Aria update

I haven't give an Aria update in quite awhile! She is doing great! I'll post a picture today, too. She is getting SO big. She weighs 17 lbs 14 oz. She's 10 lbs heavier than when she was born ;-)

She started sleeping the night for a whole week!! yay!!... and then stopped.... bummer! But, it's not as bad now, bc she is more easily comforted. She basically just wants her nuk. Sometimes she wakes up and cries very hard. I sometimes wonder if her arm falls asleep? She flips onto her belly to sleep now. It makes me worry! I can't get her to stay on her back! I keep putting her back to her back, but she flips right over. She also doesn't like the mattress with the air filter in it.... I think it might be uncomfy for her bc it's SOOO hard. I feel better with her on her belly on that mattress, but she gets up MANY times a night when she's on that mattress (5 times average a night).

Things she loves... her walker, sweet peas, rice baby cookies, sesame street.

Her walker....She cruises all around in her walker. She stands right up in it without holding on with her hands! I know she can't do that outside of the walker, but it's amazing to see her do it in the walker. She literally RUNS while in it. She runs all over. It's very very cute! Matthew called her while he was in the bedroom and she was in the living room. Her head perked right up, and she found her way all the way to the bedroom - there was a mirror in the way she had to get around and had to turn into a little hall to get to him. She can back up, turn around, 3 pt turn (I'm serious!) in that thing. I am afraid she thinks "who needs crawling when I can RUN?"

Sesame Street...She loves Sesame Street. Especially Grover. I wasn't going to have her watch TV. I figured why have her watch TV when she could be doing other things? Well, that went out the window. She loves her Sesame Street! That is about all she is interested in, though.

Her hair... we were so excited when she was born with SO MUCH hair. But, it all fell out by about 3.5 months except a ring around the back of her head from ear to ear. Just like her Grampa Danny ;-). It has FINALLY started to grow back in! yay! It started growing in at about 6 months. She's 7 months now, and it's just getting a little thicker all the time. In pics she still looks completely bald ;-).

Her eyes... they are still a green brown. I still wonder which direction they'll go... brown like Daddy's or green like mine?

Crawling .... she still doesn't get up on her knees! She plays on a 5x7 rug, which I'm also sitting on (while I work) so she doesn't have a whole lot of room to practice. The doc says it's OK if she skips crawling. She might just do that. She does love to be on her belly now, though. She'll play like that for long periods. She likes to bang her feet on the ground as she plays.

Demeanor... she's sometimes very gentle, and other times not so much. She is very gentle with her doggy, Zig. She pets him like she knows how! She sometimes touches our faces very gently. Other times, she pulls my hair SO hard and pinches me! She is SUCH a laugher! If I'm on the phone and laughing, she'll laught right with me! Yesterday she was laughing at the signs in the grocery store that were spinning. She sometimes just looks at me and laughs! I wonder what she's laughing at? She laughs at Zig a lot, too. She laughs a LOT at her daddy. He's ALWAYS doing something funny! I know that Gramma makes her laugh a lot, too bc I hear her laughing when I'm teaching violin ;-)

Speaking of violin... she sat in on the beginning of a lesson last week. She just sat and looked up at the students (2 students, 8 yrs old and 9 yrs old). I think I will make her a little kid violin. She'll probably just chew on it.

Teeth... she still just has the 2 bottom ones. They're awfully cute! But it HURTS when she bites! She bit right through a pickle a couple of weeks ago! That is the last time I'll try THAT. Too funny. She does love her Barley teething bisquits. So does Zig. Yum! She reaches out her little arm over the high chair and hands it right to Zig. She'll hold her hand out to him and look at him. Zig has had his fill of baby cookies! I started to brush her teeth finally ;-) She LOVED it! Good thing ;-) I can see the top 2 teeth are well on their way!

Talking... she still screams, but not as much. She still says what sounds like HI every once in awhile, but not nearly as much as she used to.

Belly dancing ... she sticks her belly way out and then brings it back in. It's very funny! My niece, Christina, used to do the same thing when she was Aria's age! She was actually doing it to the beat of the music the other day ;-) Gramma saw her, but I didn't.

First Kiss... a boy at Chruch kissed Aria ;-0 He is 8.5 months old (older man!) and he kept kissing her. Aria even kissed him back ;-) (well, OK, so maybe she was trying to chew on his face...)

Date night.... Matthew and I go on dates every Friday night. Aria has gotten to go to Gramma and Grampa's house and have fun fun fun! Grampa always has a new room theme he is working on! Right now he's doing a Fairy room. Aria loves to look at them! Last time when we came to get Aria, she was playing with Gramma and she just looked at us like "what are you doing here?" Hmm.....

Well, that is about all I can think of that is new with Aria ;-) She is just so much fun and we love her more than words can say!!!!


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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Lotsa sleep and a new walker!
Current mood: refreshed


Well, night 3 of sleep! WOW! I actually have energy. It's amazing! I had forgotten what that is like! Aria slept from 11 pm - 7:45 am! I was up before she was!!

We checked out Craig's list and found 2 brand new walkers still in the box for VERY inexpensive! So... they're all put together and Aria LOVES them. There is a sesame street walker, and a stars and smiley faces walker. The stars and smileys is easier to get around in bc it is smaller, but the Sesame Street one is SO MUCH FUN. She forgets about moving around in it because there are so many fun things to play with on it! It lights up, plays music, has a mirror in the middle that spins, and baby big bird on one side, and baby cookie monster on the other! She sat in it and watched her new Sesame Street movie that she loves. What a fun day!

Later today we had a party for Grampa. It was his birthday today. Check out the pics to see the party fun we had :-) Grampa took the pics, so he's not even in them :-) Aria LOVED the party favors and laughed and laughed when Gramma blew into it and it unrolled. She kept grabbing for it.

The new food she had today was peas and it was her favorite so far. Yum yum yum! She ate the whole container :-) and then had some squash! WOWY!

Well, it's bedtime. I'll write some more later!

Love

Mia & Aria


Monday, January 07, 2008

2 nights of sleep! A miracle!
Current mood: awake


Well, Aria did great again last night! I guess it just took putting her in her own room! In her own crib! She slept from 10 pm last night until 6 am this morning. Can I tell you how great I feel? She didn't even cry once last night! I really think that she looks at all the paintings in her room and that catches her interest, and then she falls back asleep.

So, today I finally dropped off a Christmas package that was sent to my house, but meant for the person who used to live in our house. Aria and I stopped by (after apologizing for taking so long to drop it off!) Silvia's house, and she was telling me how much her daughter, Carmen, liked her walker. I asked if I could put Aria in it to see if she liked it. She LOVED it! She cruised all over the place in it! Then, we were talking about baby food, and I told her that I'd just learned about the baby food puffs yesterday. She told me she had some, so she gave one to Aria. The long puffs that are veggie flavored. Aria took it and chewed off the top, and chewed up the rest like she'd been eating her whole life! Too funny. So, we had to take a trip to Target to pick some up. She loves her new food :-)

Now, I'm looking on Craig's list for a walker. They don't sell them at the stores anymore bc people left their kids in the walker on the top of stairs... umm.. HELLO! I told that to my mom, and she told me that Sonia (my sis) fell down the stairs in one (the door was supposed to be locked to the basement) OK so I guess it does happen to good parents :-) But, we all think my brother must've opened the door and pushed her down the stairs. ha ha! Well, we don't have any stairs on the first floor going down, so we should be good.

:-) Mia & Aria



Sunday, January 06, 2008

Aria is 6 1/2 months old! WOW!
Current mood: pensive


It's been awhile since I've updated you all on a day in the life of Aria :-) She is SOOO much fun and doing SOO many new things all the time. First of all, she has two teeth! They grow in more and more every day. They're so cute! But SHARP! She weighs a little over 17 lbs, and is 26 or so inches tall (long?) which makes her more than a 1/3 my height :-) ha ha ha! She hasn't started to crawl yet, but rolls all over the place. She can sit up really good now, though. She LOVES to scream. Not in anger or frustration, but just to get our attention, or hear her own voice. She is loud, too. She was doing this before, but has just done it more and more. We have to constantly walk out of Church now bc she screams so much! She loves to be out and about (still) and makes friends wherever she goes... smiling and screaming at people :-)

We think she says HI :-) but we could just be over-proud parents :-) But, it really sounds like HI when she says it! She waves to us when we wave at her. Only her waving is swinging her entire arm. She gives Uncle Chris high 5's. hmmm.... what other baby tricks does she have up her sleeve? OH she sucks her bottom lip in and then opens her mouth to make a kissing sound. May or may not be what she is intending to do. OH it was hilarious - today she whistled! Completely by accident, but it was funny!

I keep telling myself that I need to write down all the cute funny things she does, and I never do. Today's cute funny thing happened when I set her in her crib to go to sleep tonight. She spit out her pacifier and started laughing at me... What the heck? I never did figure out what was so funny, but she laughed for quite a bit.

Well, she is finally sleeping in her own room. I put this off bc she got up SO many times in the night that I felt if I put her in her own room, I'd actually have to get up and walk to her room 3 - 4 times a night, and she'd eventually end up in bed with me. Well... I was very wrong! She slept great! She did wake up crying about 3 - 4 times, but not an "I need you" cry, but more like a whining cry that let up after a very short time. Then she'd fall back asleep. In the morning when I went to get her up out of bed to feed her, I found her sleeping on her side. I gently put my hand on her side, and she turned onto her back, and looked up at me with a very annoyed look on her face, and pushed my hands away, turned back on her side, and fell back asleep. TOO funny. I guess that was the best night's sleep she'd gotten in her 6 months of life and didn't want me to interrupt! So, she's in her own crib now in her own room. I think when she wakes up during the night, she sees the Raggedy Ann paintings in her room (which make her smile EVERY time she looks at them) and that calms her, and she goes back to sleep. Tonight is night 2 in her own room... we'll see how it goes!

Awwww... she's growing up!


Wednesday, October 24, 2007

A day in the life of Aria
Current mood: happy


Aria has had a great week! She has smiled and laughed more this week than ever before. She sleeps great (well, she still gets up at night..) eats great and is sooo happy!

On Monday she smiled and laughed more than ANY other day of her life! It was COLD in TX and she felt the cold air for the 1st time ever. Every time she experiences something new like this, it makes me feel like I'm experiencing it for the 1st time, too. She breathed in the cold air and it made her kind of sniff... which made her smile and then laugh! SO cute. When she was in her stroller between the car and wherever we were going, I put the blanket over the stroller umbrella to the handle so she wouldn't get too much cold air. Under the blanket she was playing with the blanket, so you could see her little hands grabbing under the blanket. I took off the blanket when we got to the car and she had a big smile on her face.

When daddy-o got home we sat on the couch together and we were messing around with the camera, and I said the word Yellow. Well, after I said it, Aria said YELLOW! OK, so I know that she didn't really say yellow, but it sounded just like it. When she did that, Matthew and I just looked at each other with a look on both of our faces like "did you HEAR that??!!" ha ha ha!



Importance of community
Current mood: grateful


This is from Bible Study Teacher, Beth Moore...

Last night at Bible study I taught on being a mom and my mind has been swimming with memories of my girls when they were little bitty. As God would have it, a few weeks ago I happened on an old prayer journal from 1982 when Amanda was barely three and Melissa was a newborn. Those of you in the throes will not be surprised to hear that it was filled with unsophisticated requests for things like more sleep, for Melissa to adjust better to the church nursery, for financial help as I got to stay home with the girls, for Amanda not to catch Melissa's cold, for Keith and I to get along better, for him to want to go to church, for him to stop cussing (I hope you're smiling because I am), for him to...and for him to...and for him to...and for him to...and for us to get to go to a marriage conference, for me to apply what I was learning in my first Dr. Dobson book, for me to have a better disposition (I must have used the word ten times that I could find), and for me to make minutes for my quiet time because "my day goes so much better when I do." Sound familiar?

(My personal favorite was when I asked God for forgiveness for trying to steal some of His glory for being so prideful about the way I played handbells in the handbell choir. I laughed until I cried. Then again, it has nothing to do with children but you surely would not have wanted to miss that, would you?)

Even before I found the journal, I'd begun reliving so many of those experiences as I watched Amanda with her young family. One of the things I enjoy so much as I relive those priceless and challenging days in my memory is Amanda telling me all about her fellow mom-friends and the babies they share. Second only to seeing pictures of Jackson in his Easter outfit, I died to see pictures of Ella and Ava, his best girl buddies who were born within days of him. The pictures did not disappoint. I hang on every word Amanda says as she tells me about this mom and this baby, that mom and that baby.

I can't overemphasize how rich my fellow moms made my parenting experience. Particularly one: my best friend, Johnnie. She had two boys and I had two girls and we dragged those four kids to every McDonalds in Houston just so we could finish a sentence. We taught Mother's Day Out together because we were both broke. We home-made family Christmas gifts because we didn't have the money to buy them. (We spent what money we had on our babies.) I hate arts and crafts to this day and still have burns from glue guns. That's not all. I'd decide I'd had it with Keith and I'd leave him in the morning sometimes, go to her house with my unsuspecting girls, drink a cup of coffee, get in a better mood, and be back home by the time he got off work. He'd walk in the door, ask about my day, and I'd say under my breath, "I left you today. That's how my day was." Hee hee. Somehow I'd feel some satisfaction with that, repent, then fall in love with him all over again. It was his looks.

My point is, Moms, you've got to have you a support group of other moms. Many who are peers. Others who are just ahead of you. They will be used of God to get you through everything from the mundane to the morose. As I told my class last night, our ancient female ancestors walked to wells and rivers together to get water. Our great grandmothers quilted and canned together. We, instead, are imprisoned in our minivans driving breakneck speed, thinking a few maniacal minutes on a cell phone can replace a regular play-date where believing moms can take some time to laugh and share. I don't think it's a luxury. It's a necessity for mental (and often spiritual!) health! Because, you see,...

*No day full of dirty diapers has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No tantrum has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No "but, Mom, everybody is going!" has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No "You hate me!" has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No child's first love has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No child's first broken heart has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No broken curfew has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.
*No goodbye has overtaken you but such as is common to moms.

About five years ago, my buddy Johnnie's oldest son, Jeremy, was just about to vow his life to the woman of his dreams. The music was already playing in the sanctuary and we were only about three minutes from the service starting. We looked around and suddenly realized that it was just the six of us left in the choir room: Johnnie, her two boys, and me and my two girls. The four kids were all beautiful, God-loving young adults. Johnnie and I had lived through it and they'd lived through us. Wow, Lord. The groomsmen had already gone to their posts and it was just about time for Jeremy to take his place through a sanctuary door down a long hall. Had we tried to manipulate a few moments alone between the six of us, we could never have pulled it off. It was a gift from God. The completely unplanned moment was not lost on a single one of us six and even now I could cry about the tenderness of it. Without anyone saying a word, Jeremy held out his arm for one of my daughters. Jordan held out his arm for the other. And Johnnie held out her arm to me. Arm in arm, three familiar pairs of us walked the long hall, laughing, and nearly crying, making our way toward the finish line of young family-hood just like we began: together. Those kinds of relationships don't take place in five minutes. They take years. Crises. Prayers. Divine favor. Your fellow moms are some of the most priceless treasures God has bestowed on you to cheer you on your way to the finish line of young parenting. Grab some arms and do it together.



Thursday, October 18, 2007

Eye Doctor :-(
Current mood: sympathetic


Yesterday I noticed a black spot on the bottom of Aria's eye when she was looking way up. So, I took a look at her eye, and there is a long black line on the bottom part of her eyeball! I took her to the doc to have them check it out. They wanted Aria to go see an Optometrist and made an appointment for her this morning.


We went to the appointment at 8:30 and it was the worst experience of my entire life! Awful! They tried to first view her eye while I held her, and of course she didn't want them prying her eye open. Next, they took an instrument and attached it to her eyelids to keep her eyes open. AWFUL! She started SCREAMING. It was awful. They just couldn't see what they needed to see, so they then took her into the other room, and put her in velcro straps to hold her down, and she looked up and smiled at the nurse... I'm just dying inside, knowing what was coming next. They put the eyelid pryer back on and she again started to scream.... and scream and scream for what seemed like an eternity.


They still don't know for sure, but what they were trying to determine was whether Aria's iris was coming through her eye. The black line was coagulated blood from a scratch. They saw purple/blue around the black and were trying to determine if that was iris poking out. They still are unsure and she has to come back in a week. I hope next week they don't pry her eye open again, but I have a feeling they will.


Poooooor Aria!!!


After the appointment at 8:30 am, I just sat in the car and cuddled with her until she was asleep. Then I put her in her carseat, and she stayed asleep in the car, and when we got home, she got up very briefly to eat a little, and then slept until 2:30 pm!!! Crying really wore her out! Poor baby!







Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Today 1 year ago


I will never forget today, 1 year ago... today was the day I found out I was pregnant. I've never felt a feeling of elation like I did that moment. It was about 5:30 am and I took a test. I didn't think I was pregnant, but had an extra test from the last month that I wasn't pregnant... when it came out positive was one of the best moments of my entire life. I've been on cloud 9 ever since ;-) What a great day last year today was ;-)



New favorite blanky


I am unsure how to post pics on a blog, so I will post them in My Pics. Aria has a new favorite blanky. I should just say ... favorite blanky.... since she's never had a favorite anything before (well, she does like a specific type of nuk, and loves all her toys ;-) but I've never seen her react to something like she did this new blanky. Gramma Valerie - Ahna - send Aria a purple blanket with her name on it. I put the blanket on her stroller on the handle so I could spread out the part where her name is on it and she could get a good view (we'd just gotten home, and was still in her stroller and we opened the box). I went to put a load of laundry in, and when I looked back at her in the stroller, she had removed it from the handle bars and had it all scrunched up and was hugging it. The part I can't describe is how she reacted when she was holding it. SO cute! Each time I've handed it to her she's reacted the same way. I think this may become the official "blanky" ;-)

Now, to all those who have made Aria blankets. She DOES love each and every one! And so do I! ;-)

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Scratched cornea


On Wednesday I noticed a red spot in Aria's eye. You could see it only if she looked far the the left (her left). On Thursday, I noticed the spot got larger, so I called the doc. They said to come in. They put dye in her eye, and looked with a light into her eye, and found that she did have a scratched cornea. I am positive it is from her rubbing her eyes with her little fingers when she's tired. She ends up poking herself in the eye... doc gave us some eyedrops to put in her eyes every morning and night. She said to come back if the redness wasn't gone in a week.

It's now Sunday and the spot is much worse. You can see it if she is looking straight forward, and it covers the whole right side of her eye now. I'll call the doc on Monday. ;-( Poor lil' Aria!