Half a year old!

Only slightly assisted sitting:

And here she is looking less evil:

These were actually taken yesterday morning when we went to the park, and TECHNICALLY AJ turned six months old today, but we really only got one photo today, with Instagram shortly after we got up this morning:

AJ enjoys sitting on Daddy.  I particularly like how his knees form a sort of throne here.

She also briefly enjoyed the baby swing at the park yesterday, but then it became a little too scary.  She's not quite big enough.

Her very favorite game is one we learned from Mama Lu, wherein I bounce her on my knees with accompanying narration:

"This is the way the ladies ride: trot, trot, trot, trot!" (measured up and down bouncing)
"This is the way the hoydens ride: gallop-y, gallop-y, gallop-y, gallop-y!" (frantic up and down bouncing)
"This is the way the farm girls ride: higgle-dee, piggle-dee, higgle-dee, piggle-dee!" (slight up and down bouncing with side-to-side swaying)


(The narration has been slightly modified.  I also call the baby bunny in The Runaway Bunny "she," and while I was pleased that ONE of the six pirates in This Is Not My Pirate was identified with a feminine pronoun, I edited our copy with a sharpie to bring the ratio to 1:1.)

It really was beautiful at the park, and the lake didn't even stink, which is honestly noteworthy.

Rolling champ

In case you were wondering, though, she is totally a rolling champ now.  She can't really do forward motion (she can scoot backwards on her stomach, as well as pivot efficiently), but she rolls from back to front AND front to back now without any problems:

Achievement unlocked (kind of): sitting

She'd actually already been sitting a little bit on the floor (for very short periods), but I put her on the quilt because she kept toppling over and I was hoping to provide a marginally softer landing.  Dee Dee the Dragon held her attention for a few seconds.

Looking to the side may have been her undoing.

...And then she toppled over.

But she seemed unfazed!

We'll just have to keep practicing!

You may also notice the giant bib she's wearing despite the lack of any other clothing (it being hot as balls in Wisconsin once again).  She's started teething--while the teeth do not seem like their appearance will be SUPER imminent, she is basically a drool fountain and they're definitely causing her some pain.

We got two packs of these Carter's teething bibs from Great Aunt Sue and were overjoyed, because they're not just bigger than the bibs we had--they also snap instead of velcro, which AJ had recently learned that she can yank right off if she's feeling sufficiently Hulkish.  We ended up having to pick up two more packs at Target just so I'm not washing them twice a day, though.  She soaks those suckers impressively quickly.

Art for babies

Years ago, a friend of mine did this pop art print based on a photo self-portrait of mine:

It hangs on our living room wall, next to another print she did in the same style from one of her own photo self-portraits.  Every time I carry AJ into the living room, she stares at it.

At first I thought it was just the contrast in the image, but when I turn her toward the other print (which is black and yellow and white), she actually turns her head to continue looking at the one of me.

It's pretty gratifying, I admit.

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.

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...

Quarter-birthday

That's right: AJ is exactly three months old today.  She can still wear 3mo size clothing if it doesn't have legs (see her Old Navy Aquarius onesie below), but she's also wearing a lot of 6mo size stuff now.  She grabs stuff and she is VERY vocal.

Look, Daddy shaved.

She got tired of wiggling around trying to get closer to Dee Dee the Dragon, so she just grabbed the quilt and yanked.  Crude but effective... she's obviously a genius.

She had a big day today!  The tummy time pictured above followed an outing to Daddy's work, which was very exciting; she got to ride facing out in the front carrier for the very first time, and there was a lot of cool stuff to look at:

 

The passage from Andromeda Building to Heaven Building.

The photo of the Andromeda Galaxy in the tunnel.  We should totally get a framed print of this.

Auntie Hannie, AJ, and me in Heaven Building.  I only wish I knew what AJ was staring at with such determination.

The Mothers' Room in Heaven Building--definitely the coolest one we saw today.

More gripping!

As you can see, AJ is gripping things pretty well now.  She grabs fabric pretty frequently (often my clothes when she's nursing, or her blanket in the stroller).  Here she's holding onto a burp cloth.  When we gave her one of the toys that attaches to her motion gym last night, she had some fun lifting it up and down.  Well, she lifted it up and down.  And she didn't hate it.  That's pretty good, right?

Achievement unlocked: Tummy-to-back roll!

This afternoon we were having some tummy time in the motion gym, when quite unexpectedly, AJ rolled over--fortunately, I happened to be snapping pictures at the time:


Her usual determined face.
Pushing up.
At this point, I was already impressed because it was the furthest she'd ever leaned to the side from her tummy.
And suddenly she was on her back!
Pretty self-satisfied.
I know that they almost always roll from tummy-to-back first, but I honestly wasn't expecting her to do this any time soon, because she hadn't ever looked like she was even close to it before.  She's definitely rolled onto her side from her back, and I was sort of expecting her to go back-to-front first.  But apparently not.

For those of you keeping score, she rolled from her tummy onto her back at 12 weeks and 2 days of age.

Sadly, there is no video of the actual achievement, but if you want to see her being pretty cute and tilting a bit and grabbing the motion gym mat (and hear me talking like an idiot again), then this video is for you:

 

The strongest baby in the world.

When placed on her back in the motion gym, AJ now quickly rolls onto her side and slowly inches around the mat:



On her tummy, she's holding her head up for longer periods of time:



She's no longer content, usually, to be over a shoulder if she's awake and alert; she likes to sit on our laps and look out. As daddy discovered today, she really likes to do assisted super baby poses:



She's already wearing some 6-month size stuff. (We need to resize all her Fuzzibunz this weekend to accommodate her growing legs, so she's been wearing a lot of disposable diapers this week.) The black onesie here was a gift from her Auntie Niz (whom I really think she resembles in that last photo, at least in her smirk); the legend says "Because I'm awesome." The heart-covered sleeper came from my advisor.

Achievement unlocked: side roll

AJ has been tipping back and forth when placed on her tummy for awhile now, but very suddenly (it seems) she is rolling onto her side from her back. She can't do a full roll-over onto her tummy, but all our baby books indicate that we should stop swaddling her for sleep at this point since it won't be long before she can and swaddling actually increases SIDS risk if they get onto their stomachs (and it does seem like swaddling is starting to piss her off more than anything, plus she yanks her arms out every single night now). Changing her diapers today has been a special challenge, now that she can attempt to roll away from me while I'm fastening them...

I just happened to be taking some iPhone video today while she was playing in the motion gym and got some footage of the side roll. I will also include a less impressive video of her on her tummy solely so that y'all can hear me talk in a semi-normal voice for once. I am starting to believe there really is some kind of biological imperative to talk like an idiot to babies.






The onesie came from a giant pile of dinosaur baby clothes in various sizes that my mom gave us at our Missouri baby shower. It's nice to know we'll always have at least a couple of dino pieces that currently fit her.

AJ is two months old today!

The onesie was made at my Missouri baby shower by my friend Terri. Isn't it cute?