Fascination

I bought her this spinner toy awhile ago. You might remember it from an earlier post. Well, she finally figured it out! Object permanence is also in place. Ryan was hiding the remote the other day under his hand (which, or course, she just has to play with), and she was staring at his hand, and then began picking up his fingers one by one to find it. Back to the spinner toy. She played with it for the longest time tonight, watching the little balls pop up. It’s so fun to watch her discover new things. It’s just downright fascinating! She is also getting so much closer to crawling. She is in the stage where she pulls one leg out, like she is trying to get onto her knees. So close! I bet we have a crawler before Christmas. One last note…she giggles a lot more now than ever before. She will be playing with her toys and I will be reading and I will here this little giggle. She is laughing at herself playing! Too cute. She also giggles when she sees Ryan and I, spontaneously! Does she have a bit of her Daddy in her?? Hmmm….OK, one more thing…I swear she is saying Mama and Dada, in reference to Ryan or myself. Isn’t it a bit young for that? But I promise ya, she does it. When Ryan got home tonight, she said directly to him Da Da Da several times. But when she is fussing for me, she says Ma Ma Ma or just Ma Ma. Too early? Maybe, and maybe it really isn’t in reference to one of us but I sure love hearing it!

Bad Hair Day

Who can resist such a silly picture as this? After bathing tonight, I rubbed her head with the towel and when I pulled it off, her hair was standing straight up! Gotta love moments like this. Oh how she will not like me so much when she is older and dating…I can already see the wedding reception picture slideshow...

Entertainment

Princess Peanut has become a lot more independent lately. It’s actually kind of nice right now, because I can sit on the couch and do my reading, and she will entertain herself for a long time! She LOVES to take her toys out of the bin. I didn’t know this, but both Ryan and I have been doing that with her for quite some time. We load all the toys into the lime green container and set it in front of her and she completely unloads it. Sometimes she tips it over and dumps it. She is in heaven—so many toys to choose from! When all the toys are out and she looks like she is losing interest, we can load it back up and she will start all over again! Cinderella has taken a back burner with this new little task! Thank you Mark and Jaymie for the bin--who knew two years ago it would end up as a baby toy?!
She literally plays with every single toy in the container. Loves them all!
I love this shot because she looks like she is giving the "yes!" pull with her fist and arm pulling down.
Didn't I mention she mimicks me? Well, here she is now, reading her own book, just like Mommy!Doesn't that just look like loads of fun? Who wouldn't want to play with so many wonerfully colorful toys?

The copycat

It sure looks like Jacie is mimicking me these days…This is a picture of the great mess I blogged about before, but this time it shows her in the mess looking so proud. Maybe if I had her do my school work with me, we could get twice as much of it done!

Thanksgiving Part Two

We had some of our friends from medical school join us this year for the Big Feast and shopping the next day. Dave and Griselda came up from the south-eastern part of the state with their three boys. Bless their hearts, they were prepared to rough it with no power!! We had a wonderful time, and Griselda helped me save the gravy from going extinct. That is a story for another day, but one I will not ever forget! Of their three boys, their youngest is 3 ½ weeks younger than Jacie. They were so cute together and Jacie just wanted to eat him up. She tried to kiss him while we had them sitting next to each other for pictures, and she giggled at him several times. Babies are so fun, but even more fun when you see them interact with each other.
Griselda and I went shopping the next morning and managed to get all the deals we wanted! We let at 7:30 AM, and went to Kohl’s where we got in line right away. One of would shop while the other waited in line and vice versa. It worked out really well. We were in line until 10:00!! It was well worth it, though. I got Jacie’s Christmas gift for half off, a down comforter for $110 off, and some other good stuff. We had a blast!

She has a plan, you can see it in her face...

Here she is getting ready to plant a big one on him. Doesn't he look like he knows what is coming?

Gotcha, big boy!

She succeeded! This little look says Triumph!!

First Thanksgiving

Jacie has enjoyed her very first thanksgiving! And what an enjoyment it was. Little does she know that thanksgiving is generally a day filled with lots of good food, visits from friends or family, browsing through the Black Friday ads, and then, if you are lucky, a nap. However, this thanksgiving, Jacie woke up at 3 AM, then 4 AM and decided it was time to play. Daddy Bear was kind enough to give Momma Bear a couple more hours of sleep before she needed to get up to prepare the scrumptious holiday food. This is all a good thought. It didn’t work out so well, though. At 5 AM, Momma Bear woke up to a screaming child, got out of bed to go see what was wrong and discovered Princess Peanut was crying because the power went out and she was in a dark basement! Finally, we got some more food in her belly and she settled in for a nice slumber, as did Ryan and I. Not much you can do when the power is out. I called the Power Company to report the outage and they said it was because of an auto accident in Flint. Little did we know we would be without power until 4 PM!! We were having 17 people over for dinner at 1 PM. What to do…Well, Ryan got up to take care of the sump pump issue so we didn’t flood the basement, and I began making calls to our out of town friends to let them know the issue. After a couple hours of not knowing what to do, I called our in-town friends to tell them. A couple of the families offered up their homes for dinner, and we took one of them up on it. In the meantime, I made pretzel salad, stuffing, put the turkey in to oven, and waited…and waited…and waited. Did you know you could cook most of your thanksgiving dinner with no power? The hard part was transferring all that food to another location 30 minutes away…in the snow no less!! Thankfully, I did a lot of the stuff the night before, like pies and devilled eggs and so forth. It all worked out, we had far more food that 17 people could eat, and enjoyed a nice warm home with our dinner just two hours later than planned. How’s that for a first thanksgiving day?! Thanks to our fantastic friends, The Youngs, the Skeehans, The Balls, and of course, The Olsens for a wonderfully full and exciting Thanksgiving day!
This is Jacies way of saying she won't eat any pie. What am I talking about...she loves food!!

Playing Catch

I always wonder what Ryan and BJ do when I am gone. Ryan has been telling me that he plays catch with Princess Peanut. I believed him, but seriously doubted they could ‘play catch’. However, I caught it on film! It is the cutest thing! We were enjoying a relaxing evening watching Steelers football on television and working on the computer (as usual). I walked over to where Ryan and The Precious were and they were in this cute little stance facing each other. Jacie was throwing the ball to Ryan. Apparently, they can do this for quite some time. If you will notice, there is an array of toys on the floor of the video. We try many methods of entertainment, but it seems the catch game is the best for long term entertainment. Who knew?

In other areas of her sweet little life, she is trying really hard to pull herself up on furniture. The other day she was sitting near me while I was on the computer (see a pattern here?), and she grabbed the table leg to pull herself up and bumped her head. She let go and looked at the table leg kind of dazed and did this “uuuuhhhhhh” sound, kind of like you would do if you were bonked in the head. Then she tried again. No success, but she has managed to pull herself up numerous times in her crib.

Big Beds and Big Girls

I make my bed most every morning, and when I do, I place Jacie at the head of the bed. I always cover her up as I go and she thinks its great. It reminds me of a story I read as a kid, but can’t remember the name of the book. Its this little bear that gets tucked into the bed and only his ears are showing. Sound familiar to anyone? Not that this is anything wonderful to share, but just thought I would share a rambling thought.

Last week she decided she would sleep through the night. Then her schedule got thrown off Friday and Saturday and she reverted back to her old ways of waking at 1 AM and 4 AM. I’ve tried the “crying it out” thing and it just doesn’t work on her, or me, or Ryan. I’m sorry, but letting a baby cry and scream for 45 minutes is not worth it to me. The longer and harder I try, the angrier she gets. I know these nights of waking won’t last forever, but those nights that she slept all the way through were such a tease!!

Future Writer

This little mess may look just like that—a mess. But I can tell you it was not intentional. Jacie was sitting by me at the computer, and she was quite for a really long time while I was doing some school work. I turned around and saw this wonderful array of my school papers strewn all the way around her. I stacked them on the floor to get them off my desk for some reason and she found a playland full of fun!

The Littlest Steelers Fan

Ryan went to a Monday Night Steelers game in Pittsburgh and had an awesome time! He came home with two sweatshirts, a third terrible towel (he already had two), Steelers Crocs (shoes), a poncho, a long sleeved t-shirt for me, and this little bib for Jacie Girl. Oh, and the local paper from the day after the awesome awesome game. They won, of course.

For those that don't know, the Terrible Towel is a yellow towel the size of a hand towel that the fans wave at the game, when they are mad, I think. Very famous thing. If you watch a Pittsburgh game on TV you can see all these yellow flags waving every now and then. Pretty cool. Now, Jacie has her very own!

7 months old!

Princess Firebutt is really 7 1/2 months, almost 8 months (next Monday!!) old, but we couldn't get in for those shots because she was sick and cranky. We actually went in one evening and she screamed the whole time, so they didn't even get one shot done. She cried the second time we went in, but at least we got a few pictures, although they are not the greatest. Not my favorites, that's for sure. I'm not sure if it's because of the color red, or because of the background or what, but I really didn't care for them.

She is now standing against furniture on her own, and will play there for quite some time. She's liked standing since very young, maybe 4 weeks old, so this doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is how they manage to learn new skills, like crawling and so forth. She is almost there! She will be sitting on her bum and reach all the way forward for a toy until she is on her hands and knees. Once, she actually got one hand forward, then the next lifted up and then--plop! right onto the chest. She is also doing this graceful fall thing where she will fall backwards, but controlled like she is doing a pilates move with Mari Windsor. I'm thinking she wants to be on her back because if you set her up, she will do it again. Cute little tyke.
This may look like a smile, but it is really more like a cry getting ready to burst forth. Gotta take what you can get!
I have no idea why they insist on getting shots of her on her belly every single time. They are my least favorite shots every time!

The Head

BJ (Baby Jacie) has some wild and wacky hair these days. It is getting longer and longer, thus crazier and crazier. She has that little bald spot that babies get on the back of their heads, but long hair on top. Very cute. Its fun to look back at her old pictures and see how little hair she used to have!

Why do they do this to me?

In other news...we got her to take some formula--two days in a row! You might recall that she refused formula when we tried to start her on it before this semester started. She would cry if we gave it to her. However, I had this most brilliant idea to try it again and see what she would do with it. I thought she might take it simply because she's had so many new flavors introduced into her diet through food. I thought that if she would eat something so gross as the turkey & green beans combo, or the mixed vegetables & beef combo, she just might take formula. She won't drink it in a straight up 'one scoop to 2 ounce mix'; I have to make it slightly watered down, but she will drink a whole 6 ounces in about an hour or so. She is a slow drinker, but we will work on getting her up to speed. This opens up a whole new world to me since I have been very concerned about nursing next semester with my super crazy schedule. Other things in my life have just gotten a bit crazier too, so it will be super nice to possibly wean her before the start of the new semester. Originally, I had hoped to nurse for the entire first year, but it is looking less and less like a real possibility.

Last note of the night--Jacie had another cousin born this weekend! Ethan was born Saturday November 3 in California to my brother's wife (congrats, guys!!). When I told Peanut she has a new cousin, she got all excited and flapped her arms and squealed in delight. Could she possibly have understood me, and maybe knew he was coming?? Did they know each other before?? Hmmm...something to ponder!

Happy Halloween!

I know this is not the greatest shot, but it is hilarious! It was taken with a camera phone in poor light, but I love it just the same. Happy and safe trick or treating, y'all!!

Eskimo

The Precious does not like wearing sweatshirts, coats, jackets, hats, blankets, or anything that will keep her warm. However, I like to walk, so I make her wear stuff in the frigid Michigan weather. I bundled her up on Sunday and we went for a walk--it was freezing! We didn't go too far, it was so cold. Today, I thought I would just layer her up a bit more. She had on two jackets, two hats and three blankets. The temp outside? 63 degrees. I was sweating by the end in just a sweatshirt, and when I finally got home, she was quite toasty. Probably too toasty!

Other news...we are surviving the never ending sniffles and crabbiness from such. Humidifiers are the best, and those little nose suckers are great. Princess Peanut would not agree, though. She HATES it, but it helps her breathe better. Lots of finger sucking at our house this past week. We are thinking of renaming her Maggie (from the Simpsons) because she sucks those fingers so much. Or maybe Mags for short. I'm surprised her fingers aren't all pruny or something.

Still no teeth, and not crawling yet, but getting closer every day with both!

This works, too

Little Butterbean just cracks me up sometimes. While we were doing the laundry, I gave her some toys to play with to distract her from the clothes, and it worked pretty well. As is her favorite thing to do these days, she threw them. She loves to throw anything, but especially when she decides it has served its purpose and she no longer needs it. This time, however, she deicded she wanted it back, and reached for it. It was just out of her reach, so she tipped over to the side. That seemed to be OK, because she layed there and played with it for a long time, on her side! however, any other day or minute of the week, you lay her on her side or anything that does not involve sitting up or food and she gets M-A-D!

One funny thing I wish I could have caught on film was a throwing match she had the other day. When she wants to be held but just can't be for whatever reason, the last thing you can do is distract her with a toy. Nana sent this super cute witch that says Happy Halloween on it. She really enjoyed it the first few days, so I thought maybe it would trick her into sitting still for a couple more mniutes. Was I wrong. She pitched that thing across the room. I tried again. This time, her swing was so fierce that it flew out of her hands on the upswing and landed right on top of her head. I just looked at her, giggling and she had this look of "What the heck?" She took her little fist, picked it off the top of her head and chucked it again. I gave in after that and picked her up. The result? Happiness.

La Familia

Somehow, this picture didn't make it onto the blog! My sister-in-law asked me for a family photo and it got me to thinking about what we had. This one was taken when Jacie was three months old and we were visiting my Dad in Boise. Smiles? No. But she's cute anyway!

Momma's Little Helper

Jacie loves to help me. In fact, she helps me so much that we get twice the work done. Or is it that I have to do twice the work. Well, at any rate she sure likes to help out. We had a day filled with alundry and washing sheets and towels and getting clothes put away. She thought it was great, all these new things to play with!

Halloween

Can there be any cuter Pea in the house? The ones she gets on her shirt when she eats sure aren't as cute! Our very good friend Dawn Myers gave us this costume a long time ago, before Jacie was born I think. Who knew it would be almost too small before she got to wear it? It seemed so big at the time. She didn't care much for it, but then again, its the first time she has been green.
Her little feet are crammed into the bottom, but her arms are too short to get out. Hee Hee. Halloween will be so fun this year!

New Toys!

Ryan and I went to the store together tonight with Jacie Girl, kinda like a date (insert smile). We felt she was advancing well out of her toys--she was becoming bored with them, so we thought it might be nice to get her something a bit more challenging. Ryan picked out this roller thing-a-ma-jig. I got her something that looks like a top where you push the button and stuff moves around inside, but the outside stays stationary. Anyway, she loves both. She played with mine in the store in the grocery cart and played with Ryan's as soon as we got it home and blown up. We are hoping it will encourage her to crawl. She scoots a tiny bit on her bum, and plops on her face quite a bit when she reaches for stuff. Is that progress towards crawling, I wonder?

Pay no attention to stuff in the background. School stuff is everywhere in our house, and the white and purple is for the Winnie The Pooh fleece throw I am making her--someday when I have time...or neglect my school projects...or something else like dinner, or sleep, or laundry, or...
What do I do now?

Fun Mail from Grandma Jo

Everyone likes a little fun mail every now and then, and we are no different! Grandma Jo sent us this fun fall outfit and we just had to wear it the next day. I just love new clothes!!

Silly things

Some of you, or maybe all of you, are bored by the short video clips I post, but they give me the giggles, and Ryan, too. I post these for the benefit of family who enjoy them. So, for the rest of ya, sorry! On this clip, we were enjoying some play time and Ryan started to tap his feet and Jacie would just laugh and laugh. She actually had a really laughy-type day. She laughs mostly at Ryan, who she thinks is the funniest person around. He can do anything and she will laugh. Silly girl.

To view the video, click on the box, then click on the arrow and it should play for you.

You can take the baby out of the routine, but you can't take the routine out of the baby!

Whoever invented this wonderfully nifty little contraption deserves a gold star! Jacie has to have her routine at night or else she won't go to bed. Usually Ryan will shower with her and then I get her dressed and fed and off to sleep. But sometimes it just isn't possible for Ryan to be home, and I have to take care of it. She is getting too big for the infant tub, plus, she really doesn't like it. I thought for sure that if we could get her into the tub sitting up, she would enjoy the splashing and playing. Sure enough, she enjoyed splashing the water all around and grabbing her toys. It takes longer to get her down at night now, but its worth it since she enjoys the bath now. I think that some fun and interesting bath toys will be on the Christmas list this year.
The red on her belly is from leaning against the front of the chair so much. I didn't put enough water in the tub and she was having to strain to get to the water to splash. Oh, the lessons we learn...

The Pooping Face

All babes have it--that face when you just know they are taking care of business in their drawers. We (Ryan, Baby J and I) were spending some fun giggly family time in the living room last night when all of a sudden the smiles stopped, the grunts came out and business was taken care of. Then, back to the smiles, giggles and happiness again!

Cuteness all around!

Jacie may be almost 7 months, but we still had to do the 6 month shots! Finally, after many start and stops and cancelled appointmnets, we took her cranky butt in and got at least a few shots! She hated being there today, cried for almost every shot. Anyway, this adorable little outfit was sent it to us by Nana and she loved it so much (and we do too!) that we just had to have her pictures done in it. Plus, I have a thing for hats...
I don't know if you can appreciate the cuteness of this picture. There is a tear on her sweet little cheek.
First shot of the day! This monkey has been with her since before birth and we have a newborn shot of her with it, and then this one. I want to take her pciture with it at 1 year, 18 month and so forth to show her as she grows in comparision to the monkey.
One bathtub shot is all she would allow.

This little frown is the Great Grandma Powers frown. For her 1 month shots, she has the same frown. It is so full of expression to me, but that might be just because it reminds me of my Grandma! In other Jacie news: she doesn't seem to like peaches, but loves Carrots, Green beans, and peas. She doesn't care for her baby cereal anymore and I think she is working on getting her teeth (nope, none yet!) I have no idea what I am looking for, but it looks like I can see her teeth through her gums coming down on the top and bottom. and for the best news--she has slept a solid 8 hours two nights in a row all on her own! However, I wake up at about the 6 hour mark and lay there until she wakes up to eat. Does that ever end??