The Little Finn

The Little Finns

2010-04-10T20:47:00.004-04:00

Since "The Little Finn" won't technically be accurate soon, I've moved this blog to a new address at http://thelittlefinns.blogspot.com/ so update your links accordingly.

All the old pictures and posts will remain here for a while, but nothing new will be added.

9 weeks to go

2010-03-28T21:46:00.006-04:00

The rainy season is ending here, so we've been able to revisit all our favorite places again. A few weeks ago we went to Limantour Beach at Point Reyes. It wasn't really that cold, but Anja wanted to wear her hat and gloves anyway.

We had family visiting the week before last, Anja's aunt and two cousins. We visited many of our local highlights, like this spot in Bolinas for tidepooling:

...and Chimney Rock for seal watching:

With just nine weeks to go, prenatal visits continue to be uneventful. I am slightly anemic, like most pregnant women in the third trimester, but my glucose screen came back great, so no gestational diabetes to worry about. The baby measures right on for size, and I've gained exactly the average recommended amount of weight. Heartburn is back full force, and this time is actually worse than before. It was so bad last Friday night that I woke up in the morning with a badly burned esophagus from all the bile that kept coming up. It's like having a sore throat, except along your entire esophagus! It recovered after a few days of minimal, careful eating. So from now on I have to eat even smaller meals and nothing after 8:00 every night.

We finally made it to the hospital tour. It seems like an okay place. The labor/delivery room is nice enough, with a shower you can use during labor, and birthing balls and stools and they seem to encourage moving around a lot during labor. The recovery rooms are very small, and shared, which I'm not very excited about. But hopefully we won't have to be there for very long after delivery, so that's okay. Getting there will be pretty easy, takes about half an hour, and we can park right outside the door. Our other option was to drive to San Francisco, but with traffic it could easily be an hour and it is a massive hospital in the middle of the city. The place we're going to instead has a much more personal feel to it.

Anja continues to show me where her baby is, when I show her where mine is. But just recently she has been really interested in a book we were given about becoming a big sister and what the new baby will be like. I'm sure she still doesn't understand, but at least the baby is part of our regular dialogue.

Anja had a great Easter weekend. Saturday was the local Easter Egg Hunt, which was at the park near us so we just walked over. Anja was surprisingly not scared by the Easter Bunny, and thought he was really funny. It's the first time we've subjected her to an Easter Bunny or Santa type experience and she loved it. She even gave him a high five.

Easter morning at our house below. Anja had fun finding the plastic eggs that were hidden. Some contained little chocolate eggs and some had stickers. She also got a couple of crocheted bunnies that I made, a kite, and some little matchbox trucks.

Don't forget to follow Laura's blog each week to see what vegetable we are now: the baby is a cabbage this week, which doesn't sound very cute until you see the picture: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BmuAToNk4jU/S7k6OUGcuSI/AAAAAAAAAkk/C7sdizJpxXw/s1600/cabbage.JPG

Third trimester and the aquarium!

2010-03-07T11:22:00.004-05:00

As a reminder, my due date is June 8th. Here is the actual fortune Jay got at Lily Kai this week:

Those people who say they enjoy being pregnant are lying. We are now in the third trimester, otherwise known as the longest 13 weeks ever. I'm tired, and have heartburn most of the time, I waddle when I walk and my hips and back are sore all the time. I have very little space for my lungs to expand so I'm always out of breath. Picking up Anja is really difficult and a little painful for me now. Until the last few weeks I was still wearing a few non-maternity shirts that were just really stretchy, but that's not possible anymore. I've gained 15lbs so far but it feels like much more. Interestingly, it is exactly the same amount I had gained at this point last time, within .5lbs. Yesterday I picked up some decidedly tent-like shirts that should fit me until June. I'm supposed to start keeping a "kick count card" of daily baby activity. I wish there was just a box to check for "moves around constantly like a bag full of kittens". Luckily, sleeping has been pretty good lately, so I'm feeling much better than I could. And although the sleep deprivation will be hard, I'm looking forward to feeling physically better once the baby is here. I want my lungs and stomach back!

Jay has started planning some races he will run in the near future. It's exciting to me, because these are races I can potentially run next year! I have a few in mind I would really like to train for, but I'm going to be much more conservative in my approach this time, since my recovery was very slow last time, and I just ended up disappointed when I couldn't meet my goals. I'm trying to remember that I have many years of running ahead of me, as long as I'm smart about training, and there's no need to rush.

We keep trying to arrange time to go for a hospital tour of the place we'll have to go for delivery. We can't bring Anja, since kids are banned from visiting hospitals right now (H1N1 season), and that makes it difficult for us. After many many weeks of trying to arrange for a babysitter, a friend volunteered to watch her today. But we decided to go out to a movie during that time instead, since that sounds much more rewarding than a hospital tour. It will only be the second time we've gone out on our own since we moved here over a year ago.

I'm much less concerned about the details this time around, having already been through this once before. We never went on a tour of Sparrow Hospital before we ended up having Anja there, and we had a wonderful experience. We don't really have a choice in hospitals due to our HMO anyway, so it isn't totally necessary to check it out ahead of time. It seems like an okay place. They are completing a brand new labor/delivery wing of the hospital sometime around June, so we may even get to be there for that. The one bad part is the distance from where we live. At best, we will have about a 30 min drive to the hospital. If it's rush hour, the drive could be much longer. I sometimes have fantasies that we can use the freestanding birth center in Santa Rosa that looks wonderful, but at over $6500 (not covered by insurance), it's not going to happen. Maybe we will "forget" to go to the hospital until it is too late and end up with a homebirth. Just kidding, Mom!

Yesterday we went to San Francisco's Aquarium on the Bay then downtown to meet a friend for her birthday lunch. Anja loved the aquarium and did pretty well at the Indonesian restaurant, considering how tired she was. Here she is at one of the touch tanks, petting a live starfish!

We have a yearly pass to this aquarium now, so we can go whenever we want. The bay area is expensive, if you want to go to any museums/zoos/aquariums, but the yearly passes are pretty reasonable. We are really lucky to have so many great places to visit that are so close. The aquarium has some amazing tanks of sea jellies. These guys are actually sea nettles. The still photo doesn't really do them justice, since they are in constant motion. Amazing.

Here are a couple of bat rays overhead in one of the underwater tunnels. Anja really likes the tunnels. Actually, she likes all of the exhibits.

The tunnels are always popular. There is one for primarily predatory fish and one with schooling fish and other less dominant creatures.

Anja and Jay in the tunnel.

Tahoe and Petaluma and 26 weeks

2010-03-03T23:28:00.004-05:00

Well, we've all been transferring colds around here for the past three weeks or so. First Anja, who had the worst of it, and then me for the last two weeks, and Jay was a little sick off and on during that time. I'm just now beginning to catch up on everything and today is the first day I would say I'm not actually sick. Unfortunately I still had a really bad cough over the past weekend, sometimes uncontrollable, when we went away with my coworkers to Lake Tahoe. It was a fun trip, but I was pretty physically miserable. I slept a lot, or tried to through all the coughing. Having the depressed immune system of a pregnant woman is not fun at all. It's very frustrating to have to spend weeks fighting off a cold in addition to all the other pregnancy discomforts.

Otherwise, the pregnancy is going well. All measurements are right on target, and the baby is very active, just like Anja was. I just finished 26 weeks, so I have another 14 to go. Still seems like forever, but at least it's getting closer.

Even though the trip was tough for me, I'm glad we went. It's about a 3 hour drive from Petaluma and we left Thursday after work. Anja fell asleep in the car Thursday night and woke up Friday morning to this view out the window. The first thing she said was, "Snowmen!" when she saw some in the yard. She hadn't seen snow since she was 9 months old!

This is the back yard of the lodge we rented. Stunning. And with a great little sledding hill! That's Lover's Leap rising up in the background. We stayed for three days and even had some new snow while we were there, maybe a foot or so. We also lost power for about 12 hours the second day (overnight). It was just like being back in Michigan.

Here are Anja and I on our way out to the sauna. She was very excited to have her own towel like mommy.

She thought the snow was pretty cool. She threw a few snowballs, and we built her a little snow fort. She wasn't very impressed with how difficult it was to walk in fresh snow, though.

Meanwhile, spring has been here in Petaluma for about a month now. The hills are bright green and all the trees are blooming. We've had quite a bit of rain lately, but most days the sun still comes out for a bit. We had a few weeks of weather in the 50's, but now we're solidly in the 60's every day. Flowers are out in all the yards in town, beautiful.

We've been talking to Anja about the baby coming. Since my belly is huge now, I've been telling here there is a baby inside. She just thinks it's a joke, and shows me where her baby is:

Do it again!

2010-03-01T03:04:00.001-05:00

Anja sledding for the first time at Lake Tahoe:

Itsagirlitsagirlitsagirl!!!!

2010-01-05T12:12:00.002-05:00

So, Jay was thinking we were having a girl, and at the last minute looking at the ultrasound screen I found myself secretly hoping for or thinking we were having a girl. Not for any real reason, I suppose just because the first little girl we had was such a success and so much fun! The ultrasound views were very clear and gender was confirmed by two technicians, so looks like we can keep all Anja's girly clothes!

More importantly, all the big measurements look good. I was pretty nervous for this ultrasound. It's hard not to listen to all the information regarding my "advanced maternal age." We still have to wait for an official reading by the doctor, and we have an appt this Friday for more details. Technicians aren't supposed to give diagnoses, but they unofficially told us things look good. She measures right on for size (I forgot to ask for the calculated weight), and no obvious problems otherwise. She is very active, and we have a few ultrasound pictures I'll put up later. We didn't get a 4D ultrasound like last time, so these will be the grainy-type pictures you're used to seeing, the kind that need labels to tell you what you're looking at.

Stay tuned!

Ultrasound tomorrow and new place

2010-01-05T00:52:00.007-05:00

Our ultrasound is first thing in the morning, which means getting up early, drinking a cruel amount of water for a full bladder, and waiting one hour for the ultrasound.

I have started telling Anja that I have a baby in my belly, and then I point to my belly. Then she lifts up her shirt, points to her belly, and says, "Baby in there." Then I tell her, "No, you just have food in there," at which point she always laughs. I'm not sure why this is funny every time for her, but it always is. Personally, I think it's funnier to have a baby in your tummy.

We have also started to tell her that we will have a baby in the house some day. But then she starts saying, "Mimi? Where's Mimi?" her baby (doll). So for now I think the coming baby will remain part of a funny joke about which of us has a baby in her tummy and which of us has food.

One of our Christmas presents this year was a family pass to the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Anja loves it - we've already been twice! It's right on the bay near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and has a lot of great activities, both indoor and out. I think Anja's favorite part is this toddler room with waterbed-like ponds for jumping on and animal panels on the walls that make noise when you push them. She is absolutely beside herself about the noise the frogs make:

All the kids love this outdoor running river at kid height.

And of course, anything that makes noise:

I'm excited that we can go here for free all year whenever we want, and that the weather will be nice enough. I do regret a little that Anja doesn't get to see snow right now, but the ability to play outside virtually every day in sun and nice weather more than makes up for it to me. We're about three hours drive from good snow (as in, chains on your tires required and they measure it in feet, not inches), but haven't been yet. Hopefully we'll get that way at least a few times this winter for Anja. I'm rapidly becoming less mobile, and so won't be doing any skiing or sledding this year myself.

In other news, we are moving next week to a new place. This will be a much nicer move than the last one, since it's just across town and not the entire country. We are SO excited for our new place. It's right next to an elementary school with playground equipment and a big open field for soccer or frisbee or whatever you want. Across the street from that is a really nice park with big twisty slides, climbing walls, swings, etc. The park has some really nice mature redwood trees, plus a couple of tennis courts. Of course, right next to that park is a dog park. AND, in the summer they show outdoor movies in the park for a donation of a few $$! The neighborhood itself is really nice and great for walking. The house is one mile from downtown and .7 miles from our favorite coffeeshop. I can't wait to be able to walk to town again, like we could in Lansing. I'm really looking forward to living in a neighborhood again.

We will also now be living on the "Point Reyes" side of town, which means it will take even less time now to head to the coast, or the redwoods, or just out for a bike ride through the vineyards and farms. We will be literally a 30 second drive from the edge of town!

This place is also bigger than our apartment. It has three bedrooms, two full baths, a giant living room with a fireplace and a giant kitchen. Also a small storage shed/workroom and a big fenced yard out back with big shade trees. We found this place for the same price we were paying for our apartment, which is great since we really couldn't afford much more. I think it would have been a little more if not for its vintage (aka outdated) appearance inside. But the avocado green countertops are in great condition, as well as the peach-colored tub. And hey, our very own orange tree in the front yard, loaded with oranges right now! I'll have some pictures of the new place in a few weeks.

Tantrums

2009-12-30T10:43:00.002-05:00

It's only 7:45am and so far today we've had pretty impressive tantrums about:
1. Not being allowed to wear Diego underwear
2. Not being allowed to watch TV
3. Not being able to put a bite of apple back onto the apple it came from

Also, be sure to check out Laura's blog (link at right), where she updates what vegetable or fruit my baby is each week. This week we're an avocado!

And stay tuned for next week when we have our 20 week ultrasound and hopefully find out the sex and some other interesting info. So far I've gained 5 or 6lbs, which is pretty much right on track for this stage. That isn't much weight, but I look huge right now, more like I did last time at 5 or 6 months. I'll put up a belly picture soon.

Thanksgiving, Christmas and 17 weeks along

2009-12-26T22:29:00.006-05:00

It's been difficult to keep up with posting lately. First I felt sick for almost three months due to the pregnancy, and then we were busy with both Jay traveling for work and then all of us traveling or hosting travelers for three weeks straight. Meanwhile all of this time I was and am still completely EXHAUSTED. Much more fatigued than last pregnancy. Imagine always feeling like like you've only had two hours of sleep for months and months. And yet you still have to go to work, take care of a toddler, and function normally. I've got a long five months still to go. Now we're fully in the midst of the "terrible two's", which we're told will start to improve when Anja turns four or so. Even if you don't think the two's are terrible, they are incredibly consuming and take up all of our time. Even this post is being typed a few words at a time while keeping Anja from hitting the computer with hard toys. And now she's running around the house like a crazy person on her tiptoes laughing hysterically.

Anja has advanced incredibly in last couple of months. She now has full conversations with us and asks a lot of questions about everything. She recently learned the word, "why", which is pretty fun. Whatever answer we give is always followed by another why, and another. As usual she is really active and needs constant entertainment. In addition, we are now experiencing the emotional turmoil typical for this age. The first few mini tantrums were just amusing, but now we can expect a meltdown at any time for really any reason. It is very challenging and completely different than the predictability we've had for the last year. Meltdowns are caused by not being able to watch TV, having twisted socks, not being picked up, being picked up, dropping a toy, not having food yet at a restaurant, not liking the food you have, Blue being too close to a toy or food, having a piece of fuzz stuck to your finger, etc.

This picture and the two above are from the Oregon coast. For Thanksgiving we visited my sister and her husband in Corvallis. It was beautiful, and we even had good weather on the day we drove to the coast. These are some pictures from a place called Seal Rock. The tidepooling there was really good and we did see a few seals.

Here are Jay and Anja on some of the rocks exposed at low tide.

And here are the four Spaulding girls at a spot a little further up the road, I forget what town this was.

The next week my sister Heather came to visit and stayed for a couple of weeks. She just finished her degree and is currently job-free (aka free to travel). Here's a photo of Jay, Anja and Heather on a beach at Point Reyes during her visit. We had a good visit there and got to see some really impressive Tule Elk, a couple different species of deer, elephant seals, and numerous water birds.

It's also the beginning of the salmon spawning season here, which we tried to go see, but no luck. We did find some really pretty rivers nearby, though.

And then we got a Christmas tree and started putting wrapped presents under it. At first Anja thought the wrapped presents *were* the toys. She carried them around and arranged them and didn't want to put them back.

And packages for her kept showing up in the mail with bubble wrap, which she hadn't seen before.

Anja really likes to have "jobs" to do. She especially likes feeding Blue. Afterward she even reminded me to add Blue's joint medication to her food, which I had forgotten.

She also really likes singing, but she doesn't know all the words to any songs by herself yet. She loves the rubber ducky song from Sesame Street:

Here's Anja on her new bouncy toy, Rody, that she got for Christmas.

Anja loves all her new toys. Here she is "eating" a wooden strawberry...

... and playing with her wooden hammer.

Halloween and pretend play

2009-11-08T18:42:00.003-05:00

First, the big news that some of you already know about, Anja is going to be a big sister next June! Here's an 8 week ultrasound of baby #2 (it's pretty hard to decipher, but the x's are at the head and bum). So far things are going alright. I feel yucky most of the time these days, and the fatigue is much worse than last time, but baby is developing well. And as of today we're 10 weeks along, which is 1/4 of the way there! I'll continue to update on progress over time.

I'm a few weeks behind in updates, but we did take Anja trick or treating. I made an adorable costume by buying a brown jumpsuit and sewing a few pieces of fur on it. Unfortunately I didn't check the fit first. I could barely get in on her! But after about a week of trying it on for short periods, she finally decided it was fun to wear, and not just a restrictive furry bodysuit. Sometimes she would forget her costume was a dog and she'd call it a monkey.

Most of the shops in downtown Petaluma were open for the kids for Halloween, so that's where we went. At first she was pretty confused and we had to carry her to each candy spot and hold her bag open for her. After a few stops, she figured it out, but she was very serious about the process. She marched straight into each store with her bag open and waited for her candy. Then she walked straight out of the store and opened her bag to see what they gave her. No smiles and no "trick or treat." Oh, and she didn't understand about waiting in lines, either. She tried to walk around all the taller kids and weave her way straight toward the candy bowl.

We've also had a few other recent trips, one to a wine tasting just down the road when Jay's friend Pete was visiting, and we also went to the beach, where Anja is really beginning to have some fun. She likes to collect small rocks and shells, and hide her toys in the sand, and dig. She also really likes the seagulls and has started to walk just a short distance into the water. We've been a couple of times now to this great beach on Tomales Bay, where the water is shallow and there aren't any waves, so it's a great place to bring kids.

This past weekend we went to the Oakland Zoo. Anja really loved it, and we stayed for 3.5 hours, which is a long time for anything to hold her interest! Here she is just before going into the zoo, wearing her favorite hat with soccer balls on it. She loves soccer balls, even though the only soccer ball we have here is a half-deflated ball that belongs to Blue.

We brought the stroller, but Anja really wanted to run around instead. And I mean run. She really has picked up speed recently. She has a pretty interesting technique, with arms and legs everywhere, but it works for her. Here she is watching the giraffes.

She was also very impressed with the petting zoo and their goats. Actually, she was just mildly amused by the goats until she found out that there were brushes for the kids to use. Here she is, so happy while brushing her goat.

Throughout the zoo were these colorful animals for the kids to climb on. Equally as impressive as the real animals to a 1.5 year old.

Anja really loves to play pretend games. It's so fun to watch, and to make up fun games with her. She loves dressing up, and of course doing everything she sees us do. She's even been pretty good with the potty lately. She uses it at home and has started using it at daycare now too. She helps me fold laundry, which goes about as well as you can imagine it would. Yesterday I laid down on the floor and said, "I wish I had a pillow." She ran into the bedroom, pulled the blankets back and brought back a pillow. Jay let her play with this wrench so she decided to fix her car.

And wow does she like playdoh. She will play with it for a full hour. That is about 50-55 minutes longer than anything else! I am amazed at how good she is at pretending a lump of playdoh is whatever you tell her it is. She told me to make an Ernie and an Elmo, and she's completely happy with the these weird squished pac-man shapes I made instead. And she pretends they are eating snakes and says, "yuck, yuck, yuck."

Eyebrows and hugs

2009-10-23T00:50:00.002-04:00

This was supposed to be a mustache...

Anja hugs everything she likes. Hugging means putting it under your chin and rocking back and forth. She hugs her toys, her food, pictures. And then she gives it to you to hug.

Granona Beas!

2009-10-10T13:27:00.004-04:00

We have a lot of conversations now. Mainly Anja tells us what she wants, which is actually pretty great. Now she tells us when she wants water or milk or food.

She babbles nonstop about all of her toys. "Elmo? Big Bird? Dollhouse? Big Teddy! Hugs, Big Teddy. Daddy hugs?"

Recent conversations around the house:

(While hiding under the high chair) "Daddy!? I see you! I see you Daddy! I see you Blue. Blue!"

(While reading Goodnight Moon) "Kitty. Bunny. Moon." (Then casually, as Blue walks by:) "Hi Blue." (and then back to the book) "Kitty. Shoes. Brush."

"Look at me!"

"Playground! Playground! Playground! Playground!"
"No Anja, not now, maybe later."
"Noooooo! Playground! Playground! Playground!"

"Anja, are you thirsty?"
"Anja water! Anja milk! Anja juice! Anja milk, water!"

She also says please after most things she asks for, which is incredibly cute:

"Granona bease!" (Granola please)

"Akee seem bease" (Ice cream please)

(While putting a puzzle piece down her shirt) "Anja, shirt. Daddy, shirt?"
"No, Daddy doesn't want a puzzle piece in his shirt."
"Blue, shirt"
"No, Blue doesn't want a puzzle piece in her shirt."

She also asks to use the potty. A recent typical scenario:
"Mommy, potty."
"Do you want to use the potty?"
"Nah" (yes)
"Okay"
Diaper is removed. Above child pees immediately on carpet, then runs to living room and pees on her chair, then pees in the potty, and again on the carpet.

Way behind

2009-10-04T16:57:00.003-04:00

I'm way behind in blog posts, so here are a few cute pictures from the past several weeks. Here's a sweater from Great Grandma Spaulding that was made for one of Anja's aunts quite a long time ago. We have a large collection of Grandma sweaters that are equally cute that Anja will grow into over time.

We've been pretty busy lately. Last weekend we went to New York for the weekend for a friend's wedding. It was challenging. Traveling with a toddler is much harder than traveling with an infant. Luckily the airport folks are pretty accommodating. They let you skip to the front of the line for security checks and they let you bring any food you want. I was glad we didn't have to deal with a hungry baby waiting while waiting in long lines. We missed our connecting flight for the first long day of traveling and had to stay overnight in Atlanta - that was not fun at all. We stayed in a questionable hotel without a crib and had to go buy milk, diapers, and other baby items at a gas station. That night we didn't get any sleep because Anja tossed and turned and wrestled with us all night on the bed. And I mean ALL night. In the morning we took a shuttle, caught another flight, got our rental car and drove 1.5 hours to the wedding *just* in time. We had to run into a public restroom 10 minutes before the ceremony and throw on our nice clothes AND change a diaper and change Anja's clothes. It's funny now but wasn't at the time. Luckily we borrowed a crib that night for the cabin we stayed in. The ceremony was outdoors and very cold but luckily it didn't rain until after the ceremony. And mice only got into one thing in the cabin - her bag of formula.

A few weeks ago we went to Armstrong Redwoods State National Reserve, about an hour from here. It's a pretty impressive place with a lot of old growth redwoods and not a whole lot of people. Anja was really impressed with the trees. I didn't expect a 1.5 year old to be so excited. She kept pointing up and saying "Trees! Trees!"

Who wouldn't be impressed?

Anja was almost as impressed by the really low railings along some of the trails that she could sit on.

Anja continues to copy everything we do. She is particularly interested in yoga.

She has the general idea, but not the details:

I am continually amazed by this place where we live. We drove down to Muir Beach, a little town nearby this weekend. This was just a little scenic turnout off the highway:

You can see the beach we went to just on the other side of the trees. There are no pictures from the beach since it was way too windy. Not "blow your hair around" windy, but "cover the baby while we all get sandblasted" windy.

doll house

2009-09-12T17:10:00.002-04:00

Anja and Jay's legs at Bolinas Beach a few weeks ago. A pretty, rocky beach but no marine mammals that day.

I have been looking for a doll house for Anja since we moved here and really didn't think I was going to find what I was looking for. Since we live in an apartment it isn't practical to build one, and in stores I could only find cheap plastic houses and they all cost at least $100! But last weekend I finally found exactly what I wanted - a great deal on a very big and sturdy wooden house without any breakable parts. Anja absolutely loves it:

It has a roof that opens and a side that swings out and a lot of hiding places for dolls. She likes it even more than I thought she might, and even uses the furniture and dolls that we picked up to go with it. It's the new central focus of her play, adjusted from empty boxes and couch cushions.

Lately she wants to do everything that we do. She likes to help sweep the floor, and brush her teeth ("bush teeth bush teeth!") And she also learned to hold the phone up to her ear and talk to it.

Energy and monsters say rraaowrr!

2009-08-29T14:32:00.004-04:00

My mom used to say if we could harness the power of a two year old we could power the world. I think that might be from a Bill Cosby sketch, but it is definitely true. She also used to call my younger sister a perpetual motion machine. Anja has so much energy. Luckily for us, naptime is still easy and so is bedtime. Anja sleeps 11 hours a night and today she actually slept a full 12 hours. She was awake for less than 3 hours after that and then back to bed. In between sleeping she is now full speed gogogogoooo.

She can open all the doors in the house now, so the other day she came in while I was showering and stuck her head inside the shower. I gave her a blob of bubbles on her hand and said, "Go show Daddy." She left and came back again 30 seconds later with bubbles gone and asking for more. So I gave her more and she left again. She did this at least 10 times. She would carefully carry her bubbled hands into the living room to have them wiped off by Jay and would then return for more. She loves these types of games:

She also likes to play pretend games and has a sense of humor we are beginning to see. She has a monster puppet with velcro eyes, ears, etc that can be removed. Today she was trying to put "monster hair" on the dog. Here she is modeling the monster teeth herself:

We really do need to get her a rocking toy or bouncing toy of some kind. She's a little too small for most of them still, though, so it may have to wait. Meanwhile, thank you Ikea removable couch arms.

Finally a successful somersault:

And she really loves to go running with Jay in this stroller. It's pretty cushy, so I can see why. There was a recent stroller-related tragedy when her lemur went for a ride in the stroller and she dropped it. This time we didn't find it again. Luckily she's not quite old enough to realize when one of her regular toys is missing. But I think at this point she would be pretty sad if we lost Big Teddy or Soft Teddy (yes, I realize we are incredibly mundane in naming Anja's stuffed animals, we also have two Tiny Teddies and a Small Teddy).

She is really beginning to communicate now. It is SO much easier for us when she can actually tell us what she wants. A few of the more useful things she can finally say are "Finished", accompanied with the sign for finished, and "Ouchie" if something hurts. She also asks for specific foods now, which is great except when she only wants to eat pizza or cheese. Luckily she still really likes broccoli and applesauce and grapes. Here she would rather have pizza than pancakes for breakfast:

12 miles

2009-08-16T19:41:00.004-04:00

Yesterday we went on a hike at Point Reyes (where else). It was 12 miles long, which is the longest we've done with Anja so far, and reasonably difficult. It was about 3000ft in elevation gain total, but the trails were pretty easy to walk on, some were even fire trails, which are really just dirt roads. Jay may have a different view of how difficult it was, since he carried Anja in the backpack carrier and I had a lighter backpack with some supplies. We have been out to Point Reyes so many times, but have still only seen a fraction of it.

Anja had a great time. Except for the carsick incident at the end of the day that shall be known as "Extreme Vomit 2009." There was no permanent trauma, except maybe to the car.

Now that she's getting bigger, it's harder to make her sit still in the carrier. She can get both arms out of the harness and likes to hang completely out one side, like a dog sticking its head out the window of a car. This is fine, unless you're the person carrying her. 22lbs is a lot of weight to be lurching from one side to the other.

Part of the reason I wanted to hike this route was to see Wildcat Camp, the most requested camp at Point Reyes (there are only four). Jay and Anja are there in the shade, it's hard to see them.

You can see the camp below next to the ocean on the right side of the trail. There are only about 10 or so campsites. I'm hoping to camp here sometime, but I'm just not sure about being 5.5 miles from the car with a toddler, just in case we need extra supplies (see "Extreme Vomit 2009"). You may also notice in the beach pictures than Anja is not wearing pants while they are hung to dry. This shall be known as "Diaper fail event 2009." You can definitely backpack with a baby, but it's a little more work.

This picture absolutely does not do the scene justice, but here is the view coming down the trail that leads to the ocean, 6.5 miles from the trailhead where we started. If you look closely you can see the tiny dots that are tents.

This is a popular destination for horseback riders. Anja loved the horses we met along the trails all day, "ohses, ohses".

There were groups of sea lions leaping through the surf for the entire two hours we sat on the beach. You can see one sticking its head up out of the water here. There are also two pelicans in the air. Swarms of pelicans were patrolling the surf and diving in after fish. There were also a few ospreys diving into the water. I don't know what they were all after, but it was a very popular fishing spot that day.

Anja was stacking rocks and planting feathers in the sand and burying my feet with sand. I'm glad we're beyond the sand-eating phase, but I still watch closely whenever she has small rocks or kelp in her hands. We need to get her a sandbox at home sometime soon.

I should have taken more pictures of the beach area because it was really pretty. Jay took this one of Anja and me and one of the cliffs that comes right to the ocean.

And in a completely unrelated note, Anja loves Sesame Street. Actually she loves Elmo. She picks up the remote control all the time and says, "Emmo, Emmo" and points it at the TV. Most of the programs out there for kids are pretty pathetic, but Sesame Street is still pretty good.

Michigan and more ocean

2009-08-09T22:41:00.006-04:00

Anja has done so much in the last few weeks. She spent a week in Michigan visiting family. here are some pictures taken by various people. Anja at camp:

And dancing with cousin Kai:

Anja and Jackson, her closest in age 2nd cousin - Jackson is about 3 weeks older. I think every Roberts has been photographed on this swing at camp, including Jay when he was younger.

Anja spent some time with her aunties Meredith and Beth. Here they are walking on the beach at Perch Lake.

She was fairly unimpressed with the kayak.

But she did like the sauna. One day she can carve her name on the wall there too.

She also took a trip out to the forties.

And was introduced to badminton with her four 1st cousins.

She also got to have some wild blueberries picked at camp.

Lately she comes up with the best facial expressions. It's like she's trying out all of them.

Here we went on a walk on the trails behind our place recently. We finally had a warm evening. I have been amazed at how cool the evenings are since we moved here. Only lately have we even had our windows open at night. Being less than 20 miles from the ocean means there is always a cool breeze at night.

For Jay's birthday weekend we did a few fun things. Here is Anja at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, a place just south of San Francisco.

And going for a toilet paper ride...

Anja can open all the doors in the house now. So she opens the closet door all the time and grabs the leash and chases Blue around the house chanting "Walk walk walk walk." Blue is excited about a walk, but can't figure out what Anja has to do with it.

And tired at the end of the day, sleeping on Big Teddy.

Anja and Jay are in Michigan :-(

2009-07-27T01:15:00.007-04:00

This isn't a real Anja post, since I don't have any updates or pictures since she and Jay left this weekend. Jay has been away from Anja quite a few times for as long as a week for work, but we realized that I had never been away from Anja before now. It wasn't really planned that way, but what can you do when you're unemployed and can't afford vacations or childcare? It was pretty sad dropping them off at the airport, but she is having a great time in Michigan. The Cousins say she is "cute as ever" and "fascinatingly cute". Apparently they have been playing what Jay calls the gravity game, whereby Anja throws toys on the floor and Kai gets them for her. The other game, played by all, involves everyone staring at Anja and waiting for her to do something cute. Jay will be taking some pictures and video that I can put up next week. She's already spent some time at camp and had a sauna!

In other news, my job is fun. I've been growing very specialized bacteria in .9 pH acid with no carbon. They get their carbon from CO2 instead of organic matter like most bacteria and grow in a solution as acidic as battery acid - cool. They also are the main accelerator of sulfuric acid production in mines, creating acid mine drainage, a serious environmental problem. Our study site was the most polluting acid mine site in the U.S. and is now a superfund site. We don't have our technique perfected for growing the bacteria in the lab yet, but here's what my latest colony looks like:

I also just ran my first ultramarathon today, a 50K( 31miles). Here's a picture of the area where the run was:

As usual I am awed by the beauty. Too much beauty! It was pretty fun, but I think I've had my fill of that caliber of running for a while. I like it, but it's just so time intensive to train properly for something like that. I had to give up a full Saturday or Sunday each weekend just for a training run. Family time is just too important now. Real ultramarathoners get up at 3 or 4am to get in their hours of running, but I also think sleep is more important. So for now I think I'll stick to short fun runs and bike rides and hikes that Anja can enjoy.

Anja recovered from her cold pretty well before the trip to Michigan. Here's a video from last week when she was pretty sad and we were trying to entertain her. A search in You Tube for "kitty" and "funny" is all we needed:

First fever

2009-07-14T01:45:00.002-04:00

Anja made it almost 15 months before having her first fever, which was today. She's had some runny noses in the past, but has never really been sick, or had an ear infection either. We've been amazingly lucky about that so far. She was a pretty good sport about being sick today, and still wanted to play, although she had trouble sleeping. Her fever reached 104 in the afternoon (I was in contact with her doctor) and here she is running around in the apartment with the AC on full and no clothes on. Except that she absolutely had to wear her shoes and her new backpack. She was much better by bedtime with her temp back down to 99.

Jay and Anja leave in a couple of weeks for Michigan. I won't be able to go since I don't get vacation for 6 months. I'm bummed, but more happy to have a job than anything. It does mean that Jay will be traveling across the country alone with a very active toddler while dragging a car seat. I picked up this cute backpack that she loves that also has a detachable "leash" on the back to avoid losing your kid in a crowded airport.

Bathtime

2009-07-08T23:49:00.002-04:00

In case you missed it on facebook or flickr, here is something to make you laugh:

4th of July and Reading List Complete

2009-07-05T20:35:00.004-04:00

I finally finished Anja's current list of books, you can see in on the lower right side of this page. I think these are all the books she has right now, although there may be a few under furniture or hidden somewhere around here.

I didn't take any photos of the fireworks, but for the second year in a row Anja slept right through them.

Here are a few recent photos from yet another beautiful part of Point Reyes where I have been running lately. On recent runs I've seen an osprey nest with chicks, many semi-tame deer on the trail, elephant seals, two different kinds of snakes and many lizards. This picture here is the trail to Arch Rock.

And this is the view facing south toward Bolinas from Sky Trail.

This weekend we went to Tilden Lake Park in Berkeley and Anja and Jay got to see Berkeley's campus (sorry no pictures of campus). But here is Anja sporting some new clothes from Grandma at the park, very stylish.

And checking out a ladybug with Daddy:

Also a video of Anja finding all the clothes that arrived in the mail from Grandma. She loves to play dress-up. She picks out a lovely flower dress/plaid shorts combo here:

Beaches clams and hikes

2009-06-22T00:36:00.002-04:00

Since last weekend we've been to Bolinas Beach for the first time. It's part of a "locals only" type of community but it is a public beach. It definitely has a more hippie feel to it, complete with dogs running loose everywhere and the apparently parentless boy about four years old who was running around in the surf with no clothes on. The beach was nice and the water was surprisingly warm. There is a fairly protected bay that is great for first-time surfers and some people were taking lessons when we were there.

Anja loves running around on the beach and she no longer eats sand!

She liked her clam.

Then we went to Duxbury Reef where some of the most impressive tidepooling around can be found. We were there at medium tide so we didn't see the really awesome stuff like sea slugs or sea cucumbers, but we did find a lot of small fish and hermit crabs, as well as a few bigger crabs.

Anja thought some of it was pretty cool, until she became squirmy.

Look, a rare photo of me with Anja! Check out this amazing tide pool. I love it.

We also went on a guided nature hike through Marin County Open Spaces. They are free and there are several a week. Here is Anja looking at an insect in a bottle that was caught on the hike.

And we stopped with the group for lunch here.

Also Anja and her dad on Father's Day weekend. She liked putting the picks into the hole in the guitar.

Sign Language and more videos

2009-06-12T14:26:00.002-04:00

Here are a couple of videos of Anja saying bird in sign language. She also says "bird" verbally, but it mostly sounds like "baby."

Also this video is cute for multiple reasons. First, this is the first time we've given Anja these finger puppets from her grandparents and she really likes them. Second, this is her typical morning outfit. She loves to put on clothes, especially dresses. So here she had me put on a dress over her pajamas, and then wanted a sweater put on over everything.

And here's a funny one showing how quickly her tastes change. A few weeks ago she LOVED this whole milk yogurt and now she doesn't eat it at all:

Teeth, more words and new job

2009-06-11T15:31:00.002-04:00

I keep forgetting to mention that a few weeks ago Anja got all 4 of her first molars in the same week! We didn't even notice she was getting them until the first 3 were through. Then the 4th came through a few days later. Lots of kids have a lot of trouble ( ie pain and crying for weeks) with the molars because they're so big, but she didn't seem to mind. She is pretty unphased by most things. In fact, our daycare provider was very impressed when Anja apparently did a "face plant" in the yard, got up and kept going. She said the boys were impressed. It's pretty routine around here :-)

More words each day now. In the last few days Anja has added the following: Keys, kitty, cow, car, clock, chair, bag. Today she looked at a clock on the wall and declared "Kwock!" Yesterday she saw someone stamping their feet and said, "Dancing!" (pronounced Dandee) and then she did it back. Oh, and today she pointed to my and her pajamas and said, "Babamas!"

Yesterday I took Anja on a guided nature hike for 4 hours, then we went to Berkeley for a work gathering at my new lab. About 6 miles total in the carrier and she met a bunch of new people. She did great. She slept for the last mile of the hike and was awake for the entire work party. She loved all the birds on the hike and when we stopped for lunch she loved the ladybugs and the cucumber beetles we found.

Here we are on a balcony on campus with the view of the Golden Gate Bridge (not pictured). This is my new lab, Anja is the one with the sippy cup. Really looking forward to starting Monday.

Today I felt very cosmopolitan as Anja and I walked downtown and toured the galleries and boutiques. It's a great pedestrian town. I'm not really much into shopping (not having any money you get out the habit of spending it pretty quickly). But it's great for Anja to see new things and meet new people. They do have a great bookstore here with a big kids' section and a basement for used books. There are also a few plaza-type areas downtown with fountains. Hopefully next year when our lease runs out we can move to a little house that is walking distance from downtown. Prices are pretty high here (for renting, there is NO way we could buy) so if we want to rent a house we would either have to go down in size or up in price.

We are still deciding what to do this weekend. There are three nearby towns (within a half hour of Petaluma) that have festivals with live outdoor music all weekend. Plus there is a another good guided nature hike on a nearby mountain we haven't been to yet. I also recently discovered a great coffee shop that has live music Saturday mornings at 10:30, plus the Saturday farmer's market is finally going here and I still haven't been to it. Stay tuned!

Sand

2009-06-07T13:49:00.002-04:00

A fun dilemma to have when living here is where to go when you have a few hours free? There are so many great, free options that it is hard to decide. The easiest place to go is Point Reyes National Seashore, since there are so many great places within the park to go and there is no charge. It's a really big place, it would take about 1.5 hours to drive from one end to the other, and that wouldn't include driving down the other offshoots of the main roads. You can visit waterfalls, mountains, sandy beaches, rocky shores, open meadows, wetlands, conifer forests, and more. It takes about 45 minutes to get there from here. Anja and I went there for the afternoon yesterday.

Jay is gone for the weekend playing in a hockey tournament with some folks from work (in Tahoe!), so we're on our own. Anja is pretty easy these days, but it is still amazing how exhausting taking care of a baby/toddler by yourself can be. The best plan is usually to take her somewhere so she gets the daily stimulation she needs. That way she has a great day and eats and sleeps well later. The beach is great for that. Anja loves the birds, the dogs and the sand.

On this trip she played such fun games as:
-wearing sand for a hat
-sitting in holes that I dug in the sand
-laughing hysterically when her feet were buried in sand
-taking off and putting on sandy shoes (a fun game anywhere)
-picking up sand and putting it in my hand
-very slowly pretending to put sand in her mouth while smiling (waiting for me to stop her so she could laugh and do it again)

Talking and signing

2009-06-05T22:54:00.004-04:00

Anja has been talking like crazy this past week. Her vocabulary is pretty limited, but she finally understands that words are connected to objects. For example, if you open the refrigerator and she sees the cheese on the door she yells, "Chee!" and reaches for it. She also says "Wahahah" (water). And she just started making the sign for bird! We started teaching her some sign language a few months ago, but we aren't really consistent about it. I'm surprised that she picked it up at all. If she sees a bird in a book she makes the sign for bird, and on a walk today she looked into a tree with some singing birds and held her hand up and made the sign. I have a video of it that I'll upload as soon as I find my card reader.

Her current vocabulary that mostly only we can understand: Cheese, bread, water, baby, bubbles, banana, dog, flower, daddy, no. Just the basics you need to get through the day. It's amazing that she can talk all day long with only those words.

We took a trip to the top of Mt Tamalpais recently, a mountain about 30 min from here. There would have been a great view of San Francisco, but for the fog, which is the norm this time of year.

Here's a cool view from the side of the mountain just at the level of the fog. San Francisco is under that blanket of fog.

As usual, she had a great time. This backpack may very well have the highest cost:value ratio of any baby item we've bought. Well, except for maybe the crib that we got used for $25. We picked up the backpack for $60 on craigslist and it was worth every penny.

Recently we brought out some finger puppets that Anja got as a gift from Grandma and Grandpa S. a while back. She was a little young for them then, but she really loves them now! We only gave her a few, we're saving the rest to bring out on her first plane ride in July as a special surprise.

My field work has been fun. I only have two more days next week and then I start my new permanent job. Here are a couple of pictures from my current gig. This is a cow that was eyeing us suspiciously when we walked through her pasture to our site. It looks like she's alone but there are actually about 50 other cows just below that hill who were all watching us too.

And here's one of the super cool thistles we were surveying. It's called cobwebby thistle and is completely covered by these white hairs. Luckily it's native.

American Graffiti and Coast Trail

2009-05-18T00:44:00.004-04:00

This past Saturday we headed into town for Salute to American Graffiti, since the movie was filmed almost entirely in Petaluma. It was mainly a classic cars cruise, which was pretty fun.

Anja was unimpressed by the revving engines and honking, but then she discovered she could see the "baby in the mirror" in every bumper.

Today Jay had to visit one of his field crews in the Sierras, so Anja and I headed out for our first longish hike alone in a while. Usually Jay carries her for the entire hike, or sometimes we take turns, but today I had to carry everything myself. We hiked a 5 mile loop on Coast Trail from the south end of Point Reyes to a spring-fed inland lake.

Anja did great as usual. She's pretty happy if she has a piece of grass or a dandelion to hold onto while we walk. I'm pretty sure she's not eating them :-)

As usual, gorgeous views, stunning scenery, etc. Only saw one marine mammal (sea lion).

There are actually a bunch of surfers in this photo, but they are really tiny specks. I was thinking of taking surf lessons here until I found out that Bolinas is one of the top 10 shark infested beaches in the world. You know, because the great whites breed here.

Hired!

2009-05-16T00:33:00.002-04:00

I was offered a position at Berkeley and will be starting full time there in a month (after I finish the one month field position I just started). Anja has had two full days of daycare this week and did fine. The first day she seemed to really have fun, and the second day she was a little sad for about half the day and was pretty clingy with one of the daycare workers for the rest of the day. I think overall it is going well. Most of the kids there are around two years old, and there is only one infant, so there is a lot of activity appropriate to her age. She is napping well there and eating a lot and getting a lot of interaction with other kids, which is great.

My field job has been fun. We spend all day sitting in a field of flowers, counting violet leaves and buds. Our site is on the side of a hill overlooking Tomales Bay and is foggy and really windy all day long. It is surprisingly cold, today I wore long underwear and was still cold. Meanwhile in Petaluma 30 minutes away it was 80 degrees. And I even saw my first bobcat today! Next week we work with thistles.

And here's a video of Anja putting baby animals to bed in her book:

Shadow

2009-05-13T01:27:00.000-04:00

Mother's Day and maybe jobs

2009-05-11T12:01:00.002-04:00

We had a very nice Mother's Day weekend here.

Saturday we went for a nice hike (only 6 miles, but very hilly). Anja is getting heavier to carry, but at least now we don't have to carry a heavy cooler with bottles since she does eat a lot of solid food.

She continues to be a great traveler, and even stayed awake for the entire 4 hours we were out there. The weather around here is funny: on this hike it quickly changed from very hot and oppressive to really chilly, depending on whether we were in a sunny valley or on the ridge with cold ocean winds. So we would emerge on each hilltop drenched in sweat, to be chilled by a very cool breeze and have to pull out a sweatshirt.

Here's a great view looking back over part of the trail we just hiked. What you can't see is how it dips down several hundred feet and goes straight back up again! I love this particular area, called the Marin Headlands. It's just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, about 30 minutes from our place. So close and yet seemingly so remote.

I love how Anja walks, arms swinging and so happy. She really is a happy kid.

Anja will be starting daycare this week, at least for a month. I have a temporary field work position at Point Reyes which should be pretty fun. With the cost of daycare I won't be doing much better than breaking even, but it will be good for me to do some science, and possibly make some contacts. Anja liked daycare before, but it's been 5 months now and this is a new place, so I'm hoping it's not too traumatic. I think she will be pretty sad at first. Jay will be the one to drop her off on Thursday, and I'm grateful :-) This is a home daycare, with not too many kids, and I think she will like it once she's been a few times.

I also have a couple of very real possibilities for permanent work, I should find out about both by the end of this week. I have been looking nonstop for work for the last 10 months. The job I interviewed for on Friday was the 47th job I've applied for since January out here. I had applied for 50 in Michigan before we left as well. How odd that this past week I had three interviews in three days after hearing nothing for months and may very well have to choose between two good options. Both would probably work well for us, but right now I'm very excited about the position at Berkeley, which I think I would really love. I was told at the interview that I am their "top choice", but they are interviewing two more this week. Trying not to get my hopes up...

Hats

2009-05-09T23:18:00.001-04:00

Anja likes putting on hats sometimes.

But she also thinks it's pretty funny to take them off.

Funnier at home than when out on a sunny hike.

Making faces, playing games

2009-05-07T01:41:00.003-04:00

Lots of video today.

Anja is really having fun copying what we do. She learned how to blink:

And how to make a fish face like Daddy:

She also LOVES to play the game where Daddy hides her pirate and she tries to find it:

Meanwhile all things box-shaped must be stood upon:

And a constant vigilance must be kept for hummingbirds:

In response to Beth's request, I will be adding Anja's "reading list" to the blog. It will appear on the right side of the blog, just below the pictures. Her interest in books is very persistent. She brings book after book after book for reading. She has some favorites, but really likes to look at anything with pictures: flyers, junk mail, news magazines. But the books "Good Night Moon", "Big Red Barn" and "I am a Bunny" are probably her favorites right now. If there is much more than a sentence on the page she will usually turn it before you can finish reading.

Dog, binoculars or camera

2009-04-28T23:31:00.002-04:00

Every time I go for a walk through the marsh, I have to decide whether I will bring the dog, the binoculars, or the camera. I already have the baby, so I'm limited in what else I can bring. If I don't bring the dog, she will watch with sad sad eyes when we go past the patio. If I don't bring the binoculars I may miss telling a swan from a white pelican, or similar. If I don't bring the camera how will I ever take amazing photos of wildlife?

So today I brought the dog, and therefore have no exciting new photos to put up. But here is some fabulous peekaboo video instead. It is so easy to make Anja laugh. She laughs at peekaboo, and splashing in the tub, and getting dried off really fast with a ducky towel.

We read so many books before bedtime today, I finally had to stop her. She just kept bringing more. She loves books and is understanding more and more words. Today I read a sentence that had the word "nose" in it, and she touched her nose, then turned around and touched mine. When I read a sentence with "fingers" in it, she picked up my hand and touched my fingers. Recently I asked her where the flowers were, outside, and she ran to the patio door and looked at the geraniums in the pot outside and smiled.

I try to expose her to the names of as many things as possible everywhere we go. By kindergarten she may be the only kid who can identify avocets, teals and black-necked stilts.

Another new post!

2009-04-27T18:47:00.002-04:00

Jay is gone this week for work, so I'm trying to update with lots of pictures and videos, since he will have internet access.

Here's Anja running around with her pirate doll. Until she finds something more interesting.

And here she is trying to sit in her already occupied bunny chair, but she is too tired to figure out the problem.

And some of our newest food adventures. She has shown a lot of interest in the spoon lately, and eating with her fingers. Not bad for a kid who was such a poor eater for so long. She has been a great eater lately. Sometimes she doesn't eat very much, but she never completely refuses to eat anything. Except for maybe the beet greens I tried to give her once. We've tried to give her some of everything we eat too, and so far she loves Chinese and Mexican food, and even ate my mildly spicy veggie chili. I want to get her started on Indian food soon, but we don't have a cheap place around here and that's one food genre I can't seem to conquer at home. We've also started to give her whole milk products, which she loves (imagine yogurt that tastes like ice cream).

Anja has also learned recently that if she brings you a book, you will read it to her. We read 5 or 6 books in a row this morning as she kept bringing me more. And she sits so patiently by herself and flips through books for maybe 20 minutes at a time. It is very very cute.

Butter and Egg Days

2009-04-26T12:40:00.002-04:00

We went downtown Saturday for our city's Butter and Egg Days Festival. It's like most other small town festivals with a parade and food vendors and games for the kids. The only difference is the dairy and egg theme. And the cow chip throwing contest. Petaluma was once the egg capital of the country, and shipped its eggs down the Petaluma River 12 miles to the bay and San Francisco. It is still a big dairy town. Petaluma reminds me a little of the town I grew up in, if its Main St area had been kept alive, and if it was 45 minutes from the ocean :-)

Anja loved this orange she got from one of the floats sponsored by a grocery store:

At first she was a little scared of some of the floats, but eventually she thought the parade was fun.

She likes going anywhere she can see a lot of people and things. Especially other kids. And balloons. This little square where she's running has a store that always has balloons outside.

She opened a few more presents lately, including this handmade sweater from Aunt Mary - very cute!

And this dress-up pirate doll from Aunt Heather. This is her new favorite toy to carry around. She sleeps with it and then plays with it when she wakes up in her crib. She seems impressed by the pirate's sewn-on bellybutton.

Visits, 1st birthday, babbling

2009-04-23T11:45:00.003-04:00

It's been a while since I've had time to put up anything new here. Meanwhile we've had Grandma R visit for a week and had Easter and a first birthday. We also took a short trip to southern Oregon with some friends on Anja's actual birthday. And Anja has really been "talking" a lot lately.

She says a few things that are recognizable to us, but definitely not to anybody else. She says things likes "Bayee Buh" (bellybutton) and "Dah!" (daddy) and "Fowowowlow" (flower), and "Bawowowl" (ball). She has also learned to repeat sounds and noises that we make as a fun game. She definitely understands a lot of what we say, though.

Here we are on a hike we did a few weeks ago by a massive eucalyptus tree overlooking the ocean.

And here we are on the nearby beach. Anja has gotten a lot better about not eating sand, although you do still have to watch her really closely.

We drove up to the top of Mount Vision at Point Reyes to see the view:

We also drove to Goat Rock in Jenner and watched some seals or sea lions swimming in the surf.

Anja had a fun Easter, getting some fun new toys and cute new clothes.

She is currently fascinated by shoes. She wants everyone to put on shoes.

She is almost always in a good mood and thinks a lot of things are funny. She knows it's funny to run away from you when you call her.

Here she is with Grandma at a winery in Sonoma, having a good time even though it was her nap time.

She was not very impressed by her birthday cake. Maybe a little scared.

She picked up the entire cake and dropped it straight into her lap.

After we pulled it back out, she realized it was pretty fun.

On the beach in Oregon, watching tiny shrimp-like creatures in the water.

Still trying to eat some sand...

...and some shells.

Climbing on some rocks.

And taking a first hot tub.

Cooling her feet in a stream in a redwood forest.

And just being cute.

Anja is a funny kid

2009-03-26T00:51:00.004-04:00

We didn't make her funny, she just came this way. We didn't start her fascination with her bellybutton:

... or with laundry:

We didn't make her an MSU fan (well, maybe we did that one):

We don't make her climb up chairs and onto windowsills...

We don't make her catapult herself into furniture:

Although she probably got this kind of laughing from Jay:

More beach, more climbing

2009-03-16T01:13:00.003-04:00

Anja has been really vocal lately. She "talks" all day long, all the time. Not really any words that we can understand, though. She does say, "Dah!" for Daddy, and "Daw!" for dog, and "Tah!" for taggie. Of course she makes those sounds at other times too...

We've been on a few more trips recently. We visited two more beach locations at Point Reyes. Here is the trail on the way to Abbott's Lagoon:

Grassy dune hills near Abbott's Lagoon.

It was a fairly short walk to the beach near Abbott's Lagoon, maybe 45 minutes, but it was surprisingly empty.

Anja likes the beach, but she tries really hard to eat sand. Hopefully she outgrows that soon. Even if you keep her sandy hands out of her mouth, she can still dive face first into the sand with her mouth open. Also Jay says don't try to change a diaper on the beach.

She's probably looking at shorebirds here. She doesn't pay too much attention to the water but she loves watching birds.

Walking on sand is hard but she did a pretty good job.

We also went to McClure's Beach, also at Point Reyes, to check out some tide pools. Lots of really great anemone colonies:

A very rare photo of the three of us:

Jay and Anja tidepooling on the rocks.

And she still loves to climb into the orange chair.

Shoes, climbing and energy

2009-03-01T16:47:00.003-05:00

Here are the shoes we picked for Anja last week. Cute. Despite evidence to the contrary, most baby shoe manufacturers still think stiff heavy shoes are the best for baby feet. These are pretty good though.

Anja really likes to climb now. She can get into chairs and apparently on top of boxes.

Every so often Anja switches into a "high energy" mode and runs around crazily for about 5 minutes. It reminds me of late night kitty fly-by's (if you have a cat, you know what I mean). She runs in circles and barrels into toys, falling down. And then she's done.

This weekend we went to the Point Reyes lighthouse. I've been once, but Jay had never been. And the actual lighthouse was closed when I was there. It was REALLY windy when we were there. Luckily it was about 60 degrees.

We did see a huge elephant seal swimming below us, but we didn't see any whales this time. We also saw common murres, surf scoters, and both brown and white pelicans. That reminds me, we saw a red fox on the trails behind our place on Friday!

Bodega Head and Anja gets new shoes

2009-02-23T01:45:00.003-05:00

We got lucky with weather Saturday and the rain never came. We went out to Bodega Head, a small peninsula and bay not too far from us. This is no longer the peak of the viewing season for the gray whale migration, but we did see 3 whales total, and a bunch of seals swimming. Or sea lions, I'm not sure how to tell the difference when they're swimming. We also saw a bunch of interesting birds, including several new ones for Jay. We saw oystercatchers, black turnstones, great egrets, cormorants, brown pelicans, brants, eared grebes, western grebes, and many I can't remember.

It was just beautiful here, sandy shores with great rock formations and areas that are only accessible during low tide. Also cliffs overlooking the beach areas.

There were lots of cormorants and other shore birds and big waves crashing over the rocks. It's amazing the cormorants and seals swim down there, but they do.

I love this bright orange sea star. If you look closely at the larger version of the picture on flickr, you can see there are actually a bunch of stars there, but most of them are purple, so they are harder to see.

And lots of anemones in the tidepools and some exposed on rocks during low tide.

Anja's favorite parts are the pebbles.

Sand is pretty cool too.

Here's a quick shot from the side of the road on the drive back home. Petaluma is over those hills in the distance. I'm still awed by the everyday beauty here. There are restrictions out here about building new homes in a lot of areas so there are a lot of centennial farms and small places with a lot of grazing land and gorgeous views, but no suburbs or sprawl. It's great.

Today we took Anja to get new shoes. She thought this white shoe felt funny.

10 months old and sleeping through the night

2009-02-19T01:00:00.003-05:00

It's been raining a lot here lately, like it's supposed to this time of year. Reservoirs are still down quite a bit, but this is helping a lot. We got 4.7 in of rain in the last 7 days. The rainy days are always interspersed with sunny breaks, which are really pretty with the dark clouds and wet hillsides. I was lucky enough to catch this rainbow from our parking lot during one of the breaks.

Anja is 10 months old today! She has been walking for a month now and is pretty good. Of course, that just means she is even faster than she used to be. She never crawls anymore. She climbed into our big orange chair and stood up the other day (I was right there)! And today she started chasing the dog around the living room.

We took Anja out for Mexican food tonight. Well, maybe it was more for us, but she did have some Spanish rice and refried beans. She was more interested in the huge ceramic sun face on the wall above her. She is really good in restaurants. Unless we take her out way past her bedtime (9:00 or so), she generally has a good time. She really likes new people and places. She actually looks pretty subdued in the first video because it was a little past her bedtime.

Anja is eating a lot more solid food these days. We've been more adventurous, adding exciting items like eggs, cheese, meat and pasta. She is still not really into mealtime, but she doesn't outright refuse to eat anything right now, so we just keep adding new things gradually. And when she's done, she's done:

So a couple of weeks ago Anja started periodically skipping her 4am feeding. We discussed starting to wean her off it entirely, when she just started sleeping through the night on her own! For the last 8 nights she has slept from 7:00pm until 6 or 7 in the morning. And she now takes two, two-hour naps a day most days. She is really good at going down for naps, too. When she looks tired I put her in her crib, give her a pacifier and her "taggie", and 95% of the time she's right out.

I put the TV on this funny kids' show with oversized stuffed animal costumes. Look how a TV program captures even a 10 month old:

Jay said the other day that Anja is now as smart as Blue. She knows names of people and some of her toys. It's really fun to watch her slowly understand more of what we are saying.

The Beach

2009-02-09T02:47:00.002-05:00

Limantour Beach, Point Reyes.

Dikku Dikku Dikku

2009-02-05T17:09:00.002-05:00

Anja makes a lot of new sounds these days. Lately she likes to say, "Dikku dikku dikku" all the time. It doesn't seem to mean anything to her, she just says it over and over again.

She is beginning to understand some of what we say, too. She understands Anja, Daddy, Mommy, doggie, Soft Teddy, peek a boo, puffs (puffed rice cereal), baby in the mirror, and bye bye. She also knows how to wave bye bye now. She "says" a few things now too. Here's a translator:

Dadadadada: Daddy
Mmammammammamma: Mommy
Daw: doggie
neh neh neh neh neh: I don't like it
Uhdah!: I like it

Anja's walking continues to improve. She can now stop and turn and walk wherever she wants. She commonly walks from one room into another without falling now.

Petaluma continues to be an amazing place. Jay and I each went for a bike ride for the first time this past weekend. There are endless combinations of stunning rides we can do right from our place. It's definitely hillier out here but the views are rewarding. I saw a golden eagle swoop across the road in front of me trying to catch something. Seriously.

I love the farmland here, it's beautiful. Here are a few other photos from my ride:

Here is a photo from a hill leading back into town. You can see the city of Petaluma in the distance.

Petaluma

2009-01-30T18:06:00.004-05:00

So Petaluma is a pretty amazing place. It has repeatedly been ranked among the top 100 best places to live by various groups. The neighborhoods are all really nice. The downtown area has retained all its original architecture and is a very busy place. In fact, one block downtown was restored with original lampposts and signs specifically so it could continue to be used in period movies. Many movies have been filmed right in town here. They include: American Graffiti (1973), Heroes (1977), Cujo (1983), Explorers (1985), Howard the Duck (1986), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Basic Instinct (1992), Merlin's Shop of Mystic Wonder (1996), Phenomenon (1996), Max, 13 (1997), Inventing the Abbotts (1997), Flubber (1997), Lolita (1997), Videoplasty (1998), Pleasantville (1998), Mumford (1999), The Hamiltons (2005), and Molotov Alva (2007).

The town is only a few miles across, and it turns into farmland immediately without the usual sprawl. One mile from our house is beautiful rolling pasture with scenic curvy roads. It's a road biker's paradise. People still refer to Petaluma as a "cow town." There are a lot of cow and sheep farms. Vineyards are everywhere. Really, everywhere. I'm pretty sure everyone just gets one when they move here. We haven't gotten ours yet.

Here is the weather for this week. It is the same as it has been every week so far. I actually heard a weather person say on the news, "Well, it's gonna be warm today with a high of 68, but we'll be cooling down next week into the mid 60's." So prepare yourself for the cold front I guess.

It is sunny all the time. Even during the day or two we had some rain, the clouds parted for some sun during the day. What a difference it makes to have sun in the winter.

There are farmer's markets year round here. And buying local is easy. We can recycle most everything in a big bin across the parking lot, including plastics 1-7, fabrics like old clothes and rags, and plastic bags. We see the sun set every night over the mountains our apartment faces.

Jay walks to work. We take Blue to the dog park right next to the apartment, and take Anja on the two mile loop around the wetlands. Part of the wetland system is a tidal marsh which rises and falls with the tides due to its direct connection with the bay. Part of the day it is a mud flat, part of the day it is open water. Yesterday I saw a kite dive after something in the grass out there. But Jay wins because he saw an otter on his walk home from work.

And because it's funny, here's Anja playing peek a boo behind her stroller wheel:

Practicing

2009-01-29T02:06:00.002-05:00

Anja practicing. And Blue says, "Pay attention to me!"

boxes

2009-01-27T18:26:00.002-05:00

We are still partly living out of boxes, but we have all the basics now. Even with all the boxes there is still a lot more room for Anja to play than there was at our last place.

Anja's walking is really progressing quickly. She can walk and stop without falling now, and while carrying large things. She does still crash into things sometimes.

She has adjusted well to the move, and is even on a very regular nap schedule. She has lately been taking two naps a day, each one two hours long! This is the kid who often wouldn't nap at all a few months ago.

Saturday

2009-01-25T02:53:00.002-05:00

Today we took a three hour drive north up the coast and saw even more amazing things. We drove through tiny towns in thick mature redwood forest and through this little town on a hillside that overlooks the Russian River where it empties into the ocean. Click on the photo to see notes showing where things are, including harbor seals, which are a first for me.

Anja was walking a lot today. She's always so active. Here she is crawling to her rattley bird toys and birdhouse. Watch her sort through them until she finds the one that has knotted rope feet that she likes to carry in her mouth:

Starting to walk

2009-01-23T17:32:00.002-05:00

Anja started taking some independent steps yesterday, and now it's all she wants to do. She's been taking 5 or 6 steps at a time before falling. She really seems to think it's fun.

She is so strong. She tries to climb on everything before we stop her. Here she is jumping like a frog:

She also thought the sound "brrring" was really funny for some reason.

Weekend

2009-01-19T00:09:00.003-05:00

How many seals did you see this weekend? We also saw a whale, and pelicans, and redwoods, and Tule Elk. The last seven days have set record highs, but we've enjoyed to 70 degree sunny weather.

The Petaluma area is absolutely amazing. So far Point Reyes National Seashore is my favorite place. It's 18 miles from our place to the entrance, and the twisty, hilly drive through green mountains and pastures would be a worthwhile trip by itself. But the park is breathtaking. It's 20 miles from the entrance to the farthest point, the lighthouse, which has spectacular views. There are also beaches on protected bays, and beaches on the open ocean, and rolling farmland with 150yr old dairy farms, and rocky cliffs.

Here's a photo of the north end of the park. See that pointy rock in the distance? There are people climbing up that rock.

Here is some of the pasture land on the inland part of Point Reyes.

This is Drake's Beach, at the southern end of the park. It's part of a secluded bay so the waves are pretty tame, but big for those of us accustomed to Great Lakes waters. These tall cliffs overlook the beach. If you look closely, you can see Mom and Dad walking near the base of the cliffs. It's also where a few male elephant seals were basking.

This is Point Reyes Beach South. It's on the west side and faces open ocean. The waves are huge and the surf is loud. One guidebook warns to "never turn your back on the ocean" here, because a big wave could come along at any time. This is where we saw a couple of whale spouts, and Jay and I saw the back of one whale crest above the waves.

Anja needs to grow some hair or learn to wear a hat with all the sun out here.

Today we went to John Muir National Monument, a small national park not far from here. We walked a couple of miles through some cool (in temperature) redwood forests. My pictures weren't so great, but here are a couple. Anja managed a short nap in the carrier, which is not as common as it once was. She does best with two naps a day, and a nap in the carrier or the car doesn't seem to be the same as a nap at home like it used to be.

Anja liked the trees.

Point Reyes

2009-01-17T11:32:00.003-05:00

Today we are going to Point Reyes for the day. I'm hoping to see some sea lions, and maybe whales if we're lucky. Weather for today is 68 and sunny. Here's a picture taken at sunset in the park behind our place:

We live here

2009-01-16T12:23:00.002-05:00

The first two nights at our new place we heard a great horned owl calling. We have pelicans in the marsh behind our house. This is where we watched the sunset Wednesday night.

We have internets again

2009-01-15T14:34:00.002-05:00

We are moved in and the kids are doing well. We got a first floor apartment (for Blue, who doesn't do stairs so well anymore) facing south, so we get great sun all day.

Here's Mom with Anja on our patio the night we were moving in.

Our backyard is a wildlife sanctuary and marsh. This is the path Jay walks on when he goes to work (he works less than a mile away). He calls this his commute. Today he brought the camera to work so he could take pictures on his commute.

Here's a picture from across the marsh facing our apartment. The raised green area is a dog park, and the tree line is the edge of our parking lot.

Here's the marina next to the marsh. Mom and Dad have been staying in the Sheraton here overlooking the marina, walking distance from our apartment. Tonight they will stay with us.

Day 5

2009-01-09T23:16:00.002-05:00

Grand Canyon was very cool, we spent the day there today. Weather was brisk, in the 40's, but we had some nice sunny weather so it was very pleasant. Tomorrow we arrive in southern California and will be staying near Barstow.

We ate at a lodge inside the park. Anja is great in restaurants.

Day 4 - Grand Canyon and a day off!

2009-01-08T22:37:00.003-05:00

Day 3 was good, pretty uneventful. We stayed in Albuquerque, NM. Today is day 4, and we arrived at the Grand Canyon around 4:00 today. The drive today was beautiful, although I didn't get a lot of pictures of it. I tried to take a few through the windshield, but they are just okay. Northern New Mexico and Arizona are very mountainous and incredibly scenic.

We drove through a lot of red rocks, black mountains, washed out gulleys, and snowy hillsides.

Anja is still doing very well on the drive. Amazingly well, actually. My mom and I stop every two hours for her, and haven't really needed to stop more often than that. Our schedule is breakfast, drive two hours, short break, drive two hours, lunch (1-1.5 hours), drive two hours, short break, drive two hours, done for the day! We have each been driving at our own pace, and meeting up for breaks when we can. Yesterday and the day before all three of us met up for lunch. Today just our car and Jay met up. Dad ends up being last usually because of the trailer. We stop because of Anja, but Jay has to stop because of Blue, so it varies who is in front. By the time we check in at a hotel, unload and head out for dinner, it's usually Anja's bedtime, so Jay left the restaurant early the last two nights to put her to bed. Tonight we are eating in. Normally we can keep her up a little past her bedtime, but it's too much stress to add to all of the traveling. Plus we have been in three times zones in the last four days, which doesn't help.

BUT, tomorrow is a day off for us. We are staying at a hotel one mile from the Grand Canyon both tonight and tomorrow night, so we can take it easy tomorrow. Everyone is looking forward to a no-driving day. Dad was actually really sick the day we started driving and is starting to feel better now. Mom started showing symptoms of the virus yesterday and is trying to fight it off. We are probably all in line to catch it, so a no stress day of checking out the canyon will be good for us. We managed to get to the canyon about an hour before sunset today to get a sneak preview of tomorrow. This is a great time of year to visit since it isn't very busy.

I was walking Blue, and some people thought she was so cute they wanted their picture taken with her. Then Jay was carrying Anja, and some girls wanted to take her picture. Nobody requested to have their picture taken with us.

Jay thought Anja might like to use the binoculars to look down the canyon

Oklahoma City

2009-01-06T23:04:00.002-05:00

Day two and everything is going great. Weather is good and haven't hit any unreasonable traffic. I haven't taken any good photos yet because I'm always driving, but maybe tomorrow I'll get some nicer photos. Meanwhile, here are some lovely photos from a Comfort Inn:

Anja chewing on cell phone:

Anja reading paper:

Day 0

2009-01-04T23:14:00.004-05:00

We're all packed, and with no room to spare. We really had to be creative to get everything in, we didn't leave any space empty. Actually, Jay packed almost everything into the trailer himself, so by "we" I mean "Jay". Anja helped me pack remaining bits into boxes while Jay loaded. I really love this baby carrier. I finally decided to try it on the back since Anja's big enough now, and she took two, one-hour naps in it on Saturday:

Everything we own fit into this trailer, which was surprisingly big inside, plus a few things into the cars and truck:

Today our friend Leah came over and watched Anja while we packed the rest and cleaned. Anja's bed was already packed, but she still took a pretty long nap:

The house is empty, cleaned, and ready for sale now. We leave in the morning for our first traveling day. We are hoping to follow the following schedule:

Monday: St Louis
Tuesday: Oklahoma City
Wednesday: Albuquerque
Thursday: Grand Canyon National Park
Friday: Grand Canyon National Park
Saturday: Barstow, CA
Sunday: Petaluma
Monday: Find lovely apartment with room for visitors and move in immediately

We built in a full day at the Grand Canyon, and the two days on either side of it are shorter days. The weather looks pretty good for the next few days where we're going. I'm so happy to finally be starting out!

So far so good

2009-01-03T15:14:00.002-05:00

So far we seem to have enough space for everything. Today we are giving away some more things via Craigslist, tomorrow is the big Goodwill run for anything that is left, and then we clean the house before leaving Monday. Tonight we are also having a going-away party at our friend Chris's place.

Meanwhile, watch the following videos. But only watch it if you can handle the cuteness. The first is a video of Anja's reaction when Jay gets home, and the second is me playing peek a boo with Anja:

Doubt is creeping in...

2009-01-02T11:15:00.002-05:00

I'm *pretty* sure everything will fit into the trailer. As long as we pack very carefully (like a tetris game) and use all the space in our two cars and my parents' truck. And make a few more trips to Goodwill. My parents are coming tonight and we are getting the trailer tomorrow morning and it all begins. I'm looking forward to when we actually leave Monday. I have a lot of goodbyes to make between now and then, and it will be sad to leave our little house where we lived so cheaply and had so much fun. But once the trip starts I know it will be a fun adventure in itself.

Anja doesn't really seem to care at all about the packing. It just means we have more visitors than usual and there is a lot more stuff to play with (boxes, wrapping material, etc). She's having fun:

And she did take some time to watch football yesterday with Dad:

I will try to update the blog each night on our drive to California, but I can't make any promises. If we have internet, I will at least put up a few pictures since it only takes a minute or two. I'll try to post our tentative itinerary before we leave for anyone who wants to follow our progress. We are driving a south route to avoid the worst of the mountain snow, but we may still hit some bad weather. We are hoping to stop by the Grand Canyon on our way out since we are passing right by it, but it will depend on the road conditions when we get there.

It's really all going to fit

2008-12-30T20:38:00.006-05:00

It's hard to believe, but we are really going to pack everything we own plus a baby and a dog into one trailer and two cars in less than two weeks. We sectioned off part of our dining room in the size and shape of the moving trailer and we've been filling it with boxes. We are almost done and we have filled 67% of our trailer space (Jay's estimate). (Don't worry, Blue will not actually be packed into the trailer like in the picture).

It would actually be quite easy to fit everything into the trailer if we didn't have several big items, like multiple bikes and bike parts, a big jogging stroller, and piles of camping equipment. But those are the things we will be especially glad to have once we are out there.

We have gotten rid of almost all of our furniture, except for a few pieces that break down. And there is very little left in any of the rooms now. It feels really good to have gotten rid of so many things. Here's our bedroom, just a mattress on the floor and two duffel bags of clothes to last until California.

By the way, did you know that 15,000 grey whales migrate past the coast near San Francisco each year? And that the best time and place to see them is mid-January from the Point Reyes lighthouse? The lighthouse is 18 miles from where we'll be living.

(photo from http://www.nps.gov/pore/)

And don't forget about the breeding colonies of elephant seals, harbor seals and sea lions. If you're into that sort of thing.

(photo taken from http://www.nps.gov/pore/naturescience/animals.htm)

We have packed away most of Anja's toys, but we kept out her new toys for the trip, and everything we think may help us entertain her on the drive out west. She absolutely loves this Mozart music box. It plays several different tunes, and each button on the box plays a different instrument:

The house is very unbabyproofed right now and Anja is very mobile, so we have asked our friends to help us watch Anja for a few hours a day so we can pack. Today our friend Carol stopped by for a few hours, and later our friend Leah came over for another couple of hours. (Carol, that nap Anja started when you left only lasted about 10 minutes!) It was great having some help, and Jay finished most everything in the basement while I packed up the rest of Anja's room. It's also nice to spend some time with friends before we leave, at a time when we really can't stop packing to go visit anyone.

Anja would still like to help, though:

Christmas

2008-12-28T14:49:00.002-05:00

Just a few quick pictures. We spent 4 days in Illinois with family and now we're packing up the house. Anja had a great Christmas:

Swimming pools and movie stars...

2008-12-23T14:15:00.003-05:00

We're going to California!

We are really really excited about what a great job this is for Jay, the terrific prospects I have out there, and how amazing an area of the country northern California is. Here's a photo of the ocean 15 miles from where we will live:

We will also be just as close to redwood forests, and a couple of hours from mountains. More soon!

New Job!

2008-12-19T10:35:00.002-05:00

Yesterday Jay received a job offer for a really great position in Petaluma, California. Today he had a phone interview for a job in Raleigh, North Carolina which he will hear back about on Monday. If he is offered that job too, we will have to make a decision quickly. So we will definitely be moving to one of those two places in the next month. This is really good news for us and a huge relief. I have been unemployed since April, and Jay has only been employed part time since September. We exhausted all of our savings months ago and have been receiving financial aid from my parents for several months. It is incredibly difficult to find a job right now, especially in natural resources. We really really needed this.

Well, it just stopped snowing here. It's been snowing since midnight or so and I think we've gotten about a foot. Anja and I are snowed in. Lansing is pretty good about plowing the main roads, but the side streets sometimes aren't plowed for a few days. Our road has not been plowed yet. I've seen a few people get stuck outside the house in the middle of the road already.

I would like to take Anja outside in the snow later if the wind dies down.

It's interesting to see what things Anja likes as she begins to prefer some toys over others. She has always liked this pink elephant, a gift from Alice and Bill. When she hears the music it makes, she always smiles and sometimes comes running.

This made us laugh a lot. Jay found that if you "walk" Anja along the ground with her feet in the air, her legs make a walking motion:

Be careful what you wish for

2008-12-15T21:30:00.002-05:00

Except for the first month or so of her life, Anja hasn't been a cuddly baby. I was jealous when other parents would complain about how their baby always had to be carried. Anja just wanted to be put down. Well, lately she has been very clingy, today especially. At the very least, she wanted to be near me, and preferably being carried. I finally had to put her down and let her cry for 10 minutes so I could do some dishes. As soon as I picked her up, she stopped crying. If I moved to a room where she couldn't see me, she would start crying. If I stepped a few feet away to fold some clothes, she would crawl up my pant leg. It is very cute and endearing, but it also made it impossible to get anything done.

Anja totally wins at the standing game. She has really mastered standing in the middle of the floor without any support. She used to crawl to furniture to pull herself up, but she seems pretty happy now that she can just stand up on her own.

Not a big eater

2008-12-14T18:21:00.003-05:00

Anja has never been a big eater. Bottle or solid food, she's just not really into it.

Jay left today for California, he has an interview tomorrow. He will give a presentation and fly back on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to some of the things I may do at my internship, and I'm doing okay with the subbing. On Friday I taught at a terrific middle school. The staff and kids were all so nice, and excited about learning. It was a really fun day.

Congratulations to Laura and Rob!

2008-12-11T19:52:00.006-05:00

This is how big Laura's baby is this week:

(picture blatantly stolen from Laura's website) Laura's baby is now known as Scott Walter, and is much cuter than a pumpkin or a jicama.

Anja has been sleeping pretty regularly lately. She's asleep by 8:00, eats at 4:30am, and is up by around 6:00. If she gets a full night of sleep like this, she's in a good mood when she wakes up. Often she's talking to herself and looking out the window by her crib. Notice how the paper blinds don't go all the way to the windowsill because she ripped off the bottom weeks ago.

It's nice that Anja is adapting well to a schedule, it's helping us to have a schedule again. Jay just taught his last class last night and my new schedule is subbing 3 days a week and going to an internship two days a week. I think the two days of internship will make the three days of subbing tolerable. I've subbed twice and had one okay experience and one bad experience. I'm learning quickly which are the more desirable schools for subbing. Tomorrow I have a middle school science class at one of the top ranked middle schools in the state, so I'm looking forward to it.

Anja really likes standing. She doesn't have any interest in taking steps, I don't think she knows about steps yet.

Tickling is funny.

Dr Jay and toys

2008-12-03T19:51:00.003-05:00

Jay is now a doctor! And I guess that makes me a master. And we are both unemployed, or will be after he gives his class its final exam next week. Coming up next week Jay has a phone interview for a job in North Carolina, followed by flying to California the following week for an interview there. Both are great jobs and he is highly qualified for them. Both are also really desirable places to live. Then we are showing the house tomorrow night for the first time. We've had several people who seemed really interested, but the first two who set up appointments with us canceled later. Friday I have my first substitute teaching job (English) and I will also be starting an (unpaid) internship with an environmental nonprofit part time. That's what's happening with us.

Anja is learning and changing so quickly these days. Each week is notably different than the week before. One thing that is fun is how much she likes toys now. When I put her down at daycare today she crawled as fast as she could to a big box of toys and stood up at the edge to look in. Most of the time at daycare she is one of three kids - the other two kids are both two years old, and I think they view her as some sort of "best doll ever" crossed with a puppy. Every day they greet us with shrieks of "Anja's here Anja's here!" And they love giving her toys to play with. After they give her one toy they search for a second toy to replace the first, and so on. When I show up to get her, she is usually sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of toys and being entertained by toddlers. I'm really glad she's getting the socialization with other kids and I love the family home setting.

Our daycare provider told me to enjoy the first two Christmas's, because babies are happy with whatever you get them, and mostly the boxes and wrapping paper. I took Anja to the used toy place and let her check out a few things. Then I bought what she liked the most: I picked up 4 toy cars and 9 "fisher price little people" that will fit in the cars for $15. I also bought her a big green rubber ball last week for $3. For a grand total of $18 I am done Christmas shopping for her and I bought her a bunch of toys that I already know she really likes. I have to wrap them soon so I will stop letting her play with them:

This week Anja is starting to "cruise" more. Cruising is walking along an object while using it for support. She is also starting to go from object to object a little now. Here she is turning and taking one step before falling:

And she is just so strong! She's riding on this bouncy seat like it's a rocking horse:

Yesterday our daycare provider told me that Anja just stood up in the middle of the floor. Me: "Yeah, I know. She does that."

Oh, I almost forgot - Anja has four teeth now! The two on the top were coming in over Thanksgiving weekend.

Funniest video ever

2008-11-30T07:43:00.001-05:00

The word "cheeks" is hilariously funny.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-29T11:21:00.002-05:00

Had a very nice Thanksgiving with the Michigan Spauldings.

Anja got to see her great grandma again, which she always likes.

And she got to meet her great uncle for the first time!

She was jumpy as usual.

Anja is SO good at standing now. She can stand for quite a few seconds without support. She has taken a few steps forward, but mostly prefers to crawl to get somewhere. She is also good at making noise.

I like the colors :-)

Daddy Daddy!

2008-11-26T17:21:00.002-05:00

Today's post is all about Daddy. He has been very busy this past month and much of his work culminates on Monday. These videos will make him smile.

Anja doesn't usually see Jay for long periods of time. When he does come home she falls all over herself trying to get to him:

And by the time he does get home, if it's before Anja's bedtime, she usually already pretty sleepy:

Here's Anja trying to go from one object to another. She doesn't quite understand that she needs to take steps between. But you can see her stand for several seconds.

And here she is jumping. As usual.

Where'd she go?

2008-11-23T19:16:00.004-05:00

Anja is really becoming adventuresome. I try to let her explore as much as I can without letting her get into trouble.

She really likes to "unorganize" things. She likes pulling books and dvd's off the shelf. Today she figured out where we keep her shoes so she pulled them all out and played with them.

She examined each shoe or slipper for quite a while.

But mostly she just liked chewing on them.

She is cute all the time, but she is especially cute when she is entertaining herself:

We're up

2008-11-21T20:51:00.002-05:00

The batteries ran out on the video camera so you'll have to watch the time-lapse account of standing:

She is really getting quite good at standing, she's been doing it all day. People who meet her are amazed at how far advanced she is for this age. She is really having fun with standing, too. She can usually balance for several seconds, and she's so happy while she's doing it.

Sleep has really been going well lately. Ever since the day we decided we would try "sleep training", life has been so much better. She still eats at 4am, which is okay, and sometimes wakes up one other time, but falls asleep on her own within a minute or two. Last night she slept for 10 hours in a row! A new record. I'm still not comfortable skipping a night feeding because she has never really been a big eater. I don't want to skip any feedings at this point.

I did not get the job I interviewed for recently, but Jay has his phone interview coming up. His defense is also a week from Monday, so stress levels around here will go down considerably after that. As of this week I am now certified to substitute teach in town here, until we find real jobs. I really like teaching college, but I'm not sure subbing at the secondary level has any resemblance to that at all. And so far the only available jobs have been teaching Japanese, Spanish, art, and gym. I'm hoping there are some science jobs this next week.

We have had some interest in the house and I think we have it priced right. We are showing it tomorrow, and then probably next weekend as well. We are hoping for a closing date near late January because surely we will have jobs by then!

Happy 7 months old!

2008-11-18T20:05:00.002-05:00

We forgot to weigh and measure Anja today after her bath and we certainly aren't getting her out of bed to do it now. We'll do it tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how much bigger she has gotten. I have filled another bag with the clothes she's grown out of in the last month.

Today I put together a set of angel chimes with candles - once the candles heat up, the angels spin around and hit little bells and make a fun noise. Anja was pretty interested.

This is how Daddy dries Anja off after a bath.

Since last night I have been congratulating myself on how good my dog is. Really, you can leave food out and she won't even touch it. I made peanut butter cookies last night and left them out all night and all day today. Then we got home around 8:00 today.

Me to Jay: "Did you eat 13 cookies while we were gone?"
Jay: "No, why?"

Anja stood up

2008-11-17T20:34:00.003-05:00

She stood up twice today, right in the middle of the floor! Her feet were wide apart, and she just stood up. I thought it was an accident the first time until she did it again later. The first time she she stayed up for a couple of seconds, but the second time she stayed up for 6 or 7 seconds, balancing before sitting down. Pretty cool. And when she pulls herself up on something now, she often likes to let go and stay up for a few seconds before falling back down. She sure likes doing new things.

Here she is trying to climb up the bookcase. She is on her tiptoes. She is so strong, she almost does little baby pull-ups trying to reach the top shelf.

Yes she still likes tags.

Check out this baby gadget. I forget what it's called, but it's a little mesh bag attached to a handle. You can put fruit in it for infants who aren't chewing food yet, and they suck on it. Anja loves it. I put little apple chunks in it and she mashes them with her gums until they're just applesauce and goo.

Sleepy kid

2008-11-16T21:20:00.003-05:00

I finally figured out how to get pictures off my cell phone and onto the computer. Stay tuned for more "on the go" action shots of every day life from such exciting locations as The Store, The Car, and The Restaurant, where I don't normally have my real camera. Here's a picture from today of Anja sleeping in the cart at Meijer. So far, riding in the cart seems to have the same effect on her as riding in the car. I can't believe she can sleep like this.

I tried putting Anja in the cart for the first time the other day, and she's just barely big enough/ready enough. But wow does that make shopping easier. The seatbelt pretty much holds her in place, otherwise she would slide all over because she's so little. And I do have to keep repositioning her as she still does slide a little bit anyway. But she seems to really like it (see above picture). Up until now I was bringing her into the store in the sling, but it's just too difficult now with all the extra winter gear we're wearing these days. And I think she's been frustrated with the sling lately because she can't see out of it very well.

For some reason today was a big sleep day for Anja. She slept pretty well last night (slept 8 hours, fed, then slept another 2.5), but she still needed a lot of sleep during the day. After shopping we stopped to visit Jay where he was working (at a local coffee shop). She fell asleep in the two minute drive over, and remained sleeping when I picked her up and walked through heavy snow and noisy traffic to the second floor of the coffee shop. I gave her to Jay where she continued to sleep for at least half an hour more, still not waking at all. I often wonder what it must be like to fall asleep at home and wake up in a completely different location miles away in someone else's arms.

Anja's personality is really becoming more apparent recently. It is so fun to see her develop into a real little person. For the last few days she has been more "huggy", which is great, and I hope a permanent trend. She even fell asleep on my shoulder yesterday, which she hasn't done since she was about a month old. She also raises her hands to be picked up now. She responds more to words now, and definitely prefers some toys and activities to others depending on her mood.

One interesting development lately is that she has begun to find some noises scary that weren't scary before. Suddenly now she is terrified of the food processor (which I use to puree her baby food). And the noise made by pulling clear packing tape off the roll. She is so scared of these two things that I can't use either one when she is around. Both sounds invoke an instant, wide-eyed cry with frantic arms in the air to be picked up.

But perhaps the funniest thing that has happened in a while was our visit to the coffee shop today. We were sitting in an open booth and Jay was holding Anja so she was facing over his shoulder to the next booth. Anja would put her head up to see over his shoulder so the ladies in the next booth would see her. Then when they smiled and talked to her she would smile back and hide her head in Jay's shoulder, like she was suddenly shy. Then she would do it again. She did this quite a few times, getting the same response from them each time. One time when they didn't look back right away she started hitting the back of the seat as if to say, "Pay attention to me!" I hadn't seen her interact with other people in quite that way before. Very cute.

Toast

2008-11-15T16:32:00.003-05:00

People always want to know how Blue has responded to having a baby around. Lately she's been pretty excited about it.

Mirror

2008-11-14T21:30:00.002-05:00

Anja likes playing a game called, "Who's that baby in the mirror?" It's not a very complex game, but it's still fun every time.

Cute.

Serious.

It works for naps too!!!

2008-11-13T17:50:00.003-05:00

After having another successful sleep last night (only fed Anja once, at 4:00), I decided to try something new today - putting Anja down for a nap when she's awake. She generally takes a nap around noon of an hour or so and then around 4:00 gets really cranky. I've always waited until she fell asleep before putting her in bed for naps, but she won't fall asleep in the afternoon. She then remains awake and cranky until bedtime at 8:00, leaving me exhausted after 4 hours of squirmy, complainy baby who does NOT want to play with toys, be held, or read a book. So today I put her down at 5:30, checking on her every 3 minutes until she stopped crying. In 20 minutes she was sound asleep!

I realize that I am not the first mom to ever put her baby down for a nap successfully. But this concept of giving her a nap when she needs it will change everything for us!

In baby-unrelated news, we have decided to put our house up for sale. Since we live in Michigan, and Lansing in particular, it may take a while to sell our house. It will be harder to do if we get jobs and have to move to another state right away. On the unlikely chance that the house sells quickly and then we get good jobs in Lansing, we can certainly pick up another house easily, or rent temporarily. I sure will miss our cute little house so close to downtown, work, parks, etc. And what a great garden we had in the backyard.

Sleep!

2008-11-12T09:50:00.003-05:00

This picture is pretty typical these days. She likes to feel her bottom teeth with her fingers.

Last night was pretty good again. Jay spent about 30 minutes alternating comforting Anja and leaving her for 3 minutes, then comforting her again, until she fell asleep. Then I got up to feed her at 4:00 when she cried. When I put her back down she cried, but I waited for 3 minutes before going to her. Before 3 minutes came we were both asleep again! Jay said last night was the most sleep he's gotten in a long time.

Sleep training

2008-11-11T20:43:00.002-05:00

So far we've had two nights of "sleep training". The first night was pretty busy, although not too bad (Jay may have a different view of this, since he had the first shift and there was more crying involved). But last night (the second night) I put her to bed at 7:30 and she slept for 9 hours straight! Then I fed her at 4:30 and she went right back to sleep and slept for another 3 hours! It's funny to think of "only getting up at 4:30am" as a luxury, but it really is. I'm hoping tonight is similar. If we can successfully eliminate all but one night feeding, we will start to make that feeding later and later until it is also gone.

Did I mention Anja is fascinated with Blue?

Blue has decided that Anja should be able to throw her toys just like everyone else:

But she could do without the petting.

We have tooths!

2008-11-10T18:05:00.002-05:00

Anja's second tooth has come through, and you can see the first one pretty well now. It's sharp!

We're starting "sleep training" this week. She is nearly 7 months old and is still up multiple times a night to eat and Mom and Dad are tired. So we are going to limit her to one nighttime feeding, and we won't pick her up the other times she cries. What we will do is comfort her when she cries, while leaving her in the crib. Hopefully over time this will teach her to go back to sleep on her own, instead of needing to be picked up and fed every time she wakes up.

We have been very busy around here lately. I've been applying for jobs everywhere and completing training for substitute teaching here in town. Jay has to turn in his written dissertation material in about a week. His oral defense will be Dec 1st, so he will have two weeks to prepare for that. He's pretty much working 'round the clock these days. I'm almost always asleep before he comes home, often around 1:00. Not getting much sleep at night doesn't make this any easier for him. He has a much harder time falling asleep after Anja wakes him. Sometimes he just stays up and works. Once last week he left the house at 5am to go to work because he couldn't sleep anyway (I of course was completely unaware). I'm suffering from sleep deprivation too, but I can usually fall asleep eventually after getting up to feed her. As hard as this is, it is still not as hard for me as the last month of pregnancy was, when I couldn't sleep at all because of the heartburn and reflux. Broken sleep is still better than no sleep, although 7 months of broken sleep is no picnic. At least Jay will be done soon, and we will laugh about how hard these few months were. But we aren't laughing yet!

We have two leads on jobs right now. I had a phone interview last week for a job in northern Virginia (outside DC) working for a land trust group; they are calling people back this week to schedule in-person interviews. Jay is a finalist for a job in Petaluma, CA working for a Bird Observatory. I'm really interested in the Virginia job, but I'm not keen on the area (super expensive and big city lifestyle). Jay's job lead is in a really interesting area, and I'm pretty sure I could find something out there as well, so I'm pulling for the California job, but we're not ruling anything out yet. We should know more in a few weeks. Meanwhile I have two temporary jobs lined up here that can start in a few weeks.

Obama, fruit, and Christmas list

2008-11-08T20:40:00.003-05:00

Anja is very happy. I'll leave the politics out, since this is Anja's blog, but Americans did something right this week:

I'm way behind on fruit comparisons for Laura's baby. Here are the week before last (cantaloupe) and this past week (honeydew melon):

Laura is doing a great job, and she's almost there!

Anja has also been doing well lately. Her evening schedule is really regular now, she goes to bed at 8:00. If we try to keep her up later so she'll sleep until morning it doesn't work, she still wakes up at the same time regardless, so 8:00 it is.

Her little tooth (bottom middle, right side) has really come through quite far. You can see it sometimes when she smiles, although I don't have a picture yet. She has been pulling on her left ear the last few days, so I think the second tooth will come through shortly (the pain of teething radiates up the jaw near the ear, so babies pull on their ears when it hurts).

She is so good at standing now. She almost never falls. Almost never, so you still have to stay near.

I've taken advantage of the unseasonably good weather to take the jogger out several times lately. I'm finally really starting to train again now. It took longer than I'd expected to get back into it, my stomach muscles were really weak for a long time, and the recommendation is to let them recover properly before hard exercise. Unfortunately this is the time of year I least like to run, but on the bright side there's very little competition at races, only the hardcore runners race in the yucky weather. The stroller we use has been great. I try to mainly run on the paved river trail, which is a mile from our house, and I have to run through construction and some bumpy sidewalk to get there, but she doesn't seem to mind. Here's Anja after a run to campus and back Thursday, over some pretty bumpy sidewalk. She fell asleep anyway. We'll use the stroller a lot next summer, but now that it's cold again I think we'll have to put it away for the winter.

I've been thinking about what Anja wants most for Christmas. Based on her current interests, this is what I've come up with:
-a set of remote controls
-Jay's cell phone
-dog toys
-a shoe rack, complete with dirty running shoes
-a wristwatch
-anything with tags

But what does it taste like?

2008-11-05T11:49:00.002-05:00

Anja is very interested in exploring and touching everything now. But she can't properly assess something without putting it in her mouth. Aunt Heather sent her a fun soft bug book with a crinkly page and textured bugs with wings that you can grab. She really likes it. And likes eating it.

Here she is, SOOO tired but still playing with her book:

And also finding other uses for her mouth:

And wishing she could try more interesting food:

Wanting to walk

2008-11-01T18:33:00.004-04:00

Anja is pretty good at standing now. When she uses something to help her stand, she hardly uses it for balance once she's up. And now she's started to let go of her support once she's standing. She can stand alone for a second or two before falling into a sitting position. Her progress seems to come in bursts, so it's hard to say whether she will just do this for a while or whether she will start to take steps soon. My mom says when I was little, one day I sat up for the first time. That same day I stood up. Three weeks later I was walking (I was older than Anja is now, though), so she could try to walk soon. I'm excited for her to learn to walk, but I would also be pretty glad if we didn't have to deal with walking-related issues yet.

We've been on an okay schedule lately. She reliably goes down for the night at 8:00. She is then usually up to eat 5 or 6 hours later. Then she's up a 6:00am for good. It's not perfect, but we can live with it. Often there are a few other times throughout the night when we have to get up and settle her back down, but she doesn't need to be fed then. Of course after the time change she will be getting up at 5am!

Anja has begun making more consonant sounds. She likes to say Da-da-da. It seems like she says it preferentially to Jay, but we're probably imagining that. She is having some teething pain again today, so we wonder if her second tooth is coming through.

!!Warning!! extreme cute below

2008-10-29T16:51:00.000-04:00

Of course we have a costume.

We Have Tooth!

2008-10-27T19:45:00.002-04:00

Anja was pretty fussy most of yesterday, and I finally felt the edge of a tooth on the bottom that has broken through her gum. She was pretty happy for most of today though, so it must not hurt as much now.

We haven't carved our pumpkin yet:

Anja likes looking out her window. We aren't sure how cold it will get near the window in winter, so hopefully we won't have to move her crib away from it. She would be sad.

Here she is performing her new favorite trick:

Pumpkin time

2008-10-25T18:16:00.002-04:00

We took Anja today to a local cider mill/pumpkin patch to pick out a Halloween pumpkin. She fell asleep on the way there and was a little sad to be woken up. It was in the 40's and windy on the farm, with some spitting rain. I'm not sure she was too impressed.

She was however very impressed with the pumpkin itself (pictures later) and will be REALLY impressed when she feels how squishy they are inside.

She sure loves standing up and trying to reach things. Here she is trying to grab things off the third shelf of our bookcase.

She is beginning to play with toys while sitting for short periods of time, instead of just plowing through them and gumming them.

She crawled into her bouncy seat again today and stood up in it. She is really good at climbing. But sometimes she stops moving for just a moment:

Standing standing standing

2008-10-21T21:37:00.002-04:00

All Anja wants to do now is stand. She can get toys from the third shelf in the bookcase now. You really have to watch her though, because she still falls a lot.

A friend of mine with small children referenced the "Golden Time" when babies can sit up and play with toys, but haven't yet learned to crawl. Since Anja learned to crawl first, we completely skipped that stage! She very rarely just sits to play with toys. And now she crawls straight toward the closest big object in the room so she can stand up. Usually through all of her other toys. She's like a 4X4 tonka truck - straight through everything. I think she crawls really fast because she knows I'm going to catch her before she gets there. Remember those little toy cars with the wheels you can "rev up"? You put the cars on the ground, wheels spinning, and they take off really fast in one direction. You get the idea.

When she gets really close to something she can pull up on, she gets really excited. She makes a funny repetitive noise, like a baby hyperventilating. It's the best thing ever. Today she crawled to her bouncy seat and stood up. Then she crawled completely into it. And then she stood up inside it! You should have seen the look on her face when she turned around to see me. You'd have thought she was at the top of the monkey bars.

In my personal news, I finally turned in the final copy of my thesis to both the graduate school and the bindery today. I am completely done now. It's a little anticlimactic since I defended last March, and it's taken this long to finish the required edits. But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel REEEEAL good!

Stats

2008-10-19T12:25:00.003-04:00

For her official 6 month birthday, Anja is 27.25" and 16lbs, 3oz. That's 57th percentile for weight again, but now 95th percentile for height! She must be going through a growth spurt. We have to get the next type of car seat soon, because while her current seat is good to 23lbs, the height limit is 29". She will need a new one before Thanksgiving.

I find the percentile rankings a really funny way to look at height and weight. They foster an atmosphere of competition among parents, hoping that their child "wins" by getting as high a number as possible. I'm not sure why this happens.

Now I can't decide whether to make jicama slaw, jicama chili sticks, or crab jicama pate.

6 months old today!

2008-10-18T18:37:00.003-04:00

It's hard to believe Anja is halfway to one year already! Later I will measure and weigh her so we can have official numbers. Right now she is actually taking a nap, and as everybody knows, you do not wake a sleeping baby.

She has been really tired today. She slept in the carrier at Fenner Nature Center today. Then she played with her friends Toby and Scott:

And after they left she actually took a 30 minute nap. Then she woke up and ate a huge amount of avocado (three ice cube squares) and drank an entire 8oz bottle (which is rare for her) and fell asleep again! She's been sleeping for 1.5 hours so far. I'm hoping that helps for tonight, because generally the more she sleeps, the more she sleeps.

In between naps, I managed to take a picture of her with Laura's baby fruit this week:

>>>
I'm back. I had to leave to go get her because she woke up. Only two hours after her huge meal, and she drank another 5oz, she was starving! Now she's sleeping again!

Meep Meep!

2008-10-17T22:01:00.002-04:00

Never fear, I did manage to find a jicama, which represents Laura's baby this week. Jay wonders how one eats a jicama.

In local news, this kid is fast! In just the last week she's really improved in her crawling skills (crawling skills?). And she can pull herself up on almost anything now. Even things way above her head. When I picked her up from daycare today, Brenda's husband said, "I can't believe she's pulling herself up at 6 months. I've never seen anything like it!" And he's seen a lot of kids. She is getting better at falling, too, which is arguably more important. She usually falls onto her bum from a standing position, which she doesn't mind (thank you bulky cloth diapers!).

She is also suddenly really good at sitting this week. All day Monday she insisted on sitting straight up, then falling over and bumping her head. It was really hard to catch her every time. But she figured it out and now she doesn't fall anymore. Again I am amazed at how quickly babies learn.

Anja discovered her tongue this week. And that moving her tongue will make different noises. This is her at bedtime a couple of days ago:

Back home

2008-10-15T18:04:00.002-04:00

We made it home from the UP without too much trouble. Anja was pretty fussy for the first 3 or so hours, but then she slept for the most part.

It was fun to visit family. Anja has been sleeping a little better since she is over the worst of her cold.

The fall colors were beautiful, and it was unseasonably warm - high 60's to low 70's.

And check out this fox that walked across Grandma Roberts' back yard!

Up north

2008-10-10T11:39:00.002-04:00

We're in Marquette for a long weekend. Anja did pretty well on the car ride. She took a few short naps in the car. Jay says they were 45 minutes, but they seemed shorter to me. This time we brought along a few new little toys from the "used baby store" so we could pull them out at fussy times. One toy that was pretty useful was an arch-shaped attachment that connects to the car seat, from which you can hang other toys. It kept toys where she could reach them instead of allowing her to throw her toys away.

For the last hour or two she was really not happy being in the car anymore (the trip is about 7 hours of driving, without a baby). So sometimes we just had to let her cry while we drove. It was more of a low-grade whine/cry, since she was just tired.

We had a funny experience at a welcome center/gift shop along the way. I was letting her walk around on the floor of the gift shop so she could stretch her legs. The woman at the gift shop was enamored with her. Before we left she had me fill out a card with Anja's name on it; then she handed us a big teddy bear and said, "Here, she won this." That's the first time she has won something for being cute!

Things are settling out

2008-10-07T19:34:00.002-04:00

It seems we are back on a normal schedule now, and even Jay is mostly better. Anja was only up once each night for the past two nights, which is normal.

Laura's baby weighs as much as four naval oranges this week. Wish me luck for next week when her baby weighs as much as a Jicama. Not sure if they sell those in Marquette.

When I dropped Anja off at daycare today, the little girl who loves her, Zoe (she's two), showed me her own baby doll that she calls "Baby Anja". She puts diapers on Baby Anja and puts Baby Anja down for naps. This is the same Zoe who used to say hi by poking her in the eye :-) She is SO excited when we show up every morning.

Sick. Plus crawling, sitting and standing

2008-10-05T21:46:00.003-04:00

All three of us have been sick since the last post. Jay has had the worst of it. I was sick first and am feeling fine now. Jay was just getting sick when he ran a 1/2 marathon last week, and that caused him to get sicker than I did (in the period right after any race, your immune system is really low for several days). And Anja was sick for several days, and now seems to be feeling much better, but has lingering congestion and a runny nose. It hasn't been pleasant for any of us.

The sleep issue was REALLY bad early in the week. Laura sent me some good vibes on her blog (http://everyseasonbutwinter.blogspot.com/), possibly building up some karma for when she's dealing with this in a few months :-) Looking back, Anja probably wasn't feeling well when we were having sleep problems, but we didn't know that yet. She wouldn't go to sleep easily, and once she was asleep we would rarely get a full two hours before she was up again. One night after feeding her I tried for 1.5 hours to get her back to sleep in her crib, but she would wake instantly as soon as she touched the sheets. Most of the time I just gave up and brought her to bed. We started dividing the night again like we did when we first brought her home: one of us takes the first 4 hour shift, and one takes the second. Even so, we both lose sleep, because we both wake up when she cries.

You'd never know from the pictures how much trouble she gives us at night :-)

There are some simple techniques you can use to help your baby to establish better nighttime routines. Well, simple in theory. You are not supposed to try them, though, if she is sick or if your routine will be disrupted, and we are going away for a few days this next week, so now is not the time to try it. But if we are still having issues in a couple of weeks we will try something. Mainly what you are supposed to do is establish a regular routine (ie bath, food, book) each night before bed, and we haven't been very good at that. And then if she wakes up before we know she should be hungry (for example, after only two hours), then we comfort her in bed without picking her up and feeding her, until she falls asleep. Eventually she learns to comfort herself back to sleep. Again, in theory.

Anja has finally started crawling by moving both hands and feet to go forward. She was doing it for a while yesterday, but then she went back to the army crawl. I think that when we dress her in slippery clothes (like fleece) she finds that it's easier to just drag herself around on her belly, especially when she's on the wood floor.

Yesterday she sat up without using her hands several times. The first time she went over backward (again) and bumped her head on the floor. But that didn't stop her from doing it again right away. She held it for a little while, it was pretty neat. And she has been pulling herself up on anything she can grab. There isn't any good video of it yet because I need my hands free to catch her if she falls.

Now that she is getting stronger, she doesn't want to sit in her reclining bouncy seat anymore. This seat has been so useful for putting her in while we make dinner, or take a shower, or do anything that requires two hands. But she leans forward so far in it now that she can pick up toys on the floor in front of her.

We rarely buy new things for Anja, both because we don't need to and can't afford it. But I broke down and bought this at Target today:

Her friend Toby has this set and she was playing with it when we visited this weekend. I couldn't help it! It's a "musical set", complete with plastic drum and centipede drumsticks, ant jingle bells, bee maraca, caterpillar tambourine, and ladybug xylophone. It's made by Parents brand, they make some pretty cool interactive stuff for kids.

I also broke down and bought a "tag blanket". Anja absolutely loves playing with the tags on things. She likes to feel them and suck on them. Apparently this is common, which is why you can buy a fuzzy blanket covered in tags. She loves it.

Speaking of things she loves that we didn't buy for her, look at her reaction to a sheepskin rug. Kim and Scott pulled it out for us when we were over yesterday. When we put her on it she started laughing and burying her face in it. She couldn't get enough of it. Here's a video I stole from Kim's website:

And as usual, she still has plenty of energy:

Pulling up

2008-09-28T12:18:00.002-04:00

Anja nearly crawled into her bouncy seat by herself today. She got this far by herself:

(by the way, she did have pants on just before this video, but she apparently crawled right out of them)

Peas, please!

2008-09-27T09:50:00.003-04:00

We tried our second solid food yesterday, peas. Anja really liked them. I pureed them a few weeks ago and froze them in an ice cube tray. But she ate 4 cubes yesterday, so maybe I need to freeze it in larger containers. It wasn't "too" messy, although I did find that sitting outside of her reach doesn't mean you are safe from food attack - she is pretty good at spitting and flinging bits of food. However, I do really like feeding her in the chair instead of the bouncy seat... at least this way she can't get her foot into her mouth while she's eating.

She looks so much older to me when she's sitting in her chair. Hard to believe how much she's developed in just 5 months.

We're trying not to be too pushy about food, we plan to introduce new foods gradually, as she finds it interesting. There is really no rush. Right now she seems more interested in the texture than anything:

We measured Anja at her 5 month birthday and she is exactly 15lbs and 26". That puts her at the 56th percentile for weight and the 90th percentile for height. Still long and thin. She eats all the time (see previous post about not sleeping through the night!) so she's growing well, she's just outgrowing clothes quickly because she's so long. I just bought a bunch of footie pj's a month ago so she would have some warm stuff for the winter. She's already outgrown some and the rest just barely fit now. Look at the cute outfit she was wearing Aug 27th - it's too small now! She's wearing the 6-9 month clothing right now, but won't be for much longer.

I am so so grateful for the great consignment shop we have in town for baby stuff. Everything I need is there. The one I like has fairly high quality stuff at really low prices. An expensive outfit might cost $3, but most are under $2. A few are under $1! We have a pretty large supply of baby stuff at the Volunteers of America store here, but they aren't organized so you are left to sift through literally thousands of clothes on racks of all sizes. We also have a high end "baby boutique" resale store here, but their stuff is pretty expensive.

It's hard to tell from pictures, but her hair is starting to grow. It looks really blond in all the pictures, but it's actually coming in as a really light brown.

I think it's funny that sometimes babies just laugh for no reason at all:

It's been interesting to see which baby items have been indispensable to us, and which we haven't really needed. One of the most important items for us has been our jogging stroller, the Baby Jogger brand. Last weekend we walked to a tailgate party on campus - 4 miles each way, and she was great in the stroller. It's a really cushy ride with big wheels and shocks and lots of padding inside. The sun shade is huge, and can be moved all the way down to her legs in front, so you can completely block her from the sun. Here she is after we got home (the picture is a little blurry but I didn't want to wake her up with the camera flash):

It's sometimes hard to take her places where she has to sit still, but I'm so glad that we can just take her for an 8 mile walk without worrying about how she'll do. Jay regularly takes her for runs in the stroller, too. I haven't been running with her, simply because running is hard enough for me right now without also pushing a stroller, but I think I'll be there soon.

Updates overdue

2008-09-25T12:04:00.003-04:00

I've really been trying to get a lot done in the few hours Anja isn't here so I haven't been posting much. No news in jobs, though. I have applied for quite a few jobs now. A few won't close for a few more weeks, but I hope to hear back on some others soon. It has now been a full month since I first started applying.

Anja has been making steady progress with crawling. It's not really full-out crawling with all four limbs taking steps, but she really gets around so I'm calling it crawling now.

Last Friday we went to a Mom/baby group for the first time. It was pretty fun. It was a "pre-crawlers" group at the birth center where we had planned to have Anja before the preeclampsia. There were about 10 of us there. The babies ranged in age from about 2 months to about 8 months. We mostly compared notes about what the babies were doing, shared our concerns about all topics in parenting, and gave advice to each other regarding what has worked for us. It was very nice and I plan to go again. Although I don't know how much longer I can consider her a pre-crawler.

Sleep has not been good lately. She was doing really well for a while, occasionally sleeping all the way through the night, but usually up only once. Now she is up repeatedly, demanding food each time, and having trouble falling asleep afterward. Here is Jay's account of last night:

"I went to sleep at midnight, and just as I was falling asleep Anja woke up. So I tried to calm her down, but she demanded food. She ate 5oz, then played in her crib for 1hr. I sat next to her in the chair with my eyes closed. She finally fell asleep at two. I went to bed, fell asleep at three, then got up with her at 6:30 and fed her again. 3.5hrs total for me, 4hrs + 4.5 = 8.5 hours for her. Having trouble concentrating today, very scatterbrained."

Each week I think to myself, "Something's gotta give, we can't keep doing this," and then another week passes and we're still doing it, and we get by. It sure is hard to feel like a real person, though, when you never sleep through the night yourself. The night before last we made sure she had a really big feeding before bed, including some rice cereal, which is supposed to keep babies full overnight, and she was still up a bunch of times. We've decided not to try the "cry it out" method for a number of reason, so every time she's up, we're up. Besides, she is genuinely hungry each time, so she needs to be fed. I'm so jealous of the parents whose newborns sleep through the night without any coaxing at all. And she rarely takes more than a couple of 20 minute naps throughout the day.

We picked up a used infant booster seat last week for a few dollars (I love the baby consignment store we have in town) in anticipation of needing something better than a bouncy seat for feeding soon. When she's in it, all she wants to do is frantically bang her toys around and hit the tray. It's almost like she doesn't know what to do with her hands, now that she isn't using them for balance!

A few days ago she sat up unsupported for the first time. She moved from hands-on-the-floor sitting to a straight up sitting position with her arms in the air. She was so surprised and held it for several seconds. I was so surprised that I didn't dive for her fast enough before she went over backward. So I'm not sure when she'll want to try it again.

My friend Kim came over last week with her son Toby, who is about 9 months old. They are a little young to play together yet, mostly Anja just plowed headfirst into Toby while he wondered what she was doing. But look how cute they are together!

Anja is really interested in toys these days. She loves this wooden toy with stackable rings, she crawls straight for it. I don't know if she likes the colors, or the height, or the fact that she can knock it over. She also really likes tupperware and empty powerade bottles. And as you saw last week, full heads of cabbage.

And she loves these waterproof bath books, which is great, because they're washable:

Cabbage!

2008-09-16T20:52:00.004-04:00

It's hard to believe, but this week Laura's baby is as big as a Chinese cabbage. Good job Laura! And at 7 months pregnant she looks great!

Anja crawled straight to the cabbage and started tearing off leaves and trying to eat them. You can see in the last picture that Blue really wanted the cabbage.

Daycare week 2

2008-09-15T19:28:00.003-04:00

After the first week of daycare, I've gotten over the guilt of having Anja in daycare while I am at home. It's a catch-22 situation: taking her to daycare costs money that we really need to conserve right now since I don't have a job. However, trying to find and apply for jobs so I can make money is essentially impossible while I'm watching her. For example, today she took two naps of about 20 minutes each. I can't get much done in 20 minute increments.

Here are her new favorite noises:

Babyproofing

2008-09-14T19:39:00.002-04:00

Jay just went to put some "fresh bum duds" on Anja. At least that's what he called it. I guess she needed a diaper change. They spent the afternoon at our friend Chris's house watching football while I tried to get some stuff done around the house.

I've been trying to babyproof the house the last few days. Actually, I started with one room... I'm not entirely sure we can babyproof this whole house. The main problem with babyproofing a house this small and old is that there are no closets, no extra storage anywhere. So it's hard to really put things away where she can't get to them. There isn't really an "away" for them to go. So we may just gate off part of the house and call it good. So far the living room and two bedrooms are in pretty good shape. They are baby safe, but still maybe not perfect. For example, all small objects that she could eat, cables she could pull on, and things that could fall on her have been moved; but she can still crawl over to and suck on our dirty shoes by the door. Which isn't really dangerous, just gross. Right now her favorite thing to do is crawl to the edge of the carpet and pull it up so she can try to suck on the carpet pad underneath. Yuck! Obviously we stop her before she succeeds, but she sure tries hard.

Also, more fun with food. After several very successful feedings she decided that the texture of food is fun and it's fun to push it around her mouth while making noises: