8 Month Pics

You can only imagine (and see!) how hard it is to get these pictures accomplished now!!

8 Months

8 Months

Well here it is... it has totally snuck up on us! Hailey is now 8 months old. She is changing more and more everyday, looks, attitude, and accomplishments. She has really taken off in the past couple of days and week. Starting the Sunday before last she up and crawled over to me. It was he most amazing thing that I have experienced in a while. It is so powerful and makes you feel so accomplished for her. You could just see it all over her face that she was so excited to be coming over to me without any help from anybody! She has been up on her knees and looking like she was doing push ups since way before Christmas, and started moving one hand about two weeks ago. She got sick last week and was not doing any better on Sunday, so I decided to keep her home form Church to not get any of the other kids sick (and there are a lot of them!). She was still very happy and all smiles. We were sitting in the living room watching t.v. and she, like always, got up on her knees... well this time she started moving her legs AND arms! I was so happy, but also upset because Dustin had already left! So I immediately grabbed the camera and started shooting. She has now gotten good enough to get into things before we can get over to her. She has gotten into the dog food, the dish washer, and the DVD player in the living room (all harmless!)
She is also saying "hey dada" all the time, and the funny thing is, she has yet to do it when "dada" is in the room! haha, but at least others have heard it so I am not just being 'that' mommy! GG swears that she says "hey there" every once in a while... and you can hear it if you listen real closely. She now thinks that naps are overrated and for the weak hearted. She has been letting them get shorter and shorter and sometimes only taking one long or two short naps a day. Of course mommy wishes this could go back to the 2 hour naps... because that is the time a mommy lives for!
Her adorable chubby thighs keep growing and somehow get even cuter. I keep telling her to enjoy this now, because it is sure to be short lived. She is now up to 17.5lbs (thanks to a sick visit) and is right there in her %'s. I think she is one of the only kids that I see get so excited in the doctors room. Now I think this is mostly because she is almost naked and LOVES it! That and the fun paper that rattles everytime she slaps it.
She still loves her bath time and gets so excited every night when we go in there to start her bath. She sits on my lap and watches me get it ready. I hand her the bath toys and she throws each one of them into the tube. She splashes and laughs the whole time she is in there. She is the most excited right when she gets out. She kicks and yelps and starts hitting notes we haven't ever heard! It is a site to see.

Hailey loves hanging out with other babies and kids. She just smiles and laughs at them. As I have said before we have a lot of babies in our church that are the same age as her, and we get together every other wednesday and Sunday for church, so she gets to have her play time. She has gotten close with a boy already and dad is keeping his eye out!
We bought her a walker for Christmas, and it didn't exactly work out because it was too tall. So I found one on Craig's list that was in good shape and HB LOVES chasing the dogs around the house in it, banging into the walls, and getting into everything she can find. She has gotten really good at walking in it, and will all but run to you when you put your hands out and tell her to come to you! She gets so excited, but like crawling, it is because she is doing it all by herself... such a big girl! The flower in her hair in this pic is one of my most recent projects. I have made her a couple of hair bows like this and plan to buy some waffle head bands to attach them too. She looks so adorable in these big hair accessories!
I am going to be taking her 8 month pictures on Wednesday, but these were some of her most recent ones :)

Menu Monday

Well I had a yummy meal in mind for today, and at the last minute, changed it up! Why you ask... well my goal is to give easy recipes that are fast and can be done with kids/mulit-tasking. I am living proof of how easy it is to multi-task while making this delicious meal... I woke hailey up, fed her with one arm, checked Dustins online banking (while still feeding HB!) and talked on the phone while cooking this meal. haha! Now of course it did not have to be this complicated... but when do we ever make things easy at the Floyd house! Here it is...


Sausage (Grnd turk!) Corn Bake
6-8 Servings
Prep 15 min Cook time 30-40 min

1-1/2lbs bulk pork sausage (i subst grnd turk)
1 md grn pepper, chopped
1 md onion, chopped
4 tbls butter, divided
3 tbls all purpose flour
1/2 tspn white pepper
1/2 tspn salt
1-1/2 cups milk
3-1/2cups (10 oz) egg noodles, cooked and drained
1 can cream style corn
1/4 cup shrd cheddar cheese
1/2 cup dry bread cumbs

IN a large skillet, cook the sausage, grn pepper, and onion over md heat until no longer pink; drain and set aside. In a large saucepan, melt 3 tlbs butter over md heat. Stir in flour, salt and pepper. Gradually add milk; stirring until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 min or until thickened. Stir in corn. Add corn mixture and noodles to sausage mixture. Mix in cheese.
TRANSFER to a greased 13x9x2 baking dish. *Melt remaining butter; *stir in bread crumbs. Sprinkle over casserold. BAKE, uncovered, at 325 for 30-40 mins or until heated through.
*Two things that I did different and to make it easier is, we like crunchy toppings and french fried onions are cruchier and a little tastier than bread crumbs... so if you want this texture, try those. To skip a step, just sprinkle bread crumbs without melting butter and use spray butter once you have topped casserole.
**You can also add bread crumbs and mix in the casserole to give it a thicker consistency... we liked it much better this way.
***If you are feeding a family of two and thinking this recipe needs to be downsized.. here's a tip: Go ahead and make the full serving size and bake half now and place the other half in a foil baking pan and freeze it for up to 3 months! (don't sprinkle bread crumbs until thawed and ready to bake)

Enjoy!

~**~Nicole~**~