Rollin' fool baby

As you may recall, just under a month ago, AJ rolled over for the first time (tummy to back)--and promptly forgot all about it in favor of grabbing stuff.

Well, it's only been four days since her first back-to-tummy roll, but she pretty much does it non-stop now.  Changing her diaper has hit a whole new difficulty level.

She also rolls tummy-to-back, but not as easily, or at least not as frequently.  You can pretty much expect that if you lie her down on her back, though, she will end up on her tummy.  Unless I have the camera ready; then, she dallies.  But I finally got a decent video of her rolling this afternoon:



She also rolled right off the space gym mat:



She might be getting a big head.  Look at her, all high and mighty in her new booster seat command center:



She really likes the command center (it looks like she's commanding a spaceship, doesn't it?).  We got it because she loves sitting but can't really do it unassisted yet, and the seat has an insert for babies that can't sit up by themselves.  She's into it.

Rolling!  She's a genius baby.  I am kind of afraid of when she'll be crawling by.

Achievement unlocked: back-to-front roll!

Sadly, we don't have any photos, but tonight in the space gym AJ rolled from her back onto her stomach, without even pulling on the arches!  According to our baby book, babies typically don't do this until 5-6 months, so it's pretty impressive at 15 weeks and 5 days.

Obviously, she is a genius baby.

(This brings her up to a grand total of two rolls ever, one front-to-back, one back-to-front.  She's mostly into jamming as much of her hand as possible into her mouth right now.)

There should be some fun new photos soon; we just got a booster seat with an insert for younger babies who can't really sit upright on their own, and a saucer of toys that go around it.  It makes her look like she's commanding a baby starship.

More laughter: bigger, better, louder

Don took AJ out for a walk this evening and apparently she found having her diaper changed beforehand absolutely hilarious, which made Don laugh, which only increased the hilarity of the situation.  This laugh is much louder and prolonged compared to her first laugh last week; we think she was mimicking Don.

Mothers Day (a day late)

A belated happy Mothers Day to all the other mothers out there!

The semester ended last week, but AJ also went on a nursing strike (that's seriously what they call it when they start refusing the boob--in my opinion, it's a terrible analogy, since it's not like she's NEGOTIATING for anything), so I've been very busy trying to get her back ON the boob.  Also I still have 30 final papers to grade.

Fortunately, Don's mother came to help out while he was out of town on business last week (it was an eventful week), and Don was back in time for Mothers Day, so we've been having some nice family time even though I have to pump, like, every two hours.

 

Me & AJ on Mothers Day morning.  AJ was quite fetching in a dress that Mama Lu bought for her on her last visit.  I am still wearing all my maternity loungewear.

 

Me & AJ next to the hospital-grade breast pump that we rented to try to boost my supply while she's "striking."

Daddy & AJ--still no photos of AJ's emerging dimples, but you can see where she gets them, at least.  Notice the first diaper change here.

AJ & Gramma B, and evidence of the second diaper change.  AJ grins and smirks a lot now, but the hand clasping is new.  Sometimes she just sits in the stroller WRINGING them now, or lifts them up while still interlocked like she's beseeching me for something.

Patty cake with Daddy & Gramma B. 

It took three or four tries before Gramma B could make it through the rhyme and remember to say "A" for "Andromeda"--all four of her kids have "D" names, so she kept being tripped up by maternal autopilot.

I'll have to do an Instagram post soon, as I got some very cute pictures of Daddy & AJ with my phone today.  I don't care what people say, I LIKE putting faddish filters on my mobile phone pics.

AJ's second laugh!

(And her third, fourth, and possibly fifth...)

AJ has been making sort of happy gibbering sounds mixed with heavy breathing for a couple of weeks now, but this afternoon playing with Daddy, she produced what I think was her first actual laugh.  I grabbed the camera and captured some subsequent laughter, although I think the first, undocumented laugh was probably the loudest (as you can see here, Daddy basically gets diminishing laughter returns as he goes--apparently she is sophisticated in her sense of humor):

You can't see it here, of course, but I think she has also developed a dimple on her right cheek!  I noticed it when we went for a walk after this and she was grinning up at us from the stroller.  I'm stoked--I was a little bummed that she looked so much like Don yet didn't have dimples, but I guess they take awhile to develop (makes sense; the cheeks fill out a lot).

She's also drooling a TON lately, as you can see in this photo from tummy time:

Apparently this might be related to teething, though it's still unlikely that we'll see teeth before around six months (thank god).  But anyway, it's pretty common for 3-month-olds to start drooling a lot.  Time to dig out all those bibs...

14 weeks old

AJ is 14 weeks old today!  On April 29th, a friend of mine in the department had her baby--exactly three months to the day after AJ was born.  We'll have to celebrate their quarter/half birthdays in July.

AJ is a champ with Daddy

Tummy time on the rainbow quilt


She got tired of tummy time, so then we had motion gym back time.


After a wardrobe change.


It was very difficult to get her to look at the camera.


More back time--she's winding up to swat the monkey astronaut here


More tummy time! She's getting very good at lifting her head.

The dino sleeper is from the lot of dinosaur clothes that Mama Lu gave us at my hometown baby shower.  It's super cute--I especially appreciate that along with stegosaurus and T-Rex, it features the less well-known diplodocus and spinosaurus.  Rather ambitiously for a 3-6 month size piece of clothing, it has treads on the feet.

AJ has not rolled over that we know of since her debut, but definitely scooches around (possibly faster on her back, actually).  She seems to be mostly interested in grasping right now; yesterday, she started grabbing her foot while I was changing her, and has done it pretty much every time I've changed her since.  It's like she's upped the difficulty level.

I read that you can't really tell if a baby will be right or left-handed until into toddlerhood, but it seems like right now, she can do a lot more with her right hand.  We're trying to put interesting stuff to her left to encourage her to use that side more.

Saturday visit with Keely

What is that?!

I MUST HAVE IT.

I'm intrigued.  Tell me more.

Huh.

Good times.

AJ & Auntie Hannie trade poses