Sunday, February 17, 2013

Hannah @ 5 Months

Miss Hannah is 5 months!






Why hello there Pooh Bear!



My favorite new development this month are true, genuine smiles…often!


She still is in love with her brother!  Best entertainment ever!



Who me mom?


We started some rice cereal and I stopped feeding it to her because, well, she hated it.  She literally choked it down.  Nana told me how to do it.  Bottle, rice, bottle, rice, bottle, rice repeat.  It was not easy!  So I decided to wait.  My friend lent me a book about whole foods eating so we might wait a bit more for that at 6 months.  She does however eat rice in the am because I have to give her new antacid medicine in a solid.  She eats it pretty well but I swear it goes under her tongue, not on top!





I love her smiles!



One of Hannah's favorite things to do is play!  This girl loves any toy!




We did put her in the jumper.  It wasn't a huge hit at first but now it's part of our routine.  She likes it more and more every day.  Her favorite part is when Hudson is near by:).






She still loves her swing, with an additional toy or two.



Mom, I dropped my caterpillar!














I like helping mommy in the kitchen!  Notice my nice spread of K-Cups?  I'm addicted:).


She is starting to hold her bottle, so precious!
After you feed her if she sees her bottle she grunts until you hide it.  Now you might think she needs more milk but really she just likes holding it and chewing on it, I promise!  Once it's out of sight, she's all good!


 She has always grabbed her hair and pulled hard, extremely hard.  Well when her nails get long, which happens quickly, she pulls and scratches herself!  Look at the back of her head!  She also likes to pull on mommy's hair, clothes, actually anything she can get ahold of!


When she is starting to get sleeping this is the progression:




That's right, she's an eye rubber.  Then it's time to put her down!

She used to way up like this




But now it's mostly smiles!  
The pics below are of an exhausted little girl.  She continues to fight her naps. I lay her down, she cries and cries, and then I go in and rock her and then she'll go to sleep.  She is still swaddled at this point in time and needs it! We've put her in more restrictive ones but she always tends to escape so we've embraced our little escape artist.  



But her favorite place to sleep is still the car:).


Highlights:
*full of giggles
*babbles a lot, she has lots to say
*SMILES
*long nails
*morning smiles
*loves her binky
*loves to drool
*still spits up, a lot
*plays in her jumper


Schedule:
She wakes up anywhere from 6:30-7:30.  I've learned that if she wakes up before 7, I need to go back in and rock her and binky her.  If she's up before 7, it's a long day!
She gets her solids (just rice and applesauce) around 8am for her acid meds need to be in.
She naps around 8:30-9 and almost till 11.  Without a doubt her eyes pop wide open around 9:30, almost exactly 29 minutes after I put her down.  If I let her stay in the crib, she'll either play or go back to sleep until 11.
11-Bottle
Then the rest of the day is totally unpredictable.  Lately she's been napping around 12 and goes till 1:30.  Unfocanetly it's always different and I can't predict her.  Then she's up again and I feed her later in the afternoon.
4:30-5:30-Bottle
Sometimes she still takes an evening nap, last night she didn't. Her evening nap has been the longest and most consistent.  This drives me nuts because her afternoon is not really a nap…it's like two cat naps of 30 minutes.  Ugh!  Then we'd have to wake her up for her bottle at 7.
7-7:30-Bottle
7:30-Bed

 I will say she is teaching me to not "follow a schedule."  Before I knew she was tired and needed a nap, so I tried to help her sleep.  Now I'm learning how to follow her schedule and let her lead.  She is letting me know when she is hungry.  Dropping feedings and naps was never this difficult with Hudson, at least I didn't even notice when we did, I just dropped them and he was fine.  Hannah requires lots of work and baby steps on stretching feedings/naps but that's ok because I'm patient and learning to follow her cues.  I will say though, if she you don't listen to her sleep cues (rubbing her eyes, fussiness after a feeding) and wait too long, it's rough getting her to sleep.  Hannah does best at home, keeping her routine.

All in all, Miss Hannah is pretty happy most of the time unless she's fighting her naps, which is often, or hungry. Hannah is a delight and she looks forward to each day with lots of energy and excitement.  I will say how can you not love this face?
  

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Jared turned another  year older in January.  He is now 32, wow, that's old!  Ha ha, just kidding it's more like 32 years young.  I love this man more than words can express.  He is kind, caring, loving, thoughtful and one of the hardest working men I know.  I'm so thankful for his love and patience, especially with the birth of our Hannah.  For his birthday I thought I would do a little reminiscing:

Here is Jared with the birth of Hudson.  


"It's a Hudson!"

Feeding Hud Bud in the NICU






Then here he is with our Miss Hannah


Hannah's first bath


Getting ready to take her home!




Yes days after I had Hannah, we went to the fair.  Jared was such a sport.  The fair isn't his favorite place to go but he was a trooper and we had so much fun.

For his birthday this year, his parents drove up for the evening and Tiff & Raylee happened to be in town as well.  They call came over for a nice dinner from Outback, yes we did carryout!  3 young kids and a restaurant does not sound like fun to me!  It was so relaxing at home.  

Raylee is 9 months here and he was fascinated with Hudson.  She would crawl and chase Hudson while giggling, spitting, and climbing on him.  He wasn't the biggest fan.  We kept telling him soon he'll have to get used to it with Hannah!



Happy Birthday to the best daddy in town!  We love you!


Dancing


One of Hudson & Hannah's favorite activities is dancing.  We have an iPhone doc and Hudson loves to have it close to the edge, he's very specific about this, so he can see the songs that are playing either on Pandora or my iTunes account.  He loves to pause it or skip to the next song…I'm gonna have to start putting some parameters on this!


The best part of his dancing is his dancing rope


He loves to show Hannah his "moves" and his dancing rope.





Every once in a while he takes a break to play with his sister.



I can just hear him right now "Here you go Hannah!"  

*Our new favorite Christian CD is from The Rizers.  They are awesome, youtube them!

Washer/Dryer Fun

 I love front loaders for this reason alone:



That's right, it's hours of free entertainment!  Ok for Hannah it's not hours but it lasts a while.  
Here is Hudson doing the same thing






Thank you Whirlpool for hours of "efficiency" for this mamma!

Friday, February 1, 2013

Hudson @ 3 1/2


3 1/2 is my favorite age!  Ha I know I know I say it all the time but look at this picture!

You know he's standing there singing, looking at himself in the mirror, cocked to one side, in his underwear.  I love it!

Then there are these types of moments:





My super hero who didn't want to wear his mask but saw all the other kids at the party wearing theres so he he put it on:).  



One of our favorite games lately is hide n seek.  He counts or I count and he hides in the same place almost every time.  I try to make it as exciting as I can when I find him:).




We've even become a little skier!






But then he wanted to go back to sledding…well actually it's just pulling his sled:).