Pulling up

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!

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

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!

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

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

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:

Some days we love solid food

And some days we just think solid food is a game.

Let me out

Anja would rather not be strapped into her bouncy seat:

Anja's got places to go

Anja crawling

She really gets right up on those hands and feet:


Okay, sorry.

But here's a real video of her this morning. She slept 8.5 hours all in a row! And when I went in to check on her she was just hangin' out. (And I didn't realize how messy her room was until I saw the video!)

Daycare Day 1 recap

Brenda said Anja did very well today. She was put in the middle of the group for "circle time" and loved to look at everyone's faces. She also said that in all her 20 years of daycare, she has never seen a baby this young sit up. She was so surprised that she called her husband over to see, but she couldn't get the video camera fast enough. I tried to tell her this morning that she really does get around, but I don't think she believed me until she saw it :-)

And she asked if Anja gets carried around most of the day because she didn't like to spend a lot of time in her seat. I tried to explain that she really does prefer to be on the floor, really. Often, when you put her in her seat now, she tries to turn around while still strapped in because she does NOT want to be stuck there.

She's getting much better at getting up into a sitting position (it looks like she bumps her nose at the end, but she's fine):


She's still trying to figure out how to go from rocking to crawling:


I kind of like this "leap frog" version of crawling:

Daycare Day 1

I took Anja to daycare this morning at 9:00. It went really well. I stayed for half an hour to meet the other kids and make sure Anja was fine. I think she's still too young to really be concerned about being held by strangers, but I still wanted to make sure. The other kids have known she was coming for a while, and when I pulled up they were all at the window looking out. As I got closer to the door I could hear them yelling, "They're here! They're here!". There were three other kids there (and a baby sleeping). I met Owen and Cassandra (about 3 or 4 years old) and Zoe, 2. All three kids wanted to hug her at the same time and give her toys. Owen especially really loved her, it was very cute. The place has an open floor plan, with a toy/play area on one side for the older kids, complete with a plastic play house and lots of toys and books. The other side of the house, with a kitchen in between, has pack 'n plays for the two babies and baby-safe toys. When the babies are having "tummy time" on the floor, this area is separated by a gate so the toddlers don't fall on them. But most of the time all the kids and babies are together, including for daily story time and activity times. I think this will be great for Anja, to be around kids.

She was pretty subdued when I dropped her off, she hadn't been awake for very long. She seemed pretty content watching the other kids. I tried to say bye to her but she kept looking around me to try to see the other kids. It reminded me of the story my mom tells about dropping me off at daycare for the first time. I think I was maybe 2 years old. She put me down and said, "Bye Susie," and I said, "Bye Mommy" while running toward the toys and never looked back. My mom cried but I never did!

Brenda, our daycare provider, said that this week will be a low key week with the kids since it's Anja's first week. They won't have many activities this week and may deviate from their schedule as needed. The general schedule each day is play time until 9:00, 9:00-10:00 is story time, 10:00-11:30 or so is play time, then lunch. 12:30-3:00 or so is quiet time/nap time for everyone. 3:00-4:30 is play time. And at 4:30 they get to watch a video as parents start to arrive. They also have special activities and crafts depending on the week (ie: green foods for St. Patricks Day, Easter Egg hunts, Halloween dress up, etc). These are mostly for the toddlers and older, obviously. They are also learning sign language - this week they are learning to sign colors. Anja will only be there from 9-3 each day for now.

Searching for daycare earlier this year was pretty hard. We can't afford a daycare center, which is the most common type of care and easiest to find. So I cold-called phone numbers from the statewide list of licensed daycare providers. Most didn't have any openings, the rest were too expensive for us. The most common price for daycare was $800/month. Others that we could afford were ruled out just because I didn't get a good feeling from them on the phone. In the end we visited three places that sounded okay. The place we ultimately chose was first, and I really liked it. The other two were pretty scary. My favorite was the rambling old farmhouse-type place with a completely open door policy. We walked in and the young girl working there said, "Who are you here to pick up?"! When I asked her how many kids she was watching at the time, she looked around and counted heads, then said, "five." It was chaos at that place. The third place had a large finished basement where they keep the kids all the time. It was piled to the ceiling (no exaggeration) with toys and puzzles and games. Kids had to walk through corridors of plastic toys and boxes to find a place to play. And they have 12 kids at a time there.

So we were lucky to find this place. It's just outside town, which is partly why it's so affordable. It would be great to have affordable daycare just down the street, but driving 15 minutes to a quality daycare we can actually afford is worth it.

My only real concern is that she won't get enough floor time. At home she spends most of her time on the floor, and she really demands it now. She is liking her bouncy seat less and less. She isn't big on being held, or being strapped into a seat at all, she wants to crawl around. But she requires constant attention when she's on the floor because she moves so fast now. So I don't think you could watch her on the floor while simultaneously watching 4 or 5 other kids.

We'll find out how it went in a couple of hours!

Not a cuddly baby

Anja really isn't a cuddly baby. And now that she's stronger she's learned that she can pull her knees up and put her feet on your stomach and push really hard. And arch her back. Every kid is different. This one is nonstopmotionallthetime.



And she's still working on that "crawling" thing.

Not quite hands and knees

In this house we don't crawl on our hands and knees, we crawl on our feet and face.


And we play with toys while we're sleeping.

Daycare

We are starting daycare next week. We've put it off as long as we can, the wonderful woman we chose for daycare has generously let us wait an extra month before starting (we signed up with her last February), but I can't ask her to wait any longer. And Jay really needs to focus on his work while I need to spend more uninterrupted time applying for jobs. It is really difficult to get much done that requires concentrating when you're watching her. Up until now we've been taking turns getting stuff done, but we can't do that anymore. Each job I apply for requires several hours to find the job, research it, and fill out the appropriate materials and send it in. And I'm reaching the panic stage of being unemployed now. The first few months home were really nice while I recovered physically and was able to spend time with Anja. Now it's just constant stress while our savings disappear to nothing and I still haven't found a job. I really didn't start applying in earnest until last week after I finished my thesis, so there will likely be some lag time before I start to hear back about any of the jobs.

Anyway, I'm a little sad about starting daycare, even though I really like the woman we are using. She is SO excited that Anja is starting next week, so that makes it a little easier. And she is very competent. Much more competent than us, I'm sure :-) She's been running a daycare for 20 years. But I don't want to miss all the new things I'm sure Anja will be doing. I'm pretty sure she's going to start crawling in the next week or so, she's up on all fours all the time now. I know you can't be there for all the milestones, but you can try! So I told her we would start with a schedule of 9-3. That gives me enough time to get some real work done job searching, but she won't be gone all day. We still have to pay for full time, but that's fine. It sure will be quiet around here.

Anja's not worried about starting daycare:


Recently we got some new toys for Anja: some stackable tupperware and this magazine:


They were a big hit. She likes the crinkly noise of the paper and the tupperware is big enough to grab easily and doesn't weigh much. By the way, check out that fuzzy head!

And this week, Laura's baby is as big as a head of cauliflower. Good job Laura!

Biking crawling sitting eating

Dalmac went great. Anja slept pretty well at night, usually just up once to eat. It's actually a little easier to get her back to sleep in the tent than at home since she's right between the two of us and we just hold her hands until she falls asleep. It's pretty comical, really, but she likes it. She wasn't always good driving around in the car and we had to stop frequently if she was unhappy. She was really a little celebrity on the ride. People are so friendly when you have a baby, everyone wanted to talk to us. One night we camped in Boyne City and went to a (non-smoky) local bar to watch the MSU football game. A woman at the next table over kept staring at us and I was convinced she was going to criticize us for having a baby at the bar, turns out she just really wanted to say hi to Anja.

And a lot of people asked me if I rode my bike with her in the front carrier. Seriously? But the funniest thing is how many women commented to me about how great Jay was for taking care of Anja when I biked, and how good he was, carrying her around in the carrier, even though I did the same for him when he was biking. As if somehow he shouldn't be competent or willing. I'm surprised that a father taking care of his child is still so surprising to people these days.

Here we are at a couple of rest stops:




And here we are near Wilderness State Park


In the last week she has really gotten a lot stronger. I know I keep saying that. She is starting to push herself up on all fours. It isn't for very long, but she's definitely doing it. And she's also starting to push up into a half sitting position. The first type of sitting that babies do is usually supported with both hands. Mostly she still tries to crawl with her forehead on the ground. Even if she's not on all fours, she is definitely all over the place now. She sees toys she wants and crawls over to them, or rolls several times to get across the blanket. It's really fun to watch her learn new things.

Here she is up on all fours


And here she is pushing up into a sitting position.


We decided to start solid foods this week. It's a pretty long process, you are supposed to introduce new foods one week at a time and make sure there is no reaction to it, and then the next week you can try another food. We started with rice cereal - little flavor, little texture, and it doesn't stain clothes! Plus babies generally do well with it. She did surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because she's never been easy to feed. From the 10 weeks of failed breastfeeding struggle to the many different types of silicone nipples we had to buy to find the one kind she will actually use (including the $12 breast-shaped bottle!), to the struggles we've been having lately of just generic freak outs during mealtime, I assumed solid food would be tough. But she was very calm and did a great job. We mixed up two tablespoons of the dry flakes and she ate it all.



In conclusion, look how cute: