Happy Birthday Miguel!

Mom, Sophie, and I drove out to Grand Rapids on Saturday to visit the Estrada side of the family.  In addition to being Mom’s birthday, we also timed it just right to be at Miguel’s 1st birthday party.  Sophie did a fabulous job on the ride…not so great once we got there.  It all ended up just being too much stimulation, too little time doing what she wanted (we can’t take everything with us – just don’t have room to pack a lamp, swing, ceiling fan…), and probably too much gas.  Maybe next time she’ll be a little cheerier when it comes time to hang out with family.

It was great to see all of Kelly’s kids (well, sans Robyn) and marvel at how big they’re getting.  Sam got to put his big brother skills to practice by making Sophie smile and Kaelin had another baby to marvel at.  Aunt Pam got Sophie some clothes and a set of headbands (of course Mom and Pam set to work right away getting a picture with one of those – something that I’m sure Keri will appreciate when she sees it!)  The best thing about the clothes is that one of the shirts says something like “Happy Day” and has a rainbow and smiling sun – it’s the perfect shirt to remind me of Pam.

We’re gonna try to head to the city tomorrow for pictures – hopefully she’ll be more cooperative than the first time we tried.  Wish us luck!

Enjoy a picture of all the “kids” and their bottles from the party:

A few of Sophie’s favorite things…

Ok, so you may remember a post a few months ago about a few of my favorite things – I thought I’d do one now with a few of Sophie’s favorites (from her perspective).  Also, her eyes are starting to change from gray to a color…still not sure what it’s going to be though.  The right eye definitely looks brownish but the left eye seems more green.  Did your kid’s eye color change at different rates?

Included a clip of Sophie watching the mobile…I hope you enjoy my editing and storyboard!

Sophie loves:  lamp, mountains, light, elephant, bird, rattle, bears, and Zeke!  (She’s really noticing Zeke more; it’s cute.)

Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde

That would be our daughter – Jekyll and Hyde!  Monday she woke up (after sleeping the entire night!!!!) as the happiest baby in the world.  She was smiling and laughing at everything.  Then something happened Monday evening; not sure what it was, but she progressively got crankier.  How did she sleep Monday?  Well, how does 9:30, 11:00, 1:00, 3:00, and 6:00 sound to you?  Plus, she was up at least an hour each of those time and had a terrible time falling asleep.  Then she was a stinker for her Aunt Michelle.  She was asleep when I picked her up and she stayed that way until about 9:00 that night (I guess she had some catching up to do!) 

Since then she’s kind of settled in the middle for the rest of this week – not sleeping through the night but not screaming through it either.  There are a couple of things to be thankful for: 1) she doesn’t rely on the pacifier; sure, she likes it sometimes but she’s never really looking for it, and 2) she does a good job falling asleep on her own; just this morning I put her back to the crib and she was wide awake but she just fell asleep on her own (after some tossing and turning, but no screaming).

I have a video of her watching her mobile go around (and you can really see her fascination with the elephant – she’ll watch the other animals but not as long as the elephant, plus she really seems to look for it.)  The hippo is her second favorite animal (probably because it’s gray like the elephant so it tricks her).  The giraffe also gets some attention but the lion is the least favorite (maybe because it’s after the elephant in the rotation).  Anyway, didn’t feel like hooking the camera up right now so that’ll have to wait.

Anyway, hope you guys are enjoying the blog.  It really takes the place of emails for me (as those of you waiting for responses have probably figured out!).  Take care and check back soon!

Weekend Recap & an Excuse for Pictures!

Tom played in a the Arenac Eastern 3-on-3 tournament on Saturday.  They were done after 3 games – seems like if they would have had a break in between games instead of back to back to back they would have done better.

Kiddo was good today – mostly just sleeping.  She definitely needs some days like this because she has some VERY awake days.  Played in the tub again today during the bath.  I’ll have to get some videos of that sometime, she really enjoys it.

Zeke still loves his Waggers – he’ll go bring him out of whatever room he’s in just so that he can snuggle with him.

OK, here’s some pics, including a St. Patrick’s day one.  Sophie really loves “naked time”.

 

Catching up…

Well, I feel like it’s been ages since I posted so let me catch you up on things:

Sophie had her two month check up.  Things were good…until the shots.  That was a pretty sucky experience all around (especially with all the tears – she had so many that they were forming little droplets on her eyelashes.

Which brings me to eyelashes, it seems like they are getting longer and longer every day.  Her hair seems dark some days but lighter others.  And her eyes; still don’t know what color her eyes are going to be.  They are still mostly gray but they sometimes look like they have hints of dark green in them.  We’ll wait and see.

Another side note, is it “grey” or “gray”?

Here’s an update on spring weather:  it’s snowing!

Won $30 at the casino today…Mom won $47.  She’s always luckier than I am!  The $30 is better than the $0 I won last week though!  At least I’m not losing.

Mom, Sophie, and I are thinking about heading out to Grand Rapids next weekend, so that’s nice.

Tom has a basketball tournament at Eastern later today.  Wish them luck – after all they’re getting old!!!

The kiddo has been cranky at night lately; not every night but off and on.  The upside is that she occasionally will sleep 7 hours or so after her 2 hour cranky fit.  Not sure if part of it might be early teething.  The book (yes, it’s like my bible) said that babies can have symptoms of teething 2-3 months ahead of time (and I guess I have a family history of early teeth) so that could be it.  It could just be overstimulation, but the teething fits because she drools sometimes (not spitup, just spit), gets mad when sucking on the bottle even though she’s hungry, and can be calmed by chewing on fingers.  But them I’m not sure because that doesn’t always help.

Question of the post:  what diapers did your baby like and how close to the pound sizes did they fit?

Busy Busy Busy…

Well, I started back to work last week and it was good to get back to school after being pretty well sequestered for the last couple of months.  Sophie had mixed results staying with Michelle, Ingrid, and my Mom.  Some days she just slept all day, other days she was a stinker, and then other days she was somewhere in the middle.  She’s been pretty good today and it seems like she smiles more and more every day.  When I walk in the room sometimes she’ll be laying awake in the crib and when I peek over the edge she gets the biggest smile…so that’s cool!

This week is a big week – she has her 2-month checkup and will be getting shots :-(  I’ll keep you posted after we’re done.

I was thinking the other day that it’s really weird that the English language can’t come up with unique words for everything but instead has duplicates with seemingly unrelated origins.  “Bay” is the word that set off this thought process.  Go ahead, think about it.  This thought-exercise is almost as interesting as finding words that just sound funny sometimes (“soup”).

We took advantage of the warm weather and took Sophie and Zeke for a walk on the golf course today.  Sophie slept and Zeke ran so it was pretty much perfect.  Oh, and Tom found golf balls so it was a good day in his book too! 

I’m going to try and keep taking monthly pics with Sophie and her bear to see how much she grows.  I’m reposting the February one with the March one for comparison.  Another interesting fact:  she’s really grabbing her bird rattle thing on her mat now (instead of just punching it with her fist).

Decided to join the board for the AuGres Pirate Festival.  If there are any booths/tables/vendors that you would like to see, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.  Stay tuned for more info.

Just thought of something…

I just thought of something I wanted to blog about and instead of adding to the last post, I figured I’d throw a new one up (that didn’t sound great, did it?) since it would give me an excuse to add another picture!  I just adore this little jacket cause it’s so fluffy and has cute ears on the hood – she got a chance to wear this on our walk.

So anyway, the thing that I wanted to talk about was sizes.  Oh, and baby books.  I finally got Sophie a book and filled in what I could up to this point.  See, I figure she’ll have this blog to eventually look back on as a sort of electronic baby book (that’s a crazy thought isn’t it, how much of our lives will be accessible for future generations just because of our increasing attachment to computers) that is about our lives (but admittedly is a lot about her); however, I know I personally like to have tangible things to touch and browse.  Real historical documents are way cooler than scanned images.  If they weren’t, people would be content with the pictures of the Constitution in the history books and wouldn’t wait in line at the National Archives to walk by the real thing for a few seconds.

But I digress, back to clothes sizes.  It seemed like Sophie was stuck in the newborn size for a long time but she has really had a growth spurt that doesn’t show any signs of letting up.  She’s on to 0-3 months now, but now I’m dealing with the frustrations of how vague those numbers really are.  For example, most of the onesies she wears are 0-3, but Gerber onesies are a whole size off so she wears 3-6 months for those.  Some sleep and plays are too short but other ones are so long her hands won’t stay out of the sleeves.  Then there’s two-piece things.  It really seems like she can handle a smaller size of these since we don’t have to worry about her legs not having enough room.  I have found the weight information on the tags to be a much closer approximation to what will and won’t fit.  So yeah, that’s just my little rant about clothes and their sometimes misleading sizes.  Enjoy the extra pic!

Sweetie Pie

Things have turned a corner here.  For a few days (week maybe?), our little darling was quite the little stinker.  It could be a coincidence or a correlation, but I drank a lot more milk than usual during this time so perhaps she is somewhat lactose intolerant.  It probably isn’t a full-blown allergy (or even serious intolerance) since there is lactose in her formula and she was fine for a while.

Not much else new to report on.  We were able to take advantage of the recent nice weather and go for a walk in the neighborhood.  The added benefit to this (as opposed to walking in the school) is that I can bring Zeke along and let him burn off some of his energy.

I’ve included a new video.  This one has Sophie enjoying a dream while sitting in her swing.  What can she possibly dream about at this age?  Eating of course! 

I used Soapbox for the first video and YouTube for this one.  I’d be interested in feedback from you guys as to which one you prefer (if either) for viewing these little tidbits.

Sophie sleeping in swing

Book Review: The Amnesiac

A bit long and somewhat self-indulgent, I would still recommend Amnesiac if you’re looking for something new to read.  The story was truly a trip down memory lane – all the talk about memories invariably led me to think of my own.  I can relate to all the existentialist thinking by the protagonist and enjoyed the thought process that the book followed, even if I admittedly skimmed some of the wordier parts.  I also appreciated the use of different fonts and absence of chapter numbers to delineate the different perspectives.  All in all, it was an enjoyable read, even if the last third was a bit predictable.  The middle of the book reminded me of Lost – there were clues everywhere and you start to look for connections between seemingly mundane facts.  The main thing is that it is a unique enough book for me to recommend.  Let me know what you think.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

It seems like Sophie is needing less and less sleep during the day…and at night.  She used to give at least 4 hours between feedings at night but now it seems to be that she is going 3.5/4 hours pretty consistently.  She is definitely more and more interested in faces and voices now, so that’s cute.  She also really likes her changing table.  When she’s cranky we’ll take her in her room and put her on the table and she calms down.  Go figure.

As you can see from this picture, she’s losing her baby hair.  I thought that it would thin out evenly and then be replaced by new hair but she’s going with the “receding hairline” look.  We’ll have to get a picture of her and Grandpa Mike once she loses a little more!  (In his defense, Tom had a really bad head cold in this picture.)