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.