smile

four months

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dear s,

today you are four months old. i know i said this two months ago, but i can’t believe the time has gone by this fast. your daddy and i were talking the other day, and neither of us can believe that you’re a little person all of a sudden, with your own personality and mannerisms. you’re inquisitive (nosey, most normal people would call it), sensitive, happy, and loving. you’re also stubborn, emotional, and impatient sometimes. it’s amazing to me how i can describe you as anything other than a crying, pooing baby, but you are so much more than that. so this post will be dedicated to the s that we have come to know and love over the last few months, and your many accomplishments.

this month you learned how to roll over. kind of. you still hate being on your tummy, but now it takes almost five whole minutes to make you scream before i have to flip you back over myself.

what?!

you love your sophie the giraffe. and your bunny rabbit. daddy and i call him frank (after the bunny rabbit in donnie darko…yes, we’re freaks). sophie is for playtime and frank is for sleeptime. you like to cuddle frank to your face when you’re falling asleep. mommy only freaks out a little when you do that.

frank and i are just sleeping, ok?

you have incredible lower body strength. what you lack in rolling over skill (or maybe you’re saving it up, i’m not sure) you make up for in leg strength. you’ll be cruising well before your first birthday, i know it.

look at me!

we’re (pretty) sure you’re teething. you gum your toys, and hands, and clothes, and our hands, and whatever else you can get your paws on, all day long. and you drool. oh, do you drool.

nom nom nom

you’re developing the gift of gab. it’s so cool to watch your language develop…especially as a linguistics nerd myself, i feel like i can really appreciate the massive leaps you’re taking every day with your speech. now you can make occasional consonant-vowel sounds (ga ga ga, etc) and i swear i heard you say ‘hiya’ the other day. it’s the teesside in you. 😉 you can also laugh, but only when you want to. last week after your immunizations, you had a few days of no talking at all. it made us sad not to hear your beautiful voice (and to only hear your cry!) but now i think you were just saving it up, and practicing in your head.

chatting with daddy

you are OBSESSED with the tv. you crane your neck around when i have you sitting in your boppy to watch big bang, how i met your mother, and desperate housewives. not so much daddy’s documentaries. oh well. yesterday we took you to see spiderman at the big scream, and you absolutely loved it. you sat on daddy’s lap and watched the whole thing. we’re also pretty sure you had a bad dream because of the movie last night! can babies have nightmares? that lizard was pretty scary.

i’m just watching my shows. leave me alone.

you hate being manipulated. more specifically, you hate having your clothes changed. i try to do it as quickly as possible, but it usually results in screams and cries of anger and frustration. sorry about that!

when you’re playing, you stick your legs up in the air. it’s super cute, and i know that your discovery of your feet is not far away at all! you’ll play for ages with your sophie and other toys with those feet above your head. it’s adorable and looks like it might not be that comfortable, but hey, i’m not as flexible as you anymore!

feet!

bathtime is one of your favorite times of the day. you love kicking, splashing (sort of), and playing in the bath. we can’t wait to take you swimming. it’s on the summer to do list, so it’s got to happen!

love the bath!

you can sit up! not by yourself, and not entirely reliably (slumping over happens more regularly than actual sitting, but oh well). we’re going to invest in a bumbo like this one to work on it next month! yay!

just sitting up, nbd.

you’re such a happy girl, s! we are so lucky to be a part of your life and love seeing you grow and discover. there are a million more things you’ve learned and experienced this month. i wish i could remember them all and capture them to have all for myself. but i’m looking forward to sharing you and your talents with the world. i can’t wait for what the world has in store! here’s to you and to so many more firsts.

love, mommy ❤

so excited about being four months old!

mondays with the vicar: may 28

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my mother (s’s gram) thought it might be a good idea for us to document various adventures taken on p’s day off. usually the poor guy is so strung out by monday that we just have to get out of town, resulting in cool experiences that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

(note: mondays with the vicar isn’t necessarily an accurate title, since p isn’t actually a ‘vicar’ per se…but since everyone in this country thinks every ordained person is a vicar, that’s how we tend to describe him. he hates it.)

today was BEAUTIFUL, so we decided to get the f out of cambridge and enjoy the sun.

the plan was to get up and out early, but my snoring husband had other ideas. 😉 by the time we were up and at em, most of the morning was over. we decided on anglesey abbey, a local country house and estate about fifteen minutes down the road. s is such a good little passenger in the car now…at first i was too scared and paranoid to leave her in the back seat alone, but now she only screams if she spits her dummy out and even then can usually suck her fingers until she’s happy again.

last week we decided to drive an hour down the a14 to bury st edmunds and forgot the carseat adaptors for the stroller (which resulted in a huge fight and an unnecessary purchase of a cheap baby carrier, since no one sells icandy accessories ANYWHERE). this time, we vowed to be more prepared. we brought every single possible mode of transport we could think of and shoved it all into the car. s was a happy baby in her bassinet at the gardens and stayed out of the sun the whole time since i freak out if a single ray of sunshine touches her body for half a second.

p and s at anglesey abbey gardens

i overcame my irrational fear and we let her out for a few minutes when we were eating lunch so she could look up at the trees. her face was a picture; i wish i had taken one! she gawked for a full five minutes before getting bored, and i consider that a huge success. i fed her while we sat in the shade, watching the planes taking off from cambridge airport.

here’s cheeky chops!

getting braver with the bebe au lait nursing cover!

after the abbey, we came back into town to mooch. mooching is a favorite pasttime of our family, and usually results in the buying of tons of crap we don’t need. today wasn’t an exception…we came home with a basket for s’s growing collection of toys, a fan (it’s still freaking hot), and a george foreman grill. but not before a stop at starbucks, my new favorite nursing spot. usually the comfy chairs are occupied by businessmen who haven’t purchased anything in the last three hours, so we sit at the table next to them and give them the stinkeye until they feel pressured to move. it didn’t work today. oh well…it gave me a chance to practice some more public nursing, something that still stresses me out. i’m just waiting for someone to come up to me and tell me how inappropriate it is so i can fly off the handle at them. man, i have too much pent up rage. i need a hobby.

p’s day off usually ends in the best way: relaxing on the sofa with bad tv and each other.

my beautiful family, watching tv!

we need more days like this!

smile watch 2012

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capturing the elusive smile from s is like hunting bigfoot. for awhile, p and i thought it wasn’t going to happen. sure, she’d smile for us in the morning, after feeds, and when p made ridiculous faces at her. as soon as i stuck the camera in her face, however, i got nothing.

so in the mornings i’ve taken to whipping it out every other second. poor s; the paparazzi has descended. these are the versions of the baby smile most likely to appear:

the half laugh:

the cheeky chops:

the paparazzi pout:

although each of these smiles is more adorable than the last, none of them lives up to its full potential. what we are hunting is THE BIG ONE. a smile so adorable that the heart melts instantly. a truly happy smile. so far, we’ve only caught one of these smiles on film.

good enough for me! ❤