Hang on, Amelie is...

.....seven eight eight and a half months old!

Thanks to Catherine for the awesome quilt and thanks to Mamta for the adorable dress!

I am late posting Amby's seven eight month post because, well, she's seven eight months old.  This means she needs to crawl, climb, talk, splash, nom, stand, and examine every second that she is awake. If she is quiet or still for a minute, that means she has probably spit up on the floor and is finger painting with it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2 months after said picture was taken!

It's much more fun to eat the oatmeal off the bottom of the bow

Needless to say, I've given up trying to keep her clean during meal time.  She enjoys playing with her food much more than eating it right now.  She also enjoys the bath immediately afterward ;)

Speaking of eating, she may be spoiled with all the nursing I let her do, but she's been fairly resistant to eating solids.  At first, she loved nomming on the baby spoon and would thereby eat the food on it, but now she's bored with the spoon and just wants to play with the food itself and enjoy squeezing it in her fingers and wiping it everywhere.  If I manage to sneak some food in her mouth, only about 30% gets swallowed.  Lately, however, we introduced puffs, which were interesting to her, and she would put those into her mouth, so I began putting dollops of fruits and veggie purees on them, and she'd suck it off the puffs.  She'll also take a piece of panera bread from us (the harder crusty part) and suck on it while biting off small pieces at a time.  Yesterday, she finally decided she liked pickles, oranges, and frozen raspberries in a mesh bag.  I'm hoping to transition to a higher percentage of solids soon since I'm getting tired of nursing and pumping at work.  While convenient at times, it's also a hassle to have to deal with it every 2-4 hours, and during the all-day seminars I have to attend.  It's worth it for this face though:

By the way, Easter baskets make fun hats:

Ganglion.  That's what I have on (in?) my wrist now since she is a whopping 16 lbs (as of her 6 month check up). I'll spare you a picture, though mine isn't very big, compared to the google images I've seen (ew!).  I suppose should be glad she's only at the 23rd percentile for weight, but that's probably also symptomatic of her tiny tummy, which does not allow her to eat more than 4 oz at a time without spitting up, which also means she still wakes every 1-3 hours at night to nurse.  Just call me zombommy.  No, it's cool, I don't need to sleep more than a few hours at night in order to work, clean, be a mom, and deal with.....

CHAOS IN THE BATHROOM!  Apparently when we bought our house, there was a leak under the sink and/or toilet that the inspector didn't catch (hidden, so technically not his fault) and it's been saturating the floor and subfloor in there for awhile, growing mold, mildew and other lovely things.  We finally discovered it when it began seeping up around the toilet and it clearly wasn't the wax ring.  Luckily, insurance will pay to fix most of it, which gives me the perfect in for a complete remodel, yay!  So far, we've decided on a deep acrylic soaking tub (yesssssssss!  I've been dying for one since 2nd trimester a year ago haha), white subway tile for the shower with some glass accents in blue/grey/seagreen/natural stone, a new double sink vanity in a nice chestnut finish with the same white marble counter (if it can come off in one piece), replacing the ugly seashell faucets with a nice brushed nickel, and replacing the old laminate floor with a dark grey tile.  It's been both fun and stressful shopping and researching everything, but we found a great contractor that let us buy our own materials, so we scored lots of bonus gas by first purchasing gift cards at Giant Eagle (20 cents off for every $50 gift card) and lots of points by purchasing those gift cards with our credit card.  I think we'll have free gas until at least August now.

Anyway, even though the existing bathtub may be out of commission for awhile, Amelie will still be able to enjoy water during.........

Swimming lessons!  She LOVES them.  As soon as we get into the water, she kicks and splashes.  She has also made a friend - Delaney, another baby that is about a month younger than she is, and the daughter of an elementary teacher in town.  They enjoy their social hour every Saturday morning from 11:15 - 11:45 at the YMCA.

Now a short interlude to say:

Hi Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Cope!  

In other news, I threw my first baby shower for our good friends, Jon and Ashleigh this month.  Good thing I threw it 2 months before her due date, since Ethan James W. decided to enter the world just a couple days ago!  I hope to have more updates on that soon, but for now, here are a few pictures of the shower, which was great fun despite Dorian almost cutting off his finger two hours before guests arrived (yes it was a kitchen mishap, but no, he wasn't even cutting the watermelon baby carriage fruit, instead, a bagel haha).

Mint Chocolate covered Oreos with Baby W's initials from Lancaster's own Candy Cottage!

The aftermath.  His first stitches, I might add. 

Daddy's girl. 

Thanks for the idea, Pinterest!

Akron Law friends - Jenny, Ashleigh, and Ashley!  If we survived the AK-Rowdy, we can all survive pregnancy.

I still have to post about our west coast trip to visit family in Washington and Colorado, back when Amelie was 6.5 months old, but I'm afraid it will take another 2 weeks before I have time to go through those pictures, so enjoy these updates for now.

Happy Half Birthday, Amby

Amelie (A.M.B.B. - aka Amby) celebrated her half-birthday this week!  And boy, what a week.  What a month. I have a bit to remember for the blog this time.

March 6 - the primary elections.  I campaigned for my cousin, Terre Vandervoort, for County Prosecutor - as of right now, she has 36 less votes than the incumbent, Gregg Marx, before the 226 provisional votes are tallied and before the recount.  I also campaigned for Issue 3 - the bond to build new elementary schools in Lancaster. As of now, it is passing by 24 votes, before the recount and provisionals.  Win some, lose some.  If we don't move by the time Amby is in school, she may be one of the first in the new buildings. Hurrah.

I also became involved in supporting the plans to build the Pearl House downtown, but it has been a pretty ugly issue locally, and I really don't want to get into it on here beyond mentioning it for posterity.  I've recently decided to back off because 1) most people have already made up their minds 2) it's exhausting and I have better things to attend to (my daughter and my job) and 3) some people are playing dirty and threatening local businesses (2 have already called our office to complain) and that's just silly.

I bought my first road bike with help from Ron (shocking) and Dan Peters from Lancaster Bicycle and I'm excited to get back in shape post-baby.  I used to run long distance, but I don't care what kind of supportive undergarments you can buy, it's really difficult to do that while continuing to nurse, so now I have a better alternative for exercising and I'm really looking forward to riding several times a week.

I guess it's fortuitous that I bought the bike when I did, because less than a week later, our dryer began to die, and had I known we would have had to replace it, I probably couldn't have justified buying a bike the same month.  So we'll be a little tight for awhile, but now I can also enjoy our new 7.0 cubic ft Crosley dryer from Good Housekeeping, which apparently is the only company that can offer a 10 year warranty.  So far, I love the Auto Dry feature and the option to turn off the end-of-cycle buzzer (for obvious reasons).

Back to Amby - she's grown SO much over the past month; it's unbelievable.  Now she chatters regularly with a wide variety of noises - da, ma, na, growl, ba, yell (happy).  I can distinguish between serious crying and non-serious crying. She's also quite mobile now, rolling every which way, turning, and army-crawling. There have been a few occasions where she has attempted to get on her knees, but for the most part, she's still pretty flat to the ground.  She likes standing though, and has stood holding onto the table a few times.  She has also learned to pull herself not only across the floor toward toys, but up onto our laps.  Since we're talking about recent purchases, we just gave back some borrowed living room furniture/rug and replaced it with this awesome squishy mat for her (SoftTiles) - only $5 each:

We began to introduce solids very slowly over the past couple weeks - first oatmeal mixed with mom's milk (a messy hit), then peas, carrots, apple/apricot, and now sweet potatoes.  I'm pretty sure she likes the most recent introductions the most - that or she's getting the hang of eating them now.  Regardless, the new routine is 6 pm - eat, following immediately by a bath, then play time and a book, nursing, then bed between 8 and 9.

Now that she loves rolling, diaper changes have become quite challenging, and her changing table has been moved to the floor in her room.  She still sleeps relatively well, up to 11 hours at a time, save for multiple requests to eat throughout the night.  I don't mind all that much since she goes back to sleep quickly, but I'm beginning to worry that she is either using it for comfort, her stomach is too small to hold enough for all night, and/or I'm not producing enough to satisfy her for longer than 2-3 hours.  I know it can't last, regardless.

In other news, Amelie is finally getting ticklish, she can sit up unassisted, she loves to watch her daddy whistle, AND *drum roll* I just discovered her first tooth finally erupting today!  No wonder she's been Miss Diva Fussypants.  Despite my past impatient guesses, it is indeed a front bottom tooth that looks like a tiny blister breaking through.  Now that she's old enough, I put some baby orajel on it, but so far all it has done is produced a funny face reaction to the taste haha.

Six month picture dump (all attempts to take photo of said tooth = big time fail):

Loves her caterpillar friend

Story time with Dad

"Are you my mother?"

Peas - her first non-milk solid

Hahaha!

Apples and Apricots make a great hair gel.

Happy 6 Months, Amby!

The actual day that little one turned six months old was rather eventful, as it turns out.  Not only did Dorian leave for Washington to visit family, but our house was burglarized in the middle of the day, while I was home with Amelie.  My mom had just left around 4 pm, after babysitting while I ran D to the airport.  Amby was sleeping, and I went to the back room for a second when I heard Jack barking.  I ran out to shush him and noticed a silvery blue car in the driveway, so close to the garage that I could only see the hood.  I say hood, because it was backed up to the garage, and I immediately thought someone was delivering something to the wrong house and opened the front door to correct him.  However, when I ran out and said "hey" he quickly drove away, even though I know he heard me since his windows were down.  Then I realized the garage doors were still open (I had just returned home and it was 4 pm and 70 degrees out, why not?!) and saw some things swinging on the garage wall.  It took me about an hour to realize that he must have taken our pruners.  Luckily, our security cameras completely caught his car on tape and the Sheriff took it to look up his license plate.  I wonder if Jack scared him away or if he was just an opportunist and only planned on grabbing what he could and running right away.  It was kind of freaky how quickly he backed up the driveway right after my mom left, as if he'd been waiting and watching.  Time to go do some target shooting again.

Anyway, it'd be an understatement to say it's been a rough week as a "single" working mom.  I had to find a babysitter for the days I had to work, buy the dryer and run home from work to have it installed, deal with the burglary, and take work home with me and stay up hours after Amelie to finish it, get up with her every hour, and get my shower before she woke up in the mornings. It's surprisingly clean around here, but I definitely haven't had time to eat (or sleep!) very well.   Thankfully, my mom has helped bring me a couple meals and stayed to watch her "mousekin" for a few hours today while I cleaned up the garden, showered, and made a couple baby gifts for friends. Tomorrow we celebrate her birthday a little early, so I'd better get to work on her cake soon. SitterBaum out.