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!