Cuteness

Audrey has been able to hold her own bottle for a while, but we have to keep a really good eye on her....

...because she gets bored and likes to shake it.

Oh, lookie! More food on the face!

We started brushing her two teeth and gums. She doesn't mind it too much. Sometimes she chews on the rubber brush and seems to like it.

Audrey is wearing 12 month clothes now. Just as I was warned, we couldn't find one piece footed sleepers anywhere. Carter's did have some, but they were either too big, too small, or fleece. So now she's wearing big girl jammies.

She crawls around the living room and decides for herself which toys she's going to play with.

Her favorite toy (and teether) of all!

I must confess, Audrey got her first bump a couple days ago. 20 minutes prior to the bump Chris and I had a conversation that went like this...

C: I think we should set up a pack and play in the living room.

A: What for?

C: I just don't like her being out of my sight when I have to leave the room for a minute, like to go to the bathroom or something. I'd like to be able to put her in something so she can't get into trouble.

A: Just pee with the door open. You just have to go quickly or she'll try to crawl in there with you. Besides, our living room is TOTALLY baby proofed now. There's no way she could get hurt.

C: I know. I just worry more than you do.

I went into the kitchen to warm up her dinner. Before the 20 seconds on the microwave were up she was bawling. She was sitting up playing with her books when I left her, but she fell onto her back into the space between the table and the couch (in the pic below). Her head was stuck. After I got her she stopped crying pretty quickly, but I noticed a red bump a few minutes later. It was gone by the next day. Christopher was right again...Argh!

New furniture

I thought I'd put up some quick pics of our new furniture. We got a new couch and a new chair, and got rid of the red stuff. The room feels a lot bigger with no ottoman or coffee table.

Here's the couch. The fabric is green chenille (Note the girl in the picture is not a model)


Audrey's chair above is new also. She was getting too big for her bouncer so we upgraded to a infant/toddler rocker. It supports up to 40 lbs.

Here's the chair. It's funny how there's clearly a "Mommy" chair and a "Daddy" chair. Amber had just got back from shopping so there's some new baby clothes on the chair. It's fabric, but looks a lot like leather. Sadly, it's not a recliner, but still comfy.



We also put up a gate between the kitchen and living room. It has a spring-loaded door in it that closes behind you, but it's still a hassle. We're getting used to it now, though.

9 month pediatrician check

Weight: 20 pounds 5.6 ounces, 75th percentile

Height: 28.5 inches, 80th percentile

Head Circumference: 45cm., 76th percentile

Audrey had her 9 month checkup today. We had to change doctors because her pediatrician, Dr. Blumberg, took a position at Texas Children's Hospital. Her new doctor is Dr. Sperling. We had seen her once before for a sick visit and she would always pop in during other visits just to check out Audrey's freakish hemotoma (which is now gone, yay!). We really like her so we don't mind having to change. Oddly enough, we have a small outside connection to both of these doctors. Dr. Blumberg is the husband of a librarian I worked with at WHS and Dr. Sperling went to medical school with my OB who delivered Audrey, Dr. Campaigne.

Her visit went well. As you see, she's growing! Although her weight is a little high, it's perfect because it's proportionate to her height. She met all of her developmental milestones- scooting, reaching for objects, babbling, touching things with her first finger, and responding when you talk to her. Fortunately, she doesn't have separation anxiety like many babies her age. We're keeping our fingers crossed. They did have to dig wax out of her ear for the third time, but fortunately this time it didn't lead to a meltdown. Since she hasn't been spitting up much we're going to stop the Zantac and see how she does without it. Most kids with reflux grow out of it around this age. We talked about diet. She gave me a better, more detailed handout than what we received previously and Audrey is right on track with those guidelines....except for the fudgecicles, but she said that wouldn't hurt her. Over the next couple months we'll start giving her more table foods. Right now she doesn't care for them. She's had some scrambled egg yolk and some Gerber Puffs (like Cheerios, but they dissolve much more easily). She makes a nasty and confused face when she gets a bite, but after she swallows it she'll open her mouth for another bite. She'll only take about 6 little bites, but it's a start. She only has the 2 bottom teeth, so I imagine mashing everything with your gums might be a little weird. We do need to start brushing her teeth and gums now, so we'll see how she likes that. She didn't need any shots today, but she will for her 12 month visit. We scheduled that for the day before her birthday so she wouldn't think we were meanies. It's amazing how quickly things change! At 12 months we should be transitioning to the sippy cup, on whole milk, getting off the pacifier, done with baby food, and eating a few new foods that are current no-no's (honey, egg whites, certain berries). She's already drinking an ounce or two of water from the sippy cup everyday so I think that we're off to a decent start. That's all the news for now!

French kissing blood sisters

Over the last few days Chris has called into question some of my and Audrey's new favorite activities. The first thing is that Audrey and I share fudgecicles. Kinda funny since I'm really particular about what she eats (all the colors of the rainbow!). About a week ago she was watching me eat a fudgecicle and opened her mouth. I held it out to her and she opened her mouth really wide for a bite. I let her try it and she now loves fudgecicles. So we take turns licking and she gets a little impatient for her turn. She barely touches it with her lips, but it somehow still ends up all over her chin. She's teething, so we wonder if it's the cold that she likes so much even though she's not into cold teethers. Chris thinks sharing a fudgecicle is equivalant to swapping spit and french kissing. I figure that we've already shared so many other fluids, what's one more. Did you know that babies urinate in the womb? Nuff said.

Last night we came up with a new activity. She likes to put her pacifier in my mouth. It's not as gross as it sounds. I do have standards so I'll only take the outside part, not the rubber nipple that she sucks on. She puts it in my mouth, lights up and laughs like crazy, pulls it out, puts the nipple part in her mouth, puts it back in my mouth, repeat x25. It's so adorable I just can't stand it. Last night this went on for about 10 minutes and she was laughing the entire time. Before this she would laugh when we laughed or laughed when she was tickled, but this was somehow different. She was laughing because of something she did. She did bump my nose a few times with the slobbery part, but overall was really good at keeping our pacifier sides sorted out. This time Chris said we were like blood sisters.

4th of July

Aunt Jen, Uncle Allen, and Cousin Kylie came to visit for the 4th of July. We played with the girls a lot, went shopping and bought Kylie's first shoes, and grilled. Audrey and Kylie really paid attention to each other this time. They would follow each other around and want to touch one another. Kylie is taking a few steps now and can crawl really fast. Audrey is still scooting, but tried her best to keep up.

Our 8th Anniversary

Chris and I celebrated our 8th anniversary yesterday. Normally we go on a vacation for our anniversary, but this year we spent it at home with the Niblet.

We continued our tradition of buying a personalized romance novel from yournovel.com. In our new novel, "Awake My Love", Chris's wreckless driving gets him in a coma and bangs me up too (Men!). I stay by his side in the hospital. Since I'm so distraught they have to give me sleeping pills. I think what comes next is a series of dream sequences that Chris and I have in which we carry on various adventures. They're fun books. You get to pick about 20 personal details that they include in the book and repeat, such as me having "sultry brown eyes" and us cruising around in our Toyota Matrix.

We had dinner at the Olive Garden, which was nice, but for the first time we were the ones with the noisy baby! She was happy, but she's learning to vocalize herself and would let out an occasional baby squeal. We told the waitress we were going to get our food to go so we wouldn't bother anyone, but the lady next to us spoke up and said she really wasn't loud and not a bother at all. That made us feel better, so we stayed, enjoyed our dinner, and Audrey calmed down.

Later, we did what any doting parent woud do...we dressed our baby up in my wedding dress and took pictures.

Baby Proofing

I took the entire 4th of July week off, and one of my projects for the week is to do some baby proofing.

As Amber mentioned previously, Audrey isn't crawling yet, but she can 'scoot' along the floor on her belly using her arms to pull and her knees and feet to push. She just needs to figure out how to lift her belly off the floor and we'll be in business. But in the meantime, she's getting very adept at scooting--so much so that we're really having to keep an eye on her when she's 'loose' on the living room floor.

The first project was a gate at the foot of the stairs. We don't plan on needing this for a little while, but figured we'd might as well do it now.


This was actually a bit of a pain. We bought adapter kits for both sides of the gate because we didn't want to drill holes into our banister. The kits provide the white clamps that attach to the banister without screws, but aren't cheap (about $80 for both). The gate is an Evenflo Plus, which we really like. It swings open and comes off easily for when you don't need it.

The next project was the kitchen cabinets, which turned into a nightmare. We tried four different baby proofing kits and only found one that would actually work on our cabinets. Our cabinet doors are 'picture frame' style, where a thin piece of wood is framed in a thicker wooden frame. I always thought this was the most common type of door, but most of the kits didn't work with it. The kit we ended up using, the only one that actually worked, was also the simplest, and just ties the door handles of adjacent doors together so neither will open.