Our Trip to Philadelphia- The Mlynek and Wark Wedding

This has been an amazing year for weddings. Our "baby" brother Bo and Leah got married in Tennessee, Our great friends Kevin and Naina were married in Cincinnati and another set of amazing friends, Alan and Emily, were married this month in Philadelphia! I love weddings, but there's is something super special about watching loved ones get married. It's such an honor to be a part of such a special and momentous moment in a relationship!

John and I love Philly, but we didn't do much sightseeing this trip. We spent the entirety of our time hanging with friends, which is exactly the type of weekend we wanted:)

The wedding was simply perfect. It had all the parts you want to see in a wedding: great food, amazing friends, music you can dance to, and just enough tradition to hit on everyone's favorite parts but not so much that it seemed you were attending the same ol' wedding. There was a lot of love in the important details of the wedding, and all the frivolous stuff was left out. Simply put, it was perfect and the love between Alan and Emily radiated in every detail.

I could go on to describe all the moments of our weekend, or I could just show you, so I'll do that. I hope you enjoy my creative use of google+'s new editing functions; I certainly did ;)

Our ride to Philly went like this

Selfies in the hotel

can we say built in play-yard?

Godmommy love

The glowing bride and her parents!

I love this picture of Kaiya and John. <3

Husband and Wife!!

Besties.

Kaiya's 6 Month Pictures AND Her Nursery Reveal!!

I can't tell you guys how EXCITED I am to share this post!! Not only am I head over heels in love with the pictures of Kaiya that Melissa took, but I FINALLY get to share her nursery!! So much love went into the assembly of her nursery, and not just by John and me, but by many of the wonderful and creative women in Kaiya's life.

Prior to Kaiya's birth I sent out a bunch of hoops and accompanying craft supplies to the crafty women closest to me and John asking them to please participate in the decorating of Kaiya's nursery by creating a hoop as a representation of themselves. That it would be something that she will wake up to and fall asleep to everyday in the years to come and that she will know what crafty and caring women she had in her life just by the fact they took the time to make her something so thoughtful and beautiful. I didn't end up getting them all back (you ladies know who you are ;) but I got a good number of them and they are all beautiful, unique, and special in their own way. Kaiya is lucky to have so many thoughtful and creative women in her life!

Of course, it wouldn't have been possible for me to put together a nursery without my own crafts, so I constructed an ombre rainbow of flowers above her crib:

And I took a few stands of string lights, a fallen branch, and made a whole bunch of various paper flowers to create a cascade of flower lights:

It's hard to really get a feeling for how peaceful and serene this room is, but these pics at least show all the pieces; The pictures of all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, the hand-knit blanket a co-worker made for Kaiya with her name and birthdate, the wooden shelf that my grandpa made me when I was a girl (filled with a nice collection of things from my childhood room and stuffed animals given to Kaiya), and the beautiful sheepskin over the back of the rocker sent to Kaiya by one of my best childhood friends and his family. I honestly love every single piece of this room.

Finally getting some awesome photos of Kaiya's nursery was awesome, but the real highlight of this shoot was, of course, Kaiya herself! They all came out so beautifully that I can't for the life of me pick a favorite!! So without further do:

Kaiya- 6 Months!

You can possibly tell by the length between these posts, that as Kaiya gets older, she keeps us busier and busier. I seriously can not believe that she's 6 months old already. It seems with each passing month she grows faster and faster!

Kaiya has learned and developed so much this month!

She's learned to share take toys away from Cooper.

She learned that Daddy is determined to teach her how to be a good loser.

She learned how to sit in the grocery cart like a big girl!

She learned that friendship is a language that needs no words, 

The woman and her grandson only speak their native African tongue, but our nanny Ely and her meet up for playdates every afternoon:)

And that some friends don't have words at all:

She learned that she loves bacon:

She learned that her favorite toys aren't toys but are any cord she can find/reach:

She learned that Aunt B is still a big kid at heart:

She learned that shoes are a woman's best friend:

And, most dangerously, I fear she's learned that this smile will get her most anything she desires:

BookMama Review- The Wonder Weeks by Hetty van de Rijt

I'll be honest, I don't have a whole lot of time to sit around and read books, but being a first time mom I can't pretend that I have any clue what I'm doing. Sure, I "google-wack" (John's term) a fair many of my questions, but come on, how many ill-informed yahoo answer or babycenter forums can you read before you start to think that nobody actually knows what they're talking about? Those places scare me more often than provide me with any real information. That's where books come in. If chosen carefully, you're pretty much guaranteed to get information that is generally well researched and with a bit of real fact behind it. There are a few books that I've found to have been critical to my successfully surviving nearly 6 entire months of motherhood. The first one I want to share is "The Wonder Weeks" by Hetty van de Rijt.

What's in this book that would be useful to you?

Not long after having a baby you'll find that as soon as you start falling into a rhythm, something will change and everything is different again. This book describes them as "fussy periods" and they apparently are precursors to developmental leaps. The book tells you when to expect these "fussy periods," what they will entail, how to cope with them, how to support your little one through them, and what developmental discoveries they'll make. It sounds simultaneously hookey (seriously, "fussy periods?") and logical (Duh babies go through a series of developmental growth spurts) but I've found the information to be hugely supportive.

Recently Kaiya has gone from the happy baby she usually is to an often intolerable fuss-pot. She always wants to be held, started sleeping poorly, wakes up crying, refuses to nap, and has developed a shy streak around people. I referred to the book to see if there was a "fussy period" associated with her current stage (she was 25 weeks 5 days at the time). Sure enough, at 26 weeks they predicted the emergence of another fussy period, with pretty much those exact behavioral changes. It goes on to explain that this stage is the "stage of relationships" and she'll be learning how to perceive distance between one thing and another, which will bring with it a number of other discoveries in the world around her. It's described as being both amazing and scary, thus the fuss.

It's kind of awesome to read something that attempts to explain what she's going through and also gives tips on how to both support her development and ease the dauntingness of it.

The best part? You don't have to read it all in one sitting! I mean, "ain't nobody got time for that!" You can read up to the "wonder week" baby is about to have, or just read about the one you think they're going through now. It's an easy before bed chapter or "while I'm rocking a crying baby" desperate read. I love books that break down into easy and relatable chunks:)

I'm not delirious enough to think I'm any good at writing anything close to an actual book review, so I'm including a couple links to actual reviews of this book below:)

http://www.rookiemoms.com/book-review-for-new-parents-the-wonder-weeks/

http://www.thelifeofrylie.com/2010/09/book-wonder-weeks-review-giveaway.html

And, if you're interested, I'll make it that much easier for you and give you the Amazon link (I bought the kindle version):

http://www.amazon.com/The-Wonder-Weeks-Development-Predictable/dp/9079208043/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380852945&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wonder+weeks

What "baby books" have you read that you've thought super educational or useful in some way? Comment below to share your favorites!