Little Explorer

Hannah has really become a little explorer as of late. She's finding all manner of ways to get around and she uses each method as needed to get where she wants to go. Her favorite places to go right now are under her swing, under the coffee table, up against the entertainment center, and up against the basket of blankets. She LOVES to get up against something and then kick it tirelessly. She's also been attempting to pull herself up on the coffee table and the basket of blankets. She has yet to be successful at this new milestone, but we all know how relentless she can be when she sets goals for herself. She also loves to crawl and roll all over Kyle and I as well as the couches and chairs in the house. It's so funny to see her climbing over things to get what she wants which is usually a lamp, remote control, or the telephone!

The last few days she has been VERY cranky. Her teeth are really bothering her. I'm not sure if it's her newest tooth that's still causing pain or if I should expect yet another new tooth sometime in the near future. She's drooling like crazy again and chewing on EVERYTHING in sight. Whenever I give her one of her teethers from the fridge and she first puts it in her mouth she gets this look of ecstasy on her face like she's saying, "YES! This is heaven." Kyle said Tuesday night when he gave her one she went from fussing to laughing hysterically as soon as he gave it to her. At times it's like we have a miniature Dr. Jekyll-Mrs. Hyde on our hands. One minute she is happy as a clam and the next minute she is SCREAMING bloody murder. It's so hard to know that she is hurting and to not be able to do a whole lot to ease her pain.

Her sleep problems seem to be evening out for the moment. She's getting much better at soothing herself and that makes me happy. It's so hard for me to hear her cry and just let her keep crying when I know that if I just picked her up and rocked her I could have her comforted and back asleep in under 5 minutes. I know she has to learn how to do this for herself or she'll end up being that 7 year old that won't go to sleep by herself and has to sleep with mom and dad. I want to do what's right for her long term, but it's hard.

Hannah's become an obsessive stander and eater of veggie puffs. I truly believe that she is addicted to both of these activities! She will grab and pull on the handle of the basket over and over and over, but she's just not quite strong enough to get herself up because the handle has too much give and it's a bit high up for her to really get a good grip on it. Or she will pull at my hands and slap me and make all sorts of noises if I'm not paying close enough attention to her until I let her use my thumbs to pull herself up. If I make her sit back down she cries and starts reaching for my hands again until she can pull herself back up. She's starting to get adventurous about it too. She'll let go of my hands with one and sometimes both hands. Today she actually balanced herself without holding onto anything for about 3 seconds before she started to topple over. She also started trying to pull herself up on the crib railing today. She rolled herself up next to the crib and grabbed and pulled with all her might. She just wasn't quite strong enough to get herself up at the angle she was at. As far as the veggie puffs go, she swipes them up as soon as we put them on the tray of her highchair and as soon as it's gone she's looking for more. I have a feeling that it won't be long before she's using the "more" sign to tell me she wants more of the beloved veggie puffs!

Notice in the last bath picture how long her hair is getting! It's down between her shoulder blades now! I can even manage to get it into a single ponytail in the back if she holds still long enough!

The purple shirt Hannah is wearing in these last few pictures is a Christmas present from our friend Marisa. She gave Hannah and I matching Life is Good daisy shirts! We love them and I can't wait until it gets warm enough for us to both wear them out together! We'll look so cute! Well, at least Hannah will. :)

Belly Sleeper

Well, it's now official. Hannah is definitely a belly sleeper and we have given up the fight to try to make her sleep on her back or side. It's to the point now that she sleeps completely on her belly with one leg and arm tucked up underneath her and her butt in the air. It's pretty cute to see, but still scares me to death. We've tried and tried to turn her back onto her back while she is asleep, but she now turns her immediately back over without even waking up. She did this 3 or 4 times in a row last night! The Ferbering continues for Hannah's sleep issues. I think it may be getting better, but it's hard to tell. I still hate letting her cry.

Hannah's been working really hard on crawling and can now occasionally get up on her hands and knees and wiggle her butt back and forth, but she's not consistent with it at all. She continues to search out other alternative forms of transportation and is getting quite creative at it. This morning she was pushing up on her hands and toes (like the yoga plank position) and then swinging her upper body over to the side and setting herself back down, resting, raising back up and shifting over some more. To move forward she rocks side to side over and over again and slowly inches forward. Of course there is always the old stand by of rolling all over the place.

Hannah's newest foods are green beans, peas, applesauce, and bananas. She's becoming a pro at picking up and depositing veggie puffs into her mouth. She's getting much better at chewing them up too! Sometimes she even relaxes her vigil with that extra finger and chews them with no fingers in her mouth! Her sippy cup skills are also improving and she's starting to get the idea that she should hold it with both hands and that she needs to tip it up to get more than just air coming from the spout when she sucks. Dropping things from the highchair has also become a fun game as has taking her arm and completely clearing the coffee table with one fair swoop!

Next week Hannah goes to have her 6 month hearing test done. Because of her exposure to herpes at birth she has to have it checked every 6 months until she is 3 years old because herpes can cause late onset hearing loss and we don't want to take ANY chances. We're lucky that one of the testing sites is the Purdue Audiology clinic here in West Lafayette so at least I won't have a long drive. The bad thing is that her appointment is scheduled for 12:30 and they said that she has to be asleep for the screen. I tried to explain to the lady that Hannah usually only takes 2 (at the most 3) half hour to 40 minute naps total during a day and that 12:30 is not one of those nap times, but she was not sympathetic. I'm not sure how much she knows about babies, but most of them will not generally just sleep on command when they are 6 months old. That has been my experience anyway. I'm not thinking this screen is going to be a good experience for either or us, but we shall see. Maybe Hannah will be super cooperative and go right to sleep. She IS a VERY GOOD girl, but that may just be expecting too much from her.

Well, I'm back. It's been a few days since I started this post. Now it's Friday and Hannah has hit another big milestone. She got her second tooth! She's been quite cranky today because of it, but thankfully this time it wasn't at night! Just to prove to me how proud she is of her new tooth she bit me several times today HARD. Kyle thought I was being a baby about it until she bit him just a little bit ago. He really hollered because it hurt a lot. :P That'll teach him to make fun of me!

For an update on the cutest baby contest I am happy to report that I chose the picture of Hannah sitting up wearing the reindeer antlers. I used the closer up version that Tina doctored for me. Thanks for everyone who voted to help me make up my mind! The deadline for submitting photos is next week I believe so I will be sure to put the link up to vote as soon as they have the pictures assembled on the newspaper website. I would appreciate all the votes we can get. A $2000 savings bond would really give Hannah's college fund a jump start!

Another new thing that Hannah decided to try today is pulling up from sitting on the side of the pack-n-play. I had been sitting her down in the bassinet part of the pack-n-play while I check my email or pay bills online. Well, today I heard her making some cute noises and I turned around to see that she had pulled herself from the center of the pack-n-play to the edge and was pulling and bouncing to try to stand up by holding onto the side of the bassinet! Well, that's the end of the bassinet. :( I took it out today and now she has to sit down in the bottom like a regular old play pen. We will see how she likes that.

Here's a video (it's about a month old) of Hannah practicing transferring objects from one hand to the other and practicing sitting up on her own. Now she's to the point that I don't even put up pillows to break her fall anymore unless she is sitting on something really hard like a floor without carpet. Just click on the link and enjoy the video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7153612364983465505&hl=en

New Mommy-Do

Before Hannah was born there were two things I said I'd never do. The first was drive a minivan. We all know how that turned out. The second was get rid of my long hair. Well, Hannah had other ideas about my long hair and decided it was great fun to pull mommy's hair out by the roots. She's quite the strong little girl and extremely quick so, besides being in considerable pain, my head of hair was quickly thinning anyway. So, I decided to just get over it and cut my hair. It's not nearly as short as say Heather's hair is, but it's quite short for me. I think I like it and Kyle says he really likes it AND the best part is that it's much harder for Hannah to get her little fingers around.

As far as Hannah updates go, Hannah's sleep struggles have continued even though I haven't mentioned them much lately. Finally on Monday I decided enough was enough. So, I decided to Ferberize her. I'm not sure if that's how you spell it, but it's the name of a doctor who developed this method of teaching babies 6 months and older to put themselves to sleep. His method is pretty simple although it's easier said than done. He says that you should start with 5 minutes (or whatever you can tolerate and for me it's 3 minutes to start!) of letting the baby cry before you go in to soothe them. You are supposed to calm them by talking to them, patting them on the back, pretty much anything except picking them up out of their crib. Then, you leave before they go back to sleep. When and if the crying starts again you stay out of the room longer this time. I jump up to 5 minutes the second time. Then you go back in and repeat the process of calming. You continue these cycles over and over making the time you wait before going back into the nursery longer and longer until the baby finally falls asleep. Let me just say that it about broke my heart to do it to Hannah, but I knew it had to be done so I toughed it out. I had to do it again Thursday morning when Hannah woke up at 5:00am and refused to go back to sleep. On Monday night it took a little more than 2 hours of hysterical crying for Hannah to eventually fall asleep. Yesterday morning it took just over 1 1/2 hours. Hopefully this means we are making progress. It is SO HARD for me to hear her crying, know that I can immediately make it stop just by going into her room and rocking her, and not go into the room. Keep your fingers crossed that I can hold up in this battle and that soon we will have a peacefully sleeping baby.

I've finally got Hannah's six month pictures scanned and I must say that I think these are the cutest photo shoot yet. Our photographer at JC Penny's, Melissa, is amazing. I don't know how she does it, but she definitely has a way with babies and can get the very best out of them.

Hannah is getting quite good at feeding herself the veggie puffs. It's pretty funny to watch her though. She chases the puff around her highchair tray and then pens it up against a side. Then she picks it up with moist fingers and it sticks to her finger and resists being eaten as she tries to shove it into her mouth. Finally she gets it inside, but she keeps at least one finger in there as protection because she hates when it sticks to her tongue and gets too far back and gags her. So, she keeps that one finger in there and keeps pushing it to the side of her mouth if the piece starts to migrate too far back in her mouth!