I just can't help it!!!

I love taking pictures of Hannah. I just can't help myself. Matt went to an aikido seminar this weekend so Hannah and I hung out at my mom's during the day on Saturday, joined up with Matt for dinner party in the evening, then spent all day on Sunday just snuggling and napping. It was awesome. I took a lot of pictures!

Getting ready to go on Saturday. It wasn't even 9:30AM and she was on her second pair of pants.

 Playing the piano with grandma!

Lunch with mommy on Sunday.

PJ day on the couch after we got back from lunch.

Post-nap with a happy baby!

Random pictures:

We tried avocado last night the first time. It went over quite well.

She is in love with the cat. Whenever he meows near her, she perks up and looks around until she sees him. When he walks into the room, she just stares at him and smiles, occasionally she even laughs at him. She's very grabby whenever she can get her hands on him, but he's doing a great job of putting up with it.

There are times when I wonder if I should limit the amount of pictures of her that I put on my blog, but at the same time, I just want to share her adorableness with the world! There are very few naked baby in the bath pictures, so not too much blackmail worthy stuff. I read a blog post once by someone who did not post pictures of her kids for fear/concern/whatever reason that they might not appreciate it someday. Eventually, when Hannah is older, I might ask her if she minds her picture appearing in my blog. I ask any adults that are pictured if they mind. I'm just not sure it matters at this point. To each his/her own, of course.

Six months... How the time flies

I can't believe it's been six months since we welcomed our precious little bundle.

She has grown so much!!

We went to the doc yesterday, and she is up to 17 lbs 5.5 oz with a height of 27 inches. She's not a gigantic baby, but she's definitly not tiny. She's almost as big as the baby of a friend who is seven months older.

She's getting pureed fruits and/or veggies just about every evening. So far we've had applesauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, bananas, and peas. We're getting ready to try peaches the next few days, and I just need to make some time to make some carrots so we can try those too. I'd also like to give her chicken sometime in the next week.

Part of me is second-guessing how we're doing food because of things that others have posted on Ravelry about the huge variety of foods their kids have tried. But at the same time, I think they are going with more of a solid food/baby-led weaning kind of thing which so far, we haven't. I tried giving her tiny pieces of banana this weekend when I was making fruit salad for dinner and she looked at me like I had a second head. I even tried putting it on a spoon, and it was a no-go. She did eat a tiny taste of our tuna salad last night, but she didn't seem particularly impressed.

It's amazing how it can feel like time has gone by so fast and at the same time it can seem like she's been with us forever.

Belated 5 month post

WARNING: TONS OF CUTENESS AHEAD. PROCEED WITH CAUTION

Hannah turned five months about three weeks ago. I posted on the date, but didn't actually talk about it at all.

She is sitting up on her own for lengths of time without propping and is reaching for things easily. She'll often fall over when she reaches for stuff, but it's okay.

She is seeming to get used to being on her belly more. She almost always sleeps on her belly these days. At night, once you give her back her pacifier (it almost always ends up under when she rolls), she'll sleep for hours without a peep. It's been lovely. Occasionally, she still wakes up around 4/5 and needs some snuggles, but other than that, she's sleeping well at night.

Nap time still sucks. We've had a few naps of more than half an hour, but thirty minutes is generally the norm. So she is still taking tons of naps during the day. At her four month appointment, the doc said it was fine for her to do that, so we're not too worried. It's just more annoying than anything. She'll go down and Matt will have enough time to shower and make a sandwich, then he'll go get her and eat over her.

Right around her five months, Matt took her in to the doctor because we were worried about an increase in spit-up and discomfort. It seemed like spitting-up was really causing her pain which worried us way more than the mess. She was officially diagnosed with GERD and so she's is now on baby zantac. It seems to be helping. Apparently, right around this age, the acid in the stomach starts getting more acidic to prepare for dealing with solids which is why she is having more discomfort. To help with the spit-up, we also switched bottles. We're now using the drop-in liners which are supposed to collapse as she drinks so she gets less air. Seems to be helping, I think. We're still doing rice in her bottles but that brings me to the next big thing..... food!

We started solids right around five months. The doctor suggested it might help with keeping more of food down. Her first food was applesauce, followed by sweet potatoes, and bananas this weekend. She has enjoyed all of them.

Before the baptism, Doug put together the jumperoo (aka circle of neglect) that she got from my parents for Christmas. She loves it! She is going to get bird some day!!

We also put together her high chair after the baptism and she has spent time in it. Even when she's not getting food, it's nice to have her in the kitchen and she'll sit there and play for ten-fifteen minutes at a time so I can get something done. Hannah helped with the directions.

We've gotten some cute outfits lately. Matt's car seat doesn't have a cozy on it so we bought her a polar bear snow suit.

Having a snow suit gives us the opportunity for her to wear more of the short sleeved onsies that Sam made for us as part of the decorations for the baby shower.

And this outfit is covered with turtles so we had to get it.

I also need to stop impulse buying her toys.

Our kid is so stinking cute.

Baptism post

Yes, I'm backdating this post. And I don't care.

Hannah's baptism went very well.

We got ready to go in the morning before grandma and grandpa arrived.

She had a bottle right before the service.

She fell asleep right before we went up to the baptismal fount. She very briefly opened her eyes when Pastor Gail put the water on her head, but went right back to sleep.

And Diana is going to be a great sponsor. Here she is holding the faith chest that each child is given by the church on their baptism. We're friends with the couple who makes them so it is super special. It's for holding all of the things related to Hannah's faith journey. So for now it will hold the bulletin from her baptism, her baptism candle, the handkerchief used to wipe her head, a little medallion from Thrivent, etc. Eventually, it will have things like her Bible, Confirmation stuff, etc.

After the service, we took a bunch of pictures. In fact, John took over 1.2G of pictures. Here are the highlights.

This is us with my brother.

Us with Diana, Hannah's sponsor. No, she's not my sister. We've just known each other since we were 14.

 Hannah Banana and Diana Banana

The four of us goofing around.

The three of us being goofy.

Hannah and Pastor Gail having a goofy moment.

After we finished up at church, we had everyone back to the house. As I posted earlier, we had more than 20 adults and around half a dozen kids under five all in the basement. Eek. It went remarkably well. We had ham and rolls, a Teschner (my side) family tradition as well as some salads, a veggie tray, and chips & dip. There was beer that only Matt drank (weird!) and lots of pop. We also had a beautiful cake.

And there were more pictures. We each had grandparents that were able to attend, so we took four generation pictures.

Note Hannah's different outfits. Right after we took the picture with my family, she spit-up all over both of us so we both ended up changing clothes.

We also took pictures with my parents. Sadly, between Hannah getting fussy about church and needing a nap at the house, we ended up not getting a picture with Matt's parents. We did get a kinda cute one of her with Matt's dad though.

We also got some very lovely gifts from those in attendance. Overall, it was a long crazy couple of hours, but we all survived. It was a great day though.

I'm glad that the next time I have to host that many people it will be summer and we can be in the backyard.

Phew

We made it. We survived Hannah's baptism and the accompanying lunch at our house. We hosted more than  twenty adults and about half a dozen kids under 5. It was crazy. We all fit downstairs, everyone got food, and no one fell down the stairs. Pics are coming.

It has also been exactly a year since we saw this:

I can't believe how far she's come.

Ramblings on the future

A friend posted a link to this article yesterday and it made me think. She wondered, as they discuss the possibility of more children, if her physiological reaction to the article is trying to tell her something. It's an interesting thought, and while I didn't feel the same reaction, it definitely got me thinking about our own situation.

It's a very well written article, and even if I wasn't already firmly convinced that I wanted another baby, I would be after reading it. Right now, Matt and I are dancing around the subject: me with my absolutely certainty that we could and should have another baby in a year or so and Matt who struggles with being content having just one as well as the financial incertainty that having another would bring.

I'm not working too hard on him because I'm okay with waiting a year before we start trying again and I have a feeling he's going to come around on his own. He is already missing those baby snuggles as Hannah becomes more and more independent and wanting to do things. I do think that two will be it for us. It's how I've always pictured things, although we have talked that if we were to have two of the same (girls since we had Hannah), we would discuss adding a third to try for a boy, in this case.

I would be happy with Hannah, but I know how much our siblings mean to us and I want her to have that experience. She probably isn't going to have a ton of biological cousins, at least not around her age (my sister's kids are almost teenagers already) and the rest of our siblings are single. She'll have several non-biological 'cousins' since we have multiple friends who have kids born within a year or so of Hannah. One good friend's daughter was born the week we found out we were pregnant.

Thoughts.....

I'm trying to blog more, so when something comes across my mind that provokes more than a passing thought, I'm posting. I'm also going to sign-up to guest host for PAIL so that might drum up more traffic here and inspire me to write more.

Loose New Year's Goals

Now that the new year is here, I have some goals for myself. I'm not making resolutions this year because I feel like they sound like things that have to happen overnight and years of trying for dramatic change instantly has shown me that it doesn't work.

Knitting: I have several WIPs to finish up in the coming months. I recently (finally!) took pictures of all of my yarn from the last two yarn crawls and am slowly working on getting it plugged into my stash. I’m sure some of my yarn will get moved to trade/sell as well.

I’d like to make more drool sweaters for Hannah as well as finish the sweater for myself that I started over break. I am in love with cowls this year, so I have plans for another one of those as well. I’m hoping to knit as much from stash as possible so I feel less guilty about buying yarn at the yarn crawl in August. I’d also just like my kid to have tons of knitted stuff!

Health: My goal is to be healthier this year. For the first time in ages, I am not going to try to lose weight. I do think that if I stick with a healthier lifestyle, I will lose weight. I just want to make gradual habit changes. So every few weeks I'll pick a new goal to add.

My goal for the first few weeks is to drink more water/fluids. My plan is have 12-16 ounces of coffee or tea by 10AM, 32 ounces of water by 4PM, and at least 16 ounces before bed. That's between 60-64 ounces a day which is a pretty good. Most of this is going to be water. Any other beverages need to be after 4PM and I need to finish the first 44-48 ounces first. At work, I think this is going to be easy to keep on top of. It's at home that I usually struggle, especially weekends. All of this is going to be pretty flexible since it's rigidity that usually trips me up. There will be occasions when I have pop, and beyond limiting myself to no more than one a day, I'm not going to attempt to control my Starbucks consumption. Starbucks is more of a monetary concern than a dietary one, at least to me.

Personal stuff: I'd like to get better at balance. I think I'm doing a good job (even when I don't feel like it) being a mom and also as a teacher. My struggle is finding the balance between working, being a mom, being a wife, and being ME.

Finding time for things to keep me sane, namely knitting, is challenging. I have my knitting night, but other than that, there isn't much knitting going on right now. It hasn't always been this way; sleep is rough for Hannah right now, so I know it will get better. It's still a rough situation though right now. I also tend to feel guilty if I'm not holding her or playing with her or doing something with her when I'm home and she's awake. Since I'm gone all day, I don't get to spend the time with her and Matt spends all of his time with her. In my head, that means I should be spending as much time as possible with her in the evening. Unfortunately, that means no time for me which makes me irritable. As her sleep habits improve, I think this situation will work itself out.

I am also seeing that keeping the spark in our marriage is getting tougher. I'm not saying that we're falling apart or anything drastic; we're just getting in a rut. I don't like it. We need to spend more time together, even if we're just at home. Less electronics, more snuggles. Even if we're both on the computer, but sitting on the same couch. Sadly, that would be an improvement over where we are now. I come home from work and tell Matt about my day. He tells me about their day. Then we are completely focused on Hannah. Sometimes we'll go out to dinner and then we'll have conversations like we used to, but that's not a new problem. We've always talked more when we go out than we do when we eat at home. I think that's part of our issue with cooking. It's easier to talk when no one is stressed out about the food.

We also need to figure out how to get out of the house more without spending a ton of money. Babysitters are expensive and at this point, she's mostly luggage so I don't mind taking her places with us. Once she's mobile, then we'll start talking about getting a babysitter. I don't mind leaving her with my mom so we can see a movie, but beyond that, I just can't justify the expense of going out AND getting a sitter. It's pretty chilly for the zoo, so we need to find other alternatives even if it's just wandering around the mall and picking up Starbucks.

School: I need to finish my thesis.

I want to just be better at whatever it is I'm trying to do.