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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Nap Time

Miss Fusspants has not been excited about sleeping lately. I suppose Miss Fusspants is never excited about sleeping, since I reserve the name Fusspants for such occasions. I don't know if she is teething or something else is going on, but man! She will get sleepy and rub her eyes, followed by getting upset with whatever she is doing. Done jumping? YES! Done with everything else? YES! Ready to sleep? YES! In your crib? NO!

We've been trying to just put her up there and let her go to sleep, which used to work, but now she wants to fall asleep with us holding her. Heidi and I hope she is just teething again, but maybe not. It's these times that give me boob envy; if she's really fussy, Heidi can just feed her and usually that does it. Not for the James! Hannah has taken to sucking on my shoulder, and then when it doesn't give her milk she bites and tugs. I tell her no, mostly for Heidi's sake. There we go...no more boob envy: biting and tugging doesn't sound like so much fun.

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Deciding on a post title is hard...

...when you haven't posted in a while. It seems as though I have more trouble giving occasional updates than short everyday blurbs.

So here is what Hannah is doing. She is being 7 months old today! Unfortunately we didn't have quite as much milk as usual and her schedule was thrown off, so she was on the fussy side for her 7 monthiversary. She never fusses when I hold her though, so I guess things could be worse.

I'm getting frustrated with reading to her since the only thing she wants to do is chew on the book, which I guess makes sense, but we're trying to teach her not to do that. Maybe the key is to read her bigger books (in terms of page size), so that she has more trouble getting them up to her mouth. I'm afraid that if I keep pulling the book away from her then she will associate books with suckitude. No, baby Hannah! Books have rockitude if anything.

Hannah is also working on standing up better by herself, but no crawling yet. She was scootching her butt up for a while and so far hasn't gotten past that. I really need to give her more tummy time, except she has never enjoyed that. Not one bit. Time to make her suffer through it, because life is hard. Never too early to pressure your kids into catching up with their peers!

I am starting to think that she is getting the concept of rhythm, which is really pretty cool. Not very many animals can do that. If you think about it, rhythm requires recognizing a pattern that has occurred, is occurring, and that you believe will continue to occur unchanged. She can predict the future! Which is totally why we had a kid to start with.

Heidi is starting to talk about cutting Hannah's hair. I am firmly against this. It is so cute! And so are her little ponytails!

Hannah and I have been doing this cute little thing where we put our heads together and touch noses. She likes it so much that she has been doing it with other things too. Things that are not gentle like dad. I suppose she has to figure out that she can't smash her face into everything at some point. Again, life is hard! And so is the exersaucer!

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Swim Lessons

I can't believe that it is already time to post about Hannah's first swim lessons! Unbelievable! Given her enjoyment of bath time, we expected to have a little fish on our hands. What we did not take into account was that when presented with something new, she just stays cool:

She was the youngest in her class by a couple months, but was not at all afraid of the water. Usually in her baths, if she splashes herself in the face she will just blink a couple of times, look at us, and go back to playing. Pretty much the same thing happened. Here is a little more cuteness:
Swim lessons are going to be every Saturday for a little while. It kind of makes me miss swimming, and got us talking about how I should start working out. I don't really feel like I have a place in my schedule for that, but it's a good habit to start. At any rate, I got a new pair of shoes out of the conversation. It was about time, since I was wearing the pair that I bought in 2002, and they were starting to look a little worn out. 

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Happenings of Late

One thing I have enjoyed about writing this blog is that it gives me a time to reflect on what has been going on in my life. I was thinking about what to title this post, and it took a while to remember what all had happened in one week. Too much for a concise title apparently.

Looking back in two years, I would probably be able to come up with: Hannah was 6.5 months, I was her father and a grad student, and Heidi and I didn't see each other much. Good job future James! You are correct, but missing the fun details.

For starters, over the weekend we went to my parents' house. We picked up one of my aunts from the airport the night before and drove her as well. My aunt and uncle from Rhode Island along with their kids were also there. Kind of a bit hectic at first. My Dad was set on canoing and kayaking (not contemporaneously for any one person, although that could be interesting) and shortly after arriving I found myself in a canoe with my cousin. Dad, I know I set this bookmark up on Mom's computer, so I would like to reiterate something: "Yes, it is shallow and moderately rapid" is not an internally consistent response to the question "Is it a good river for canoing?". Perhaps "No, it is shallow and moderately rapid" or "Yes, it is deep and slow" or even "Yes, it is deep and moderately rapid, but there are no trees hanging over the river into which the rapids try to pull you." Or maybe we already talked about this. I guess all that to say, I have never, never accidentally tipped a canoe. Before last weekend.

I think we still had a good time. The rest of the weekend was a bit more relaxing, and I came home well fed. The above photo is Hannah and I relaxing in their backyard. Here is Hannah chewing on Heidi's sweatshirt string:

Then on Labor Day we went over to our friends' house. They have a beautiful 10 month old daughter, Jade, with whom Hannah was delighted to play. There was also a 1 year old boy there, but he was too busy using his new found walking skills to be caught by the camera. Jade was kind enough to try to share some cracker:

I love the next picture, since they both look like they're posing like gangstas.

Jade: Why you gotta be frontin'? You want a piece of this?

Hannah: Wazzup wazzup!?

They make a pretty tough posse.

In other news, Hannah has graduated to the big bathtub. She seemed to really enjoy herself.

A little note for us to look back on:

Hannah is learning to clap. The waving that she learned a couple weeks ago really is waving - she's just selective with the timing. Last week she learned how to hold things in both hands at the same time and to hit them together.

That should do it for now. I would like to leave you with a suggestion to check today's Dinosaur Comics (number 1548). Why would we ever start calling them intestines instead?

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