Jada 10 month photos

Jada at 10 Months

Jada is getting so smart and has started doing several new things recently. One big one that we have been looking for and anticipating for some time now is crawling. We thought she might end up being one of those babies that walks before they crawl and she was close. She started walking around furniture long before she started crawling and she is still way more efficient at that. Her first time crawling was only about 5 minutes before Mike got home from work which was sad but she crawled to him when he got home. She can really get herself around now. She walks around funiture, walls, door frames,ect., can go from laying down to sitting to standing and standing to sitting and can crawl. She is quite vocal with lots of new sounds. Every time I sing she starts "singing" and whenever mike growls at her she growls back. She also has recently started throwing miny temper tantrums nothing like when she gets a little older but she throws her body back and screams high piched but it only ever lasts a second or two and then she decides she is fine. She LOVES spashing water. I was trying to show her how to blow bubbles with a straw the other day and she didn`t pick that up but had a grand old time making a big puddle and splashing around in it. She also LOVES to empty things out. She doesn`t put them back in yet, I keep showing her so she will get there. Today she crawled over to the table and was walking around the chairs and got under the tables. There are cross beams on the underside of the table and she is just short enough to stand up under the table inbetween the cross beams. But she couldn`t figure out that she needed to duck to get passed the cross beams and so got really upset because everytime she moved she hit her head. That was quite difficult getting a scared, stiff baby that wouldn`t bend her knees out from under the table. That really hit home to me just how much a baby has to learn. I totally take ducking for granted. Just recenly when we go to greet her in the morning or after a nap we find her standing up in her bed and it is a favourite game of her for us to kiss her hands through the mesh sides of her pack and play. She absolutly loves pick a boo type games. That gets lots of giggles and and screams of delight and she will try to find us or the object that we have moved out of sight. She GAUCKS at babies and other little kids, it is so funny. She still eats just about anything that we put infront of her which is huge blessing as parents. She uses her pinchers to pick up small chunks of food and she always seems very pleased as she looks around the table at us as we eat together. We recently got a high chair. We were feeding her in her walker before because it has a tray but it was harder to keep her in one place which ment more clean-up. She has 6 teeth now, I almost forgot to mention that. She is a little cutie, her hair is getting blonder and her skin is getting darker with Bejing`s hot summer days. We love her lots. She is a huge joy and blessing in our lives. Mike is a great dad to her, they are good pals. It is fun to watch him play with her. You can see how much they love each other.

housewarming party extraordinaire

When you move having a housewarming party really makes you feel settled in and that you have a warm house. We invited 30 people, and probably 25 showed up so it was a full house with a mix of friends from work and church.

We made pulled pork with homemade BBQ sauce, coleslaw (Thanks Mom Innes for the recipe! People loved it and asked for the recipe) and a plethora of smoothies. As one flavour ran out, we would make another one.

We started with Lime-razzy, then strawberry-mango, then orange-pineapple-banana, ending up with dad Innes' special: chocolate-marshmallow-grape!

With the chocolate-marshmallow-grape, we made it into a game: We gave everyone a taste, and they had to write down what they thought that the flavours were. 4 people got 2/3 right but no one got all three - 3 of them said chocolate and grape, only 1 said chocolate and marshmallow. So we drew the winner (who got a tolberbone bar) out of those 4 people and gave everyone else a small chocolate bar (someone brought them as housewarming gifts, so why not) as a prize for trying. People where guessing everything from Chocolate covered cherries (quite common guess) to Tootsie rolls (very common) to my favorite "deliciousness, mmmm and chocolate"! Someone else said chocolate and magic. But everyone agreed that this flavour combo is quite good.

All the Innes' know the story behind it, but for those who don't this is the story behind it: A number of years ago he went to Peter's Drive In in Calgary, with a bunch of friends who dared each other to come up with the weirdest flavour combination (Peter's something like 30 flavour options). Dad Innes said Chocolate Marshmallow grape. He won the dare, and the milkshake was surprisingly good, so has became a favorite ever since.

BTW, the ratio that we came up with is: 4 cups ice cream, 1-2 cups milk (depending on how thick you like it), 3 tablespoons grape concentrate (we found one that is almost a jam, just not as thick), 5 tablespoons sweetened chocolate powder (ie Nestle Quick) and 5 tablespoons marshmallow cream (we made our own, really simple to do). Adjust ratios as needed. Of course, some of the ingredients in Canada will be different then in China, so the ratios could be a little different. You'll have to play around with it until it tastes right - Chocolate with grape with a hint of marshmallow - no flavour should overpower any other, but if you were to order the flavours it would be Chocolate, Grape, than Marshmallow. This is definitely going in our family memories cookbook.

Everyone had a good time which made us happy!