(not recommended if you easily become motion sick - you’ve been warned!)

I think it’s safe to say that…

a)  Delaney is learning to enjoy the Jumperoo (she’s been too short for it up until now - there are still a couple of blankets underneath so her toes reach, but this is the first time she’s enjoyed it for more than a couple of minutes)

b)  Delaney is going to be talking my ear off for much of the foreseeable future (my aunt loves to tease me by wondering where on earth she learned to become such a chatterbug)

c)  Delaney is going to keep me very, very busy trying to keep up with her…

but Delaney turned six months old this past Friday!  She’s half a year old already!  I cannot believe that six months have passed already - it’s tough to even put into words!  

A few “then and now” shots…

She really is such a hoot.  A few notes of what she’s up to these days:

• No teeth yet, but good grief, they must be coming soon.  She likes to chew on her hands, my hands, anybody’s hands that dare to get near her mouth, my hair, my face (tries anyway, though those are “kisses” as much as “chomping” I think!), her dress/shirt/bib/blanket, her feet, her stacking cups, her stroller tray, Grandma’s granite countertop…  in other words, EVERYTHING!
• Loves eating solids.  Her favorites are pears and applesauce, she’s also eating with limited enthusiasm carrots, zucchini, squash, green beans and sweet potato.  Will eat puffs like crazy.
• Favorite activities include long walks outside, watching the cat, giving very slobbery, open-mouthed, sometimes tongue-involved kisses, grabbing hair/earrings/necklaces, standing over the book basket and throwing all the books onto the floor, tearing apart magazines or whatever paper she can get a hold of, trying to grab whatever is on the table near her ESPECIALLY if it is clearly something to drink, knocking over her stacking cups to go “boom,” banging her stacking cups on the highchair to make loud noises…
• Giggles, laughs and smiles a ton.  She’s a happy waker - blowing raspberries, kicking in delight and giggling whenever you go in to pick her up.  If she’s not in that mode, it means she probably will be falling back asleep soon.  (It is worth noting that her raspberries are multi-purpose - while they usually indicate great happiness with whatever she is doing, she also uses them to show her annoyance with a situation as well.  It’s hilarious and generally quite easy to tell which intent she has!)
• Still not a great sleeper, but progress is being made.  It’s getting more common to get one nap of about 1 1/2 hours and another of 45-60 minutes, which is doing pretty well compared to much of the recent past.  She goes down for the night pretty easily these days around 8:15 but is not sleeping through the night.  She will typically wake up between 12-1 for a bit of a bottle and some re-snuggling, then the rest of the night after that tends to be a crap-shoot.  Some nights she wakes up every couple of hours, though I think the standard is becoming waking up somewhere between 4:30-6, getting a bit of bottle, perhaps a fresh diaper and snuggling, and then she’ll usually drift back off until 7-7:30 (sometimes later if she woke up frequently or for longer than a few minutes).  She does not have a handle on getting herself back to sleep, which I’m sure is something I need to be working much harder to teach her.  Obviously we have some work to do in regards to sleep - I need to figure out a plan and stick to it, among other things.  (advice from those who have BTDT is greatly welcomed!)
• I think her weight is about 15.5 pounds right now (according to the bathroom scale at home).  I think she’s still gaining in a healthy range, but she does seem to be a fairly petite squirt (though I think her length continues to be a higher ranking on the charts than her weight).
• She loves being around people and is a huge ham.  She has our entire family wrapped around her little finger, is well aware of it, and loves every second of it. 
• She is generally a very busy, active, happy baby who seems to really enjoy life and doesn’t want to miss a thing.  She’s a smart little cookie and I have no doubt she will keep my hands full over the months and years to come!

Though I have a ton of videos loaded, I’ll wrap things up with just a couple of recent favorites.  In this first, I will admit that she is really just copying what I am doing next to the camera - but she is really starting to “get it” and I think she’ll have this figured out on her own soon!

And just a moment of her being her silly self tonight, which really I am thrilled she could manage since she was quite miserable much of the afternoon feeling just worn out from the weekend travels and that DANG TEETHING…

We had a fun get together with family this afternoon where D was, as usual, the star of the show.  She wore herself out and it was a stretch to keep her awake until 7 p.m.  So far she’s sleeping through the fireworks (uh oh, the big, loud ones just started and scared the daylights out of the cat, so we’ll see if she really sleeps through them) then of course after the city fireworks the neighbors will start.  We were hoping to sneak in a bit of a pool party today too, but we were all too worn out to tackle the concept (would have had to move locations and we were just too worn out and settled where we were!).  Perhaps later in the weekend…

Hope you are all having fun holidays as well!

Thank you everyone for all the comments of support in response to my last post.  Last week was tough - and we still have a lot of adjusting to do here with Maddie gone but I sure needed lots of cyber hugs and you all came through.  Adding to the challenges last week were that I hurt my back - it had started the previous Friday but was just an annoyance until Tuesday afternoon of last week when it got pretty overwhelming (oh you know, like you’re not sure how you are going to get out of bed or get the baby in/out/up/down of anything and anywhere among a million other things).  Went to the chiro Wednesday morning and though I should have gotten back in again, I’ve just been muddling through since and it’s better than it was.  Well, I think I’m doing better but my coworker friend laughs at me every morning saying I look pitiful (yes, she laughs, but also helps me out).  But I guess it did provide quite the distraction last week - ugh.  I’m just glad we’re headed into a long weekend here and I plan to have lots of fun and relaxation.  Ok, I actually have a bunch of work to do, and I’ve accomplished zero of it so far today in typical fashion, so I will be working much of the weekend too.  If I weren’t scrambling on a Sunday evening panicked about finishing my work I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

Enough of my boring updates (more to come, but too lazy right now), here’s what you really come here for…

Loving the carrots - though so far pears are the favorite

Believe it or not, she actually left these alone for about 75% of our walk (until she realized she could pull them down and chew on them) - I was impressed!

I’m not sure why I love this one so much, but I do!

More to come…

Some of you who have been reading since pre-Delaney may remember that last winter, my cat Maddie got really ill - kidney problems.  Though the vet didn’t expect her to pull through, somehow she did.  I knew the problems probably weren’t entirely gone, and kept her on a bit of a maintenance routine as much as I could keep up with, though I wasn’t doing as good a job as I intended as I have just had such a hard time keeping up with everything.  About two weeks ago, I saw signs that Maddie was getting sick again - so I tried to step up all the things we had done last November hoping for her to be strong enough somehow to pull through again.  Over the weekend, I realized that it probably wasn’t going to happen again.  All along, I’ve had a horrible time even trying to think about losing her or taking her in to the vet to put her to sleep.  I realized last night it was probably going to have to be this week, and realized at 5:30 this morning when Delaney woke up that it would need to be today and was waiting for the vet to open.

Well, Maddie passed away just a little bit ago. 

Luckily I had already called my mom asking if she could take Delaney for the day today, as much as I love the little squirt I’ve had about 4 hours of broken-up sleep and know we have too much work today for me to not take some and I was hoping to spend a little time with Maddie before taking her in.  Guess things didn’t work out quite as I intended but I’m glad Maddie could be spared that stressful trip in - our vet always said he thinks they know when that’s what they’re going in for and she always hated going there so much.

I really can’t stand the idea of taking her in there later today and leaving her - I’m not sure that I really have any options, but the idea is overwhelming.

Sorry for such a fun post first thing Monday morning, but of course I have to do something with this sadness this morning.  Maddie was my first pet that was truly mine - the day after I bought my first townhouse I went to the Humane Society and picked her out.  I’ve had her a bit over nine years and she’s been such a treasure.  When I had moved to Madison, got laid off eight weeks later and lost my dad at the same time, she is one of the main reasons I somehow kept going.  That may sound dramatic, but there you have it, it’s true.  She was always scared of every other person in the world, but loved to chase mice and bunnies in the yard and was the biggest sweetheart I could have asked for in a pet.  At least these past few days she got to spend full days out in the yard where she loved to be the most.

It’s going to be an awfully long day…  Thanks for “listening.”

                      Our special delivery yesterday afternoon - yippee!

Delaney’s reaction to her first ride in the baby swing at the park (yes, she’s too little for it, but it actually works for now!)

Yesterday we got together with Shawna and Sophia for some awesome fun.

Don’t they look like they are having quite the conversation?

Can’t wait to do it again!

NOW do you see any teeth yet mama???  What are these teeth things you’re always pestering me about and digging around in my mouth to look for anyway?

Five months ago yesterday, my baby girl was born.  Here are a couple of shots I don’t think I’ve shared before that I really can hardly believe when I look at them right now:

And here are a few shots from this week.  Seriously, can you believe it?

Oh, the poor girl’s hair.  This is a good shot because while you might think it’s just the angle, her hair really is crazy longer on one side than the other.  You just don’t see all the funky bald stripes on the side and back in this picture!  But, new hair is starting to fill in so perhaps it’ll all start to blend better.  I think it’s hilarious though, as she really does have about three different things going on at once.  Hey, we can still do hair pretties though, that’s the important thing!

I love this one of her in the chair, since it shows she is still a little peanut.  Though yes, the chair is huge.  I think she unofficially is about 14 1/2 pounds right now.  She’s chomping on her “lovely” as she usually does, because isn’t anything and everything she can get on her hands meant to be chomped on?

A haphazard update of where she’s at…

• no teeth yet, but I’m still convinced there will be two of them soon.  My mom got a glimpse of her mouth this morning (she’s quite stingy at sharing good glimpses) and thinks she’s a ways off.  I’m pretty sure that the fact I’m so sure they’re coming means she won’t get any until she’s 12 months or something.
• Loves eating cereal.  Yes, we’re only three days in, but I think it’s clear she was ready and is excited!  She’s definitely noticing other people eating and is already figuring out the bottle is far less exciting than her other options.
• Getting closer to sitting up on her own.  Last night at baby class she just happened to hit the right stance and sat for several minutes without toppling over - I couldn’t believe it.  I just figured out that when I prop her in the corner of the blue couch and leave her for a second, when I come back and she’s slid down that it’s now because she gets herself that way, not because she fell/slid - she bucks her way into that position.  I’ve learned the hard way too that she can buck her way out the bottom of the bouncer too when she’s had enough - and gets angry with it because she’s not sitting upright enough - so I guess that can be packed away as obsolete already.
• Has the attention span of a gnat much of the time.  Can go for an hour walk and not utter a peep of discontentment (well, this week she can anyway), but try to get her to play with something next to my desk for a bit so I can work and you’d think it was pure torture after a few minutes.  So I am definitely working on creative ways to keep her entertained.
• Back to loving her stroller as of this week - which is nice!  A couple of days this week we actually got out for TWO walks and it’s great to have the flexibility to do one in the stroller and one in the wrap, or any old combination.  Bless those walks - so good and fun for both of us.
• Sleep - ha, ha, ha - sleep is for wimps, says Delaney!  Two days of good naps this week, that’s something (they were even days in a row!).  It’s just so weird, we did develop a pretty good routine for a bit there and after Memorial Day it flew out the window.  Tuesday gave me hope that it’s within our reach again.  More on the whole shebang another time (yeah I know, you all can’t wait to hear me whine again about sleep!).
• Chews on everything she can get her mouth on.  And as I was reminded last night when I was foolish enough to allow her to chomp on my fingers, she’s got a wicked tough bite!
• Thinks her hands are the most amazing creations ever.  That’s one thing she can do for a long time - watch her hands open and close, reach for imaginary things, pull hair, reach for kitties and other interesting objects, stick in her mouth and nose, they’re just magical!
• Generally wakes up from naps and in the morning grinning, giggling and blowing raspberries.  Bless her heart, her face just lights up when she sees me ready to get her and grinning at her, you can’t help but laugh.
• She is a ham, a diva and knows she’s darn tootin’ cute.  I’m in serious trouble.
• Still LOVES to stand - and is truly figuring how to inch her way towards things she is motivated to get to - um, like the boys in our baby class - no joking, or of course the cats. 
• Is definitely doing her best to imitate what she sees grown-ups do - I think she’ll have waving down fairly soon, and I really want to get consistent with some signing because she watches what I do with my hands very closely and definitely is starting to understand some words.
• Loves the songs “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” “The Wheels on the Bus” (though I somewhat despise that one from my summers of Y camp bus programs), “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Itsy, Bitsy Spider,” and “Baby Shark.”  She loves being sung to and just about anything, real song or not, will do. 

I think there are a million other things I’ve had in my head to include in this post, but of course they don’t come to mind right now.  I sure cannot believe she’s been with me for five months and do not remember what life was like before her (what DID I do with all my time?).  My house and yard are disasterous messes, my bank account is too empty and I don’t remember what more than 2-3 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time is like, but I don’t think I had had my heart as warm or my laughter as deep ever in my life as much as it has been with Delaney.

Here’s what we were up to last night!

And bless her heart, she just woke from a 1 1/2 hour nap this morning - longest nap she’s taken since Thursday.  Whew - hope there’s more of that where that one came from (please, pretty please???)!