Wednesday, November 28, 2012

3 months!


Hip hip hooray, Baby Bear turned three months! She is such a different little lady than we brought home from the hospital. She is SO aware of everything around her. She is chubby, and happy, and smiley, and cute, and awake a lot. Just in the past week her sleeping has vastly improved. She went from fighting naps for up to an hour at EVERY naptime to going to sleep on her own in just a couple of minutes. And she went from waking up 4-5 times a night to just 2-3 currently. The little baby that used to take up to 2 hours to be put to bed is gone and has been replaced with a baby that has been falling asleep almost instantaneously when I put her in bed for the night. Sometimes I just stare at her waiting for her eyes to pop open again, but they never do anymore. What happened? I don't know, but I like it.

(The pediatrician told me that she was probably sleeping when I wasn't watching her...)

Baby Bear loves to look at toys that move or light up. And she can reach for them and keep touching them until they make music.
Not sure who likes this toy more...


















But she prefers faces to toys (even Mika's face). She loves to smile at herself in the mirror and smile and stare at our faces in the mirror. She loves to talk to us every chance she gets, and also talks to herself when she wakes up (oh just kidding, these past few days she screams when she wakes up). It's so cute (the cooing not the screaming). She LOVES to be sung to. Her current favorites are "You are my Sunshine" and "Patty-Cake". She loves when we slap her little hands while singing Patty-Cake. She also now really enjoys standing on her legs. She has such a good temperament. She is so easy going, hardly a crabby day except for maybe here or there (and the whole fussing at nap thing). We feel so lucky to have such a happy little thing. Even when her little eyes pop open at 7am after a really long night, it's impossible to not smile at that tiny happy face that's looking up at you just so happy to see you and waiting to be picked up and loved.

We met with both our caseworkers today and little Baby Bear will be with us through at least January then possibly another 1-3 months before she goes back to live with her mom. I'm really nervous to relinquish her into mom's care. I hope that this is what is best for Baby Bear. That will be a hard day for me when it comes.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Dog and baby= trouble

If you are wondering if it is a good idea to get a new dog and also acquire a newborn baby at roughly the same time, let me spare you the trouble of wondering and let you know that it is in fact not a good idea. At all.

Exhibit A
Exhibit B
These used to be the contents of a diaper bag
Exhibit C
This used to be a roll of toilet paper on a shelf
Exhibit D
Look carefully at what is in her mouth...
More often than not she is doing something I would not like her to be doing...like sneaking onto our kitchen table to eat food, jumping into the baby's seats to steal pacifiers and bibs (she once took the pacifier while the baby was still in the seat), finding wet baby washclothes in the bathroom and bringing them onto the dry carpet, romping around like a crazy dog while chewing on a baby sock...things of that general nature. I think somebody needs more attention.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Hurricane Sandy

In the year and 3 months that we have owned a house we have lived through 1 earthquake, 1 freak snowstorm, and not 1 but 2 hurricanes! All of which are atypical to our area. We probably need more homeowners insurance...

Hurricane Irene left us with a flooded basement and only momentarily without power, Sandy left us without power for 4 days. Thankfully we have a gas water heater and gas stove, so we still had hot water and could cook. We could have had it much worse. Our house was still intact at the end of the storm.
 The first day we had fun roasting mini marshmallows on toothpicks over our candles while we all played scattergories. The next day we decided it was time to start eating everything in our freezer. It was a delicious day if slightly uncomfortable for the fact that there was no place to store leftovers but in your belly. The third day it was just cold and uncomfortable and we spent the day at Justin's office which by then had electricity.
There were trees down everywhere. Huge trees. Trees on roads, trees on houses, trees on electric poles. This is a picture of Justin's office. He was one of the lucky people to get a tree branch in his office. This hurricane really made me wonder what all the birds and squirrels do during hurricanes. Do they go to the ground or do they hold on to the trees for dear life? Next time I will be watching them to find out.
Mika finds new ways to be naughty everyday. She gets especially creative when she is cooped up. Here she is with her face in the baby's formula can. I yelled her name and she jerked her head up but the can didn't come off...