Our baby is going on 9 months! It's true, time does fly when you're having fun - we're still as smitten with that sweet girl as ever before. It's also been about the same amount of time since the blog saw a design facelift - it was about time, wasn't it?

Lets talk of these adventures. . .

As you may recall, Jon and I have been stuck in moving status, officially, since April. This means since April we have been preparing to move mentally, while also fitting our house into various size boxes. Come moving day the weather man called for rain all.weekend.long. But we've been through more challenging weather forecasts...so we moved. We, and all our volunteers, showed some muscle power, obtained some serious bruises, struggled against some ridiculously heavy furniture...carried boxes that lost the contents out the bottom - broke a few glass items...stumped a toe, and then collapsed in exhaustion. In the quiet of our first Saturday morning in the new house Jon and I stepped outside to just enjoy and "be". Never again will we have that first morning waking up in our new house, so we just enjoyed the cool, quiet, foggy morning. It's a nice feeling...a nice feeling to be moved in and start the settling in process.

...it's amazing how much fun an empty box is!

When I was in my 3rd trimester Jon and I took a CPR class as I didn't ever want to be in a situation where my baby's life was hanging on the line and her ability to breathe was dependent on me...and I was at a loss as to what to do. So one Fall evening Jon and I spent a couple of hours learning infant CPR. A portion of that infant CPR, unfortunately, had to be used this past weekend. I have never been more grateful for being a paranoid first time parent! So, I am writing this blog to let all parents know the importance of CPR. Please please please, take this seriously. Choking in infants is the number one cause of death...so please do your due diligence to ensure you are prepared.

What happened? My mom, sister, Chloe and I were having lunch at a restaurant this past Saturday when Chloe choked on her Cheetos Corn Puff. This is was her favorite snack of all time! So she was sitting in her high chair next to me, chewing her snack while checking out this exciting new environment...she swallowed prematurely and choked on her corn puff. The corn puff completely blocked her airway, meaning she made not a single sound indicating she was choking - the process was 100% silent. I wouldn't have even known she was choking had I not been looking right at her. I watched her for a second to see if she would dislodge the object herself, when I realized she couldn't I immediately picked her up and placed her in the head down position to begin back blows. My mom realized her lips started to go blue within a few seconds of me doing the initial back blows, so I handed her over to my mom for help, in that time her face went blue...my mom continued back blows and then suddenly, from lack of oxygen, she went limp and passed out unconscious. I'm guessing that either her complete relaxation from passing out, or luck that dissolved the corn puff, either one - allowed the corn puff to shift and allow her to take her first breath, without having to initiate chest compressions. A very very scary situation that happened so quickly you could just blink an eye.

The event scared me enough to go back and revisit CPR. My worst nightmare would be this happening when I was along with Chloe. You never know when you will need to learn the maneuver of back blows or chest compressions...so please click here  if you need to revisit old skills. This can save a life.


Needless to say - Cheetos Corn Puffs no longer exist in our house...!

It's been a rough 3 weeks...we've dealt with our first round of Strep Throat, a cold that resulted in a horrible cough...choking...and now an allergic reaction to lavender! We will get through this!

Vacationing with a 6 month old. Those who have gone before me in this particular journey, know what's coming next. Those who are yet to vacation with a 6 month old, let this help prepare you! :)

We ended up packing our whole house up, or so it felt, to go on vacation. If it wasn't for Jon's truck we would seriously have ended up renting a moving truck. I say that and laugh, but while we were "islanding" we did come across a few families who had U-Haul trailers parked alongside their vehicles. A year ago I would have not understood that...today I do. Everything we packed we were grateful that we did. We could definitely have used the baby swing but we did pretty good with just the baby bouncer. On the way down we also bought Chloe a little pool. That was $10 well spent! Took her a few days to get used to the waves, so while she was acclimating we would let her play in her little splash pool that we took down to the beach with us. Before we left we bought a beach tent - this was also dollars well spent! Kept Chloe out of the sun and away from the beach winds. A single trip to the beach had a tendency to become a monumental effort - beach chairs, beach mats, tent, baby pool, towels, sunblock, extra diapers, extra baby outfits, umbrella...baby. Try carrying all that with the number of arms the good Lord gave us. But she LOVED the sand - ate a few mouthfuls for good measure too. The water was pretty cool, she thought, but only after we had given her the accurate number of days to test out this new weird cold bath water experience.

Beach time was limited dramatically. After about day 2 we were exhausted from lugging all the beach stuff back and forth, so we decided to just enjoy the bay front instead. Our house was on the bay, western facing with THE most incredible evenings. So instead we put Chloe's pool up on the deck at the house, and had immediate access to everything we needed. While she napped, Jon and I sunned like lizards. When she was awake - she was in her bouncer, in the shade, enjoying an outdoor bounce. It all worked out once we realized that we would not be laying out on the beach long enough to cook a skin cell.

We also took to long walks around the island. Chloe adores her stroller. In fact I think her love for her stroller is a top 5 in her life. We walked when it was cool, we walked when it was hot - we taught Chloe how to drink out of a water bottle too. She thought that was so much more grown up than drinking out of her sippy cup. Each time we walked, she fell asleep. So on those afternoons when she thought a nap was for newborns...we'd buckle her up and off we'd roll...and soon she was snoozing.

Jon and I are so accustomed to vacationing freely - no worries, you just GO. Working around the heat, the sand, Chloe's feeding and sleeping schedule, really makes you ensure the activity you're about to partake in is WORTH IT! So we only did about a one hundredth of what we normally do. But watching Chloe's initial reaction to the ocean was so much better than floating around in the ocean for 2 hours as just the two of us...or seeing her dig her little toes in to the sand and kick like crazy for 10 minutes was so much better than the past where we would lay on the beach sunning our bods for 8 hours! The change, although dramatic, is worth it. It's also humbling.

While I have ten thousand pictures I could put up to go alongside this blog, I can't as I'm sitting hundreds of miles away from those cute adorable pictures - and hundreds of miles away from my little family. I'm traveling on business this week - spending my first night away from Chloe. Daddy has Mommy duties until Thursday evening. . .and Mommy is going to. . .perhaps sleep a full night for the first time in 7 + months?

In the mean time, you can check out some pictures from our vacation, if you haven't already. From past blogs you'll know that I tag my most favorite pictures as Shutter Candy - Shutter Candy has expanded, officially. I've captured tender life moments over time, and why keep this to myself, when everyone has tender life moments that they'd like to capture too? Take a moment to "like" me on Facebook by searching Shutter Candy or click here  .This will give us an opportunity to connect.