8 months

This is the best picture I could get with the sign. Anna is just grabbing for everything these days.

(This is pretty typical of Emily & Anna. Emily just wants to love on her and Anna just wants to get away!)

We've continued adding new foods to Anna's line-up. One that hasn't made the cut is rice. Unfortunately, she's had a reaction to it so we'll wait on it for a while. But, she loves to eat now and is eating about 1/2 C cereal and 1/4 C fruits/veggies a day. She loves sweet potatoes, squash, apples (when mixed with something), peas, and bananas. We'll be starting peaches today.

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I don't think I ever posted these pictures of Anna trying Cheerios for the first time. A couple weeks ago, in Tennessee, Chick-Fil-A had free Cheerios, so we tried giving her some. While curious about the ones on the table, she gagged at the ones we put in her mouth (and eventually gagged so much she threw up). Guess we're not ready yet!

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Next week, Granddaddy turns 99. The place where he lives has a monthly birthday party so Emily, Anna & I met my mom there for the party. Emily loved "working" the puzzle and Anna enjoyed the balloons!

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A few months ago, I did a freezer cooking day. With two little ones underfoot (or even having someone watch them), I realized that I really can't take a full day to do freezer cooking. So, taking a cue from Crystal at Money Saving Mom, I'm doing some quick batch cooking. I planned several meals we like that I knew would freeze well and am making 3-4 times the recipe and freezing the some while we eat some for supper. I bought a box of chicken through Bogie's (40 pounds!), sold some to my sister and kept the rest. Even thirty pounds of chicken is a lot! My freezer went from barren to very full overnight. I'm also making freezer meals for Anna, since I like to make her food (mostly for cost reasons).

In the past 2 days, I've made peas, squash (fresh from the farmer's market), sweet potato and peaches for Anna (and divvied up a jar of applesauce). I also made 5 meals of cracker crumb chicken and 2 meals of sweet soy chicken. I plan to make sloppy joe meat and spaghetti sauce next week and will make up WAY more than I need right now so we'll have some in the freezer for later. I also have a few more meals planned for early September.

Whew...my vacuum sealer is tired!