Before we had kids, we loved restaurant week and would do about 4 different ones with friends and family.  I had a few girls nights ones, a few couples nights and a date night one.  Well, fast forward a few years to having a toddler and newborn, and being a SAHM.  Now we work hard just to squeeze one in, and we save it for our own date night.  We also wanted to celebrate Todd's new job!!  He worked hard and finally got a job back in the field of real estate, but this time working to become a mortgage broker.  He used to do commercial real estate and owned his own property, but now is wanting to do the other side.  So we chose our favorite restaurant to celebrate, The French Room.

We were greeted by the always wonderful maitre'd, Jim, who led us to our table.  If you haven't been before, you definitely need to go, you feel like a princess eating in a castle and the inside of the restaurant is just gorgeous!  And the food is French but not the old school coq au vin and lamb kind of stuff, but very modern French.  I started with a crab cake, yum! (Excuse the iPhone pictures with out using a flash)...

And then ordered the Salmon with cucumber sauce..

Then came my favorite, dessert!  With a chocolate hazelnut nutella cake.

Todd got the coffee cream brulee and had to steal a few bites :)

With the Texas heat and West Nile lately, we've been trying all of the indoor places for fun with her friends.  We've gone to Walnut Hill Rec Center's Open Gym, and the new Jump Street!  Luna loves running around at the places, a little afraid of the trampolines but she's getting there.

This past month has been crazy busy, so I am a little behind on my posts.  The good news is that Belle reached the 12 week mark, which is the huge milestone that colicky babies reach and all of a sudden are no longer colic!  Yay!! We never thought the day would ever come when she would stop crying, but alas, she is so much better.  It's like she was saying, "ugh, I hate being out of the womb, cry cry cry...oh, well, okay it's not so bad out here, I guess I can deal with it." 

After my 90 year old grandfather passed away in May (2 weeks after Belle was born), my grandmother came to Dallas to live.  It has been a transition for her, but we are soooo glad she is living here now and we get to see her regularly.  She is living in an Independent Living place called the Traditions and it is like a country club with a movie theater, library, art center, pool, gym, game room, and weekly activities.  I want to move in there! 
Here are Belle and Luna visiting Momo in her new home:

Then last Sunday, we headed out to McKinney to visit my Aunt Kathy, and cousins Kelly and Kevin and their kids.  They all took turns holding Belle and Luna had a blast playing and enjoyed seeing her family!

Belle has finally turned the corner and is no longer colic!  Yay!!  She now only cries when she is tired, hungry or has a wet diaper.  Just like it should be.  Poor little thing was not a happy girl those first few weeks.

She is my little cutie pie if I do say so myself!

So far she has been growing like a weed and I think she is now close to 13 pounds.  She has amazing neck strength and I swear it's not just her momma that thinks so, even the doctor commented on it.  But she still is not a huge fan of tummy time, lasts about 5 minutes and she's done.  She loves the Bumpo now and it helps me get stuff done in the kitchen.  She also loves laying on her floor gym now!

She is still eating well, breastfeeding and is a fast eater, with me only having to nurse around 5-10 minutes total. 

Her sleep?  Well, she was doing really well at 8 hours a night, but now wakes up around 2-3 times a night.  She goes to bed around 7:30pm and gets up around 7am or earlier.  But we are working on getting her to bed sooner as they say infants do better going to bed around 6:30pm.  I have read over and over the Healthy Baby Healthy Sleep books and Babywise and Sears books on sleep to get it down and it's been crazy.  They say they should not be up more than 2 hours at a time during the day so it's been hard to get her to go down for naps and if we have to run an errand we are racing to get back home for naps.  My life is now dictated by my children's naps. But hey, sleep is super important, right?  I've become a little on the verge of crazy with my sleepless nights.  My counselor friends have all said they wonder why they don't see more moms on the local news going crazy psychotic from lack of sleep! :)

And she LOVES her sister Luna.  She smiles at her all the time and is really enjoying spending time with her this s

Luna and Belle had a couple of fun playdates last week.  Last Monday we went over to our friend Camille's house to visit Ellie and her new baby sister Adie (Adeline).  Adeline was born with a heart defect, so right now she is not able to leave the house and was wanting the fun to come to her.  So we went to play with them and let Ellie have a fun playdate with Luna since she doesn't get to go out much either.  Luna and Ellie are about 1 week apart, and Belle and Adie are also about 1 week apart.  The only problem is that Luna is also 2 years old and that means she doesn't know how to share yet and everything is, 'mine!' Ellie has some fantastic dolls and baby carriages to play with, but put 2 toddler girls together and basically my time was spent trying to derail Luna's possessiveness with all of Ellie's fun toys :)  I don't know if the playdate was a disaster or what.  But I think the girls still had fun and Adie is such a cutie pie!!!

On Thursday we had a visit from the twins, their mom and their grandmother!  And for those that don't know, I used to babysit the twins (Alex and Caroline) when they were 2 years old, and now they are 10!  AND, their mother used to live next door to us and used to babysit my sister and I.  When they came over I joked that pretty soon the girls will be babysitting my girls and it will be like the 3rd generation of babysitting! :)  They were so great with Luna and Belle!  They also live about 5 minutes from here by White Rock, so maybe one day soon they really will be babysitting :)

My birthdays have sure been different than before I had kids.  Now I do mostly family and kid birthday get togethers. I've never been one to celebrate my bday and HATE getting older.  But what helps me feel better about getting older is celebrating it with Luna and baby Belle.

We went to Blue Mesa for a brunch last Sunday with some friends, Carmen, Mish and their daughter Mila (who are expecting their second in November!) and Bao, Thomas and their kids Tinsley and Ava.

Ha, here are the three of us pre-baby at my bachelorette party- yes, we were dancing at the Ghost Bar ;)  Life sure has changed!

Then we went out with my family this week to a place I used to love going to as a kid, Celebration Restaurant.  And I am so happy my grandmother lives in Dallas now too and we can spend more time with her and she can go to family dinners with us.  Celebration is super kid friendly and the food was sooo good!  And I loved my mojito, made with fresh mint.  Luna loved the rolls and had about 4 of them with honey.

Friday, July 27th was the first date night for Todd and I since we had Belle over 2 months ago!  It was also my birthday and it was so nice to get out and have a nice dinner.  Aunt Erika babysat and we were so thankful!  I was itching for some sushi since I had to go 9 months without it!  Unfortunately our favorite place, Tei Tei doesn't take reservations so when we got there at 7:15pm, there was already and hour and a half wait.  So we decided to go somewhere else, since I didn't want to miss more than 1 feeding for Belle.  We called Steel and got a reservation at 8pm and we were so glad we did! I hadn't been there in years and it was super yummy!  The sushi there is unbelievably fresh and they serve my favorite wine from Times Ten Cellars.  And their warm chocolate cake dessert was amazing.  We will definitely be going back and I can't wait for our next date night.

Belle turned 2 months old on July 23rd and had her check-up on July 27th.  Dr. Deuber said she is doing fabulous on growth, has amazing neck control and strength for her age and didn't see any concerns.  We are doing Dr. Sears' vaccine schedule of basically spacing them out so she doesn't get them all at once.  Before you roll your eyes, it's because I had a reaction to a vaccine as a teenager and it makes me extra cautious now- when I was 17 and had 4 shots at once and one was the Hep B which caused me to pass out, had a pseudo-seizure and EEG for it all, not fun!  Anyway, Belle had 2 shots and will go back next month for the other 2 vaccines. 

Belle is also still colicky, sigh.  She cries a lot. In fact most people see her and tell me, "Kira, Belle is crying!" "Yes, she is" I answer, tell me something I don't know :) Even Luna goes around the house all the time, "baby crying, baby crying."  She cries most of the time she is awake, and only doesn't cry when she sleeps.  Dr. Deuber said colicky babies are calm only when they are held, but mine still cries when held.  Poor thing!  Luna was also colicky, not fair to have 2 girls with colic!  So I have cut out dairy, practicing the overabundant breastmilk trick of feeding on one side only to cut out too much lactose, tried Mylanta, the 5 s's, and even the Windi.   But she is getting a little bit better. 

The good news is that she sleeps through the night!! Well, she goes 6 hours at night and we are happy with that!  We are trying Babywise this time around and working hard on getting her to take naps more during the day so she doesn't get over tired and more fussy.  I am not strict on it and if she is hungry I feed her, and don't wait until it's been 2 hours, etc.  They say Babywise babies are the happiest and well adjusted babies so I hope it works for us!

Here are her stats:
Weight: 11.7  70%
Length: 23 in  75%
Head: 32 at 50%

Belle is such a joy and a cutie pie, but we can't wait until the 12 week mark when the fussies start to go away. I never thought I would rush my children to grow, but just this time, I want to flash forward just a bit :)