Turkey Day

Annika looooves turkey! Well, not really. But she loooves cranberry sauce! OK, that's not true either.

I was looking for a relevant opening line about Thanksgiving, and that's the best I can do. Yeah, seriously.

I am typing this as myself and my sweet baby fight back colds. Neither strain is violent - she has a yucky cough that tends to show up when she's laying down (yes, thereby disturbing her sleep) and I have some congestion that tends to show up when I'm laying down as well (oh yes - thereby distrubing my sleep). So it's been fun, but not too bad. At least I got to call our medical plan's advice nurse and use our saline drops from our baby meds kit! I feel like such an involved mother.

Thanskgiving was a wonderful time. Annika got to see literally dozons of cousins, aunts, uncles, close family friends, grandparents...you get the idea. She was sooo excited to be with so many people. This is how I summed it up to Chris, "She loves the people and attention, but she can't handle it." Not handling it manifested itself in her inability to sleep the first night, and being generally crankier at strange times the next day. She also had a screaming fit on Friday that I wasn't privvy to, but her father was there and he reported that it wasn't pretty.

However little sleep there was, I will say that she (and us!) truly had a great time. Cousins young and old alike fawned over her. She saw her great-grandmother Julie and her two baby cousins Ally and Braden who were born in October and late July, respectively. And she really really likes people. There was constant interaction and activity, and she just ate it up. Even after only sleeping 3 hours Wednesday night, she was in wonderful spirits for most of Thursday and so much enjoyed the love that surrounded her.

By the way, this is the 48th post. YEAH!

Cornucopia

This past week has been a week of firsts. FIRST of all, Annika can hold her own bottle! My friend Lisa and I always look longingly at the toddlers in the malls, all quiet in their strollers with bottles propped on their lips, held by their own tiny hands. Annika is thsiclose to being one of those kids - at four months!

Then we put Annika in her high chair for the first time. It was an experiment - and there would be no food involved. She just seemed sad and lonely in her bouncy chair and kept looking up at the table. So we sat her in it, and wham! There was a happy kid - I think she was just super excited to be at everyone's eye level. I've realized lately how much easier it is to calm her down when she's either in our arms (duh) or proper somewhere that she can easily see our faces without craning her neck. Most of her current activities are on the floor - so Chris and I need to get down there more often lately to keep her happy. I like this highchair thing though - she's safe in there and sooooo cute!

She's also been amping up her motor and speech abilities. She has tried to roll again more often - she gets almost all the way there, the flips back onto her back super fast, and then is done with her effort. But she's once again interested in flipping over. Boo! She's also been laughing much more. It takes effort but she is quite fond of being held upside down (???) while having her feet kissed. It sounds complicated, but I assure you it is not.

Finally, her maternal grandparents came to visit this weekend. Annika has been developing stronger aversions to people, so we were a little worried, but it went great! She was excited to have all the attention all day long, and was an angel for most of the visit. Now, getting her back to her regular sleep schedule has been a bit of a struggle, but hey, you can't have it all!

Jinx

Maybe we're the only weirdos who think this, but as new parents, we're extremely superstitious. We are never more so than when we talk about Annika's sleep schedule and patterns. If she has a "good night" - i.e. 6 or more hours of straight sleep - we never really think "this is it! she's figured it out! sleep for all!" In fact, we usually say stuff like "Oh, she slept a lot during the day - you know she'll wake up tonight."

So, I'm here to announce, that for the past two weeks, Annika has been sleeping from....8:30 p.m. - 7:00 a.m.! OH YES, IT'S TRUE. Well, it was true - until it wasn't any more.

So, I've been living my life for the last two weeks - soooo well rested and suuuuch a better mommy because of it. We had a rhythm down. We had a sleep routine. We were rocking!

However, the last two nights, something got screwy. Maybe it was the change in weather. Maybe it was the clean crib sheet. Maybe it was....too good to be true?

So, on night #1 (Sunday), she woke up at 4:30 a.m. Now, that's usually not too bad - because that means about 5-6 straight hours of sleep for us, which is doable. However, when she was smaller, waking up at 4:30 meant eating then going back to sleep. Now that she's all about waking up for good once she wakes up, she thought 4:30 was TIME TO GET UP! That wasn't good. I am lucky, because I have a wonderful husband who was already awake and willing to sit up with her and attempt to get her back down. Sadly, by the time he left at 6:30, it didn't happen. She was eating from Mommy as Daddy kissed us good-bye.

Then last night, it was a little worse. Sleep routine complete, Annika went to bed with a smile on her face. Usually that means she'll hang out in her crib for a while before she cries for someone to rock her to sleep one last time. Daddy went in as requested, and she JUST WOULDN'T SLEEP. Daddy tried rocking, the bouncy chair, a pacifier - she just wasn't interested in sleep. So he finally brought her into our room where she was happily playing with her hands. Then she flipped! Started screaming and just wouldn't stop. We hadn't heard her cry this hard in a while. I finally fed her again, and she drifted off - though not without a fight. This all finished by 11:30 p.m. - which is 3 hours past her bedtime. We surmised that she was likely extremely overtired. But it was still very strange.

The good news is that she did sleep until 7:30 a.m., which was nice.

I continue to remain hopeful that she'll get her rhythm back. But I will never forget those two delicious weeks of sleep...sweet sleep.

Shorty?

Yesterday, Annika went to her 4-month appointment at the pediatrician's. The results were ASTOUNDING! Just kidding.

Annika appears to be right on track in terms of her growth and development. Our regular doctor was out "sick" (if anyone saw Dr. Clifford Yee at the beach yesterday, please call my cell) so Dr. Lee stepped in. What is interesting about Dr. Lee is that she has a son just six days younger than Annika! So it was fun to hear her exclaim "oh, my son does that, too..." or "he doesn't do that yet! She looks great!" I'm finding that parents have an instinctual competitive spirit.

So, here are the latest stats:

Weight: 15 pounds, 3.5 ounces
Length: 24 1/4 inches
Head Circumference: 16 7/8 inches

Of course, these stats fall into "percentiles." Annika is in the 75th - 90th percentile for weight still, but only the 50th for length. So, maybe her new nickname is Shorty? I know 50th pretty much means average...but parents don't like average!

Well, she doesn't have an average sized head. At nearly 17 inches, she's in the 95th percentile. THANKS DADDY.

Happy Halloween and Happy Birthday!

So Annika's first Halloween came and went, and it was bittersweet. Bittersweet because it was her first "major" holiday (ok, I suppose that honor goes to Fourth of July - go United States! Woo hoo!) and that she seemed to take no pleasure in it. The costume I so lovingly picked out for her essentially made her scream every time it got within four inches of her. But we perservered, because she sure looked cute in it! I will also say that the costume was purchased in the beginning of September. By October 31, she grew out of it! Bittersweet - see what I mean?

We celebrated Annika's first Halloween by visiting "cousin" Nico. They were SUPER excited to be dressed up.

Today is also four months of Annika! Her 4-month birthday was marked by a trip to Trader Joe's and some birthday breast milk (her favorite). This is a relatively major milestone as many parenting books use four months as a marker for life changes. This includes the ability to roll (which she has done once, but I shudder to think of her doing it again), recognize faces, touch things with a purposeful mission and general interest in mobility. Oh, and she looooves to talk. Though I look forward to "real" words, Annika language is quite amusing. Here is sample dialogue:

Mommy: WHO'S MOMMY'S BABY??? WHO????
Annika: Ehh...ahhhh....EHHH!!!
Mommy: Is it you? IS IT YOU???
Annika: Uh. (silence)
Mommy: It's you - IT'S YOU!!!! MOMMY LOVES BABY!
Annika: (silence)

Happy Birthday, sweet baby girl, your mommy will always love you.