A Glimpse into our Saturday

I love our weekends as a family. We get to relish in the entire day together and Daddy takes delight in being hands on with Ilah all weekend and spending oodles and oodles of quality time with her. Normally Ilah is still sleeping when he leaves for work during the week so when Saturday rolls around, he loves greeting his little girl "crib side" and seeing her when she first wakes up. Nothing like seeing a sweet baby's face when they've just woken up from a long nights sleep. And then to have your precious baby look up at you and give you continuous smiles - one after the other - ahhh. What a feeling.

After Ilah's first feeding, we let her come into our bed for some family cuddling time. - sometimes she will drift off to sleep and have her short morning nap. Just as much as she loves being tucked under us {literally; she turns on her side and scoots and scoots until she is touching one of us}, we LOVE the feeling of having her nestled between us!

Here are some pictures of Mama and Ilah {that Daddy took pretty early!} Saturday morning....still in our pj's....no bows in hair....messy bed. This is what our Saturday morning looked like exactly!....

I give Ilah about 446 kisses every morning. Ha! Can't help it!

Last week I bought Ilah a "Praise Baby" DVD and we watched it with her Saturday morning. We ALL loved it!! I had heard about Praise Baby DVD's when I was pregnant and decided to visit a local Family Christian Store to see in person what they were all about. While although Ilah is too young to process the biblical stories that we read to her, or the songs that we sing to her, or even the prayers that we pray over her, we still want to begin building her spiritual development by depositing spiritual substance into her. There's a variety of Praise Baby DVD's;on the market;I purchased just one to see how we would like it. The Christian music, along with the simple imagery, really captivated Ilah's interest. I will definitely be buying more.

There were a few "firsts" in our house this weekend. One was that Ilah laughed for the first time!! And of course, it was the cutest thing ever!! Then again...just about everything she does is the cutest thing ever!!

The other thing is that Ilah started on rice cereal {recommended by Ilah's pediatrician at our 4 month visit on Friday...more on that later}. For about a month and a half, Ilah has been drinking 7 - 8 ounces per feeding - and lately she was starting to get a bit fussy when she reached the end of her bottle. Needless to say, it was time to introduce her to rice cereal. Stage 1 baby food is up next!

So Daddy assembled Ilah's highchair and she sat in it for the first time on Saturday!

So how did Ilah do with the rice cereal? Have a look for yourself....

I call the below face: "Where do you think you're going with that?" {Sidenote: We LOVE this highchair!! They don't sell it anymore - Safety 1st went onto designing new fabrics and discontinued making this particular one. In case you're wondering why the larger tray is on the floor behind the chair...I removed it from the highchair so that we could lean closer into Ilah as we fed her. It clips onto the back of the legs but I just put it there and got to taking pictures}.

Ilah did really well for her first time eating rice cereal! She didn't eat a whole lot but she did eat some - and that was a good start! She ate almost twice as much on Sunday.

Last week, Ilah really discovered that she has feet - and she loves grabbing them!

Yes, Ilah did well with her rice cereal, but she was mostly looking forward to the familiarity of her bottle!

"Daddy, keep this thing close ok? No taking off with it".

Here is Daddy asking Ilah how she liked her rice cereal, after burping her....

And here is how Ilah responded....

Even though you threw up a little bit on Daddy, he decided to still keep you ; )

When the afternoon rolled around, I headed out to grab a few snack foods for some company that came over. They dropped in at 4:30 p.m. and since it was a time between lunch and dinner, I just put together some meats and cheeses and fruits, and had a few other things for us all to nibble on...

I made a salad with homemade glazed/candied pecans and through in some cucumber and parmesean cheese. I got the meats and cheeses from a local deli by our house....

I picked up some Italian soda from Target {I normally get it from Trader Joe's but they were all out the last time I was there} - my husband and I agree that this brand from Target is a good back up! I also made some dark chocolate covered strawberries....

Our guests were a couple from our church who facilitated our premarital preparation classes {With This Ring}. They were great mentors and have turned into wonderful friends. Here's a picture of the four of us on the day that my husband and I got married....

Below is an even better picture of just the two of them. Don't they make a beautiful couple!? They've been married close to 20 years and have two amazing children {a boy and a girl}.

They were so sweet to bring a gift for Ilah...two adorable Ralph Lauren outfits. One is a dress and the other is a cute little romper!

We spent the entire weekend at home and it was so nice to just relax and have family time - and have over to our home two people who were a part of our journey towards marriage and parenthood.

I hope you all had a nice relaxing, fun-filled weekend as well!