Dressing Herself

Today Hannah discovered a new skill that she wants to master and that is the art of dressing herself! Pap, Mindy, and Uncle Kevin came to visit us and Pap and Mindy brought Hannah her birthday presents since they won't be able to come to her party. Well, her present was lots of new clothes and Hannah had a blast taking them out of the bag and then trying to put them on and take them off over and over again. She was really good about getting her legs through, but of course couldn't get them pulled up and trying to pull things over her head were a big frustration to her. At one point she asked Mindy for help and so Mindy helped her pull a skirt on over her onesie and then put her bikini top of her new bathing suit on over her onesie too! She was certainly stylish! Once she got those new clothes on she didn't want to take them off and wore them the rest of the day. The skirt made it hard for her to crawl around in so she had to adopt her crazy way of crawling where she crawls on her hands and feet instead of her knees.

Here are some new videos I uploaded recently. I hope you enjoy.

The first two videos are of Hannah watching one of her Praise Baby DVDs. They are videos with worship songs playing and all sorts of fun stuff for the babies to watch. Hannah LOVES them and she will often tell us what she sees on the video as she watches. In the first video if you listen closely you can hear her tell me that she sees bubbles and a baby. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6099436925128610572&hl=en

In this second video if you listen you can hear her tell me that she sees more bubbles, another baby, blocks, and a flower. This is a great video of her doing the flower sign that I said was so cute in a previous post. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6910713314814269653&hl=en

Some days Hannah just absolutely refuses to nap. Usually that means that she will end up crashing around 7:00pm instead of her normal 8:00pm bedtime and we will have to suffer through her crankiness most of the afternoon and evening. On this particular day she did something she had NEVER done before, she just fell asleep in her highchair with her Zweibeck toast in her hand and food still in her mouth! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2650520767366045823&hl=en

Sometimes when Hannah wears dresses she has a hard time crawling so she crawls on her hands and feet instead of her knees. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5309101150350923959&hl=en5309101150350923959&hl=en5309101150350923959&hl=en

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. . . . Knees and Toes!

Hannah has been showing a lot of interest in the song, Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes lately so I paired that song with labeling her body parts, my body parts, and the parts on her Whinnie the Pooh doll. All of a sudden it was like a light bulb clicked on and she just got it. She can now correctly point to her head, nose, mouth, eyes, ears, feet, hands, and tummy about 75 % of the time. Many times she will also point to those same body parts on me or Pooh if I ask her too. I'm not convinced that she actually messes up on the times she seems to point to the wrong part or doesn't point at all. There are times when I think she is just trying to pull a fast one on me because she gets this mischievous little grin on her face and then sticks her fingers in her mouth when I ask her where her nose is!

Today the switch to half and half formula and milk was much better. In fact it was a complete turn around. She drank nearly all of her milk today. As always I panicked too soon, but at least I didn't actually call the doctor this time like I have done in the past. They must think I'm a lunatic in that office as often as I call them! They are always patient with me though and for that I am very thankful.

Since our trip to the zoo Hannah has started being more precise when she points out animals she sees in books and on videos. Instead of every animal being "Ella" or "dog" she has really started to try to classify the animals and gets pretty close most of the time. What really amazes Kyle and I is her ability to take the concept of cartoon and toy animals and real ones and realize that they are the same animal. For example, we taught her the sign for "bear" when we were at the zoo. She really seemed to like that one for some reason. Then the other day she started grabbing her Whinnie the Pooh and signing and saying bear (sounds like Buhairrrr). Then she started pointing to bears in her story books (she has several of them) and doing the same thing. I personally don't think Pooh looks very much like a real bear and definitely not like either of the types of bears we saw at the zoo, but somehow she still knows. Tonight when I was reading her a bedtime story that goes through all the animal mommies saying they love their babies we got to the page with the bear (realistic looking) and before I could even start reading the page she said bear! Then when we got to the rabbit she said rabbit and when we got to the duck she said duck! I was absolutely floored! Earlier in the day we were reading her bible (in the bible chair!) and we got to the story of Noah's Ark and it shows cartoon pictures of all the animals exiting the ark. She started pointing to the animals she knew and saying their names. She didn't know some so I told her about the llamas, goats, flamingos, etc and others she didn't have the exact animal, but had the general category right: cat for tiger and lion for example and bird for penguin and peacock. I am just amazed everyday at all she knows and how quickly she learns. I'm sure this is all normal stuff for babies and toddlers since they really do have so much to learn and I've often heard them described as little sponges which is exactly what Hannah seems to be, but I've not been around kids of this age much so it all seems so wondrous and totally insane to me! Regardless, I'm so proud of my little girl and all her accomplishments. Now if we could just get her stubbornness and tantrums under control . . . . I guess there has to be down side to her new found independence and knowledge, but how I wish the tantrums were a little less explosive and scary. Yesterday she threw one on the kitchen floor which is ceramic tile and she absolutely slammed her head face first into the floor because I wouldn't let her climb inside the dishwasher! She throws herself down and hits her head several times a day now and sometimes even deliberately bangs her head against things when she's frustrated or angry. It really scares me that she's going to hurt herself. So far it hasn't seemed to phase her, but it's definitely something I'm going to bring up with the doctor.

Speaking of being in the kitchen, another one of Hannah's newest pursuits is playing with magnets. I went through all of our magnets and put the ones that are all one piece and too large for her to swallow and too weak to cause problems if they were swallowed on the bottom of the fridge so that she could play with them. I put some duplicate pictures I had of her down there as well for her to play with. She loves to point to the pictures and then point to herself and say Hannah. She's also been conducting little experiments to see what the magnets will stick to. She's figured out so far that they stick to the fridge, bottom part of the stove and dishwasher and kitchen door, but not to the cabinets or the top part of the stove. Today she spent at least 15 minutes opening up the bottom drawer of the stove (where we keep the cookie sheets) and sticking the magnets to the inside of the front face of the drawer. She would stick them on, close the drawer, open the drawer back up, take the magnet off, look at it, stick it back on either the inside or the outside, close the drawer again, and then repeat the whole process over and over again.

Here's a video of Hannah practicing climbing. She's getting pretty good at it now and can even turn around and sit down in the chair once she gets up into it! She's not quite able to get up onto the couch by herself yet, but it's not for lack of effort. I'm sure she'll be able to soon as much as she is practicing! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2418069064794768298&hl=en

Good-Bye Bottle

Hannah has finally given up her bottles. She now drinks her formula exclusively from her sippy cup with no complaint! I'm so glad we were able to get rid of the bottles before it was time to get rid of the formula too. I think two changes at once would have just been too much for her. She really doesn't seem to deal with changes regarding food well! Speaking of food, she now has a new favorite food that has ousted bananas (they are still near the top though!) as top dog. Her new favorite is goldfish crackers. She absolutely loves them and asks for them by name. It so neat to see her sign/say "more fish please." She really is turning into a little person!

On Tuesday I bought her one of her birthday presents, but it was so cool that I couldn't wait to give it to her. So, I caved in and cleaned it up for her to play with (I bought it at a second hand kids store) and we have had a blast playing with it. It's this little dinosaur that has 4 holes with ramps attached to them. You put a ball into one of the holes and it pops out of the dinosaur at the end of the same colored ramp. It also plays a little song each time you put a ball in. One of the ramps exits out of the dinosaurs mouth and every 3rd or 4th time a ball comes out the dinosaur makes this little growl at the beginning and end of the song that plays and I think that is Hannah's favorite part of the toy. Each time she puts a ball in she looks at me expectantly and goes, "rarow". It is SO cute. I'll have to get a video of it so you all can see what I mean. I'm positive it doesn't sound as cute in writing as it does to actually see it!

Hannah continues to try to repeat almost everything we say and today she was on a kick of saying "bible." She kept climbing up in the library chair and trying to get my bible off the coffee table. I kept taking it away from her and saying, "No, that is mommy's bible. Here is Hannah's bible" and then giving her her book. After that she kept raising up the book and saying bible. :) What a smart girl she is! Hannah has also been really practicing her climbing and is getting good enough at it that her fearlessness is starting to scare me. I don't know what she'll be into next (possibly climbing the bookcases!), but I'm sure it will give me a heart attack.

It's been a few days since I started this post and I have some more Hannah updates to write before I publish this entry. Hannah continues to be really interested in reading her bible (and unfortunately mine as well!) in the corner chair in the library. That is officially the bible chair. I guess since she seems me read my bible there quite a bit she has decided that that is where she should read hers too. All morning today she kept climbing into the chair, saying bible, signing book, and tossing her bible at me to read. Then of course she would lose interest in her bible and make a lunge for mine! She certainly keeps me busy.

Yesterday we went to visit Kyle's brother Kevin. It was the first time Hannah had been to Uncle Kevin's house and I think she approved of it. She had a nice time exploring things and really enjoyed it when we played Kevin's Wii. We were playing a tennis game and we were all jumping around and swinging our arms and Hannah got so excited she started yelling, laughing hysterically,and swinging her arms around too and banging her hands on some boxes on the floor. It was quite cute to see her.

Today we took Hannah back down to the park and she played some more. Once again she loved the swings so much that she threw a huge fit when we took her out of them. We actually got some video of this fit so I'll try to post it soon. She rode the Gecko rocking toy again (which she aparently thinks looks like her new dinosaur toy because she kept saying "rarow" when she was on it!) and climbed all over the jungle gym. She's getting to be a pro at climbing up stairs and really enjoyed crawling on all the different platforms of the gym. What we didn't expect was that Hannah would like the slide so much and be so good at it. By the time we were ready to go Hannah was going down the slides by herself! She's a little adrenaline junky so she thought going fast was really cool.

We're gearing up for the big party all this week. I still can't believe that it's been a year already. I took all her pacis out of the cabinet today and I must say that it made me a little sad to think she's so grown up that she doesn't need what I think was the staple of her baby existence-her paci. The time has just flew by so quickly. I still remember so clearly when Donna (Tiffany's mom) came out and told us that we could come in and see our daughter. It was the most amazing moment of my life. I never imagined that she would grow into such a beautiful, wonderful little girl this fast. Right before my eyes she has blossomed into a little person with such an unique personality and so full of love. I feel so blessed that God gave us the task of raising her. She has taught us so many things.

In honor of her first birthday, tomorrow we are going to start weaning her off of formula and onto cow's milk. We plan to start off with a half and half combo until we finish the can of formula we have open and then switch over completely. That's the plan anyway. We'll see how it goes.

Ok, it's Monday now and I still haven't managed to publish this post. We've started introducing the whole milk today and as I feared it isn't going well. Hannah is only drinking about 3 oz of the mixture before chucking her cup and asking for goldfish (or any other food besides milk!). She just threw a HUGE tantrum about 20 minutes ago and is now sleeping in her crib because she exhausted herself screaming when I wouldn't give her any goldfish until she finished her milk.

Busy Weekend

Hannah had a very busy weekend. Thursday Kyle and I took her to the zoo and she really enjoyed herself. She had a play date with Evelyn Friday night so Kyle and I could go watch Evan Almighty. Saturday IAC (our adoption agency) had a picnic so we traveled to Franklin for that. Sunday was the Clod reunion so we did that and also stopped by to visit Mamaw and Papaw on the way there. Hannah was absolutely exhausted after all of our traveling, but she still had trouble sleeping. Both nights she was up several times during the night. We think her teeth are bothering her and that she is hungry. She's finally back to eating as much as she did before she got sick and then some! Yesterday and today she has been hungry ALL day. She would seriously eat all day if I let her. I'm having a hard time of knowing exactly how much to let her eat. Not even a week ago I was calling the doctor because I was worried she wasn't eating enough and now I don't know how to tell if she's eating too much!

Today she accidentally stood on her own for about 20 seconds. That was exciting! She pulled herself up on me and was trying to get my sunglasses off my head (we were wearing our sunglasses in the house to get used to having them on!) and as I moved my head around she just let go of me and started swiping at the glasses with both hands at the same time. Eventually she realized she wasn't holding on, freaked out, and fell down, but still she was pretty steady before she noticed. The problem is that she doesn't really WANT to stand on her own. Her friend Evelyn is rock solid and can stand up from the floor without even holding onto anything and then stay there infinitely, but Hannah has no interest in that. She's spending all her time developing her vocabulary. At the zoo she learned some new words and signs and loved practicing the ones she already knows. Her newest and most endearing sign is please. She's getting really good at asking for things and adding the please onto whatever she wants. She even pulls it out when she really wants to do something and we are telling her no. She's finally got her name down pat and likes to point to pictures of herself around the house and say, "Haaanaaah." She almost always draws the vowel sounds out, but it's so cute to hear her.

Lately she's been loving sharing fruit with me. She really likes to bite off the pieces by herself instead of me cutting a piece off for her. I guess sharing that apple with her way back when started something. She now loves to eat apples, peaches, and plums as well as bananas just like a big person. She does think that apple is the universal word for round fruit that you bite off the core, but we are working on that. Last night we were sharing a peach and she sucked every last shred of fruit off of the pit and then threw a major fit when I had to throw the pit away and we were done. I guess she really likes her fruit.

When we were at the zoo, Hannah really enjoyed seeing the fish in tanks, the zebras (she called them horses), and the ducks. I would have liked to have stayed longer and went back through the oceans building, but it was so hot and crowded that Hannah started to get cranky and we had to call it a day. Maybe next time we can visit the butterfly gardens too.

Super Virus

Well it turned out that the virus that Hannah, Evelyn, and the other baby (Eleanor) got was a super contagious one because entire families have been succumbing to it! The casualty count is now 3 babies, 2 siblings, 3 daddies, and 2 mommies (and that's just what we've heard of so far)! Both Kyle and I came down with it, as did Evelyn's parents, as well as Eleanor's dad and two brothers. Hannah is still not completely back to normal, but hasn't had any vomit or diarrhea since Friday. Now the challenge is to get her fever to go away completely (it keeps going away and then reappearing again) and get her back on a regular eating routine. She actually did some pretty good eating today, but it just wasn't consistent. Sometimes she was absolutely ravenous and at others she didn't even want to look at a bottle, sippy cup, or piece of finger food. I seem to be through the worst of it. My fever is gone and I've been vomit free for over 24 hours. I'm starting to get a bit of energy back, but am still feeling quite weak and achey. Kyle is just starting the process, however, so I hope that for him the virus has weakened as it has passed through Hannah and I and maybe it won't be so hard on him. The hardest part about Hannah's entire illness was yesterday. It wasn't the puke or the diarrhea, but her desperate pleas for food. Because she was vomiting everything she ate or drink straight back up, the doctor said she was only allowed to have 2 sips of water every 15 minutes and then a few bites of applesauce if she managed to keep her water down. She was so thirsty by this point that she wanted to just guzzle the water down and 2 sips was just torture to her. She would get hysterical when we took the cup away and sign more to drink over and over again while she looked at us like she couldn't believe we were starving her! It would take the entire 15 minutes to get her calmed down and distracted by something else and then it was time to give her another sip and we had to start the whole process over again. Once she was tolerating her water and Kyle gave her some applesauce (which she ate greedily and that is a big deal since she HATES applesauce!) she even signed more to eat PLEASE to Kyle. She just kept pleading and pleading for more to eat and drink and it broke our hearts to not be able to give it to her. Today Mamaw came to watch her since Kyle and I could not keep up with her and she was really good about eating and drinking for awhile and then decided she didn't want any more to eat or drink at around 6pm. I'm worried she didn't get enough today, but I couldn't force it on her. I bet she won't make it through the night. I actually hope she wakes up in the middle of the night hungry. I would feel a lot better if she would even take 2 more ounces of formula.

Here are some more videos of Hannah from before she got sick.

This video is of Hannah and Evelyn using the cat food tins as drums. They get more enjoyment out of those old pop corn tins than I think they do out of any other toy.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5460520082233794110&hl=en

This is Hannah's first balloon. She LOVED it (she actually still has it although the helium of course doesn't make it float anymore). Her favorite thing to do was hold it and then let it go and watch it float up to the ceiling. Then she would say and sign help for Kyle to get it down so she could do it all over again!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8431588526699197909&hl=en

Here is Hannah's first time having a bowl and spoon on her tray. She really wasn't quite sure about the whole thing.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3206610299863713137&hl=en

Hannah developed her own way of using her spoon. Unfortunately she got sick the day after these videos were taken so we haven't been able to continue her spoon training!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2366650058610898850&hl=en

Mountain Climber

Hannah is now a little mountain climber. Since she learned that she could climb up steps at the park she has now learned how to climb onto chairs. Today she crawled up onto the footstool and from there onto to the chair to get to me! After I put her back down on the floor she climbed right up again into the chair and then turned around and gave me a look like she was so proud of herself.

Lately Hannah has been obsessed with the sign for flower. She finds flowers all over the house (it's not hard considering all the daisies I have everywhere) on the walls, in pictures, in books, on her videos and does the sign for them ever single time. She's so cute when she does it because she scrunches up her nose and sniffs like she's smelling a real flower in addition to doing the sign. Last night she was sick (I'll tell you about that in a bit) and I had her in the guest bathroom stripped naked trying to clean vomit out of her hair. I sat her on the counter and she kept pointing to the pictures of the flowers on the wall and making the sign for flower for each one. She did the exact right number of signs, one for each picture. Even though she was feeling so crummy she still couldn't let her flower guard down!

Ok, now about her being sick, this week I was helping out at Vacation Bible School and Hannah was staying in the nursery at church. Well on Tuesday night one of the other babies in the nursery ended up getting sick and was vomiting. So, she obviously was not back in the nursery yesterday. So, yesterday Hannah had a great day in the nursery and even actually enjoyed herself for most of the time. Then at home around 7:30 Hannah did not want to finish her bottle. So, I took her back to her room to read her a story and put her to bed and she vomited pretty much the entire contents of her stomach onto me, the chair, the floor, and her book-or so I thought it was the entire contents. I got her cleaned up and ready for bed again and she went to sleep easily. Then at about 9:00pm I heard her choking on the monitor. She had thrown up again and was on her back and it was pooling in her throat and nose! I could not believe she even had anything left in her stomach, but she threw up a considerable amount and since she was laying down it all pooled around her head and in her ears and hair. So, I tried to clean her up some more and then she started having dry heaves. The poor things was so scared. Her stomach kept contracting, but there was nothing left in it so just mucus came up. Today she kept her morning bottle and some cereal down, but then threw up her noon bottle. She is also running a fever today which she wasn't doing last night. Other than being more tired than usual she seems to be acting normal so that is a relief, especially after the last time she was vomiting and we ended up in the ER. Along with Hannah, another baby in the nursery also got sick last night and was vomiting. It turned out to be a little epidemic with at least 3 of the 6 babies getting sick. I haven't heard from the church today to see if any of the other 3 babies came down with the same thing, but I sure hope they don't. Hopefully they were able to clean and disinfect the nursery so that nobody else picks up whatever it was that these girls caught.

Fruit

Now that Hannah has top and bottom front teeth, she really enjoys eating fruit that she can bite off with her teeth. The other day she helped me eat a peach and today we shared an apple. She really loved the apple, especially hearing her teeth crunch through it! I think eating that apple together finally made the sign and word for apple stick because she's been going around saying "Apuh" and making the sign nonstop ever since!

The other day when we were at the grocery store Hannah had her hair up in pigtails and was being exceptionally cute. She was even flirting with the bagger boy! Anyway, he said that she looked just like Cindy Lou Who from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. I had to laugh because just before we left home for the store I had been telling Kyle that I thought she looked exactly like her too!

In the signing department, besides apple Hannah has a few more new signs that I think she knows pretty well. They are flower, banana, and peas. She continues to search out things in the house to label and the other day she had crawled over to one of the bookcases and kept saying horse and making the sign for horse and I kept telling her, "No Hannah, there are no horses over here." But she kept saying it over and over again, so finally I got up and walked over to pick her up and sure enough there was a horse on the cover of one of the books that I couldn't see from my vantage point and she was pointing right at it! That little girl has eagle eyes! Continuing with her communication, a few days ago Hannah's birthfather called us up to chat and while I was talking to him Hannah kept trying to grab the phone like she always does and was saying hi. Mike was so surprised. He said, "Is she saying hi to me?" I said, "Yup she sure is!" and he could not believe that she was talking on the phone already! Speaking of talking on the phone, last night I was chatting with my Aunt Myrna and Hannah was watching me talk. Then she crawled over and got her Sesame Street remote control, which looks a lot like a phone, and held it up to her ear and started jabbering away into it. It was so adorable. It made me smile so hard my cheeks hurt.

Yesterday Kyle and I took Hannah to a little park near our house that we had heard had some new playground equipment for toddlers. It was really neat and only about a 15 minute walk from our house. It had a baby swing which Hannah loved and threw a fit when we tried to take her out of it! It also had a bouncy gecko thing with a spring which she liked rocking on, some small slides which she liked going down, and lots of steps for climbing. Up until now, Hannah had not been able to actually climb up on anything. She would put her knee up, but then as her foot would start to slide back she would get scared and quit. But yesterday she climbed up 4 steps to get to the top of the jungle gym and go down the slide. I was so proud of her! Then, later on that night she practiced climbing up the step onto our deck. She wasn't sure how to get back down from the step on the deck and asked for help from me to do that, but it's definitely a start.

Here are some more videos. I'm finally getting some current ones uploaded! To see the video just click on the links below.

This is a video of Hannah playing with her rings. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1671340333830801627&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah and I at the play place in the mall when we went to get our Mother's Day pictures taken. She loves to watch all the big kids run around and act crazy. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=924217956251704240&hl=en

Hannah likes to use anything that is round as a bracelet. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5888869650791692167&hl=en

Here's a video of Hannah actually drinking her formula out of her sippy cup. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1642496727560204713&hl=en

Here is Hannah eating her favorite food! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7710028955292259197&hl=en

The next two videos are of Hannah terrorizing poor Abby. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9046394292170939426&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5648025850962763037&hl=en

Hannah is playing with her magnets that Mamaw gave her. Listen closely for her to say Mamaw and Zeke. Poor Papaw doesn't get a name! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8216008372094623516&hl=en

Solo Standing

Hannah stood by herself for the first time today (well for any significant length of time anyway). I was feeding the cats and Hannah had pull herself up on the cans that I keep the cat food in. When it came time to open the can that she was leaning against I said, "Hannah, move your hands. Mommy needs to feed the cats." and she just let go and stood up! She stood there perfectly balanced while I removed the lid, scooped out the cat food, put the scoop back in the can, and replaced the lid. Then she went right back to resting her hands on the can! I was in shock that she stood for that long because she hasn't shown any interest in standing on her own at all yet. Every time we try to get her to let go of our hands to stand alone she panics and thrashes around to get a hold of us. Today she was calm as could be and actually let go on her own. She's been using her walker to get around quite a bit this past week and she has finally decided that cruising the furniture is a viable mode of transportation. She even makes transfers between different pieces of furniture.

In the communication area she has a new word. It is puffs (which include veggie puffs, cheerios, and wagon wheels). It sounds like bups when she says it, but she is consistent about using it in the correct context so I'm pretty sure that's what she means. Last night I was feeding her some carrots and she started saying bups. When I went to give her more carrots she threw the carrot on the floor, gave me a disgusted look, stared right at the cheerio container, signed more and said "bups." She made her point very clear! Lately she loves to have things labeled so we walk around the house saying the names of anything we can find. She will point to something and I will tell her the name and she will repeat it. She attempts to repeat pretty much anything we say now, but most of the things I don't count as actual words in her vocabulary until she uses them spontaneously. Oh, I almost forgot she has some more new words! Horse, Hannah, and socks are the newest. She also knows the sign for horse, although she gets confused with her animal signs sometimes now! Anytime she sees pictures of the pets, of horses, or people on our walls she will point to the picture and say the name and then look at us to see if she got it right. If she has said the wrong word we just say the correct name back to her and then she repeats it. She loves to go down the hallway and see our wedding pictures. She points to them and says, Mama, Dada! She is so proud of herself when she gets them right. She's also been pointing at the various fish on the walls in her room and waiting for me to tell her their names. Just fish doesn't satisfy her anymore. She expects the character names now. I thought she was trying to say Nemo today, but it didn't sound anything like Nemo. She just kept saying the same thing over and over each time she pointed to any of the Nemo stickers in her room so maybe she has her own special name for him!

She's been VERY clingy lately and wants to be held all the time. "Up" is her favorite word at the moment and I get extremely tired of hearing it! She's now 24.6 lbs ( I have her exact weight since we weighed her on the jockey scale at Indiana Downs Tuesday night when I went to visit Heather!) and that's way too heavy for me to be carting around all day long. She also uses the word "up" when she wants down. We are working on teaching her the word and sign for down so we don't have to hear "up" when she is already up! Sleep continues to be a struggle for her, both at night and during naps. I just keep praying that this too shall pass. The poor thing just gets so exhausted that I wish she would sleep more, but she refuses to miss anything. On Tuesday night she screamed in the van for over an hour on the way home from the racetrack. Poor Kristie and Chris got a big dose of the realities of parenthood that night since I was driving and they were left to listen to her/try to comfort her (which of course doesn't work when she's decided that she does not want to be comforted!).

Transitioning away from the bottle is pretty much stalled at the moment. Sometimes Hannah will drink her entire bottle from the sippy cup sitting in her highchair all by herself and others she will barely drink an ounce of it from the sippy cup and I have to pour it back into a bottle and hold it for her so she will drink it. I feel like I'm stuck in a Catch 22. I think the only way to get her to transition solely to the sippy cup is to not let her drink from the bottle at all anymore and if that means she doesn't get all of her formula then so be it, but the doctor said that she absolutely has to get at least 24 oz of formula every day and we have to do whatever it takes to get it down her. So, there goes that idea. I guess I will just have to hold out until her 1 year check up and ask him what on earth I am supposed to do! The good news is that her hunger strikes seem to be over for the moment and she is back to eating 7 oz of formula at each bottle.

As far as solids go she is feeding herself very well. We give her quite a bit of table food now and she could conceivably feed herself an entire meal now I think. Today I bought her some suction cup bowls and I pulled out her spoons. We are going to give using dishes and utensils to feed ourself a go tomorrow. That should be interesting!

Here are some more videos. Just click on the links below to watch the video.

Hannah loves to help brush her teeth, but she got performance anxiety during this video! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8445872622748395513&hl=en

We were trying to catch Hannah saying "HI" but she wanted to get the camera instead! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3205546199928557632&hl=en

Hannah's favorite place to nap is in her baby backpack on Daddy's back. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5497180214810450999&hl=en

We read lots of books everyday. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-69954048494101157&hl=en

This is one of her first tries using her walker. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7354415489279859950&hl=en

Hannah likes to share her toys with Evelyn. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=517758871426773226&hl=en

The B Word

Yup, you guessed it, Hannah is obsessed with the B word. Bananas are now her favorite food. In fact we have to be careful not to say it unless we are prepared to give her one right then because she will want one if she hears it. If we walk past bananas in the store, if she sees some on TV, notices them on the counter, or even hears the word in a song she starts saying banana over and over again and really expects you to get her some to eat right that very second! Whenever she is eating something else she will almost always work in a request for bananas and then look at us expectantly waiting for that sticky yellow fruit to appear on her tray. It is very cute, BUT if there are no more bananas or it's not time to eat then things can get a bit ugly!

Hannah rode in her bike trailer again last night and really enjoyed herself. We went on a much longer ride this time than in the past and she just hung out back there checking out all the sights. By the end of the ride she had fallen asleep. She was so sleepy that Kyle actually managed to get her out of the trailer, take her helmet off, and put her in her crib without her really waking up. She slept for over an hour then and we eventually had to wake her up because we knew she needed to eat at least one more time before bed if she were going to make it through the night.

Hannah is doing better about drinking her formula and is eating lots of solid foods, but now her sleep issues are back. We are having to ferber her almost every night and I have to do it for most naps now too. :( It's really hard to hear her crying, but something has to give. She has to have some sleep. Lately when it is time to go into the room to calm her down a bit, she's been rolling over on her side and curling up in a ball while I rub her back. She sniffles and gulps as she fights to stop crying and does that until she falls asleep. It just breaks my heart to hear her, but I don't know what else to do. I don't even bother rocking her while I sing her songs to her anymore because she just gets upset because she knows she's going to bed. She also completely weaned herself off of her pacifier so she doesn't have that as a comfort anymore either. Her lovey helps some as does her aquarium music maker, but there doesn't seem to be much else we can do to help her get herself to sleep.

Hannah has been using the word and sign for help a lot lately. Whenever she wants to do something but is having trouble doing it, instead of immediately getting frustrated and crying she looks at us with a questioning look and signs and says help. Two incidents that happened lately were really cute. Hannah was playing with the remote control on the floor and Kyle grabbed a hold of it and wouldn't let it go. Hannah kept pulling and pulling, but she couldn't get it out of his hand. So, she turned to me and signed and said help and then looked back at Kyle and locked her eyes of the remote! After a few more repeat performances of Daddy holding the remote hostage Hannah decided that it wasn't even worth it to try to pull the remote out of his hands so as soon as he picked it up she signed and said help to me without even reaching for it at all! Then yesterday Evelyn was over and she was looking at a book that Hannah really wanted to play with. Hannah made a few half-hearted swipes at the book in Evelyn's hands and then turned to me with such a sweet face and said and signed help! She wanted ME to take the book away from Evelyn! We had a little conversation about sharing our toys and how Mommy would not take the book away from Evelyn since Evelyn had it first, but that she could see it when Evelyn was done. Then I tried to distract her!

I have lots of videos to post of Hannah. Many of them are from all the way back in April, but I thought you all might like to see them anyway. I'll try to spread them out between several different posts.

This first video is of Hannah brushing my hair. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5292348242793244230&hl=en

These next two videos are of Hannah reading books in her tunnel. The book she is reading is actually the same book she wanted me to help her get away from Evelyn yesterday!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=740745643806568290&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2454123534212638459&hl=en

Hannah was really proud when she finally learned how to make her top work all by herself.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=993345967427904964&hl=en

The dog crates provides hours of enjoyment for both Hannah and Evelyn! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4073904834445111958&hl=en

Hannah loves to crawl all over us. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2092417735517341236&hl=en

PS. Take note of all the funny faces Hannah is making in this post. I don't know what got into her, but I was getting all sorts of sassy faces out of her that day!

First Sentence

Hannah used her first sentence the other day and I about passed out I was so shocked! I was feeding her solids (a banana and cereal) and she signed more and then said banana. When I just stared at her she repeated the combo! Ever since she's been asking for bananas every time I put her in her highchair. Sometimes the word sounds like nana, but about half of the time she gets it almost exactly right and says all 3 syllables (or sometimes four if she gets excited)! It sounds like Baaa nanana. Yesterday she also made the sign for cat for the first time and pair it with tat. She's been obsessed with the box of cat litter (not the actual litter box, but what you buy the litter in) today. It has pictures of cats on it and she keeps crawling over to it and saying and signing cat. She's also been playing with her new picture magnets a bunch today and saying mamaw over and over. Hannah still hasn't been very interested in her walker lately. She is however practicing walking using my hands. It really does seem like she is concentrating on learning to talk rather than on physical accomplishments. She jabbers all day long and uses the words she knows get results as often as she can!

Swim class ended yesterday and I must say it was a bit disappointing since the instructor didn't even show up. We may try to go some place different for swimming this summer. Who knows, maybe Hannah will get her own baby pool.

I can hardly believe it but Hannah is almost a year old! I got an email from one of the online baby development sites I visit and it just hit me. I thought, "wow, surely it hasn't been a year yet?", but I guess it has. Thankfully, I finally got around to reserving the shelter house for her birthday party so we will all have somewhere to party in a few weeks. Her party will be July 7th at 2:00pm at the park by our house. Everyone is welcome to come help Hannah celebrate her big day with cake and ice cream. Feel free to bring your bikes, Rollerblades, basketballs or other outdoor toys to play with at the park. I'm looking forward to all our friends and family meeting Tiffany and Mike and for them to meet you all! Hannah has so many people who love her. It will be awesome to have them all in one place for once.

It's been a few days since I started this post and I already have some more updates. Hannah has learned two new signs and a new word! Hannah now both says and signs cat. She would say it sometimes before, but not do the sign at all. Now she's even doing the sign when she sees a picture of a cat or even a cat on TV. Tonight I was watching Shrek 2 to prepare for Kyle and I's next date night where we plan to watch Shrek 3. Every time Puss N Boots came on the screen Hannah would sign and say cat. It really made me smile. Interestingly enough, every time she saw Donkey she would either say Ella or sign and say dog! Her newest word and sign she did for the first time tonight, but I'm sure she's got it down pat as she did it continually is cheese. She loves to eat cheese and I showed her the sign for it for the first time on Friday. Tonight I did it again and she immediately did it back to me and said, eeze. Every time she would run out of cheese on her tray she would sign more and then sign and say cheese! So, a new sign and another sentence. In other Hannah news, she's finally decided to get back to using her walker again. She's been going all over the place with it this weekend. She even improvised while at Grandpa's house yesterday and used his rolly chair!

Bottle Battles

Since my last post Hannah's formula consumption went from bad to worse. She started refusing all formula from a cup or a bottle and screaming at the top of her lungs when she even saw any. She was SO HUNGRY, but she refused to eat. We thought maybe her teeth were hurting her so we tried Oragel and Tylenol. We tried holding her, putting her in her highchair, and even letting her sit on the floor. Nothing worked. We had several tense days where I fretted over her getting enough nutrition and I almost called the doctor again, but then finally she began to eat a little again. Oddly enough she will start out her formula in the highchair drinking from the sippy cup. She will drink maybe one or two ounces and then refuse to drink from the cup any more even if we hold it (that's a complete backslide as she was drinking her entire amount from the cup for at least two whole weeks prior to this recent battle). If we try to force the cup she will scream and cry. So, now we have to put the rest of the formula into a bottle and hold it for her in her highchair or pick her up and hold her for her to drink the rest. Sometimes she will drink it all and sometimes she won't, but at least she's getting most of it down. We have cut her back to 6 oz a bottle again until she starts consistently drinking it all. Today she did ask for more during two of her bottles so that is encouraging. I wonder what caused all this fuss? She seemed to be doing great and then BANG! she lost all the progress she had made. Maybe she's just not ready to be weaned yet. I might have to break down and buy some more bottles after all :(

Hannah is so active these days that I am absolutely exhausted at the end of each day. Actually I'm exhausted by 9:00am, but who's counting! She goes like a mad woman all day long and she's into absolutely EVERYTHING. She's even become sneaky and will crawl away really quietly while my eyes are turned for just a second. When she realizes that I've found her she will giggle and start to crawl away faster! She's only taking one nap a day now so I have no time to really get any work done. It's no longer safe to go into another room for even a second to grab something to work on and I have no means of containing her other than her crib and I don't want to use that as anything other than a place to sleep so I'm pretty much out of options. Hannah and I play and read all day (or I chase her around and try to undo the destruction she leaves in her wake) and then I kick it into overdrive the minute she goes down for a nap to try to get things done.

Hannah's vocabulary continues to increase and she really uses her words and her signs to get her point across. In the past week she's started using "up" a lot It's so hard to say no to her when she asks so nicely!) and every time I take her to our bedroom she makes a beeline straight for the bathroom saying duck, duck, duck and grabs her rubber duckie off of the edge of the tub! She's also said Grandpa, banana, and Mamaw for the first time and has started naming people in her picture books as we look at the pictures. She can correctly identify, Mom, Dad, and Evelyn. The Mamaw utterance was also in response to a picture of Mamaw. Phones continue to intrigue her and she talks to Daddy on the phone everyday at work. She even left him a voicemail this week!

I almost forgot to tell everyone that she got her 4th and 5th teeth in. Now she has 3 on the top and two on the bottom. She's still drooling like crazy and chewing on everything so I figure another one on the top can't be far behind. Her stranger/separation anxiety continues. She's going to be spending the day with Mamaw and Papaw tomorrow so hopefully she will go easy on them! I'm praying that this stage will ease up soon. It really does break my heart to see her so scared. It hurts people's feelings too. They really want to hold her, but Hannah wants nothing to do with them.

The dogs and cats have been so good with Hannah lately and she's started to get a lot better about gentle touches. She was hugging Abby like crazy last night and Abby actually seemed to enjoy it. Every time we let Ella out of her crate she immediately runs over to Hannah and tries to lick her on the face! Hannah thinks that is pretty funny. Even Sadie and Penny have been less apt to run for the basement when they see Hannah coming. The other day Hannah kept putting her bugaboo around Sadie's neck like a necklace! She was such a good cat and just sat there patiently while Hannah took it on and off over and over again. Unfortunately for Saddie, Hannah's not very good at just lifting it straight up so Sadie had to endure a fair amound of pulling on her head and neck each time Hannah attempted to remove it. She was a good cat though and never even acted angry.

I'm back again after our weekend excursion to work on Grandpa's house. We almost have it all done. There's just a little bit left to do next Saturday, but basically it's good to go! :) Hannah won't know what to do without Grandpa at her house anymore! Hannah spent all day Saturday and all day Sunday with Mamaw and Papaw while we worked. On Saturday she had a really rough time. She was fussy the entire day and went on another hunger strike. She refused 2 bottles and a solid food feeding. Eventually though she couldn't hold out any longer. Mamaw took her on a walk which made her sleepy so she took a nap. After she woke up from her nap she ate for an hour straight! She had a bottle, a full meal of solids, plus wagon wheels and veggie puffs. On Sunday she did MUCH better. No more hunger strikes, no more fussiness, and she even learned some new words. Mamaw is now firmly engrained as part of her vocabulary as is Zeke (Mamaw and Papaw's dog). Mamaw gave her magnets that have pictures of she and Papaw and one that has Zeke's picture on it and Hannah can look at those magnets on our fridge and tell us it is Mamaw or Zeke. Occasionally, Zeke is called Ella (that's still proving to be a tough habit to break! surely all dogs are named Ella!), but she does know his name and loves to give his picture on the magnet kisses :)

The last two nights have been really rough in the sleep department for Hannah. She has absolutely refused to go down at night. We do her entire bedtime routine and she is fine, but as soon as we turn out the light to sing her her first song she goes ballistic. On Sunday night Kyle used the vibrating rocking chair to finally get her calmed down, but last night we just let her cry and did the Ferber method. They both seemed to work equally well, which translates as neither worked very well at all, but in the end she did eventually go to sleep after much screaming and hysterics. Her 6th tooth popped through Sunday night so I thought that maybe that had been the problem so I did preventative care last night before I put Hannah to bed by giving her some Tylenol and oragel, but it didn't seem to help at all. So far I've only got to see that new tooth twice and very briefly both times. Kyle still hasn't got a glimpse of it yet, but it's definitely there.

Hannah just keeps growing and growing. Recently I bought her some really cute clothes at Old Navy using a Christmas gift card I had. I bought size 18-24 months. Sounded reasonable to me given Hannah is only 10 months old! Well, apparently I was wrong because when I got them home I decided to try them on her before I cut the tags off (good choice on my part!). The T shirt I couldn't even get to fit over her head and the dress I managed to get on, but it was already snug. So, back I went to the mall later that week to exchange them both for 2T sizes! The worst part is that neither of those 2T sizes are any too big. They fit her just perfectly now. There will be no "growing into" these particular clothes. They fit right now and once she grows a bit they won't fit at all! So, if anyone ever has the urge to buy Hannah clothes absolutely do not get anything smaller than 24 months that you want her to wear right this second and nothing smaller than 2T that you think she might wear for the rest of the summer. In the past two weeks I've had to retire 4 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, and a jacket. We even had to buy all new socks sized 24-36 months! I also think I forgot to mention to you all that Hannah got her feet measured at the specialty shoe store in the mall and she wears a size 4 1/2 wide. That explained why the size 4 shoes she got for Christmas and the size 5 shoes that I recently bought her to replace them did not fit. Her foot was just too wide to even get inside! It didn't matter what the length of the shoe was since I couldn't even get it shoved through the hole!

One of Hannah's current favorite activities is wearing things as bracelets. She likes to use the rings off of her rock -n- stack or her bugaboo as bracelets for her arms and legs (and mom, dad, or grandpa's arms and legs) or as necklaces for the cats! She's got this funny little one handed flip thing she does to get them on her arms and she thinks it's great fun to put them on and take them off repeatedly. Another new skill Hannah has been working on is putting the shapes into the right holes in her shape sorter. She understands that the shapes go inside the holes, but she lacks all the necessary hand-eye coordination to consistently get them through the hole each time. Then there is that pesky business about picking the correct hole to shove them through as well. Mommy has to help with that, but she is learning to try another if the first one doesn't work.