Let's see

How far we can push before mommy has a meltdown!

It's only halfway through the day and mommy is already at the end of her rope. Busy day at work and a whiny baby do NOT go together well.

And I swear, even if she is only 8 months old, she is already trying to push her boundaries.

For example, last night was a late night as we went to watch Andrew play softball. So our normal bedtime routine was pushed off until 8:45 - 9:00 last night. After our bottle, we decided we didn't really want to sleep. Instead, we wanted to headbutt mommy. After my third exclaimation of "OUCH" after that hard little head whacked me on the chin, Andrew jokingly says to her "Keep that up and you'll be in trouble!" She looks right at him and laughs hysterically. Which of course gets Andrew and I laughing. Elisa realizes she did something funny, so what does she do? She looks at me, grins, headbutts me again and then looks at me waiting for the praise. Of course, we laugh more. So she does it again. And again, and again. Little turkey. Finally after five minutes of this game and a very bruised mommy, we decided we had better stop engaging and get her to bed. But oh man, who says this kid doesn't understand English? The timing was too perfect.

Happy 8 months!

Wow, I'm so big now! In fact, I can now HOLD Miss P instead of her holding me! :)



I'm a big 13 lbs 8 oz. I put on 1.5 pounds in a month! My doctor was so happy she was dancing in the room! I don't think I've ever seen a doctor do a jig before. I know mommy hasn't, as she thought it was really cute.

I also was evaluated by physical therapy. Mommy was worried because I get really stiff when she tries to get me to sit and I resist sitting and crawling. Turns out I have a little bit of stiffness in my hips, but I should grow out of it. But I'm right on track for my adjusted age and doing all the things I should for a 5 1/2 month old! But mommy wants me to do things an 8 month old should do, so we are going to learn more about how to help me catch up. I think mommy is tired of explaining why I'm so little and why I'm not sitting and crawling yet. In reality, I'm doing really well for how early I was. Everyone always says what a good baby I am!



I'm a big chatterbox and love to make noise. Mommy doesn't like it when I'm not here because it's just TOO QUIET. So far I just make lots of "gah" "nah" "ah" "yeah" noises but I did decide to surprise daddy and say "da da" right before father's day. Of course I didn't know what I was saying, but it sure made mommy and daddy's day.

And I'm rolling both ways now! And love it! Mommy finds me in my crib on my belly. She doesn't quite care for that. I won't stay under my blankets either.

Oh well. Mommy will get over it all. :)

How little!

Since I seem to be making my way down memory lane, I wanted to post this one. This is the first video we took of Elisa and were learning how the camera worked. Grandpa H and I finally got our stuff together to get them transferred lol.

Compare

4 months old:


Today:

Patience

I love you baby girl but you sure did try my patience today. I knew
when I took on this challenge it would be filled with it's good days
and it's bad days. And I look forward to 50+ years of good days and
bad days.

Tried the swimming thing again!

Lots more fun today! We even dunked our face in the water and splashed water in our eyes and didn't mind!



Here we are actually laughing!



We were so worn out that we are napping on mom's shoulder right now.

I'll leave you with this image of Daddy and Elisa.

Jumpy Seat!

I promised a better picture of her in her jumpy seat. Well, I still can't get a good still shot. So here's a video instead of our play session yesterday!

Award? Me?

I guess it's about time I participate in these, lol. I received this blogging award from my friend Lindsay, who since I probably can't give the award back to her will just say that she is another preemie mom with a gorgeous little girl who I hope to have play date with at some point lol!



The rules:
If I nominate you, simply copy and paste the image to your blog and follow the same rules below!

1. Nominate 5 other blogs.
2. Tell you 10 things about me that you didn't know before.

So, my nominated blogs:

1. The Peanut Blog - A blog by a mom and her preemie who are in *gasp* Arizona! And actually not far from where I was. Wish I could have met her while I was there. But she has a gorgeous little boy and makes all of her own baby food! I can't wait to try some of her recipes.

2. Munchkin Files - I've nominated this one because of the inner beauty of it's author. This is another preemie mom who lost her little boy after six months in the NICU. He also was born at 29 weeks in October, so it really touches something in me. She has handled this un-imaginable situation with amazing grace. She really deserves this, and our prayers, as she moves on with her life without her beautiful boy.

3. Plus One - Another preemie mom and another 29 weeker, also born in October. Any one sense a theme here? This mom is wonderfully creative and I just love how she describes her new life with her baby. She's a beautiful writer and I sometimes find myself jealous of her creativity and ability to keep it up with an infant!!

4. The Klopp Quads - Well I'm sure you can tell from the title that this will, again, be about preemies. And you are right! I was turned onto this blog through another blogger who found it and was just amazed by the fact that they were natural quads. I believe she delivered at 27 weeks to 3 girls and 1 boy. Unfortunately, the boy didn't make it but the girls did.

5. Sadie Jayne - this is the only "termie" baby blog that I follow, lol. It's done very creatively and from the baby girls point of view. I love it and even copy some of the ideas sometimes. And such a gorgeous baby girl!

So, ten things about me you may not know?

1. I met my husband online. Yup. Sure did
2. I don't have a "home." Home is where I sleep that night. So if you hear me talking about going "home" when I'm not actually in my home town, I mean I'm ready to go back to my room lol.
3. I have many many wonderful friends. They just all happen to be in other parts of the country and world. I miss them all so much and wish they were closer so we could hang out more.
4. I'm a beer snob. None of the Bud Light type stuff for me. Give me a good German beer or even Sam Adams if I have to go American.
5. I HATE CAR SHOPPING. There is a story behind that one.
6. My favorite part of the day is bed time. Because that's when I get to cuddle with my baby before putting her in her crib for the night.
7. I graduated high school in Germany.
8. The funniest thing that I've ever had happen to me was when Elisa farted so loud in the NICU that it echoed across the hall.
9. I'm starting to feel fat. I need to get on the loosing the baby weight.
10. I'm a facebook-aholic.

K. I'm done now. Going to go play with my baby!

I can't help

But marvel.



Look how far we've come.

Well, we learned something new this weekend.

Elisa has a competitive streak. We met a friends baby, and they
decided to have a sqwaking war to see who could scream the loudest.
I'm afraid Elisa won.

Hi!

So Mommy and Daddy thought they'd see what I thought about swimming.



While I wasn't opposed to it, I didn't love it either. But as long as I had my ball, I was ok.



And my daddy of course.



Here's a boring video of me chasing my ball around. I wasn't really sure of this whole swimming thing so I was concentrating more on figuring it out than having fun.


I finally warmed up to the idea when I realized that I can really get jumping with Daddy's help!



So it wasn't a fail! I think I'll try again this Saturday and see what happens.

7 months!

I'm a bit late on this post, seeing as how it is June already. But you'll have to forgive me. It's been extremely busy in our neck of the woods and I've been so worn out by the time the evening comes around and little miss is in bed that I've not had the brain power to do anything but crash.

So we are seven months!





We were concentrating on sitting so much that I think we forgot to smile, lol! Oh well, I still think she's adorable and you can see how much she has grown. I still find it hard to believe she's 7 months old. And that it's June. And that she's now been here longer than I was pregnant lol!

We have tried many new things. Carrots.



Sweet Potatoes.



Crawling. Don't have a picture of this one yet. Takes both mommy and daddy to get her "into position" lol.

None of which we have liked very much. We keep trying the carrots and sweet potatoes, only get a few spoonfuls in before we start turning up our noses and pushing the spoon away. But, seeing as how we are now 12 lbs 1 oz, I'm not so worried about how much of the veggies she gets. She's scarfing enough of the formula down and I think our ped is letting us do the veggies just to make mommy and daddy happy lol. The ped still wants her main nutrition to be coming from the formula so that takes precedence over the veggies.

We have been working with her on crawling, but so far all we get is a face plant. She much prefers to be on her feet balancing on us. She's very strong and can even sort of "step" but really prefers to bounce. (Forgive me the blurriness of this one. Catching her in motion with my camera is a bit difficult. I'll figure out the settings at some point and hopefully get a clear shot of her in this at some point.)



But we are mobile in our own way. We manage to change our location through a combination of twists, kicks, bends and can even find ourselves in a different place in the crib than where I started. Just the other morning, Andrew walked in to find her at the top of the crib with her arms wrapped around the bars. Here's how we found her this morning:



We usually go to bed by 8 (7:30 really, but mommy likes the cuddle time so we sleep in mommy's arms until 8) and we can normally wake up between 6 and 7. If it's before 7, we play to ourself in the crib and you can hear the most precious sounds as we coo, twist, plop and have a blast until Mom or dad comes to get us. You can see above how we found her after such a play session this morning.

Strong willed child is not strong enough a description to describe her, I'm afraid. We were doing very well on our naps. Until this weekend. And we are just refusing all but the afternoon. Maybe we only need one? But we get so cranky in the morning and fall asleep so easily with our routine, but the second our back hits that crib, our eyes pop wide open and our legs go up and our arms stretch out. Mom is tired today from battling her and eventually an impromptu car ride took care of the napping issue.

I'll leave you with a clip from our weekend. We had the special event of having both sets of grandparents around to give us their undivided attention and we did enjoy it. Here's a portion of it, showing the most wonderful sound in the world. Our laughter.