Squeaky Girl

Jill's taking this whole cold thing in stride.  Listen to this!

4 months old

Well, the little Jilly Bean is 4 months old today, and she is sick.  Her voice is hoarse and raspy, and she ONLY wants to be held, preferably by Mommy.  I'm glad she's not suffering from a runny nose or anything else, but it's heartbreaking to hear her cry and know how her throat must be hurting.  We hope she gets better SOON!

Here are a couple of pictures taken today.  You can tell she's not her usual self, but she's still a cutie.

Pumpkin Patch

We took Jill to a nearby pumpkin patch yesterday. It was pretty...lame, but it worked out well for us because Jill slept the whole time anyway.  Next year when she's aware of things we'll take her to a good one with a petting zoo and hay rides.  This one had pumpkins, 2 bales of hay, and a tractor that pulled you around the decaying pumpkin field.    Now, we normally try to avoid Kent like the plague because of incidents like the one yesterday involving a woman emptying our wheelbarrow of its pumpkins and trying to take it, but it was a beautiful day, so we just smiled and did it.  It was only 5 minutes from the house, thus the big draw.  Steve calmly got it back while I loudly insulted her in my outside voice.  Jill was sleeping so I'm not worried that I damaged her in any way by telling the woman she was a rude cow who should just avoid society in Jill's earshot.  Or something like that...

Anyway, here are the pictures!

Fun with pictures

Peekaboo

Hi Mommy

Love those fingers

What is that thing that keeps flashing in my eyes?

Hey look, it's Mommy again!

I want to EAT it!

You can never be too prepared for soothers

All bundled up

Henny, NOT asleep on Steve's pillow

Hi guys!

Hey, Daddy's up there!

Ignore the spit up on Steve's shirt...

This one speaks for itself

Jill gives open-mouth kisses

I'm so excited!

Things We Know

Here is a list of things we have learned since having a baby.

1) What "a lot of laundry" is

2) Sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time is a "treat"

3) Sleep deprivation makes you do and think STRANGE things 

4) That not sleeping can make you break down and weep

5) That seeing your baby's smiling face at 1, 4, and 7 am makes all the sadness about being tired go away

This is the face...I just woke up and I LOVE you!

6) That sleep is NOT overrated

7) That no matter what you will always have too many blankets and not enough burp cloths.  People love to buy you blankets, but burp cloths are just not that cool to give as a gift and even though you went out and bought what felt like a ridiculously large number of burp cloths, they will at some point all be dirty and you'll be using towels.

8) That time really does go too fast when you have kids.

9) That Spray N Wash can be your best friend.

10) What it means to take a lot of pictures

11) That poop, spit up, and urine will give you daily cause for contemplation and/or worry

12) That feeding your baby is truly a thankless job; you manage to get it in, it comes back out (usually in more ways than one) and by the time you get it cleaned up, you start all over again

13) Singing silly songs comes naturally...the lack of sleep plays a huge part in this

14) That you and your baby can spend 20 minutes looking in a mirror and smiling

15) That most of the advice you got (however well intentioned was the giver) is useless and you just have to wing it

16) You'll do anything you can think of to make your baby happy--that wasn't surprising, just the things you come up with to do were a little entertaining.

17) That when you tell people you don't plan on having any more children (because they asked this, in our opinion ridiculous, question of new parents) they will suspect postpartum depression and gaze at you concernedly.  News flash folks, we LOVE our baby and that's why we don't want more kids.  We want to enjoy her.  You're all welcome to get pregnant again as soon as is humanly possible, but we're just fine, thanks.

18) That leaving your baby seems like the worst thing in the world, no matter how much you were looking forward to something.

19) That getting and keeping the house clean, the baby happy, the dinner cooked, and the shopping done would be a near impossible task some days even when you don't have a job.

20) How thankful you'll feel toward your spouse when he/she takes the baby and gives you time to yourself (usually in the form of a shower during which time you don't have to gaze at the baby monitor every twelve seconds, ready to run out with shampoo in your hair and no plan on how to get in the shower to get it out again), and then how happy you'll be when you go back to your family.

A Milestone

Last night Jill spent her first night in her crib, in her own room.  Until now she's been sleeping in a bassinet in our bedroom, but she's surpassed the weight and age limits for it.  She's been sleeping on borrowed time for about a month now.  She did fine.  I missed her being next to me, but she did great; sleeping the whole night with only one wake up for food, just like always.  She looks awfully small in her big crib, though.

this morning in the crib

3 months old in the bassinet

one month old in the bassinet

Daddy Time

Jill and Steve love spending time together, as you can see here.  Watch her face in the video; we have no idea why she likes this so much, but it went on for more than 20 minutes!  We've only shown you the tail end of the fun.

Hi Mom!

Mirror time

2 silly faces

Jill loves to eat bubbles, so Dad tried them too

Reading together

Such silliness you've never seen before today...

Fun with video

Here's Jill in her jumperoo!

Jill debuting her new squeaky sounds.

Jill rolling over

Jill talking

Monkey Lover

Mallory the  Monkey is Jill's favorite stuffed toy.  Thank you Jannica, Mark, and Owen.  Here's the girl with her monkey!

Roll Over Girl!

Jill did it, everyone! She rolled over last night.  We had been waiting for it for about a week, and I was sitting there with cameras ready to go.  Steve was downstairs watching tv, and she did it!  I called him up and she did it 2 more times for him.  I'll post the video later, but here are some pictures of her on her tummy after she rolled.  She still dislikes being on her tummy, so once she gets there she gets so angry after a few minutes that she rolls back to her back; sometimes harder than she intends and cries because she scares herself.  While I'm very proud and excited, I'm also sad; it's the end of an era.  Gone are the days when I could leave her on the floor and run off for a second.  She's mobile now!

Jill's Movie

Hi all.  Steve makes great movies, and Jill's first one is now up on our other website.  It's too long for YouTube, so you'll have to go to the other page to see it.  It's 26 minutes long so don't try to view it unless you've got a bit of time on your hands!  We hope you enjoy it.

Here's the link: http://homepage.mac.com/engine31/iMovieTheater54.html

Week 14

Well, we had our second set of shots for Jill yesterday and boy oh boy was that not a popular thing!  The appointment started out great; the doctor and his nursing student were ALL OVER our baby, picking her up, pinching her cheeks, smiling at her...we even heard them talking about how cute she is when they left the room and were standing out in the hall.  

Jill weighs 16lbs. 9oz. now, is 24.75 inches long, and her head is 16.5 inches around.  She's in the 97th percentile for weight, and just above the 75th for length.  She's going to stay on her acid reflux medicine for now, but we've been given permission to try stopping it when we feel she might be ready.  We're holding off on solid foods until she's closer to 6 months old so she can continue to get the full benefit of her milk.  I'm thinking maybe around the beginning of December we'll give them a try.  

So, the shots...Mommy, big chicken that she is, left the room but could hear the poor little Bean crying all the way from the waiting room.  Jill received 3 shots yesterday and 1 oral vaccine, but has to go back in 2 weeks for one more shot because the office was out of it yesterday.  Daddy will be responsible for that one as well.  Mommy doesn't do shots, she does the post-shots rescue!  After wailing most of the way home she fell asleep and woke up her happy normal self.  One of the sticks on her little leg is red, but the other two are just fine and she shows no ill effects whatsoever.  We go back to see Dr. Dong on December 29th for another check up and more shots when Jill is 6 months old.

Waking up after my shots...see my red eyes?

Jumperoo

The jumperoo is Jill's favorite new toy. We have an Exersaucer for her, but she flops around too much in it at this young age, so we went looking elsewhere for a stationary toy that would keep her interest. She loves her "jungle guys" (the mobile in her portable crib) so when I saw that Fisher Price made a toy with the same characters I knew I'd found a winner. As you can see here, she LOVES this toy and is excited every time we put her in it to play.

3 months old

Well everyone, I'm three months old now.  Check me out~I'm pretty cute, or so I hear!

My cute new jammies

Ready for my nap

eating my fingers

My crib mobile is fun to watch

Hi everyone.  Who will change my diaper?

3 months old girl

Big Talker