Pointer finger

"Pointer finger" makes more sense to me than "index finger", so we'll stick with it. Hannah has been developing her fine motor skills, and, like everything she does, she is doing it in the cutest fashion possible. She is fascinated with her pointer finger and uses it to touch everything. She has been doing this for a couple weeks now, so I figured I should write about it before she stops. Hannah even uses her pointer finger to touch her other pointer finger. We'll see her looking down at a black spot or hair on her exersaucer, pointer finger out, touching the small thing over and over. She'll point at our face and touch our nose with all her fingers folded in except the one. Then she'll grab our face with all her fingers and try to rip part of it off. Most frequently she chooses lips or a nose, but occasionally she goes for the eyes. It all makes you go "OW! Aww...."

Her morning schedule has changed, and she now takes a two-hour long nap in the morning. I think I was trying to get her to go to sleep before when she was hungry and tired, so she wouldn't nap as long. Oops. Or maybe her schedule changed when she started eating more solid food. So I have been using that time to do more work, but I thought today I should throw in a blog entry. Before the blog dies from neglect. Sorry blog.

Heidi's sister visited last weekend and we all went for a hike. Heidi took this photo of Hannah and I, and I thought the Interwebs might enjoy it:

I'll try to make it less of a gap between entries next time.

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Hannah's um....baptism?

Hannah was baptized this past weekend. While that was the focus of the weekend, it was also really nice to see my whole family. My older sister's then boyfriend Adam was chosen to be Hannah's godfather. I say then boyfriend because he proposed on Monday. Congratulations to them! My older sister, Anna, had to settle with being a "witness", since she is not Catholic. I think we'll still call her a godmother though, since godfather and witness sounds a little weird.

At any rate, it also meant Hannah got to wear this adorable gown:

As for the title: we didn't have time to go over the ceremony with the priest prior to starting. So right at the beginning, Fr. Martin asks us "What do you ask of the Church?". Well...we ask a lot of things of the Church. Is this our one free pass? As I was wondering what one thing he might be after, my younger sister Laura's boyfriend Jason whispers behind me "baptism". Oh yeah...that. So it ends up going something like "bapti..." "baptism!". Once we made it over that hurdle there were a couple of "I do/I don't" questions (hint - I think the answer for all of them is "I do"), and then Fr. Martin says "These questions are very important. That is why, you will see, there will be many more later." Heidi and I looked at each other with a should've-studied-for-this-test kind of look, but the rest were more yes/no questions. I think we got them all right.

Is it bad that we had to cheat on the baptism quiz? And if this were school, then it would have been on the part where you have to fill in what class the quiz is for.

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Hannah and the Dalai Lama

So here's the story: cutest little girl ever receives the attention of the Dalai Lama for embodying all that is precious in life. Or maybe it is: Hannah learns how to say all the syllables in "Dalai Lama". She has been saying her d's and m's and just recently her l's! She figured out the d's a week ago Thursday, I believe it was. Since then she has let out a couple of the cutest cries of "daddy!" you can imagine. She isn't associating that with me yet, but it is still adorable. She says it in this sing-song voice, really high-pitched and draws it out.

There is so much more that I want to get down! Hannah has started to give us kisses too! She can't pucker, so if she wants to kiss us she will grab our face and open her lips a little bit and plant a sloppy one right on our cheeks. All these new interactions are so amazing! It's all small things that she is learning, but their importance to us is immense.

Hannah has started to imitate us much more now. She does it with the new sounds she can make, but other ways too. She is waving more, at appropriate times even, and frequently lets out a soft high-pitched "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaa!!!" when we say "hi". I was having trouble feeding her breakfast the other day and so I decided to have fun with her in her little Bumbo seat instead. So we went back and forth banging on her Bumbo seat tray. I'm really enjoying the simple things in life so much more.

I did not enjoy getting pooped on this morning, however. Partway through reading "One Little Monkey" Hannah seemed to get a little more lively and happy. After I finished the book and picked her up, I found that she pooped while she was sitting in my lap. Oh joy! Somehow when I was taking her onesie off the poop trailed up her back and I ended up having to rinse off the back of her hair. Bummer. Other than that today has been pretty great. We have been a little too relaxed with taking pictures lately, so I'll try to take some more soon.

Also...I just realized that today is Friday. Not sure if I will get any factoids up. Oh - here's one. If human babies were proportional in size to polar bear babies (as adult humans are to polar bears), then they would be about the size of a golf ball. To those of you who have given birth: did you ever think you'd be jealous of a polar bear?

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