Bouncy Stella

Stella's gotten old enough that she's getting bored with laying on her back all the time. Fortunately, she's gotten big enough to use her bouncer!


Our little bouncer!

Impressively, she bounced happily for 15-20 minutes. I think this is a new family favorite!

Congested

While having a baby daughter has been probably the most wonderful experience of my life, it is important to let you all know that Stella isn't always raspberries and sunshine (to steal from Sarah's last title). In fact, sometimes, babies can be pretty gross.*

For example, over the last couple weeks, Stella has been sort of congested. We aren't sure if its early allergies, the drier Spring air or maybe just some sort of cold that refuses to give up. But, regardless of what it is, its helped earn Stella the new nickname "Snuffles."

"Just how congested is she?" you ask.

This congested.

Poor, congested Snuffles!

(I think its telling that I still find that photo a little cute.)

Luckily, that was last weekend, and at this point most of her congestion has cleared up. So, we might even have to retire the nickname "Snuffles" soon. But, that's probably for the best.

Also, I'm sure most of the regular readers of this blog already know this, but even though I can't post as often as I would like, I'm still trying to do my best to upload as many pictures as I can of Stella to my Flickr stream. So, if there is ever a dry patch where Sarah and I fail to post here, be sure to still check in there.

Finally, with the arrival of Spring, Sarah and I have found ourselves more and more interested in working around the house and yard. This includes taking photos of the various plants in our yard as they bloom, and repainting our bedroom (the last couple photos here.

Happy Spring, everyone!

* As a side note: There was a two day period where the phrase "so gross" replaced "PJ Hat" as the Funniest Word Ever!™

Raspberries, Sunshine, Easter and More

So last week we got to start the post with us cracking Stella up. We thought we'd mix things up this week and start with how Stella's cracking us up.

Apparently today Tyler came into her room after Stella woke up from her nap to find this:


Stella clowning around with her Soothie

And Stella's decided to imitate the noise I make giving her raspberries on her belly:


Stella's new noise--she was cracking me up!

Remember the post about missing Stella's 100th day and our intention to have her feet touch the earth? Well, last week the weather was beautiful and our PEPS group decided to meet at a local park and we had the chance to get Stella out into some grass. It was fun and is making us really eager for summer!


Stella's little feet touch the earth for the first time!


Stella and me at the park. (As you may notice in this post, Tyler took my previous comment about not having mom/baby pictures seriously)

We also had a chance to dress her up for Easter. Unfortunately, unlike the week before we did not have beautiful outdoor weather (it was pouring rain), so her Easter dress knit by Nana was accessorized with a sweater and baby legs.


Stella in her Easter dress


Another view of the dress...and Stella's gi-normous diaper


Stella and her bunny pals

Stella's still rolling like crazy, and she's starting to make some more promising moves that could mean rolling from her tummy to her back, scrunching up her butt and hiking her knee closer to her body. She's also hanging out on her tummy for longer, though we still have plenty of "roll over" duty.


Getting closer to the full 360...

The other fun thing lately is doing a little pre-bedtime reading. For awhile I was a little disappointed that Stella wasn't interested in sitting in my lap to read books yet. But I've found that if I lay on the floor with her, she seems at least moderately interested (or will tolerate) the whole book reading experience. Mostly I still have to keep the book out of arm's reach so she doesn't immediately shove it into her mouth.



Now if I can just get her to start waking up fewer than three times a night......

The PJ Hat

The other night after bath time, Tyler started singing Stella a silly song about her pajamas on his head ("The PJ Hat...and that is that," repeat ad nauseum). We were amused because it was cracking Stella up:


Laughing Stella

But that day was't the end of it. I can sing the song and make her laugh. In fact, it seems to only take the phrase "PJ Hat" to make her giggle. Who knew?

It hasn't all been fun and giggles since my last post. In fact, if I'd been writing this a week ago, you would have heard the Sarah of two months ago, lacking sleep and wondering why everyone else seemed to be having so much more fun at this parenting thing than me. I've always known that a hungry Sarah is an unhappy Sarah, but a few days of sleep deprivation is almost worse. We don't know if it was her 4-month shots, a growth spurt, a cold or just an unfortunate phase, but she went back to waking up 3-4 times a night, one night waking up on the hour nearly every hour. Fortunately for my health and sanity, she's back to the more reasonable schedule of waking up once between 12 and 2 and between 5 and 6.

Otherwise, things are much the same. She continues rolling like a grounded whirling dervish--she can even roll to her right and her left these days. (We're still waiting for the full 360 when she'll go from her stomach to her back.) Somewhat unfortunately for us, she's been in a phase of getting easily overwhelmed when we're out or with friends, which has meant a lot less fun experiences at a few parties and get togethers. She went from being a really social baby to crying whenever anyone looked at her the other day. But since then we've had a couple better moments at restaurants and with smaller groups, so we'll just assume her ability to handle more stimulation will catch up with her ability to take in so much more of the world.

A few other recent photos....

Like her daddy, she likes some hats!


Yippy-ki-ay! Oddly, the size of this hat is 0-3 months, but it just now fits...though the outfit it went with is a thing of the past


Babies always look cuter in things with animal ears on them.


A side effect of the rolling obsession: Stella's spending much of her time this way these days


I couldn't resist this cute smile-y photo

Is it just me, or is there a bit of a lack of mom/baby photos???

I've also decided that someday this blog will get turned into some kind of baby book for Stella, so I'll be trying to add in a few things that might be of interest later:

Favorites: The Royal Duke of York (fun for baby, good/hard for our arms!), her Easter bunny from Great-Grandma Geri, still likes Stretch the Giraffe
Hates: the sound of the vacuum cleaner

Firsts (Updated with 4-Month Stats)

Stella will be four months* next week, and she's at a really fun stage. She's so engaged with the world, really looking at people and things. She smiles a lot and laughs. I now feel like I might have an idea what comedians or other entertainers feel like onstage--it's kind of a rush to be able to make Stella laugh and smile. And we've noticed lots of new little activities and developments.

For awhile now, I've been handing Stella a little rattle she got from my friend Alison right after she was born. For a few weeks, she's been able to hold it. Then occasionally she would seem to take some pleasure in being able to make it make noise. Then, last weekend, I left her on the floor while I went to the kitchen when I heard a rattle noise. Tyler was in the bathroom, so I didn't think it was him. I quietly walked up and saw that Stella had rolled onto her side and was picking it up and playing with it by herself. It seemed like such an achievement! And it helped me feel better about not always needing to be engaging her and right there. Even though intellectually I know that's not necessary, since I've gone back to work, I want to make the most of our time together. But this helped me remember that sometimes being alone will help her do things she needs to do on her own.


You can see she's holding the rattle here, but really I just love the way Tyler and Stella are curved toward each other in this picture.

I haven't seen this particular first for reasons that will soon become more obvious, but apparently Stella can also hold her own bottle as she gets down to the last few ounces. This seems to be a relief for Tyler, since bottle feeding has been somewhat of a challenge.


Here's Stella chowing down with her own two hands!

Stella's also gotten to meet her first new baby friend from among our existing group of friends. While we've met lots of great new people with babies since our pregnancy, Todd and Christine welcomed Lucy into the world a few weeks ago. We went to visit and it was amazing the difference between 3+ months and 3 weeks. Someday it won't make any difference at all, but for now they are almost like two different creatures. We think it will be great to show them this picture when they're older!


Daughers and Daddies: Todd & Lucy, Tyler & Stella

And probably most momentous of all, Stella started rolling over! Unlike other babies we've heard of who are rolling from their stomachs to their back, Stella's decided to buck the trend and go from her back to her tummy. She spent a few weeks rolling onto her side consistently. Then she'd start to roll over but often get one arm caught underneath her. This video was from the first or second day she was really doing it pretty consistently. Now you can't set her down without her rolling over. The only problem is that she hasn't learned to roll back, so she'll roll, get tired of tummy time, fuss, we'll roll her back to her back, and she immediately rolls herself back to her stomach. This sometimes stops being cute after awhile, but it's entertaining to see how obsessed she is with her new skill.


Video proof of Stella's rolling abilities--now it's totally routine and an obsession

In some ways, these all seem fitting. Even though she's so young, one of the things we've noticed about her personality is a certain independent streak. (I have no idea where she might have gotten that from...)

And, to round things off, here are two recent favorites of mine:


Stella and the flamingo from Aunt Jeanne and Uncle Tim.


Stella on one of our Fridays together. I love her in blue since it brings out her eyes, but it will always make people think she's a boy...


So this day she also wore her first shoes to add a feminine flair to the outfit. They're so tiny and so cute.

* Stella had her four-month well baby check-up today. She is 16 pounds 1 ounce, 25 inches long and 16.5" head circumference. According to the doctor she's thriving and doing great, and she even handled the shots surprisingly well. No major post-shot meltdowns...yet...

Now and Then: A matter of perspective

First off, I feel like I should apologize since I've been absent from this blog for the better part of a month. With starting my new business, I am actually in front of the computer more than ever these days. But, at the same time, it leaves me in this weird situation where -when I am sitting at the computer- I feel like I should be either on-task (adding to my portfolio, tracking down clients) or really, really off-task (I'm looking at you, Comic Book Message Boards). So, that rarely leaves me in a situation where I feel like I should be doing something sort of on-task... or at least on-task for life, if not professionally.

That said, earlier today, I finally got around to doing something I meant to do quite a while ago: Uploading the photos our friend Breanne took of us. Breanne's been doing professional photography for a while now, so when she offered to come over and take some pictures of Sarah when she was pregnant, we jumped at the opportunity. Then, again, a couple months after Stella's birth, she came by to take some pictures. Sort of a "before" and "after" sort of thing.

Anyhow, you can now see a selection of the photos she took here. Enjoy Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents and Great-Grandparents!

Sarah actually posted a selection of the Stella pictures in the second half of this entry, so I won't bother posting more in this entry... well, except maybe this one...


(When she gets older, Stella is going to hate that I'm posting this picture.)

...but I will post a couple of the pregnancy pictures here, just because I love the lighting that Breanne captured, plus it's amazing to look back at pictures of Sarah in the final month of pregnancy. It's crazy how things have changed.



Anyhow, be sure to check out the whole set.

Also, finally, I thought I'd post one more picture. Not because its going to win any photography awards, but instead because I love what it represents.


Sarah took this photo last Friday while I was downstairs working. When I saw it later that day, it made me smile. I love watching the two of them together, and it makes me so happy that they share such a wonderful bond with each other. It's hard to put into words why it makes me so happy. I've literally tried to type it out a half dozen times now, but then gone back and deleted the sentence because its not quite right. So, let's see if I can break it down...

I love Sarah and my relationship to her, and I love Stella and my relationship to her. This photo is evidence of their love and relationship to each other, which is something I might see ever day, but not always notice because I'm there with them. Seeing this photo of them, without me there, reminds me of their relationship to each other. It's sort of physical proof of the love that -from my perspective- makes up the far side of our little family circle. And that's one of the most important things in the world to me. It makes me so happy that they make each other so happy

Anyhow, I think I still sort of botched-up and confused what I meant to say. But, oh well. If nothing else, its a cute photo of my girls hanging out together and it makes me smile.

103 Days

Well, we sort of blew it. Tyler wanted to mark Stella's 100th day by taking her out and having her feet actually touch the earth (something that hasn't happened in her life yet--remarkable until you think about how cold it's been since her birth). But between having book club that night and the exhaustion that hits me by midweek of working, we forgot all about it until her 103rd day or so, and that just didn't have the same ring to it.

But there have been other exciting developments. She's definitely grabbing onto things, like some of her animals and rattles, and now quickly moves them directly to her mouth. Stella's also getting more mobile and interested in the world, so she's often less interested in hanging out in her basket where she can't see too much. I found one of these baby seat things at a used baby store, and we amuse ourselves by setting Stella in it every once in awhile.


There's something cute and ridiculous about setting her up in this little seat. With her big diapers, I wonder how long she'll actually be able to use this....

Stella's also gotten really vocal and seems to like the sound of her own voice. It started earlier this week when she was laying in her bed going to sleep, just oohing and aahing until we turned the lights out. Now she seems to like to talk to Jacques the Peacock while on her activity mat.


Conversations with Jacques. We're still trying to learn the ins and outs of this language system

Unfortunately for me, Stella's changing her reasonable night schedule for one that's less fun and includes a 4AM squirm/whimper/wake up session.


Napping Stella--she looks big in her basket these days, but still pretty tiny in a real bed

We've had a fun past few days, with lots of smiles and fun times hanging out. Unfortunately, I didn't think about possible cabbage connections when I made a curry for lunch with some baby bok choy and got a reminder about how un-fun gassy, unhappy Stella can be. At least we know this will past, and I'll add another thing to the "do not eat" list.....