Author: Carrie Spritzer

It’s so fun watching our daughter’s personality come out! For the most part, she is the same sweet soul since she was born, she is just much more assertive now!

She loves things that we are into: typing on the computer, clicking on the mouse (or type pad — she has both down!), pushing buttons on the remote control, turning door knobs, drinking water (she likes to hold our glass with us and put her mouth to the rim — no water has been consumed yet!), talking on our cell phones (they evidently taste so good), and she always wants to read (i.e. drool, chew and suck on) our books:

In the last few weeks she has mastered sitting up and can now sit up confidently on her own:

She has also discovered the joy of scooting herself backwards across the floor to new and exciting places in the house, like under the ottoman in the living room. She frequently backs into areas where she gets stuck and after a while makes her “little mammal noises” that signal it’s time for me to come get her and save the day. (I try not to help her unless she asks for help as problem-solving her way out can be just as fun (and mind-building) as getting in the situation to begin with.)

She continues to fight going to sleep and rarely nurses when she’s sleepy as she knows it will put her to sleep. Once she’s asleep, however, she loves to eat. She can even latch on with her eyes closed and with no help from me. Babies are amazing.

She continues to love bath time. She kicks her legs and smiles and basically tries to squirm out of our arms (or off the changing table) when she sees us setting up the bath tub. It’s so fun splashing, running fingers through the water, playing with water toys, and moving around in the bath:

Daughter, you are such a happy baby, always full of smiles, cheers and laughs. You are so sweet, and loving, and fun!

Some morning moments with Miss Leyba:



Here she comes reaching for my glasses…

Oh, yum. Mama’s glasses are so delicious.

See those metal mixing bowls in the background? They are such a huge hit with her right now. Banging, licking, turning over, dumping out, throwing. What fun.

We love our jogging stroller!

We packed a bunch of toys in the jogger for her, but she was only interested in chewing on the straps and sucking on her fingers! Whatever floats your boat, sweetie!

Here they are flying by me! Go, go, my Leyba loves!

We love (and count down to) our weekends. The past few have been a whirlwind of activity—we celebrated our anniversary and David’s birthday over the long weekend—all with a common theme: delicious food. We’ve lunched at Mustard’s Grill, made dairy and non-dairy contraptions in our new ice cream maker (our anniversary present!), eaten all sorts of fresh produce and delicious fruit from the farmers market (oh, the mangoes and avocados are heavenly!), splurged with root beer floats (and strawberry chiffon shortcake), and rolled sushi rolls at home nearly every night this week for dinner (it’s been WAY too hot to cook!). I love summer eats in Northern California…

What I don’t like: summer wildfires and the resultant air pollution. We haven’t been able to exercise or even leave the house much lately because of the smoke, though it finally looks like the worst is behind us. So, today we picked up our jogging stroller and are now drawing up a training schedule for our runs… I can’t wait to get out there. I know it’s going to be hard work, but I feel so motivated! Yesterday we walked our route and, wow, I felt phenomenal. I can’t wait for the real endorphins to kick in.

What else have we been up to? While we’ve been holing up inside Miss Leyba has been perfecting the art of crawling backwards!

More on that soon…