Happy Symmetrical Date Day!

Today, 01/11/10, is a very fine day indeed. The last symmetrical date day was 10/22/01. The next one will be 01/22/10. Following that, we have 02/11/20, 12/11/21, 03/11/30, 04/11/40, and each of the corresponding /22/ etc. Unless you write the day first then the month, in which case you have many more symmetrical date opportunities.

Today Hannah clearly said "all done" when she was done eating. It was a one-off kind of thing, but she's definitely trying.

Thanks to my cousin Heather for pointing out the 22nd's should be in there too. I was thinking a little binary when I left them out.

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Hannah and the Blanket

Hannah loves her blanket. It's green, with a sheep on it, and very soft. We have let her nap with it for quite a while, but if you will remember, she liked to put it over her head. There is a different blanket in that picture, but since then she has become very partial to the sheep blanket. So after a while, we stopped stealing the blanket from her after she fell asleep. We found that lengthened her naps substantially; instead of waking up and fussing, she would wake up and sooth herself back to sleep. Problem is, we had to check on her a fair amount and keep moving the blanket away from her face. She gradually got better at this, but up until a couple of nights ago, we were still taking the blanket from her at night. Unfortunately, this meant she needed us to sooth her at night when she woke up, since we removed her method of soothing after she fell asleep.

We decided to try letting her have the blanket at night. Sounds like an easy decision right? Except that with all that you hear about SIDS, giving something like this a try means that if it doesn't work, you don't get to try again tomorrow. On the other hand, letting babies fall asleep with a pacifier is supposed to reduce the risk of SIDS (don't quote me on that, it's thirdhand knowledge). So we decided to give it a try.

I AM SO RESTED!

No more waking up at 2 and then at 5:30. Hannah is sleeping so much better, and so far she hasn't gotten herself all wrapped up in her blanket. Part of the reason we decided it was time to try was because the blanket frequently ended up to her side after she fell asleep, instead of her holding the blanket over her face.

And instead of a picture of her sleeping through the night (I didn't take any because I was sleeping too!) I have chronicled a bathtime in photos. I love the splash picture - it looks like the clown fish just dove in and caused it.

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No more bottles

I think I might be done giving Hannah bottles. Heidi tells me she should be needing milk fewer times a day, so we decided to cut out the feeding when she is gone. Instead I've been giving her more yogurt. This is also the first time I'm a little jealous of her food. We're giving her Stonyfield organic yobaby yogurt. This week it is yogurt with apple and cereal puree. I'm amazed at how good it is. Way better than any adult yogurt we've found, excepting perhaps the rhubarb and champagne yogurt I had in Ireland. Sounds kind of weird, but that was some amazing yogurt. Anyway, I might be buying myself some baby yogurt soon. Nothing says I'm ready to finish my PhD soon like some yobaby!

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Christmas Break

Christmas break has come and gone. Hannah's first Christmas went well. She got the hang of opening presents during round three of gift giving. Round one - Christmas Eve pajamas; round two - Christmas morning at our house; round three - Christmas at my parents'. We thought she would go a little more crazy with the ripping-stuff-open part. It was really more us ripping the paper a little, getting her to hold on, and pulling the present away from her so she ripped some paper off. Seeing as how she had the most gifts (a lot of it was stuff we would have bought anyway that just got wrapped up), it took a while.

Speaking of Christmas gifts, Heidi got me a whole bunch of loose leaf tea for Christmas, which reminds me that I never chronicled kicking the coffee habit. A couple months ago (October?) I decided (with Heidi's, um, help?) that I should quit drinking coffee. It wasn't so much a problem with coffee altogether, but 10 cups (5 mugs) of coffee a day was a little much. Especially with a blood pressure of 140/80. My original plan was to just cut back, until Peter (a post-doc in our lab) said "There's no such thing as quitting not cold-turkey". Or in other words, if you try to quit by cutting back gradually, then you won't succeed. Apparently he volunteered at an addiction center for a while in college. His advice matched with my experience; I had cut back before, but I always ended up drinking way more coffee than I should. Since that's a good hallmark of addiction, quitting coffee seemed like the best choice. So, a week or two of bad headaches later, I was coffee free and feeling decent. Much better, in fact. And my blood pressure dropped to 120/68. Excellent! Last weekend I had a medium latte while Heidi, Hannah and I were at the mall. Holy crap! I felt like somebody was squeezing off the blood supply to my eyes (makes sense, since caffeine is a vasoconstrictor). And that was one fifth of what I used to have every day!

The rest of Christmas break will be remembered as the week of shoveling. The redemptive part of snow is that it allows me to go cross-country skiing. Except that when we came home from my parents' last Sunday I sprained my ankle coming down our steps (that last one is real tricky). So no skiing. Just wrapping up my ankle to go and shovel our ridiculous driveway. I should get a picture. It really is ridiculous. And then yesterday, for the first time, I came down the driveway too fast (not by choice) and slid across and off the road, barely missing a big tree (the brush helped stop us). Heidi was in the back with Hannah. She told me that Hannah just sat there and looked around a bit with a "hmm, this is different" sort of look. Thankfully everyone was safe, and the only mark on the car was a little bit of tree on a door handle. Phew!

Another look that Hannah has been making recently is a "what's that all about" kind of look. A look of discernment, perhaps? She furrows her brow and looks a little quizzical. No pictures of that yet. I will, however, leave you with a couple of Christmas pictures.

Christmas Eve pajama's, which she wears in the next photos.

Santa knows her favorite snack!

One cute hat.

Another cute hat! Thanks to Caroline for making this one.

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Sharing

Hannah has discovered sharing. I don't know if it's related, but a recent study has shown that children not much older than Hannah can demonstrate altruistic behavior (helping others). This past week she learned to hand us things when we say "please", and that we will give it back to her when we say "Would you like it back?". It's probably not altruism, but she loves it as a little game nonetheless. What seems a little more like genuine sharing is her sharing of food. We've found that she is more likely to eat her food when sharing is involved. It started with her though; unprompted she will eat half of a Cheerio, Puff or yogurt melt and then try to put the other half in one of our mouths. Then if we do the same, even when she seems fussy and doesn't want to eat, she will take the half eaten item from us and finish it. Apparently food is more appetizing when it has changed hands a couple of times. Heidi found that if she puckers up and holds a Cheerio in her lips, Hannah can't resist grabbing it and eating it. Makes you feel like a mama bird. Wow...that didn't sound gross until I typed it out.

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Apple Pie

Today for breakfast I wanted some bacon. We are supposed to start giving Hannah more of what we eat, so I thought "It would be awesome to give Hannah some bacon. Who doesn't love the taste of bacon?" So I asked Heidi (online) if I could give Hannah some bacon. Her response was:

Heidi: DO NOT GIVE HANNAH BACON

I got out a container of apple, vanilla and grain baby food instead. The vanilla didn't stand alone with the apples very well, so I added some cinnamon, which made it taste just like apple pie. I was really excited to give this to her, since I don't always find her food very tasty. She liked the first couple of bites, but then got fussy. I figured if she didn't want it I could always end up eating it, since I wasn't going to bother making bacon just for me and hadn't eaten anything yet. Then Heidi suggested thickening it with oatmeal and putting it on the tray of her high chair so that she could feed herself.

Heidi: did you let her feed herself?

it's ok if she gets messy

Messy she did get. After I put some of the food down for her she ate some of it and swirled some around on the tray. After that I could spoon it to her, so long as she had some of it on the tray to swirl around. This was going really well until she put her hand on her forehead, followed by one on the side. It at least resulted in an excellent hairdo.


Needless to say, this was followed by a quick rinse in the bath tub. This bath went much more smoothly than the last. I remembered her diaper, at least. I did forget a washcloth, however, and hat to scoop up the water with my hands to wash out her hair. Heidi does this very well but it is a skill that I have not yet mastered. That is, I can get the water up to her hair just fine, but I have trouble keeping it out of her eyes. Luckily Hannah is a pretty happy little girl and didn't seem to mind too much. Drying her off even seemed to go pretty well.



Then, after a quick brushing of her hair and a bottle came nap time. Which means blog posting time. Now I'm off to get ready for the day before she wakes up.

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Holy Smokes!

Too much to write about - that is why I have been putting this off. So, to remedy the situation, I have decided to make a list. Then I will update more frequently on current topics and try to check some things off of the list.

1. Hannah is signing - we have the first unprompted sign on video, so I'll be able to put a date on that.
2. Hannah is signing a lot, and learning new ones quickly.
3. Hannah can army crawl.
4. Hannah walks towards our Christmas tree if you hold her hands up. It really only works in that one direction.
5. Hannah loves her booger sucker.
6. I have discovered the absolute best way to put a onesie or a shirt on a baby.
7. Hannah did well on the car ride to Michigan for t-day.
8. I (along with some help) nailed down our ridge vent (on our roof) and removed all of the flying squirrels from our house.
9. Our chocolate lab almost ate himself to death. Literally.

That should get us up to the present.

There. Now I just have to post regularly. Wish me luck!

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