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Enjoying the day

Teeth, Babbling, and Visitors!

Audia's second tooth finally cut the gum late last week. Thank goodness! She seems much more comfortable, and as a result, much less fussy now that it's finally broken through. I've heard that teething gets progressively less painful for babies as they get more and more teeth...I sure hope this is the case for our little one. I hate seeing her in pain and not being able to do anything about it!

She's been babbling up a storm these days; her most repeated sound currently is "Ma" which is so much fun. I like pretending that she knows what she's saying when she says "Mama" over and over.

I think she's weeks away from crawling (Chris thinks days, but I'm holding my breath for a little more time before we have a totally mobile baby). She is getting stronger by the day, and is scooting quite a bit with her legs. She can life her entire torso with her arms, so now it's just a matter of her figuring out how to put the two together. Eeek!

We had a busy, fun weekend, as my best friend Jenne was in town. Audia was unsure of her at first, but after a couple of hours, was comfortable and enjoying her company almost as much as I did :-) We had a picnic on Sunday, which was a blast, and it was pretty funny to see Audia's reaction to the grass on her bare feet. Below are a sample of photos from the weekend; as always, the rest can be seen on my site.

Teeth and Scary Movie Day

I finally managed to get a shot of Audia's first tooth. They taught us in Photo I that timing is everything when shooting animated objects; one second can make or break a shot, and thus, you should always take a roll or two of your subject (back in the days of film.....*nostalgic sigh*). So, of about 15 photos, this is the only one where you can actually see (kind of) her tooth peaking through her gums:See a bigger version here. (And get a load of those eyes! They look Aquamarine here....so pretty!) Today, I noticed that the second tooth is starting to emerge. It's right below the surface, and I'm sure will break the gum today or tomorrow. Which explains why she has seemed so uncomfortable and has been so needy the past few days, yesterday and today especially. Hopefully some Tylenol will help her feel a bit more like herself!

On another note, Happy Scary Movie Day! (Valentine's day to all of you saps out there) This month I have been blessed with two scary movie days in a row; Friday the 13th yesterday and V-day today. I do wonder how we will go about (and IF we will go about) introducing the pleasure of scary movie day to Audia as she gets older. She does seem to like to be startled, so I am hoping that she has an affinity for frightening things like her mom, but it will be interesting to see how and if we celebrate Scary Movie Day when she's old enough to actually understand the meaning of the word "scary" and that the red icing on my decapitated cookies is supposed to be blood......I am guessing this will be the last year we celebrate Scary Movie Day for at least 8 or 9 years. How sad.

Check out this cool invitation Chris made back in 2006

Sun bonnets and dresses

Well, bonnet #2 is still a little on the big side, but I figure she'll grow into it :-)

I had enough fabric left over to attempt a sundress, for which I found a free pattern online. It's cute, but there are a few things I'd do a bit differently second time around, namely adding a zipper or snaps so I don't have to pull the thing up over her diaper, and make "normal" straps. The tie straps are cute, but a pain to tie every time I put the thing on her. I am guessing the pattern designer does not have a baby of her own.

I've had a lot of fun having sewing projects to work on (I'm a pretty project-oriented person), and it's pretty cool that I spent a total of about 7 bucks on fabric and managed to make two bonnets and a dress (and I still have a bit of fabric left over....maybe enough for a shirt or something). Perhaps I'll be making more of Audia's clothes for her in the future.

5 Months!

Audia turned 5 months old yesterday! We spent the afternoon with Auntie Heather and Uncle Lance, playing and chatting and having lunch. Audia had a lot of fun watching and grabbing at an Elmo puppet that Heather brought out. Looks like we'll be puppet shopping soon. She was such a hoot to watch!

As for her current stats, she is now 17 lbs, 9 oz and 27.25 Inches tall. This puts her at the 99th percentile for height and the 94th percentile for weight. Tall and skinny like her daddy :-)

Last week we noticed that she had cut her first tooth! It still isn't all the way up yet, but I think it's just a matter of days. Unfortunately for her, I think it's going to be a double whammy, as there is a visible lump next to the cut tooth and she has been extremely fussy and clingy the past few days. I feel so bad because she will bite on something and then cry, and then bite on it again and cry again. Poor dear seems to be having a lot harder time with the second one than she had with the first.

Despite the weather being cold (in the 60's) and rainy, I've been attempting to make her a sun bonnet without a pattern. My first attempt is just a little a bit big (heavy on the sarcasm here...) and a little too floppy.....Good thing I bought extra fabric!

This and That

First off, this is really scary. Yet another reason to avoid High Fructose Corn Syrup (which, admittedly, I will have a problem doing because I love me my sweets....But I am sure I can find cookies and candy not made with HFCS.) What's really messed up is that the technology to make mercury free HFCS exists, but isn't being regularly used. Screw that.

On a brighter note, my baby shower cake is famous. Here is a short list of websites it's now on, thanks to Cakewrecks (and thanks to my friend, Anita, who introduced me to cakewrecks and suggested I submit the cake in the first place):

the official star wars blog
The Gizmodo blog
The geeks are sexy blog
The Jawa Report
The Briny Depths Blog
Retweet
And The Wired 'geek dad' Blog

Any suggestions for getting free cake from Wuollet (Numm Yummy!) for giving them publicity? You know, outside of straight up asking for free cake.....

21 weeks

Audia's 21 weeks old this week. She has become so much more interested in and aware of her surroundings in the past couple of weeks. Part of this, I think, has to do with being able to see a lot farther (her eyesight is almost completely developed at this point, according to webmd.com), and part of it has to do with her maturing to a point where she is really trying to understand and figure out what everything is and does. Because of this, she is able to entertain herself for longer and longer periods. On the flip side of this coin, she is figuring out how to communicate more effectively with us, and has started to "complain"(read: shriek at the top of her lungs) much more intensely when she is bored or uncomfortable.

It's no secret at this point that we've adopted attachment parenting (a good description of attachment parenting can be found here: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/10/T130300.asp ) as our parenting style. We never set out to subscribe to any particular parenting style, rather have tried different things and followed what feels most natural for us. I realize that in some aspects, this has the potential to set us up for more gradual transitions to independence as she gets older, but I am really ok with this. And, I am also sure that she will suprise us in some areas by deciding on her own that she's ready to do this that or the other thing on her own. We have been cosleeping at least half the night every night for a couple of weeks now and have all been getting much more sleep as a result. I've also noticed that Audia has been a lot more relaxed and happy during the day since we started this. Plus, there is nothing better than waking up to my precious girl nuzzling and smiling up at me. Snuggle time in the morning with my hubby and daughter is my favorite part of the day.

In other news, Audia's "real" hair is definitely coming in. She has this longer tuft up on the top of her head where she didn't really lose her hair at all, and the rest has finally made itself noticable. She will not be a blondie like her daddy was as a kid; it's definitely a light to medium brown. and, based on the longer hair up top, it looks pretty straight, which makes mommy very happy. I was dreading learning how to tame curly hair. It may have a slight wave to it; it's too early to tell. But it definitely won't be super curly.

Her favorite toy these days is her feet. And her socks. She regularly pulls off her sock and chews on it. I call her my little sock eater. And, when she's gotten both of her socks off and thoroughly soaked them, she starts sucking on her toes. (see photos below) She's always making me laugh :-)

On a non-baby note, I am 99.9% sure I broke my left pinkie toe yesterday. Sharp, throbbing pain and totally black and blue :-( Those pack-n-play legs jump out at you when you least expect them to.....