Big Time Laughter

David and I were playing a board game last night and I had Holly on my lap and she let out the biggest string of laughing ever. She threw her head back and everything. This was the rolling around on the floor kind of laughing. The first one sounded like a straw through a plastic lid on your typical fountain drink kind of sound. I couldn't figure out what was so funny to her and David thinks it was because the fan blew on her and she liked it. But then we were laughing and that made her laugh even more so we were all laughing for a couple minutes. A little later I got her to laugh again. On both occasions she got the hiccups...she's still working out the kinks. :)

Weathering the weather

So we're still surviving the hideous heat. 90 degrees makes me cranky, over 100 degrees and I kind of want to cry. (I'm exaggerating). We actually planned our dinners this week that there wasn't going to be much use of the oven and stove top so as not to make it any hotter in the house. Last night David came home with bread, cheese and meat. It's a perfect dinner when it's 103 degrees outside with full humidity. Holly does all right most of the day. From about 5-11pm she's a handful anyways, but with the heat crankiness increases. It's not too bad because we are all still getting sleep. Her level of activity seems to be higher now too. She swings her arms around and kicks a lot, it looks like she's running in place laying on her back. One of these days she just going to stand up and run around all over the place. :) Holly really likes to be held, but she's a little heater so she gets all sweaty with skin to skin contact. Heat really brings out the pungency of milk smell too. Tomorrow we're planning on going to an outdoor concert at the mural stage at Seattle Center. We've recently purchased some special earmuffs for Holly to protect her hearing, they're pretty cute. I'm sure will have pictures following the event.

TOO HOT!

Whew! To me, 80 degrees is too hot. 90+ is just obscene and hateful. Holly doesn't like it either, we've had a couple rough nights because of it. The good thing is that Holly seems to know that when she's in the crib that it's time to sleep, so just the evenings are touch and go. Mornings are when she's happiest. I'm starting to lean towards the idea of getting an AC for the living room in addition to the one we have in the bedroom. This morning our living room only cooled down to 81 degrees. We keep the bedroom door closed at night so the AC works pretty well on the bedroom and the nursery. So when we get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, you get hit with the wall of heat. Holly will probably spend more time out of clothes and more baths to keep her cooled down. This morning we found that she had kicked off all her blankets during the night, happily sleeping in just diapies.

Holly's Happenings

Bath time with daddy. Holly really likes getting her hair washed. Probably feels nice with it being so hot out right now.

Little baby smiles.

Feeding time with daddy at Westlake Park.

Mommy and Holiday on the first day of the light rail on our way to Pike Place Market.

Holly has really gotten stronger. Now when we do tummy time she's holding her upper body way up there for a good period of time. She hasn't turned over yet, but she's leaning quite a bit so she's making progress. I stand her up facing her mirror after I change her diaper most of the time so her little legs are pretty strong too due to all the practice. Holly went to her first movie on Saturday, Harry Potter, at the Metro in the crying room. She did cry a little, but she slept most of the time. The point is we all got to see a new movie in the theater and it was functional and pleasant enough that we'll probably do it again.

Ceiling Fan Gazing

Mommy and Holiday ceiling fan gazing (they're amazingly fun).

We also like the 'stick out the tongue' game.

Our whole family rode the new light rail on Saturday stroller and all. It's more comfortable than riding the bus and costs the same. We'll probably use it for weekend outings to downtown. The funniest part was when we came out of the Beacon Hill tunnel into the Sodo area and everyone went "oooooohhh" like it was magical. Trust me...Sodo isn't very magical. For me that made up for the long line in the hot sun. I'll be riding it on the way home tonight after the massage that David got me for my birthday so I'll get to see what it's like during regular commuting hours. I'm way more excited about the massage than the ride home in the light rail.

I think I need to start packing away some of the 0-3 months clothes, they're suddenly getting small. It seems like Holly's clothes are like mine, where I might be one size at a certain store and a different size somewhere else. So some of her 0-3 months will fit her for a while and some won't. Weird...and it makes it harder to judge how many outfits we need of any particular size. Our policy of not buying anything until we need it works just fine so we don't get too ahead of ourselves.

Holiday Pictures

Guess who wore patriotic for 4th of July this year?

Holiday Rose that's who! (As if you didn't know) :)

Daddy's excited about the possibly of wearing baby converse. They're a bit too big still.


Holiday loves her pink baby elephant. But we found she likes all toys that are pink elephants.

Holly likes sitting on people's laps.

Seeing the baby in the mirror makes Holly smile, laugh and do a little right foot tapping dance.

Funny Stuff

Now Holiday has the ability to choose. We went to a toy store on Saturday and we held up two toys for her to look at. It was either the brown flat rat or the pink flat elephant (aka flatephant). Her eyes shifted between the two and rested on the flatephant with the biggest, happiest gummy smile you ever saw. :) I put the toys down and brought them back up for her to look at again with the same result. It was clear we had a winner and it was too cute. We call it pink baby now and she absolutely loves it. Occasionally she laughs, her daddy picked up on it last week. I didn't hear too good on the first time so I wasn't sure. I caught it later in the week and guess what? It's just how I laughed as a baby...or so I'm told. It's a gasping sort of laugh that usually scared the hell out of my parents because they thought I was choking. I'm willing to bet that it's going to freak someone out at some point. heehee

Holly's New Learnings

Sable and Holly

It's amazing how much Holly has figured out how to do lately. As of last week she didn't baby talk that much, then on Monday she just flipped the switch and chats quite a bit now. Quite often when we get her up in the morning her diaper is dry. She'll go during her first feeding of the day. She immediately becomes agitated with a dirty diaper...maybe she'll be easier to potty train. I think she's allegric to pollen, Holly gets sneezy and we have to use the snot sucker a lot. She pretty much hates that too. Holiday's bound to have some allergies with her mommy and daddy having several of their own. We're finding that she likes to sit in several different ways, and she'll get bored sitting or laying down the same way all the time. She'll cry until you find the right combination, the trick is not to give up. She fell asleep on my knee facing outward last night. You wouldn't think that would be comfortable but I guess you'd be surprised. She's starting to grab at toys now, she's been grabbing at her blankets and clothes for quite some time now. Holly has terrific dexterity of the hands and fingers. Maybe I should try to teach her baby sign language since she's starting to mimic.

Back in the groove of things

I just decided that I could probably squeeze in the time to post on the baby's blog again. It's taken awhile to feel normal again...but things are going well. All of Holiday's doctor's appointments and mine have looked good. I officially don't have to have another doctor's appointment for a year. Woo-hoo! I heal slowly but completely so I still have a little pain left, mostly if I have to bend down really far. It's not bad, it just hasn't let me forget yet. Holly on the other hand will have quite a few appointments for her shots and stuff. She's learned all sorts of stuff already...interlacing of fingers (she'll probably be a button-pusher), how to grip stuff, she's been doing a breathy sort of coo but as of yesterday she's been jabbering, she has pretty good neck control, she pretty much wrote the book on huge gummy smiles and last Sunday she learned how to shake her head 'no' in response to a question from Daddy. So now everyone has to watch themselves she's begun her mimicing phase. Holiday's grown quite a bit, she's in the size 2 diapers but still in the 0-3 months clothes. I suspect that those outfits will be on their way out. With her reddish hair she looks good in soft pinks, yellows, and sage greens, but I'm all about color so I'll dress her in everything we have. We had another round of portraits done which we should get back mid-July. This time you can see her big blue eyes. I've gone back to work working two days from home and two in the office with Fridays off. Keri's been babysitting for us on the days that I go in which has been a ginormus help to us. I use those Fridays to catch up on domestic-type things (or sleep). I'm still breastfeeding her which was really hard at first, now we're both better at it. We're making mental notes of places with facilities for nursing mommies and are generally baby friendly. Holiday is sleeping pretty well through the night now...thank God. She usually goes back to sleep after her first morning feeding. Late morning and early afternoon is her prime time, then she can get tired and cranky. She's a morning person! We're not sure how that happened.

I'll try to post as often as I can.