Happy Half Birthday!

Annabel turned 6 months yesterday! We can hardly believe it's been half a year already, though if you had asked us three or four months ago, we may have said that we thought this day would never come! (see references to colicy child)

She is getting very big...about 17.5 pounds, though we'll find out for certain at our 6 month appt. on Friday. Here's her 6 month pics with her blue bunny....and as a reminder of where we've come from, here's her one week pic too.

And here's our happy little child today.

From falling over to sitting up herself.

Grandpa got her some Stanford gear so she can represent the west coast.
We celebrated with cake - candles are facinating.

Yesterday we not only celebrated her half-birthday, but also her first trip to the ER! That evening her eye had a little bit of discharge which we decided we would just monitor, but when she woke up at 10pm crying we found that her right eye was swollen shut and splotchy. So, off to the ER at Stanford Hospital we went.

By the time we arrived the swelling had gone down and she was opening it a bit, but we went in just in case. Four hours later we left with a perscription for an antibiotic and a tired little girl on our hands. She was a trooper despite being deliriously sleepy.

Today, after just two antibiotic treatments she is doing great! It may be pink eye (though her eye itself is not red) or another infection, scratch or something (or all of the above). Her hands grab everything and she stick them in her mouth, rubs her eyes - it's a wonder this hadn't happened before.

We've had a very busy two weeks so there's much to catch up on...stay tuned...

Fun with Hats

Having a baby born in September, everyone got Little A hats to keep her head warm during the "cold" winter months. Little did they know she would be born with a full head of hair. This Saturday turned out to be cold and rainy so we decided that we needed to try all of our hats on to see what one was going to be the best one for the job.

I think Blue Bunny better be ready to walk the plank!

We wore this one to breakfast and all of the old ladies loved us.

I am ready just in case we go on safari.

Go Yankees!

I think she is hanging out with the hipster, emo kids at day care.

Stay warm everyone.

the box or the toy?

the age old question remains...what's more interesting to kids, the toy or the box it came in? last night, the box was the clear front runner but was followed up with a strong finish by the toy. But it leads me to wonder if I should skip Target next time and just grab the nearest piece of packaging (or piece of paper...she loves paper!) to keep her entertained?

Date Night

Matt and I enjoyed an evening together in the city at one of the SF Beer Week events. We got to taste a ton of different local beers and compare different brews from the various breweries.

It was also our date night in quite a while - thanks Grandma for babysitting!

Anna Banana

We started munching on solids this past week...whatever we have we just share a bit with her. So far, bananas have been the biggest hit. Her chewing and swallowing skills haven't quite developed yet.



So far we like sweet potatoes and bananas. Tonight we tried avocado, but she wasn't instantly in love with it (so a little bit of me wondered if she was my daugher...)

Sleepy Time

For Matt's birthday this weekend, Annabel got him the gift of sleep. As some of you know, we decided we needed to embark on the dreaded sleep training process after Annabel's sleeping habits took a nose-dive and we were 1) spending more and more time rocking our growing baby to sleep (15.5 lbs. this week!) and 2) getting up with her 4+ times a night after she discovered how to roll over.

The goal of sleep training is to help your child fall asleep on their own - this allows them to spend more time sleeping and less time trying to fall asleep...either when they go to bed or when they wake up in the middle of the night. We chose to "Ferberize", or the cry it out method, where the child is left alone to fall asleep (with some periodic check ins to comfort and reassure them that you have not abandoned them) and is often accompanied by a lot of crying. We tried other ways, but always ended up rocking or feeding her to sleep, which never solved our sleep issues.

Here's what we expected: Hours of crying (on her part and ours), an unhappy baby, and a sleepness night because we had to go into reassure her, but not pick her up, every 10 minutes.

Here's what we got: Sleep...almost immediately. Minimal crying and few wake ups in the night, which were all very brief. And only one feeding. The sleepness night, however, we got...every sound from the monitor gave us cause to spring to action, although it was unwarrented. Like Matt said, "we should have threatened her with sleep training weeks ago..."

We recognize we got lucky this time...we'll likely have to retrain her how to put herself to sleep in the future after things like sickness or travel interfer with her established sleeping habits. We can only hope to be this lucky again.

So, on to night 5 of sleep...

You know what they say, "Hair today, gone tomorrow!"

We had to give Annabel another "hair cut"...and it reminded us how much hair she used to have!

Here's her full mane at 1 week...

And here's her sweet comb over today...

She's still adorable, just with less hair. Guess she takes after her father ;)