5 months!

well at least it was 4 days ago. now she's five months and some change. gosh i tell you i can't believe how fast time flies! it seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital! it really hit me the other day when i realized a friend of mine whom i was pregnant with is due to deliver her babe very soon. i thought she was still only a few months pregnant! i had to remind myself that i do have a five month old and that time marches on even if i don't realize it.

so what is alice up to?

--still no teeth. she does have FOUR white bumps though. and they are all K9s.

--her elf ears are disappearing. looks like daddy won that bet. and i don't think i took a pic of them either.

--she LOVES barley cereal. she eats everything we've tried so far (rice cereal, oatmeal, bananas, sweet potatoes, peas, carrots, and pears) but this is the one thing she's had that she always opens real wide for and really seems to enjoy. yuck! babies have no tastebuds!

--she's a little giggle monster despite teething issues. the funniest is when she has a major giggle fest and then all of a sudden she starts bawling. hehe, she's so fickle.

this one is for uncle mike who doesn't like closeups.

--she actually looks at you when you say her name. i'm fully prepared for her to start ignoring me soon.

--she just figured out how to blow raspberries. once she starts she doesn't stop!

--she's sitting up by herself. now if we could just get the little booger to roll over! she's close, but it still hasn't happened.
--she's trying desperately to crawl. yet STILL no rolling!! she'll kick her feet until they end up under her, then she sticks her butt up in the air and tries to move. and then the process starts all over again b/c inevitably she ends up kicking her feet out from under herself.

--she LOVES to sing along to her music. her fav? a cheesy freebie we got from leapfrog. what about those TMBG CDs i got for daddy last year??

--she's walking! ok, we've already established she's not even crawling yet (or ROLLING!) so she's not REALLY walking. but she does like her walker. i can't wait for the day when she figures out that it moves and that she can move it.


--she says "mama!". no really, she does. i try and convince myself she's calling for me when in reality she's just babbling. hey a mom can dream!

--she's a squealer. you'd swear we're raising a piglet sometimes!

--she loves to do crunches. i'll let her hold my fingers and she pulls herself up. she usually laughs like crazy when she sits all the way up. i think she's taunting me b/c she's in better shape than i am.

--she's standing. no joke! i hold her hand simply because i know eventually her legs will give out, but she stands there all by herself!


hopefully she'll be rolling by the time i do another one of these updates. if not, i'm going to lie and say she is.

hold on tight!

on to alice's SECOND trip to the park. it's not the same park, but it will do. this one actually had more than two swings (i kid you not...the "tot" park by my IL's has TWO freaking swings!) so she was able to have a turn today. i wasn't sure how she'd like it since there isn't a lot of support, but as long as we pushed her slowly she loved it! actually i think matt and i got tired of pushing her long before she got tired of sitting in the swing.

this one is self explanatory and another rare sighting of mommy and babe.

i wish we could have left her to explore the grass some more, but it was damp and she didn't seem all that interested. too bad the weather has been crappy today (and it's supposed to continue). we had so much fun yesterday.

spring has FINALLY sprung!

yesterday was our first adventure outside since winter started, so of course that means this was alice's first time outside for more than just a few minutes! she seemed to like the sunshine and all that was going on around her, but she was most impressed with the trees. she was totally hypnotized by them!



not only did we get a chance to be outdoors, but alice also went to the park for the first time ever. there were a ton of kids out as you can imagine so she didn't get a chance to swing. she didn't seem to mind though b/c she's such a nosy little girl! she loves to watch all the kids play!



here's my nephew augie climbing the "hot dogs". they just redid this park by my in-law's house so the kids had a lot of fun exploring all the new toys.



and here is amanda the ham. i can't tell you how many times she went down that slide screaming "CHEESE!" she, like most kids, loves to have her picture taken. now with digital cameras that also means you get to hear "i wanna see!" after every shot!



another treat for us yesterday was that we finally got to meet baby james! my SIL had a baby in early february and our paths finally crossed on sunday. he's such a little peanut it's hard for me to imagine alice was ever that small!



all in all a pretty fun day. if nothing else it was certainly nice to be out in the fresh air. today was just as nice, maybe a bit nicer even. let's hope it stays this way for the rest of the week.

what a rare sight!!

it's mommy and baby! usually i'm on the other side of the camera.

hey, if houdini can do it...

so can alice! as of this week alice has finally conquered the straight jacket...i mean swaddle! she really seemed to be ready this time so i decided to bite the bullet and put her down with out the blankets. sure enough she was ready! w/ hardly any effort on my part she's officially graduated to sleeping like a normal human. she's currently sleeping propped up on a boppy (despite the fact that the tag CLEARLY says it's not for sleeping) b/c she's still very congested due to teething.


no more news on the teeth front except she's chewing more and more on those fingers, they are always in her mouth on one side or the other. i'm so anxious for her fangs to come in!

just call me dracula!

i always knew there was something extra special about alice. this weekend we discovered exactly what. SHE'S A VAMPIRE!!!

i knew alice had been teething for a while now and my MIL was poking and prodding around in her mouth yesterday. she only found two bumps and she didn't see anything. a little while later before i changed her diaper i decided to look again...and i found a little white bump! it was so high up i wasn't sure if it was a tooth or a piece of curdled milk and sure enough it was hard. my MIL came in to look at it and she's pretty convinced it's a tooth coming through (she's had 10 kids so i'd hope she'd know what one looks like!). but it's not one of her front teeth like you'd expect...it's one of her K-9s! AND the other bump she has in her mouth is where her OTHER K-9 will be! so my little one is getting her fangs!!

my MIL told me to save up now for braces b/c it looks like she's going to be like her daddy, his K-9s came in real high and they had to bring them down with braces.

part of me is hoping that by some miracle this isn't a tooth because it's SOO high up...i guess we'll find out soon enough!

mmmmm...sweet potatoes!

did you notice how light her hair is getting?

anyway, so alice has been getting baby rice cereal every day for about a month now, so recently we decided to introduce her to REAL foods (well, if you can call baby food that). last week i was eating a banana and alice was grunting and grabbing for it so i decided to mush some up and see if she liked it. did she ever! we never took pics of that so this morning when i broke out the sweet potatoes for the first time i had daddy take some pics. she doesn't seem to like them as much as the bananas, but i think she was pretty full on formula by the time i got them out anyway.

now we wait and see if they agree with her. did i mention how nasty baby poop is when you introduce real solids???

as long as we are talking swings and retro outfits...

look how cute my baby is in her swing. it's not nearly as cool as grandma's, and it certainly won't be able to push her much longer, but she sure was having fun today. and she's very retro since she's wearing an outfit that i'm sure i and possibly my siblings wore when we were babies. gotta love retro cookie monster outfits.

blast from the past

does this bring back any memories dad? i know ours didn't look as retro as this one does, but it's a genuine crank swing my in laws have had for 30+ years. my MIL made my FIL dig it out of the attic and clean it up this weekend b/c she was convinced alice wanted to be up and looking around at everyone. turns out she was right. the kid loved this swing...she was in it all freaking day.

oh, and notice the shirt...it's a family heirloom. :)

mother...

i never understood just how much you loved me until i had a child of my own. i love you very much and i'll miss you forever.

FYI: that's NOT mom and i...that's mom and lilly. we currently don't have a scanner. :)

well i know my graphic artist brother won't appreciate this...

...but hopefully at least aunt jessica will think this is neat. i have ventured into the world of digital scrapbooking and this is my first real page. i'm actually quite surprised i like this so much since i really am not that big a fan of traditional scrapbooking. i'm looking into sites that print high quality 12 x 12 pics and if i like what i see i may just do a book for alice this way. click on pic to get a better view.

things are going well here. alice has been sleeping very well unswaddled for her naps for the past 4 days or so, and we're hoping this will help the transition at night time. her eye infection cleared up just as we made an appointment for her to see the doctor...go figure. the doc gave her a Rx just in case though, especially since she was still scratching her eyes like crazy. there is no sign of the infection as of this morning.

alice is becoming more and more independent as the days go by. she'll cry and cry when we hold her and as soon as we put her down she's a happy little bird again. so needless to say she spends a lot of time on a blanket on the floor surrounded by her toys. the little stinker is trying OH so hard to sit up by herself. she's still a ways from that as you can imagine, but the girl has some killer ab muscles! if she has something to grab on to (like mommy's fingers) she can easily pull herself up into a sitting position. we're working on that too, but she can only sit independently for a few seconds before she topples over. it's quite amusing actually. i'm sure before too long she'll have that down and it will be on to something else. she still has no interest in rolling over and honestly i'm not surprised. she doesn't spend a lot of time on her belly because it makes her puke every time... and not just a little bit either. i've tried everything i can think of to prevent that to no avail so we both just put up with it. hopefully she'll grow out of it before she starts to crawl.

in the meantime i'm enjoying the fact that she's immobile. once she rolls over she's that much closer to crawling, and then walking, and then running. i'm not ready for that just yet.

ahh, more things to put in my mouth!

well the little stinker FINALLY found her thumb! she doesn't suck it so much as chew the heck out of it. this will be fun once she has teeth i'm sure!