The last two months

An update on our nest:

School is back in session for Mark, who is getting his Masters in Computer Science part-time through WashU. He's taking a class on artificial intelligence this semester, which (so far) involves working with speech recognition software and designing games that a computer can play with a human. He has also been working a bit of overtime at Boeing, so his days are looong and the weekends aren't long enough.

Andrea has mostly been doing her usual mom stuff. She joined a book club with other moms she knows, but sadly missed the meeting where they actually talked about the book they read (A Curious Tale of the Dog in the Nighttime). It was an interesting book about an autistic boy who tries to solve a local murder mystery. The next book up is The Kiterunner, which she just picked up today.

Phoebe was a very very bad dog at the beginning of this two month period, choosing to use the house as her own personal potty palace and running away at every possible opportunity. BUT, praise God, we've changed our routine - mainly putting her in her crate when we're out running errands - and she has gone back to her sweet, submissive state.

And Taylor, who is of course the most interesting family member to write about, has made HUGE leaps and bounds since I last wrote. She is now crawling!!! And ::tear:: breaking in that soft baby skin so that her knees are rough and dry from friction with the floor.

She can say "mama(mamamama)," "baba," "puh," "ffff," "hehbeh," and other funny syllable combinations. She's getting close to waiving. She's pulling herself up to standing a bit too. I predict she'll be walking in the next month or so.

My hope for the next couple of months is that I'll start putting together a MyPublisher book of our photos from 2008, I'll make some alterations to her Halloween costume (she'll be a strawberry), and we'll get a bit further with baby-proofing (i.e. a new entertainment center with some sort of door to hide our dvd player, etc).

I'll leave you with a funny photo from a few weeks ago.

THIS is what happens when your baby becomes mobile.

Oddities

We found hidden treasure in our house a few weeks ago, but it's not what you'd think.

When Mark was installing our new range, he removed the bottom drawer of our kitchen cabinets and found...a big stack of towels. But, even sadder, half of them were stolen hand towels from Hilton hotels.

::shakes head::

The previous owners of this house never cease to amaze me - from the weird things they left behind for us (empty shampoo containers and used soap) to their strange ideas of "home improvement" (two layers of tile, directly on top of each other on the bathroom floors). At least we have more cleaning towels!

Also, within the last few weeks a sign appeared in our neighborhood, "Loud Music Prohibited."

Umm, really? Is our neighborhood a hot bed of loud music violation or do we just have cranky neighbors? I feel like the new sign is straight out of Footloose with Kevin Bacon. I've never heard a peep from our neighbors, but we live away from the main strip and, as new parents, we go to bed reeeeaaally early. I'll just have to remind Taylor to keep Baby Mozart at a reasonable volume.

Home improvement

Yay! Our "Pink Room" is no more. After a weekend of hard work on the part of Mark's mom, sister, and brother-in-law, our guest room is wallpaper free and painted a lovely shade of off-white. The big project now is to put all the furniture back (it is currently residing in our dining room). And, once I actually sew curtains for the kitchen, I will move on to making some for this fresh, new room as well.

Also, within the last few weeks I've done a major purging of our kitchen cabinets and basement shelves. I threw out garbage bags full of expired food (ugh) and have been sorting through the dishes and other kitchen gadgets we have in an effort to donate what we don't need.

Big news from this weekend - Mark washed our cars!!! It's an annual event, so I was pretty excited to see them white again. Mark was surprised to see how shiny they could be and is motivated to wash them more often.

On the baby front, Taylor has been doing really well eating bananas. She especially likes it when Mark feeds her and protests (scrunches her nose and gives us airy snorts) when he waits too long between spoonfuls. I think today we'll begin avocados.

Taylor's babbling is also improving and I can hear that she's capable of saying "Mama" now, though she probably won't use it as a proper name for awhile yet. She's also sitting up very well and her crawling stance is getting better every week.

Pottying at night has been going well. I was so scared to start, but now we have a good nighttime rhythm with few "misses". The Nekkie Blankie I purchased (used, half price!) is perfect for any misses (ahh, peace of mind) and I have a little Tupperware container next to the bed to rest her bum on/in as she nurses and pees. I much prefer this to having her flail for several minutes as she wakes to pee and worrying about a leaky nighttime diaper (and diaper rash for that matter). I've read that pottying her will help her become dry at night sooner, so I'm excited about giving this a go.

Mark and I have been exercising together nearly every day this last week. Mark's lost a lot of weight (has about 10lbs left to go) and I'm stabilizing around 5lbs above my pre-pregnancy weight. With the help of Trader Joe's and some farmer's market shopping, I think we'll be well on our way to FIT.

Delayed vaccination

I had heard that some parents delay vaccination, selectively vaccinate, or even skip shots all together. Since there isn't much information online that is unbiased or balanced, I decided to read The Vaccine Book by Robert Sears.

What a great book! Sears explained why each vaccine is recommended, discussed the risk factor of each disease, broke down the ingredients of each vaccine, and then talked about why the shots might be controversial. To my surprise, mercury is really no longer a concern in vaccines. It has been virtually eliminated from all of them. The problem now is aluminum.

Each shot has a tiny amount of aluminum which helps the shot to be more effective. However, when you give multiple shots at an appointment, the level of aluminum adds up and can reach dangerous levels, threatening neurological and immunological development. What is a dangerous level of aluminum? Well, it's never been adequately researched, so the safe bet is to keep the levels as low as possible (Dr. Sears discusses actually numbers in the book).

Based on what I read, we've decided to follow Sear's alternative shot schedule, which means Taylor will get 1-2 shots every month, instead of 3 or 4 every other month. Since the vaccines are spread out, Taylor's immune system can handle the effects better AND the needle pricks themselves. I can already tell a difference from her previous appointments.

Last month she just got one shot and was much less fussy than she had been after previous shot visits. Today she received the Rotavirus oral vaccine and one shot and only cried for about 2 seconds! I highly recommend this approach to other parents.

I think my baby is happier and healthier, and she'll still be protected from nasty viruses for years to come.

Enjoying each moment

As I was nursing Taylor to sleep this morning, I thought about how incredibly beautiful this baby is. I think she's prettier than either Mark or I were at her age. Her hair is going to grow back again soon and be a beautiful dark brown, and someday she'll be walking and talking and I can put her hair in pigtails. Oh, she'll be so cute!

Regardless of whether others think it a "bad habit," I'm glad to be able to nurse my child to sleep and have her in bed all night snuggled next to me and carry her around all day. After all, how long will she be this tiny? How long will she actually want to snuggle that close? How long will she be dependent on me for her every need?

I want to cherish these moments, I want to live in these moments.

I only regret that my memory isn't better. I watched this morning as Taylor carefully examined all the fingers on her hands, holding them up in front of her face as far as her little arm would stretch. She twisted her wrist and flexed each finger as if testing out how much control she really had.

She also has started pushing herself up on her arms over the last couple of days. And she can sit up for up to 20 seconds at a time. She's getting so much bigger and more capable. I'm a proud mama.

I think we'll start on bananas this next week, as tomorrow she is 6 months old! She has already showed some interest in our food, so I think she'll like to taste something new.

Movin' on up

Taylor is officially over 15lbs. Yes, I know a LOT of other babies reached that milestone well before their 5th month, but my baby is petite.

So, this means we are moving up to the next size of diapers. Once I do the load of diapers tomorrow I will retire the infant prefolds and covers (to await our next bundle of cuteness) and prep the new diapers for Taylor to wear until she's potty-trained! Wow!

I think the cost of her cloth diapers, cloth wipes, and wipe solution for the first 5 months totaled roughly $250. Of course there were other start up costs like the trash can, wet bags, and laundry detergent; but in the end it was definitely not over $350. We were very blessed in that everything was purchased for us by our parents, and my sister let us use her infant stash of cloth diapers.

For this next stage (5mo-potty trained) we bought larger fitted diapers, prefolds, and some sturdier covers. I guesstimate another $300. Definitely worth the investment!

I can't wait until we can start buying Taylor little undies :)

Our little angel

With all the traveling Taylor and I have done the last couple of weeks, we've encountered a lot of people. And they all have one thing in common - they LOVE Taylor.

She's such a social little girl right now. She smiles at perfect strangers and interacts with them for up to 10 min at a time.

Here are some of the comments we've received:

• "She's so guapa and petit" (translation: pretty and white) - Filipino family friends
• "She's like a china doll" - Filipino family friends
• "She's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen in my whole entire life" - 10yr-old boy at airport check-in
• "She looks like an angel. Is she?" - same boy at airport check-in
• "You could put little wings on her and hang her on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel" - deacon at church