Bananas for Banana

Terrill and I took Hannah to the used book store last week to browse around. After all the snow I've been looking for reasons to leave the house, and ideally the neighborhood, and since I had a $35 credit at the store (I sold him some books a few months ago), I figured this was a better outing than say....Target where I would inevitably find a use for a super cool cheese slicer and then kick my butt later when that cheese slicer showed up on the credit card statement and I struggled with where in the budget I could justify a $3 cheese slicer that slices too thick to be useful.  See, I think I know why stay-at-home moms shop: there is nothing else to do. That sounds bad...I assure you I am not spending the rest of my time watching General Hospital in my housecoat while popping bonbons.  No, I take Hannah's development seriously and only turn the TV on when I need to cut her fingernails.  I read books on baby development and I try very hard to make sure her playtimes are varied.  But I also consider outings a playtime of sorts.  I think it's good to get her out of the house and looking at stuff other than what hangs on the four walls that constantly surround us.  So Target it is.  


Before I continue, I want to remind you that in general, I hate shopping.  I mean, I like grocery shopping, and I'm not gonna lie, I can get pretty sucked in to the magnificence that is Target, but for the most part, shopping is annoying to me, so much so, that Christmas is my least favorite holiday because it comes with heavy consumer strings attached.  For me, shopping with a purpose is just stressful and boring unless I'm with someone who knows how to make it fun (or if I'm putzing around the mall with my mom as a way to spend QT not because we're actually looking for stuff--pre-Hannah that was how we spent our QT). But when I'm looking for something, I get stressed trying to find what I need for a price I think is fair. I'm not the kind of person who is willing to root through a sale rack looking for a great deal and I'm not the kind of person who is willing to pay the sticker price on the majority of things I pick up.  That leaves me as the kind of person who buys nothing in favor of wearing the same ol' holey sweatpants day in and day out.  I'm so bad that Eric actually congratulates me when I buy something for myself. It's pretty funny really.  I bought a pair of Birkenstocks over the summer because walking around on flip flops and ballet flats with 30 extra pounds attached to my navel was killing my feet.  Of course, I didn't buy them until the last month so they didn't save me any soreness, but it took me that long to realize they were necessary. So yeah, they showed up at the house, and Eric patted me on the back.  And of course they ended up being too big and looking silly and I wore them anyway so I can't return them now so I'm kicking myself in the butt for spending all that money on a pair of shoes that are of a quality where I should be able to wear them for eons but since I got the wrong size....I have no idea where I was going with that rant, but the point is that being a stay-at-home mom can get kind of boring so I find myself trying to find outings and since it's cold out, I need indoor outings and I don't know what to do that is indoors (but if anyone has any ideas that do not include walking around Target, please share). 


Oh yeah, the book store. I love used book stores. I'm bummed that this one moved from Hampden because I can't just stroll down there randomly anymore like I used to, but at least now it's an excuse for an actual outing and that's fun.  I went straight for the parenting section and found a couple of mommy memoir type books that I greedily scooped up--this is my new favorite genre.  Creative nonfiction/memoirs have been my favorite genre since reading Go Ask Alice in middle school (though I didn't realize it was an actual genre until I took a class on it).  I started one of the books the other night.  It's called Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lammott and I LOVE it!  Lammott is totally real with the kind of self-deprecating humor that I never get tired of.  I love reading her and thinking, "oh, yep, been there" or "I know how you feel...." It's nice to find writers who have found the words for feelings I've been struggling to put down on paper.  And it's nice to know that as mommies go, I'm pretty normal.  Lammott even trimmed her son's skin once while clipping his nails.  I was trying to find one passage I really liked about how when her son, who was super colicky, would cry for hours, she'd be fine up to a certain point and would then feel herself falling over the precipice of sanity and need to leave the room to breathe and unclench her fists.  That's how I used to feel--like I was totally fine and nurturing for X amount of hours and then a switch flipped and I had to walk away to keep from having a mental breakdown myself.  It's nice to know that mothers everywhere have been feeling that way for a while.  So I can't find that specific part of the book, but I did find the another passage that I really like:


"...one of the worst things about being a parent, for me, is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one's secret insanity and brokenness and rage.  Someone without children, who thinks of me as deeply spiritual, said the other day that motherhood gave me the opportunity to dance with my feelings of inadequacy and anger, and my automatic response was think, Oh, go f*** yourself, you New-Age Cosmica Rama dingdong head--go dance with that one."


This book is written journal style and the above entry is from when her son was only a couple weeks old.  With 6 months behind me, I'm less manic these days and moving back toward my old positive self so I read that passage last night and recalled a conversation I'd had with Laura a while back (and one I also had with Jess over breakfast on Saturday) about how one of my favorite aspects of motherhood was the constant challenge to grow and evolve into a better person. I don't know if everyone births a baby that just intuitively knows its mama's weakness and then plays on it like a cat torturing a baby mole, or if it's just that all babies require exorbitant amounts of patience so those of us who run low on that are bound to improve or die trying, but either way, in my case, I feel like motherhood has plucked me from my comfort zone and tossed me into a UFC cage with my least favorite traits (lack of patience being the only one I'm willing to admit to publicly....) and those traits are on steroids and they're angry and they're determined to win the belt...I have two choices: either put "lack of patience" in a scissor hold until it screams "uncle" and agrees to never again make me curse the moron driver who slows down for green lights and tries to turn left from the right lane without a blinker, or I yell uncle and agree to a lifetime of high blood pressure, a foul mouth, and a sore jaw from constant clenching.  While the latter is tempting, I thrive under a good challenge and have enjoyed my journey toward being a better me, thereby becoming a better mother in the process. I had visions of myself being the most kickass mama around and I don't intend to let those visions be merely visions. When I say I'm gonna do something, I do it to the fullest extent.  Just as Eric. My M.O. is totally "anything worth doing is worth doing kickass."   


I have no idea what I've been rambling about for the past hour because in between sentences I was gmail chatting with both Terrill and my mom. All I really wanted to write is that I'm reading a great new book and that I have a new video to post of Hannah feeding herself for the first time ever. Watching her maneuver her hands to pick up the banana I gave her is pretty cool. Human development is amazing. Every day is like a science experiment...Hope the rant isn't too outlandish or full of grammatical errors because I am way to tired now to proof it before posting....

Oh, and that's the Latin channel playing in the background.  I wanted something Hannah and I could dance to so I turned that music channel on and attempted to salsa her around the house and then forgot to turn it off.  

Hannah Houdini

I took a couple videos the other day that I've been meaning to post but....well, you know the deal: time, time, time--always in short.  Hannah seems to be at the age where she learns how to do a thousand new things everyday and everything she does just so happens to be a sheer act of adorable genius-ness.  So to start what will be a couple days in a row of video posting, I present Hannah Houdini.  There's a bouncy seat in the basement that's pretty cool because it has a footpad sensor so it makes noise when Hannah kicks it.  I put her in this seat the other day and she immediately threw herself over onto her stomach and started ooching out the bottom.  I grabbed the camera, flipped her back into the proper position, and quickly hit the record button.  She did not stay in the proper start position for long....

Hannah Houdini: Part 1



Shortly after stopping the recording because it was getting a bit slow, Hannah managed to give herself the final push and get two feet on the floor so I started the recording again to see how far she'd get. She ends up sitting on her butt about a foot from the chair.  As a reminder, after sitting her down, I didn't touch or help her in her ooching.

Hannah Houdini: Part 2



Yes mom, it looks like straps are quickly becoming a necessity....but it's so much more fun to watch her wiggle her way out!

The Tale of the Renegade Poo

Terrill came over today and arrived just as Hannah was waking up from her nap so she (Terrill) accompanied me to pick up Hannah.  While changing Hannah's diaper, we got on the topic of poop--I guess I became one of THOSE moms who can't carry a convo without bringing up baby poop--and I told her the following silly story.  As I was telling it, I thought to myself, "I should blog this," and when I finished telling the story Terrill laughed and said "Why isn't that on the blog??"  So without further ado:

The Tale of the Renegade Poo

Once upon a time (last weekend sometime), a handsome non-prince named Dad changed the diaper of a chubby-cheeked chile named Hannah.  There was a relatively small (the size of a plum maybe but more elongated) solid poo in said diaper so the non-prince laid the diaper on top of the diaper pail rather than inside, presumably with the intention of properly disposing of said poo in the toilet at a later time.  A few hours later, a non-princess who goes by the name of Mama changed the chile's wet diaper and, wishing to put this diaper INSIDE the diaper pail, lifted up the diaper that Dad previously placed on the lid of the pail.  Not knowing there was a little poo hiding inside, Mama lifted the diaper non too carefully which caused the little poo to launch out of the diaper, out of the door to the chile's room, and into the hallway.  Now Mama, who has had some anger management issues since the birth of the little chile, screamed at the non-prince "EHH-RIC!!"  (this is what the Mama calls the Dad) who rushed upstairs to see what was the matter.  The Mama explained what happened and asked the Dad to kindly finish the job he started earlier and dispose of the renegade poo which was now halfway to the toilet on its own accord.  This caused both the Mama and the Dad to laugh out loud while the Dad grabbed some toilet paper, plucked the poo from the hallway carpet, and dropped it into the toilet. The End.

So the cool thing about Hannah's poops are that they have gotten much more solid and have therefore made cloth diapering even easier to clean up.  We can just take those bad boys right to the toilet, shake 'em in, and flush 'em down.  About once a week or so she'll have a massive poop that is sorta solid but also incredibly mushy and smells like....well, like the stinkiest sh** you've ever smelled in your life and makes both me and Eric dry heave (we try to tackle those as a team).  Those poops are a huge pain to dislodge from the diaper.  Shaking doesn't cut it which sucks because you want to get that poop as far away from you as possible as quickly as possible so we end up having to use toilet paper to kinda wipe it away.  I keep thinking that a scraping device (much like a plastic knife) might work well, but that just seems wasteful and anyway, you can't flush a knife and who wants a trash can full of poopy knives?  So we suck it up.

Spare a Square

Last night Eric got stuck in traffic and took 2-1/2 hours to get home so I tackled bath time alone.  Toward the end of my shower it occurred to me that Hannah had been especially quiet that night and how strange that was and--the toilet paper!!  See, when she's sitting in her chair, she likes to play with the toilet paper if she can reach it so we usually move it before we get in the shower because I once found her with a wad of it in her mouth and scolded Eric for not paying attention (for some reason he was in charge and I was elsewhere during the first offense).  So all that goes through my head in like 0.05 seconds and I whip open the shower curtain to find her wrapped in streams of toilet paper. I leap from the shower and pull a huge wad of it from her mouth, much to her dismay and anger.  Then I move the TP roll, get back in, and rinse off to the tune of a frustrated Hannah--ahhhhhh....that's more like it.

I reenacted it this morning (but stopped filming prior to the lap full of toilet paper and the just barely before she started trying to shove the TP into her mouth).

It's Been a Week!!!!!!!

The overwhelming urge to blog kicked in on Friday but there was NO TIME and then Autumn was in town on Saturday so we socialized during nap time and then I thought for sure I'd get around to posting yesterday, but nope. Hannah's first nap was super short and then I was so tired from the night before that I napped during her second nap. So today I got up early with Eric which gave me an extra hour of work so that I've already finished 4 hours today and Hannah is still asleep (though probably not for long) so here goes!

One new and cool update:  last week....maybe Wednesday but I can't remember....I went to the gym and when I came home, Eric had another fun Hannah story for me.  When she takes cat naps, we leave her in her crib until she's been in there for at least an hour so if she lays down at 9:00, she has to stay in her crib till 10:00 even if she wakes up at 9:30.  This particular day, she woke up at 9:30.  Eric randomly checked on her in the video monitor until one check revealed her sitting up. She had managed to reach the top of the crib and use her future climber muscles to pull herself up to a sitting position!  The gal is STRONG!!  At the time of sighting, she was attempting to pull herself even higher to standing so Eric flew up the stairs to put a halt to her acrobatics.  It looks like it's time to lower the crib mattress down...In the meantime, I'm watching the video monitor like a hawk when she wakes up early in an effort to prevent her from diving over the side.

No other new developments but she enjoyed a very social weekend.  She likes high-energy people and situations so she liked having Autumn around and was even more entranced when Tasha and Matt showed up and the six of us really got going.

Later that afternoon, my mom drove down to babysit so Eric and I could join Autumn for her "Dirty 30" birthday dinner at Tio Pepe's.  This is the third time Eric and I have gone out since Hannah was born, so it took me a loooooooong time to get ready. I forgot how to wield a hairdryer and brush simultaneously and ended up with a sore arm from trying to have non-mommy hair.  Make-up is always questionable--yes, I want to look a little snazzy but no I don't want to have to scrub my face later.  Catch 22. I opted for light eyeshadow and a smidge of mascara.  Then came the wardrobe....Trying to get dressed in the winter has ALWAYS been a problem for me. I hate everything about winter not the least of which is getting dressed.  I'm not a fan of most sweaters and since I try not to rock the UGGs when going to fine dining establishments and since the only other shoes I have are ballet flats, that means my arms and ankles were cold.  Sigh.  After the stress of getting ready we had a ton of fun.  I was supposed to leave the restaurant by 6:15 to come home and bathe and nurse Hannah for bed but we totally lost track of time. I looked at my cell phone when the waiter brought our meals and realized it was 6:25 so I left my steaming plate of paella on the table and flew out the door, speed racing all the way home.  Eric had my food boxed up and took a cab home shortly after.  Mom had bathed Hannah just fine but was running out of ways to keep the sleepy little girl happy so I showed up just before what probably would have been a meltdown. Whew!!  

Here's Hannah playing with Grammy as we were racing out the door, late for dinner because of me.  My brother's wife's parents bought Hannah this toy for Christmas (very sweet and unexpected!).  Hannah can't work the various toggles that open each thingy yet, but she loves to close them.

Hannah was finished nursing and in bed asleep by 7:30 which is right about when Eric walked in the door with my food. I was starving by this point and scarfed it down but not before ditching the cute short-sleeve shirt for a sweater and trading my ballet flats for my UGGs.  After making sure mom was good to go, we headed back out to the Rainbow Music Studios for some karaoke.  Eric and I were the first to show up so we were belting out some Mariah Carey when everyone else walked in.  I love that place!! I think I want my birthday party there. It's just so fun to have a room just for you and your friends to sing karaoke and be crazy.  I was ready to go by about 10:00 and since earlier that evening I'd given Eric the green light to stay out without me being mad, I left alone.  If mom didn't want to drive back to Hagerstown that night, I might have stayed out till 11:00, but there was no way I'd be out any later than that.  It's just not worth it. I love my friends and I had more fun that I've had in a LONG time, but I'm glad I left when I did because Hannah woke up at 5:45 on Sunday. I left her in there till 7:00, but didn't get much sleep in between, hence the nap yesterday afternoon.

I've been trying to get video of her doing the table rock (called that in the Itsy Bitsy Yoga book because she is in table pose rocking) but have been unsuccessful so far.  Eric took this one on Saturday and the first couple seconds are her table rocking, but she drops almost immediately and then just makes cute noises.

Standing Up to Pee

I had a bit of a dizzy spell/headache this evening so I skipped the end of Hannah's bath to lay down for a minute and ended up missing the best bathtime story yet.  Eric came out cracking up.  Hannah does this thing where she grabs ahold of your fingers and pulls herself up to sitting and then often to standing.  So after Eric finished scrub-a-dubbing her tonight, she pulled herself up, held on to the faucet, looked down, and started peeing.  Eric snorted with laughter which startled her so she stopped peeing and looked up at him.  He gathered his wits and pulled off a straight face, and she looked down and resumed peeing.  hahahah! I love it. I'm so bummed I missed that. 

Oh, and don't worry, he pulled the plug after that and pulled her out of the tub, not that she hasn't peed in her bath water before....

Here are some pics I forgot Eric took a couple days ago of me and the banana snuggling.

Gotta love the nose scrunch!

And here's a pic of Hannah in my hat that I took this evening while we were playing.

 

Pea Mustache

Hannah's added quite a few foods to her diet recently.  So far she has had sweet potatoes, brown rice, pear, barley, peas, and is working on bananas now. I try to cycle through the major food groups: veggie, grain, fruit, veggie, grain, fruit, etc. We give her each new food for at least 4 days in a row before introducing another new food so that we can monitor for potential food allergies.  I'm still making her food, but am taking the easy road and making it in bulk each week and freezing it rather than making it fresh every day.  I cook whatever food I'm introducing (bake, steam, boil), puree it in the blender (sometimes with a little water or breastmilk if I need to thin it out), and then fill an ice cube tray with the pureed food. Once frozen, I transfer the cubes to a marked freezer bag, and then every morning I remove the cubes I want to give her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and put them in separate bowls with lids to start thawing before I need them.  (I need to start doing this the night before but I never remember...I should probably go do it now...).  Today I had an itch to spend some time in the kitchen and get her food stockpiled so we went to Whole Foods and bought organic pears, apples, green beans, blueberries, and quinoa.  Butttttt...I only have two ice cube trays.  So much for stocking up.  I chose apples and green beans. 

I've been doing some research on what foods are appropriate at this age and also the best way to prepare them and found a great homemade baby food website this morning.  When I made her pears a couple weeks ago, I peeled them and put them in a steamer basket for 3 minutes before pureeing them.  This seemed like common sense, but I always feel more comfortable doing something after I've read from someone else that it's okay to do. (You never know when common sense is gonna fail you.)  The above website provided me with that assurance and also said that in addition to steaming, I can boil and bake, so I opted to bake the apples today.  We cored 3 Fuji apples, wrapped them in foil, and stuck them in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes before pureeing them. I think Fuji may not have been my best bet for pureed apples. I mean, they're good (one of my favs to munch raw) and I'm pretty sure Hannah will like it, but I think some other apple would have been better....Whatever apple my mom used to make the apple sauce I love so much--that's the apple I should have picked.

The other thing that this site is helpful for is telling me the recommended ages for introducing various foods. I know that babies are not supposed to have peanut butter and honey for a looooong time, and I know meat is much farther down the line, and citrus foods like strawberries and oranges too, but I like to look into others before I go giving them to her. For instance, I really wanted to get her on superfood spinach, but according to this website, it's best to wait till they're about 10 months before introducing that. Something about the human body having trouble absorbing all the good stuff in it...Something else I was reading said that spinach, carrots, and beets should never be homemade because of the nitrate levels and that I should buy those, but luckily this website dispelled that.  On the down side, this site doesn't say anything about quinoa which is the next grain I'd like to feed her....I'll have to do some more research on that.

Here's a video from the day we introduced her to peas (about a week ago).  (Just boiled frozen, organic peas in water and then pureed.) She seems to like them. 

All gone!!  Her prize for being a member of the clean plate club: she gets to lick the bowl clean.

Ramping Up to Crawl

Hannah made a new development a week or so ago, she managed to push herself up to her knees.  Once there the only movement she does is in reverse, but we're confident that she'll have it first gear in no time. 

Now that she's up I can progress on to the next chapter in Itsy Bitsy Yoga which is for "Almost Crawlers."  I'm not sure how much good it'll do though--have I mentioned that Hannah hates yoga?  Yep.  For a while she tolerated it, and I was hoping she'd grow to love it as time went on but went the other direction instead.  Now when she has any inkling that I'm about to start any sort of fitness program, she goes stiff as a board and stays that way until I agree to a life of bonbons and canned laughter sitcoms viewed from an ever deepening spot on the couch.

Also....as you may have noticed, I severely altered the look of this blog.  The green was driving me nutty and I hated the super narrow column of text so I chose a less crazy template that came in size "stretch" and then fiddled with the colors a bit...Now that I know how to do it, expect more color fiddling in my downtime...

Motherhood Movement

Oooooo! I like this video my mom sent me the link to.  I want to know more about this motherhood summit.....My favorite line:

"You are writing the story of your only life, every single minute of every day, and my greatest hope for you sweet child, is that I can teach you how to write a good one."



Hmmm...just Googled Motherhood Summit. It looks like some sort of marketing and mom partnership. I don't get it. But I still really like the video!!

Cabin Fever

All of my Sleep Lady training has come undone. I don't know why; it just has.  Maybe we got confident that the problem was solved and were too quick to pick her up on the few times that she did wake up crying.  I guess it's a nonstop effort that must constantly be adhered like any other training.  I mean, I haven't been to the gym since Friday and I'm pretty sure that these few days off are enough to slide me back a couple of places so maybe sleep training has to be tended to with the same nonstop dedication.  She's quiet now.  The screaming only lasted for 25 minutes tonight.  It's been at least 1 hour the 3 nights prior.  On the bright side, once she managed to stop screaming, she slept through the night for all of those nights.  Ooops.  Nope, not quiet anymore.  She was just taking a breather.  She does seem to be winding down though.  Eric is with her.  I really have no interest in starting the Sleep Lady program all over again. It's really time consuming...Of course, this is too.  We are just running up and down the stairs these days, as if that's somehow less frustrating than the training....Guess I'll re-read the relevant chapter tonight and try to put it into effect tomorrow. Or I'll have Eric do it because guess who actually has real work to do tomorrow???? Yours truly is going to set aside the many management books I've been keeping myself busy with and edit a proposal.  Wahoo!!  The turn-around-time really stinks--it's due to me by about 3 tomorrow and I have to have it back in by 10 a.m. Friday, then the second one is due to me by about 3 on Friday and I have to have it back in by 10 a.m. on Saturday--but I've had it pretty easy the past couple months so no complaints.  Anyway, it'll be nice to have something to do.  I'm wasting away to a mindless blob as a result of this cabin fever I caught in the non-stop blizzards of Baltimore.  I haven't seen a winter like this since forever.  The snow is insane and although I live in the city in walking distance to a number of places, there still seems to be nothing to do. Nothing is open and for some reason I'm not hanging with the neighbors.  We're just sitting here inside watching the snow swirl around and pile up outside.  It's pathetic. I think Hannah caught the cabin fever too.  Maybe that's why she's been screaming....

I have a couple pics, but not many.  Terrill came over yesterday to watch movies and hang out and attempt to cure her own cabin fever and she helped me bathe Hannah.  So yeah, more bathtime pics.  Hannah likes to sit in front of the water spout with one hand in the water as it fills her tub.

Then she likes to do some shoulder exercises with her water-proof book.

I know, I know, that was dumb. Like I said, I'm becoming a bumbling idiot as a result of cabin fever.  And also, I'm trying to stay sane while listening to Hannah screaming her little hiney off....Guess I better quit ignoring her now. Eric gave up about 10 minutes ago. My turn....

A question for those of you who have or have had babies who scream incessantly, long after the screaming has stopped, do you still hear it? It's a strange hallucination, like ringing in the ears I guess.

Some of the Best Parent Advice I've Received

This is from Kerry whose amazing daughters I had the privilige of "babysitting" through college which subsequently led to them graciously allowing me into their family. 

The best advice I can give any new parent is that they must always remember they are preparing their child for the life ahead and that it is okay to think our children walk on water, but so does every other child across the globe. In spite of what we may think, our children are a gift that we endow to the world one day and they are in fact not ours to keep, so enjoy every minute with your daughter as you move through this journey we call life..............A wonderful place to be, obstacles and all.

Much love to the Stanley's!!

Snow Day!!! (AGAIN!!!)

This has been one h-e-double-hockeysticks of a snowy winter!!  I haven't seen this much snow since I lived at the Roland House right after college...We got a big snow like this one winter and apartment 3b (us gals) and 2b (our guy friends downstairs) got all suited up and trekked down to our favorite watering hole on The Avenue throwing ourselves and each other into snow drifts the whole way there and back.

My how things have changed!!!  The snow started on Friday and was really blizzard-ing it up Friday night--I think we had a thunderstorm or something because I kept hearing crazy banging.  Anyway, just like old times, I ended up being up all night but not because I was out partying.  After 2 nights of sleeping straight through the night from 7:45 p.m. to 6:55 a.m., Hannah decided to pull an all-nighter on Friday. She woke up at 11:45 and stayed awake until at least 3:30.  She wasn't screaming, just intermittently crying/fussing and wide awake ready to build a snowman or something.  I got so desperate that at 2ish I broke down and nursed her even though I haven't nursed her at night in about a month now but even nursing didn't knock her out.  Maybe she thought it was day time because the snow was making it so bright in her room (we've gotta get some curtains in there), or maybe it was the thunderstorm keeping her up.  No clue, but at 3:30, I gave up.  I went to bed and turned the monitor down really low and went to sleep.  I should have done that sooner.  She woke up again at 6:30 and I don't know about you, but 3 hours is NOT enough sleep to make me a functioning rational being. I stumbled around here like a crackhead complete with bad breath and a bad attitude.   I tried to nap when she napped, but she kept taking these 30 minute naps so by the time I was drifting off to slumberland, she was up and crying again.  Finally at about 2:45 I put her in her crib and closed her door, handed the monitor to Eric, turned the fan on high in our room, closed our door, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers up over my head. I slept peacefully till about 4:20.  She woke up around 4:00 so we were both feeling much more sane for what little was left of the day.

After that nap I got stir crazy so we suited up and walked about a block down where we ran into the amazing artist who made our transom sledding down 37th Street with his 4-year-old son and various other neighbors and one foster bull dog.  We hung out with them until Hannah's nose started running and her cheeks got red, then came home for dinner, bath, and bedtime.  Last night was back to normal--she slept straight through from about 7:45 to 7:10.  Whew!! 

Picture time! This is the view from our front door.  That's Eric's car covered in snow.  Good thing he doesn't have to work for the next 2 weeks; it'll take that long to dig him out.  He's pretty much the only person who parked on our block.  Since our street is really narrow, they don't plow it, and since we're on a pretty steep hill, it can be a real pain to get out when it snows so everyone else parks at the bottom of the hill in the grocery store parking lot or on Elm. 

Earlier in the day Eric walked down to The Avenue with the neighbors and took this shot of Cafe Hon.

Here's a shot I took of our block from the bottom of the hill last night. 

And I realize this is not the best pic of Hannah since it's a dark, but it's the only one I got of Hannah post her first blizzard so it'll have to do.

Happy Half Year Birthday!!!

The little banana is 6 months old today!! How crazy is that??? Here's her 6-month photo shoot (which I actually took yesterday):

You can kinda see one of her teeth in this one.

And in keeping with the tradition I started at 4 months, here's a glimpse into the past at baby Terri hitting her half-year birthday mark

And this is the closest I have to Eric at 6 months.  This is July of 77 and he was born in December of 76 so I guesss he's about 7 months here--close enough!!

Lights Out!!

Hannah squished her cheek up against mine all cute last night and I asked Eric to snap a pic of her being snuggly with me since she's usually way to active to snuggle. 

Shannon came for lunch yesterday and was happily surprised at how happy Hannah was (Hannah's been in hysterics the past two times she visited...). 

(She's naked in the above pics because her pee leaked out of the side of her diaper so I stripped her outfit off and let her hang out naked for a few minutes since Shannon was on her way out the door anyway.)

And how about a video for good measure?  Hannah learned how to turn on and off the light in her room so I took my video camera up for bath time tonight to capture it on film.  That's how the video below ends, but I started it a little early because she was being really cute gnawing on Eric's finger. Of course, the second I started filming he took back his finger and lifted her up so the start of this is a little rocky.

OH, and she has another tooth.  Two bottom teeth!!!

How funny is her tongue in this thing????  She's like Gene Simmons.

Rolling Around

I took some cute videos of Hannah rolling around this morning.  It's pretty funny how much she's moving these days! Especially compared with the last video I took of her playing under this same toy in October...



This one has a pretty funny ending.