Ieva is 6 months old!!

On Saturday, March 25th, our baby girl hit the 6 month mark! I was just looking back at some of our old blog entries and reminiscing about how tiny she looks in those old photos - man, she's growing up fast! She's rolling over all the time now, getting really close to sitting up on her own, babbles like crazy, and last night slept for 9 hours straight!! We're introducing her to rice cereal this week, and as I whined to my friend Rebecca about how it's a pretty big step for me emotionally, since I'm the only one who has provided all the food she's ever needed until now, Beka responded "yeah...and tomorrow she'll be going off to college!"

YIKES!
We know time is going fast, but we love every new stage Ieva is hitting (so far - I've heard turning two has a lot of not-so-fun parts) and are committed to making the most out of each developmental step. For now, she brings us constant joy and we couldn't be more thankful!

Grandpa's here!

On Sunday afternoon, Ieva met her Grandpa Stave for the first time when we picked him up at the Palanga airport. We were all excited to see him & are even more excited that he will be spending the next two months here in Klaipeda with us! Tom has taken a sabbatical from the University of Oregon library in order to volunteer here at LCC's library for the rest of the semester. We think LCC will be very glad to have him!

In less than two weeks, Ieva will also get to meet her Grandma Stave & Aunt Ingrid, as they will be coming to join Grandpa. Vicki may be doing some part time work at LCC along with her job of motivating Ingrid to finish her 8th grade class work. Aside from school, we're guessing Aunt Ingy will want to spend lots of her time practicing her babysitting skills on her niece!

During the past two days, Ieva has already had lots of Grandpa time and they seem to have hit it off famously. Yesterday Tom joined Ieva and I at our baby music class & then carried Ieva in the front pack to the market and all the way back home. Today he stayed with Ieva for a good chunk of the day while Andrew & I were both at meetings, and I came home to find her peacefully sucking down a bottle in his arms - both looking as happy as could be. Ieva loves to stare up at her Grandpa's face and reach out to touch it...I think she knows that he's someone especially special in her life.

Last night Tom made us dinner at his apartment and then we spent the bulk of the evening there relaxing and catching up. (This is us relaxing on his comfy couch!) He (and soon they) live in a great little place less than two blocks away from us! It's really nice having them so close, as I'm sure we'll spend lots of time there during the next two months.

We're not used to having family living near us, but couldn't be more thrilled to finally experience it for a somewhat extended period of time. I suspect that we'll become so spoiled by having them here that we'll have to recruit my parents to come for the fall semester in order to continue Ieva's grandparent fix! In the meantime, we're just enjoying every minute of it.

Spring Break in Slovakia

Ieva's first spring break vacation was spent in Slovakia & Austria! Pretty impressive for a 5-month old, if we do say so ourselves. We spent the first week of March driving long hours, curling up by a fireplace in a quaint house in an even quainter Slovakian village at the foot of the snowy High Tatras mountains, skiing in those mountains (Daddy & everyone else went - Ieva and I wandered the streets of our quaint village saying hi to locals), and seeing the sites of Bratislava and Vienna, Austria. It was quite a week!

We got to indulge a few of our American cravings for Starbucks, bagels and Pizza Hut, and do a little shopping in our favorite European department store, H&M (which, unfortunatley doesn't yet exist in the Baltics). The 25 hour drive on the way home was a bit much...although I think Ieva slept better in her car seat than any of the rest of us did. We got home around 8:00am and she was awake & ready to start her day while Andrew & I were wasted! We spent the bulk of the day taking "Ieva shifts" which essentially entailed one of us being in a semi-awake state and in the same general vacinity as she was while the other could be curled up in bed, dreaming of snowy mountains.

All in all, it was relaxing, beautiful, and fun...and now Ieva has 3 more countries under her young belt since we drove through Poland to get there. Anyone know of any "most traveled baby" contests we could enter her in?