Your You-Ness

{6 months old}
things i don't want to forget:

you play with my hair while eating - twist it around your hand and run your fingers through it. it's such a sweet gesture. i've been thinking about chopping most of it off, but you make me reconsider. 

speaking of hand movements, you are now practicing your dexterity by repeatedly opening and closing your fist. this is especially adorable when you're drifting off to sleep and we can just barely see your little hand peeking up over the pack&play (and then disappearing.. and then reappearing.. and then disappearing...)

you also like to delicately place your hand on our faces, or grab it with both and pull us toward you (so sweet!!). 

(you & aunt Loryn practicing a face grab/backwards hug situation)

i even love your "hunger face." - don't get me wrong, i would never want you to be hungry, but occasionally when you are especially ravenous, your eyes lock on to the target and you open your mouth as wide as possible while taking short, forceful breaths. i need to get that on tape. 

sometimes when you wake up in the wee hours of the morn, you don't go back to sleep right away. you just sit there and talk. daddy and i listen to your "aaaa. aaa. aaaaaaa"ing and can't help but laugh - even when we want to be mad that you're keeping us up.

it's official. you have inherited daddy's "crazy eyes." in other words, when you've been asleep for any length of time and awaken suddenly, your bloodshot, wide-eyed stare pierces through my very soul.. (well that may be a bit dramatic but you clearly look POed). don't worry, wake daddy up at the wrong time and i'm sure you'll get to experience them yourself someday. 

you are for real a professional ninja now. or baby beckham. those kicks are strong! and you kick with a ferocity i've not witnessed before. you've even taken to pulling your knees up and kicking off when mommy or daddy is holding you, and one of these days you're just going to do a backflip right out of my arms. careful munchkin!!

you gave us our first card for valentine's day. it had a picture of you sitting there smiling triumphantly and a little construction-paper footprint bouquet (made cuter by the little uneven monkey-toeprints). i cried.

you recognize "your peeps" now. anyone you know can summon a most brilliant dimpled smile (and sometimes even people you don't know). i love that you do this. you amaze me.

The Return of the Crud

so basically, you've been sick for almost 4 weeks now. it started off as a bit of congestion, and you had your first (low-grade) fever on Friday the 29th (of January) - which also happened to be the first of several snowdays in the past couple weeks from which you were quarantined. :(  we could tell you felt yucky, but even then it was only mildly irritating to your normally-sweet disposition, so we just let you sleep as much as possible and tried to wait it out. but in the last week and a half, the congestion has morphed into a runny nose and produced a scary-sounding cough that occasionally causes you to projectile vomit on anything in your path. not so much a good time for the washing machine to up and quit. 

just last week, you started putting both your fists in your mouth, drooling fiercely and then screaming in pain when we give you something to gnaw on. you seem to be calmed by the miraculous orajel swabs i preemptively purchased for teething. does this mean you're teething? and if so, those toofers need to stop hurting you. why do babies need teeth anyway? 

of course, mommy and daddy freak out a tad at the slightest screech (you being our first baby and all), so we took you to dr. brassfield on monday. to be fair, your cold symptoms did seem to be worsening rather than clearing up. but as we suspected, there's not much we can do to help you (you seriously can't imagine how frustrating that is!). if i haven't mentioned it before, we love our doc and ansley does, too. when she's not sick. 

at least we ruled out the big things. dr. b looked at you and said "i bet you don't cry for long at your house." nope. can't imagine why...

i guess i should take a second to explain. first, a disclaimer: i am not an expert, nor do i recommend raising your child exactly as i do. i know there are a myriad of methods out there and, really, who knows which is better than another. what works for me may not work for anyone else. so i'll try not to give "advice" unless it's asked. the following (and any further parental nuggets i choose to share herein) is simply "how we do." take it or leave it. right or wrong. crazy-brilliant or just literally crazy.

i've mentioned babywise in here before, and though i believe in its merits and fully trust its effectiveness, much like me and the pill, babywise and i have broken up. it was a mutual decision and an amicable split, but b-dub and i differ when it comes to the "cry it out" scenario.

there may come a time when i will feel the need to do such a thing. and i may eat my words with a healthy dose of my own saltwater tears, but at the current moment i simply cannot understand why i would set my baby down and leave her to cry when we can rock or sway for a few minutes, or even lay her in the crib while i watch over her as she floats painlessly off to dreamland. you could say she has us wrapped around her abnormally-long little fingers. but i just think right now she's a pretty good little baby, and i'm fairly certain she's not lacking the ability to soothe herself (her personal morning talkshow is evidence of this..). 

we did get into the habit of co-sleeping during the sickness as i feared for her respiratory function and needed to hear her breathing, but are finally easing back to the crib and she's done fabulously. yes, there are times when jon or i go to her in the middle of the night to re-insert the paciplug, but for the most part she sleeps well. and for me, that's enough. 

**disclaimer 2: if you're feeling out of sorts after reading this post, you're not loopy. i'm retro-posting, since i didn't have time to do so when i first started writing this. if you're new to.. me.. or this blog, i'm going to be doing quite a bit of this since i have "journal entries" that date back beyond a year and am seriously trying to organize pictures to go with them. i also have a list of pics and videos to add before i really "catch up" and can start posting in realtime again. so please forgive me if i don't get to the latest ansley stat. i'm trying!! i know.. i suck. 

will cute ansley pics help???

(snow-suiting up!)

(but.. now how do i get to my hands?)

My Funny Valentine

{6 months in a week!}

(don't mommy and daddy just have the most beautiful valentine in the whole wide world??! we think so :)

For our first Valentines together, we decided to take it low-key and just follow what has become our weekend tradition of going out to breakfast. We sat in a booth at Tex & Shirley's where I unloaded every toy and plaything known to man and you proceeded to ignore them and flirt with every boy baby in sight. Little harlot. ;)  There must be something about boys, because you seem to stare a bit longer at them [I'm convinced this all started on your first "girls' lunch" with Heidi and I when a mom walked by with a little boy and you literally turned your head to follow them as they passed]. 

(your "flirtface")

Well this particular day there happened to be an extremely cute little dude at the table next to us with his family. His sister gave him a Valentine (which I just thought was super-specially-cute anyway) and out of the blue he lets out the most charming baby belly laugh! Daddy looked at you and said "What the heck?! Why don't you do that yet?" And come to find out, laughing baby was literally only 1 day older than you. "Well," daddy said, "that's fine. She'll be laughing tomorrow." Hehehe I wouldn't hold my breath. Now daddy and I both know that babies develop at different rates; and as far as talking goes, you really aren't unusually vocal. So it's totally ok that you're not laughing yet. You do at least giggle. But then we started thinking - should we be taking this personally? I mean, maybe we just aren't that funny..   

;)

Happy Valentines Day, my little lovebug.

(playing the bongos)

(way too happy about that coupon in your hands. that's mommy's little girl!!)