mom worked a conference, Viana learned not only how to identify the bottle as dinner but also how to grab and hold onto the bottle by herself! Amazing what a little motivation will do for the learning curve.

After Viana's six-month check up at the doctor's office, which went fine, we've begun trying out solid foods with her. Keep in mind that we use the term "solid" loosely. Basically its just a mushed up version of whatever we're having for dinner. In this case, Peas! Everybody loves peas. Well as we quickly figured out, peas are harder to mush than you might think, and the little shells or skins are not very popular with Viana. Needless to say we've moved on to other more mushable foods such as avocado, squash, carrots, and sweet potatoes. So far the avocado is the big hit.

Based on the below picture, I'll bet you can't guess which agency dad just got back from training with??? A little silly I know, but just had to have it! Dad spent a week in Quantico, Virginia which was probably the longest week ever. I honestly don't know how most parents go right back to work after having a baby.

Anyway, by the time dad got back Viana had grown some more and although you can't really see it in this picture, is actually sitting at the grown-ups table. She has really taken an interest in everything we do while eating and it's so much fun to have her at the dinner table.

The August update will feature photos from our family Vegas Vacation where Viana met her cousins from Maine for the first time; Preston and Beatrice along with Uncle Eric and Aunt Jodie! And don't miss the Elvis outfit!