Happy New Year!

Well, the Christmas season has come and gone and a wonderful time was had by all. We feel so blessed to have experienced our first Christmas as parents. Hannah had a great time socializing and even got into unwrapping her own gifts! She just couldn't resist all that shiny, crinkly paper! I spent a good amount of time making sure it didn't end up in her mouth! Besides surviving the holidays in one piece I have many new Hannah updates to share. My little girl has really been growing up and the past few weeks she has really matured. Even her personality is maturing. She expresses many more emotions now than she did a month ago. It's amazing how much she has changed and how fast she's done it!

First off, Hannah has now mastered sitting on her own. I still place pillows around her if I'm going to be further than an arm's reach from her to cushion her if she falls, but she pretty much can sit for as long as she wants. She actually thinks it's pretty funny to let herself just fall back onto the pillows when she gets tired of sitting or when she's feeling feisty :)

With her new sitting skills a whole new world has opened up to Hannah and she's been having a blast playing with toys and reaching for things that she couldn't get to before. It's also made her easier to dress and her hair easier to brush and style. It's also allowed her to move up into the big tub and ditch her infant tub altogether which is good because the last time I tried to use the infant tub she kept sliding off the seat because her butt was too big to fit on the seat anymore! Now that she can sit in the big bathtub with more water she has really been enjoying splashing with her hands and kicking with her feet and generally getting as much water as possible out of the tub and onto the bathroom floor. She's also decided she thinks water pouring or dripping out of a cup is VERY funny and goes crazy every time I do it.

Her hair continues to grow and grow and she already needs another haircut to keep her bangs out of her eyes. The sides are so long that they are even getting in her eyes now too so I've started putting the sides in mini pig tails. Kyle's not real impressed by them because he thinks she looks silly with the pig tails on the side and the back left free, but hey, it works! I can't wait until her hair is long enough to put in a real pony tail or to braid. That will really be fun.

Now that Hannah can roll all over the place I had pretty much said goodbye to her play gym, but yesterday I found a way to bring it back from the dead. I hung the toys from the arches and then instead of laying her underneath them I sat her down in front of them and she had a blast batting at them and grabbing them while I played with her hair. Now if she'd just show some interest in crawling we could set up the tunnel portion of the play gym so that she could crawl through it. Unfortunately Hannah seems to have no intention of crawling any time soon. She'd much rather roll around to get where she wants than even attempt to get herself up onto her hands and knees. She does think it's pretty funny to watch me crawl around the floor trying to show her how to do it though!

Another big milestone Hannah hit the other day was her first taste of strained baby food. We started off with sweet potatoes and she really seems to like them. They were lots runnier than I thought they would be so that has made feeding them difficult since Hannah is used to much thicker food because I make her cereal about as thick as oatmeal. Along with eating new foods, Hannah has started to throw tantrums when it's time to eat her cereal and will grab for the spoon or the bowl and knock it out of your hands. I'm not happy about this new development and am doing my best to stop it in it's tracks. What worked for the other day was giving Hannah her own spoon to hold. She then paid attention to the spoon in her hand instead of trying to swipe mine. Maybe the same thing will happen with the spoon as it did with the sippy cup. Maybe she'll teach herself to feed herself. Speaking of the sippy cup, I think Hannah is addicted to water. She LOVES to drink it out of her cup and would much rather drink her water from her cup than eat her cereal at meal times.

Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas!

Hannah has survived a whirlwind of Christmas activity already and it's only Christmas Eve! Actually tomorrow will most likely be the tamest day of her holiday season! So far she's attended 7 Christmas gatherings already. Of course, she's loved every minute of every single one of them because she LOVES to socialize. I actually think she gets enjoyment out of entertaining guests and just generally being a socialite. As was the case when she was born, she has received many, many gifts which we appreciate greatly. We have so many generous friends and family members who are determined to spoil Hannah rotten!

Ok, time for all the new Hannah milestones and updates. Her cold that appeared last week continued to linger on through this week so Friday we took her in to see the doctor just in case since we knew it was either Friday or wait until Tuesday. Boy were we glad that we took her in because it ended up being more than just an ordinary cold. When the doctor listened to her lungs he said that they sounded different from each other, but that in infants it was often hard to tell if they are really different or not b/c of how wiggly babies are. Hannah was acting ok and not running a temperature, but he decided to send her for a chest x-ray just as a precaution since it was a holiday weekend and we would be out and about and it would be difficult to get treatment if she got worse later. Anyway, it turned out that from the chest x-ray that the doctor was able to diagnose Hannah with pneumonia. It was in the very early stages and only in her right lung. She was barely showing any symptoms at all and since we managed to catch it so early the doctor said it wasn't a big deal at all. He even cleared Hannah to go ahead and attend her 2 holiday gatherings the very next day as long as she didn't take a turn for the worse. It seems that once again Hannah dodged the bullet on what could have been an extremely serious illness since she is an infant all because of the quick thinking of her doctors. We are so fortunate to have some wonderful doctors involved in her care.

Hannah's newest trick is drinking from her sippy cup all by herself. She will still let me hold it for her occasionally to help her drink, but mostly she wants to do it herself and she is totally able to do it! Every now and then she doesn't get it tipped up quite far enough and she sucks in a bunch of air, but really she's pretty much mastered the skill. She absolutely LOVES to drink from the cup. The other day when she wasn't feeling well from her pneumonia and was refusing her bottle, we managed to get all of her formula down her using the sippy cup instead of the bottle. The doctor had stressed that it was important for her to stay hydrated and that she really should not be decreasing any of her fluid intake while sick. So, we were quite happy that she was so willing to drink from the cup because it made our life much easier.

Now that Hannah's hair is getting longer I can finally put it in pigtails and she looks absolutely adorable that way! It makes her look much older with them in. I took a picture of her sitting up by herself looking at a book with her pigtails in and she looked just like a toddler instead of a 5 1/2 month old! Speaking of looking older, when she was at the doctor they took her weight and she is now up to 18 lbs 2 oz. I don't remember the exact weight, but my mom told me recently that I was only l8 or 19 pounds at a year old! Hannah's 7 months ahead of what I was as a baby! Then again, she was double my weight when she was born since she was 8 lbs 14 oz and I was only 4 lbs 7 oz!

This Christmas season has been totally amazing. Hannah has brought more joy to our lives than we ever could have imagined. At church this morning the pastor spoke about how in our society today people are never satisfied with what they have and are always wanting more. In general I agree with him, except with one thing. I prayed and prayed to God to bless us with a child, and while I would be thrilled with another child somewhere down the road, having Hannah has completely fulfilled me. If we never have another child or if I never get another material thing my entire life I will be happy, I will be content, I will feel completely fulfilled and satisfied because the joy we have known these past 5 months is like no other I have ever experienced. It is the most precious Christmas gift (and birthday gift, anniversary gift, or Mother's Day gift) I have ever received and it continues on and on every single day when I look over the rails of the crib and see Hannah's face always bright eyed and shining smiling up at me with a smile of pure joy and love for only me. This gift keeps giving and giving. God has truly blessed us with the most wonderful daughter in the world.

Sippy Cups

Hannah continues to amaze me everyday. Recently I started giving her a sippy cup about a 1/4 filled with water to play with each time I feed her cereal. Before I give it to her I tell her this is her cup and I say, "Mommy can drink from Hannah's cup. Can Hannah drink from Hannah's cup?" and then I show her how to drink from the cup. Usually she just chews on the spout when I put it up to her mouth and then pulls the cup out of my hands and plays with it for awhile, but yesterday she watched me intently as I drank from the cup. Then, when I put it up to her mouth she latched on and started gulping down the water! It happened just like that! She had an eureka moment and now she's got it down pat. She thinks drinking the water is pretty cool although she can't manage to hold the cup herself yet and still drink the water, but I still think it's pretty cool that she learned how to drink from the cup so quickly.

Another update is that Hannah is down to only 4 bottles a day. She takes 4 7 ounce bottles and has now successfully moved to 4 hours in between each bottle. She has also been eating 2-3 tablespoons of cereal twice a day. So far she has tried rice, oatmeal, and rice with apples. I think she likes the rice with apples the best and I can't say that I blame her.

Hannah has also recently started developing a sense of humor. She will now laugh whenever we do something funny like make a funny face or talk in a weird voice. It's like she finally gets jokes now. It's awfully cute to see her laughing hysterically over mom saying silly things. It makes me laugh when she gets going and then that just makes her laugh even more.

This weekend starts Hannah's holiday engagements. She has 3 Christmas get togethers this weekend and 3 next weekend (one of which lasts all day!). I have a feeling she's going to be spoiled rotten by all the attention before it's all over.

Hannah got her first cold on Wednesday and it's still hanging on. She's really stuffy in her nose and her chest sounds all congested too. She's been pretty lethargic and fussy and of course she's very tired but refuses to sleep. On Wednesday she did take a 2 hour nap which has NEVER happened before. I kept going in and checking on her after a 1/2 hour b/c I was worried since it was so atypical for her.

Hannah also continues to resist going to bed at night and naps in general. She's been throwing huge fits every time we try to put her to bed. It's quite frustrating because we really don't know what to do about it. I have no idea why she's started this new habit of hers and I must say I don't like it. I miss the good old days where she put herself to sleep each night.

Yesterday the adoption agency called and asked us if it would be ok if they ran a story about Hannah's adoption in the Associated Press! I was thrilled of course and said yes. They said they would let us know when it was going to be published so that we could get a copy of it. I think it's pretty cool and can't wait to see what they write about Hannah. :)

Well, I think that's about all the Hannah updates for now. Hannah is still feeling really crummy and is not liking me being on the computer so I had better go and cuddle her some more.

PS. The pictures you see are Hannah's 4 month pictures. Now that she's 5 months old I've finally got around to scanning in and posting the 4 month pictures!

5 Months Old

Wow! Hannah is now five months old. Time really has gone by too quickly. It seems like just yesterday I was bottle feeding her using the boppy as a support and now she's sitting in a highchair eating oatmeal cereal! Hannah's developing at an astonishing rate lately. Her newest accomplishments are sitting up unassisted for short periods of time (2-5 minutes), standing by holding onto the coffee table, rolling all over the house to chase the cats, and babbling so loudly that it's impossible to hear anything other than her! She is continuing to have sleep issues which make things rough for Kyle and I as well as her, but we have reccently decided that we think it is related to teething. We still don't see any teeth, but the other day when she was crying inconsolably and chewing hard on Kyle's finger we gave her some teething tablets and she was immediately knocked out. The funny thing is that there is a warning on the box that says that the child may fall asleep quickly after their pain is removed and we thought, "Yeah, right!" but it's true. Those tablets have brought almost immediate paccification and sleep each time we have tried them reccently. We tried them about a month ago when we thought her teeth were bothering her, but they had no effect. It must not have been her teeth that time, because this time they really worked! Hannah has been having lots of fun rolling around the house and chasing the cats and keeping me hopping. Twice now she has bit Sadie's tail (our cat) and continues to light up every time she sees one of the cats. It's quite cute to see her arch her back to see them and then roll around trying to get at them as they walk by.

I've got several new videos for your viewing pleasure. Just click on the links and enjoy!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2574173892130424640&hl=en This video is Hannah playing with her Papaw Like.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7663669173936585793&hl=enThis one is of Hannah playing with Kyle's Uncle Jimmy.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2597797762694029574&hl=en This one is of Hannah playing with her friend Evelyn.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8293798188009359032&hl=en This last one is just of Hannah looking generally cute!

Mini Van Mom

It took me so long to actually write and post my last post that I eventually just gave up and posted it without finishing it! So, this post will hopefully contain all the news that didn't make it into the last one! First off, after so much driving with the new car seat Kyle and I came to the conclusion that we needed more space for Hannah in our vehicle. Plus, the jeep was becoming less and less reliable. Well, to make a long story short, we went to check out a car sale and just look at what there was to see and ended up coming home with a minivan. Now let me just say that I HATE minivans. They are so ugly and I swore I would NEVER drive one, BUT they are so darn convenient! Everything about this van makes driving with Hannah so much simpler. We ended up getting a smoking deal on a '05 Town and Country with stow and go seating. That's my favorite part. I can now wrestle Hannah into her car seat in the warmth of the vehicle instead of freezing my but off with numb fingers that can't operate the latches. So, I'm officially a minivan mom. I can't say I'm proud of it, but I have at least made peace with the fact and come to accept it as just another stage in life.

Since we've been back from vacation Hannah has been having a really hard time with getting to sleep and staying there. She's been fighting going down for the night and then when we think she's down she has awakened every single night at least once before Kyle and I actually get to bed and the other night she woke up at 3:00am and wanted to eat! That hasn't happened since she was 3 weeks old! Hopefully this new problem won't last long and she'll be able to get back into her routine. I really miss being able to lay her down drowsy and have her put herself to sleep as we lock up the house for the night and get ready for bed ourselves.

Hannah has now firmly grasped the concept of eating cereal. I'm now making it as thick as oatmeal and she chows it right down. Tonight she was eating so well that we ended up fixing her an entire other bowl which she ate even more quickly than the first bowl. The second bowl was a variation on the first rice cereal as it had apples pureed in with it. She really liked that! It's a bit of a challenge getting all her bottles in as well as cereal throughout the day. I feel like all I'm doing all day is feeding her! It's almost worse than when she was a tiny infant!

Hannah's newest accomplishment is that she FINALLY mastered rolling from her belly to her back! :) Every time she does it now she smiles a huge smile and seems so proud of herself. Of course I'm really proud too! Tonight she was really funny because she was practicing her new trick by rolling back and forth between her tummy and her back over and over and over again. She must have done it 8 or 9 times in a row! It was really cute and that huge grin came with each successful try. I've got some video of it that I'll try to post at some time in the future. I've still got to get it uploaded to the computer and then to the internet and who knows when they will get done with all Hannah's feedings going on!

Hannah has been hanging out with her pal Evelyn a lot reccently and the two of them have finally noticed that each other exist. It's very cute to see them studying each other's face and reaching out to touch each other. Hannah's a bit of a bully though. She frequently swipes Evelyn's toys right out of her hands and then smacks her with them as she swings them around! Another discovery of Hannah's is the fact that we have dogs. She's starting to pay attention to them and actually petted Ella for the first time the other day. I use the term "pet" loosely as I'm sure Ella would describe what Hannah did as something other than petting since she yelped and ran away in response, but still it was a big first step for Hannah. Maybe she's not going to be just a cat person after all.

Thanksgiving Trip

Well, we survived our trip to PA and OH for Thanksgiving. It was a great vacation, but we are all glad to be back home. When all was said and done we had a little over 24 hours of total driving time (excluding all stops). That was A LOT of time spent in the car with a 4 month old, but Hannah did great. We estimate that she maybe cried a toatal of 2.5 hours the entire trip when you add up all of her unhappy times and at least a 1/2 hour of that she had a confirmed poopy diaper that we had no where to stop and change until we made it to the next rest stop. I can't blame her for crying that time. I'd cry too if I was stitting in poop! I must admit that the entire trip went much smoother than I expected. I was definitely happy to be wrong about my predictions on that! :)

We started off the first leg of the trip by driving to Ohio to stay at Baba's. Hannah had a blast there. She got to visit with her great grandma (Baba), her Pap (Barney) and Mindy, and her Uncle Kevin. Baba of course spoiled her rotten by holding her and giving her lots and lots of attention! Baba also gave her a brand new snowsuit and some baby clothes that used to be Kyle's when he was little! Hannah watched the Ohio State/Michigan game on Saturday and really enjoyed herself (That girl loves her football!) except for all the times Barney, Kyle, Kevin let out shouts because of good plays. I think they scared her so bad that they made her cry no less than 3 times!

From Ohio, we drove to Cressona, PA to visit Kyle's Uncle Ted. This was Ted's first time meeting Hannah and he commented on how alert she was (man if we only had a dollar for every time we heard that!). Hannah also got to meet her 2nd cousins John and Sabrina for the first time. Kyle and I hadn't seen them since our wedding so we were glad to get to see them. From Cressona we drove to St. Clair, PA to stay with Kyle's Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Bonnie. While there we got to see Kyle's two cousins plus Sean's 3 kids as well as Pop, and Dot and Tom. The house was very busy while we were there, but Hannah got TONS of attention so she didn't mind one bit! From St. Clair we drove to Hershey, PA for Thanksgiving Day at Kyle's Uncle Brian and Aunt JoAnn's house. While there Hannah got even more attention from two of Kyle's cousins (Sarah and Catherine). We had ready made babysitters whenever we needed them! From Hershey we drove back to OH to spend the night at Baba's then on to home the next day. It was a LONG trip, but it was so great to see everyone and we were glad that they all got to meet Hannah in person.

During the trip Hannah continued to work hard on rolling over from her tummy to her back, but she is still unable to do it. Hannah also continued to practice eating her baby cereal and is coming right along in that department. She's eating it much thicker now and even ate an entire bowl of it for Baba! Since there wasn't room to take the highchair in the car we used her stroller as a make-shift highchair during the trip and it worked pretty well. One weird thing that we discovered on our drive was my amazing ability to put Hannah to sleep without doing anything. At times Hannah would grow tired of being in the car and would begin to scream. I would turn around in my seat, put her pacifier in her mouth and hold it there for less than a minute and Hannah would instantly fall asleep! It was like pushing an off button! It was the weirdest thing we have ever seen. This DOES NOT work outside of the car, but thankfully for us it did work during our many drives. Even as we came to expect it and Kyle would be counting down the seconds until she was asleep, it would still always take us by surprise and freak us out a little bit because it was such an abrupt change. Screaming to sleep in 3.0 seconds with no in between! WEIRD!

Big Girl

Hannah is turning into such a big girl. Last night she had her first meal of solid food, very watered down baby rice cereal. She sat in her highchair at the table for the first time and opened her mouth up for the spoon like a pro! All things considered, it was a relatively clean and uneventful process. I knew she would be interested in food, but I had no idea that she would just know to open up her mouth for the spoon!

OK, I'm back several days later. Hannah interrupted the post and then life just happened! Just got done feeding Hannah another meal of cereal and she loved it! She ate alot and is really getting the hang of swallowing it too. Much less messy than the first time for sure! Hannah's been doing lots of big girl things lately. She's riding in her new car seats like a pro although it sure is a pain to get her in and out of them! I miss being able to just pick up the seat and take it out of the car with her still asleep! Ah, those were the days :) She's also riding in the big girl part of the stroller and really likes it. Today we took her to Walmart and we had to take the stroller in with us b/c I didn't want to carry her the whole time and I don't think I quite trust her in the front of the cart. Speaking of sitting in a cart, she did sit in a restaurant highchair on Friday and did quite well. We padded it up a bit with blankets to make her fit a bit better, but really I was surprised she could keep herself up with so little support for the entire meal. She's getting much stronger

Lately Hannah has been working VERY hard to roll over from her tummy to her back. She's like a machine. Every time we lay her on the floor on her back she immediately rolls onto her tummy and then tries and tries to roll back over onto her back. She's so close, but just can't quite do it. She doesn't like to be helped either. It's no good if Mom or Dad rolls her over. She MUST do it by herself. She's a bit obsessed with this I think. Friday night when we put her down to bed I heard her making weird noises so I went in to check on her and she had rolled onto her stomach in her crib! Each time I put her back on her back she would roll right back over. UGH! This scares me that she's able to roll on her mattress now b/c she since she can't get herself off of her belly I'm afraid she might suffocate in bed and we won't hear her. Very scarey.

Today we bought her a bunting suit to wear for her trip to PA. The trip is coming up soon and I still have to get her some more long sleeved onesies, a winter hat, and mittens. I'm also looking for some more Sassy toys to keep her busy in the car for the drive.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1326577827995150147&hl=en Here is a video of Hannah petting our cat, Penny. She really does love her kitty cats.

I'm back again after a several day hiatus. Hannah really doesn't want me to finish this entry! Here's another video. This one is of Hannah's first meal of solids in her highchair.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2138763262574598393&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah attempting to roll over from her belly to her back. The poor thing just can't seem to get the hang of it and it really frustrates her. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6226218425442246464&hl=en

This final picture is of Hannah sitting in a pile of leaves from our yard. I got this crazy idea that I wanted to take a picture of her every fall in the leaves. She wasn't so happy about the photo shoot, but at least it was memorable.

We eliminated Hanna's 5:00 am feeding because the doctor told her she was too big of a girl to be getting up so early for a bottle. At first she didn't take to the idea very well. She was just so used to getting up at 5:00 and having her Daddy time, but now she's getting the hang of it and has been letting me sleep until 8:00 in the mornings! YEAH for that! Now that we are slowly moving Hannah to 4 hours between bottles we've upped her amount each bottle to 6 ounces. We seem to be getting a bit more spit up than usual, but nothing like before the formula with rice starch! Really, there's not much we can do about the bigger meals because the doctor said she needs to be moving towards going 4 hours between bottles during the day, but he also said not to let her total formula intake decrease now that she's on solids and he also said to get rid of that early morning feeding. So, we really have no choice, but to up her ounces per bottle. She's really not super fond of extending the time between feedings, but it's hard for me to tell if she's really still hungry every 3 hours or if she's just used to eating that often like she was with her 5:00 feeding.

Well, we leave tomorrow for our trip to PA. Wish us luck that we can manage a crazy long drive with a 4 month old!

New Toy

Let me just say that I continue to HATE daylight savings time. I was never a fan of it and strongly opposed to Indiana switching to it whatever time zone we aligned with, but now that it is here and probably here to stay it continues to give me nothing but problems. Hannah absolutely cannot adjust to this time change. Her routine is still all out of whack! I've been trying and trying to slowly adjust her schedule so that she will be comfortable again, but it's just not working. If anything she's getting worse! Now, instead of waking up at 8:00 which would be 9:00 in her head, she's waking up at 7:00 and then struggles and struggles with going down for her morning nap. She gets so tired and cranky, but just refuses to fall asleep. I feel so bad for her.

Hannah had a very busy weekend this past weekend. To start off, on Saturday she got to go be the poster child for perfect adoptions at our adoption agency. Kyle and I went and gave a talk to prospective adoptive parents and got to show Hannah off. It was lots of fun and Hannah did not disappoint them. She was in her usually bright and bubbly mood and was too cute for words. Just seeing her is enough to give hope to those dreaming of someday having their own family. Then, after our IAC talk we went to Babies R' Us to get Hannah a big girl car seat. While there we also ended up buying her a new toy. It's a cross between an Exercauser and a Jumperoo. I'll post pics of it and hopefully a video too! She LOVES it even though she's really still too young to play in it. She is supposed to be able to sit up unassisted before playing in it, but we just supervise her in it and don't let her stay in too long. We tried it out in the store before we bought it and she was so cute that we just couldn't resist! At Babies R' Us Hannah also got to meet her cousin Olivia for the first time. Olivia was SO CUTE, but very tiny. Hannah looked like a toddler next to her! Then, on Sunday Mamaw and Papaw Like came to visit her and she wore herself out being cute for them!

I'm back now and it's Wednesday and Hannah just got back from her 4 month doctor's appointment. She got wonderful reviews from all of the nurses and the doctor and is indeed still growing like a weed! She is officially 16 lbs and 0 oz and 27 1/2 inches long and her head circumference is 17 1/4 inches around. That puts her in the 90th percentile for weight, the 99th for head circumference, and past the 99th for length. Her length isn't even on the growth charts for her age! She's as long as the average 9 month old (50th percentile) and has the head of a 9 month old and weighs as much as the average 6 month old! With this newest length measurement she has officially graduated out of her infant car seat. Thankfully Kyle thought to bring her new car seat with us to the appointment just in case because she had to ride home in it because she exceeded the length limit on her infant seat by an inch and a half! She got her next round of shots at this appointment as well and really she did better in the crying department, but the doctor said that this round of immunizations are generally worse than the 2 month shots and she could possibly have stronger reactions to this set. That does not make me happy given how miserable she was for several days after the last set of shots. Poor baby! One new thing we found out at the doctor was that Hannah can now begin eating solid foods, well sorta solid anyway. We get to start her on cereal now and it should be interesting. She's definitely interested in food as she watches me while I eat very intently and often tries to swipe food right out of my hand. All these new things that keep happening makes me both happy and sad. I'm glad Hannah is developing normally, but sad that my little girl is growing up. She's so active now that she rarely wants to just sit and cuddle anymore. :( I miss that.

Another of Hannah's new interest is sucking her toes. She has become almost obsessed with them. She constantly has her feet up and is chewing on her sock or her toes. It's quite cute, but it does make it hard to keep dry socks on her, especially since she doesn't have many socks left that fit!

Since her first attempt at rolling from her back to her belly Hannah has become quite accomplished at this new trick although she really only rolls one direction. She's begun to use it as a means to get around however and uses it to get to things that she wants such as a toy or the cats! The poor cats are really in for it now. She LOVES them and reaches for their soft fur any chance she gets. Once she can chase them around they are doomed! Now that she's spending a lot of time on her belly of her own choosing she has learned two more related tricks. First, she has learned how to push herself up on her chest and rotate her body a quarter turn in either direction to face the object that she wants. Second, she has begun to draw her knees up under her body while she is on her belly and wiggle her butt around and actually scoot forward a few inches. She's pretty funny because she hasn't learned how to push up with her arms yet at the same time so what she does is plant her face into the ground, push up with her heels onto her knees and shoves herself forward and then straightens her head back out! Along with these new methods of getting around comes sleep disturbances for Kyle and I. Hannah now gets herself stuck in her crib in the middle of the night from all her moving around and then starts crying for me to come save her from the crib bumper and put her back in the center! These middle of the night rescue sessions are becoming more and more common and let me just say that I am ready for her to be able to save herself (at least when it's 1:00am!). Finally, now that Hannah is in her big girl car seat she got to ride in the big girl portion of her stroller during a walk for the first time the other day. She really seemed to enjoy the view! I'm a bit sad that I won't get to see her beautiful face facing me while we walk anymore, but I am glad that she seems to like the new position so well.

To see a video of Hannah playing in her new toy for the first time just click on the link below.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3809507158152903955

Visit with Tiffany and Mike

We had another visit with Tiffany yesterday and Mike came along this time too. It was nice to see him since we hadn't seen him since Hannah was in the hospital. It was a nice, but hectic visit. Tiffany and I dressed all of the kids up in their Halloween costumes and had a photo shoot. It was fun! :) Hannah of course was Squirt from Finding Nemo. Chase was Spiderman and Kayla was a Barbie princess. We did have one catastrophe that I'm not sure what kind of havoc it will wreak. One of the dogs, not sure which one, managed to get ahold of Kayla's sparkly face make-up and eat the entire jar. Hopefully all that will happen is some mild digestional upset for the offending dog, but we are going to have to be vigilant for awhile since I'm not sure how bad that stuff is to be ingested.

Last Wednesday Hannah went to her first Halloween party at church. The church hosts a safe alternative to Trick-or-Treating called Trunk-or-Treat where members decorate their trunks and pass out candy from them in the church parking lot. They wanted me to take pictures so Kyle and Hannah came along too and Hannah got to dress up in her Squirt outfit. She looked adorable if I do say so myself!

Daylight Savings time is wreaking havoc in the Spontak household. The pets and the baby have their schedules all screwed up and are resisting the change vehemently. I've always been against daylight savings time and now I have one more reason why to add to my list! I'm praying that I will soon be able to get them all onto a new schedule, but I'm not too optimistic that this will be a quick transition.

Tomorrow Hannah goes to get her 4 month pictures taken. It's a few days early, but we had to do them tomorrow so that we could get the photographer that we love at JC Penny's. We thinks she takes the best pictures and she's great with babies too which is a must. I'm the kinda person that when I find something that I like that works I stick with it. So, I plan on requesting her every single month that we can possibly get her!

The other day Hannah decided to make me feel sad. When Kyle came home from work we went to the door to greet him. I was holding Hannah and she immediately spun herself around in my arms and reached both of her arms out to Kyle to be held. She didn't want boring old mom anymore. :( She wanted fun daddy! Kyle of course was thrilled. Me, not so much.

Hannah long overdue first haircut was finally performed. I held her head still while Kyle snipped. Her bangs are now nice and straight and out of her eyes. I'm sure she feels a lot better and it looks a lot better too!

Well, I just returned to the blog after tending to Hannah for several hours and while I was gone Hannah hit a major milestone! :) She rolled over by herself from her back to her tummy! I had been helping her practice rolling over like we do every day and then we stopped to take a breather. I was tempting her to reach out and grab one of her favorite wrist rattles, when all of a sudden she just up and rolled over to get it! I was so shocked and so was she! I gave her the rattle to play with for a bit and then I rolled her back onto her back and tempted her with the rattle again and she didn't hesitate a bit. She rolled right on over and grabbed it! Of course both times I didn't have my camera and she did it one more time before I got smart enough to go get the camera. As Murphy's Law would have it, once I got the camera Hannah was through rolling over to get the rattle, but if I put her onto her side and waved the rattle around she would go ahead and flip herself the rest of the way over. I did manage to get a video of that so I'm going to post it here. When she did it I was so excited I accidentally hit the stop record button on the camera! So, the video ends a little abruptly, but you can see the main part! :) To see the video, just click on the link. I'm so proud of my little girl I can hardly stand it! She's growing up so fast!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8393965075501961466&hl=en