The Hals Family World Adventures: August 2014

Hannah @ 5 months!

Hannah and mommy - 5 months!

Hannah - 5 months

Five Months! Hannah has been a ball of delightfulness since she hit the three month mark and is soaring through her milestones and changing so much each week! Some of her skills are subtle but if you're paying attention you can't help but marvel at how a little girl that tentatively sat up unassisted, can confidently sit unassisted within a week's time.

I took these a few day or two after she hit four months - aren't they fun?!?

This month Hannah finally started grabbing her feet - I say finally because I think it is just the cutest thing and I was eagerly awaiting this one. She had been close for a while, but one afternoon tada! All she wanted to do if you put her on her back was hold her feet. :) Every time we go to change her (when she's not arching her back and twisting that is) she immediately and happily grabs her feet.

While we were visiting family in SC she started rocking excitedly with her whole body towards whatever it was she wanted while you were holding her and while she has been lifting her arms and reaching towards me to signal when she wants to be picked up on occasion, now she does so consistently and far more obviously.

Waiting as I fill the tub for her bath - look, Mom! No hands!

She also discovered splashing this month and does so happily at bath time. Makes things a bit messier (or wetter) for me, but she gets very excited! She also loves her bath toys now and loves to try to catch one that is floating in the tub so she can nom on it.

nom nom nom!

There was a patch mid month in which she had an obsession with sticking her tongue out. It was adorable. She would stick it out while she was concentrating or playing and also would stick it out any time she would make noise as if she was investigating how that would change all of her sounds (and it certainly did!).

And most significantly? At exactly four and a half months Hannah was sitting up unassisted! The rate of improvement with this was amazing too! Each week she was so much more confident and so much more stable. This was one of the other milestones I was so excited about - seriously what is cuter than a baby who can grab her feet and smile or a baby who sits up and grins at you or sits and plays with her toys?!! So freaking cute!

First moments she sat up unassisted - all of a sudden I realized she was no longer leaning against me!

"What, mom?! Just sitting up on my own - no big deal!"

She's quite happy about her new skills too! :)

Sleep?

It has gotten slightly better. As in...before, 95% of the time she woke every 2-3 hours. And that 5% was time that she spent waking every hour. Now it's maybe 80% of the time she wakes every 2-3 hours for food. 5% it's every hour and 15% of the time it is the greatly desired 4ish hour stretch I've been hoping for! Progress! We also had one glorious night when she slept six entire uninterrupted hours! It was Ahhhhmazing. Still plenty of room for improvement, but better!

Food?

Still exclusively breastfeeding even while being a working momma! (high fives self!)

We tried solids mid month at the disgression/gentle recommendation from our pediatrician. I started out very non-committal. Maybe she will like it, maybe not. She may not really be ready. She grabbed the spoon from me with both hands and shoved it in her mouth and was quite interested. So we started with brown rice cereal with breastmilk at first, incorporated bananas, tried oatmeal, it was going well. She loved sweet potatoes when we tried them...but then we hit a snag and had a night when she vomitted and vomitted. It didn't seem like an allergy...more like a sudden stomach bug. The next night we has something simple again (cause she was totally fine later) and she spit up again. When I thought back I realized she had been spitting up after eating most nights. And thus, we discontinued solids. She just didn't seem fully ready when I connected the dots of the different issues. It wasn't worth it to me to keep pushing her, and my mommy instinct said to discontinue and we have been happily exclusively nursing again ever since.

Favorites?

Her fascination and excitement for toys is stronger than ever and we have had fun playing in the evenings and on the weekends. We also debuted the exersaucer this month (which Arthur and Kristina generously loaned us) and it is a huge huge hit. She loves being able to stand and rotate in a circle and really likes moving from one toy to the next. The classic tower of big fat colorful plastic donut shaped objects that are stacked on a cylinder was a gift from my mom that was also a huge hit. I wasn't sure if babies really liked those things and it was just a cliche thing or if they genuinely tended to love it for various reasons....but Hannah quickly answered my question and one of her favorite activities when we sit her up is to adorably sit on the floor and dismantle the tower as she noms on each colorful piece. She also took a major interest in her bath toys this month - it's seriously just the cutest thing. And when Daniel's mom came to visit towards the end of the month she bought Hannah even more of the little soft plastic critters and a set of textured balls - again all a huge hit with Hannah!

facetiming with her grandma

She LOVES having the light aiden and anais blankets fluttered over her...this is her happily and excitedly waiting for one to fall over her! It's our favorite game! :)

We had an incident in which Hannah was slightly stuffy and then in the matter of an hour after she went to sleep she woke up raspy and honky and it sounded like it had moved into her chest. Kind of scary. Thankfully it didn't progress further, there was no fever, but we took her for a quick check the next day at the pediatrician just to make sure her lungs were clear. (I needed the peace of mind, particularly because of how quickly it had set in and on top of that Daniel was leaving for a week long work trip to California the next day and I was beginning my commute to DC again that week). But thankfully everything was clear! She was fine and it seemed like she sounded worse than she felt because while a little more clingy she was overall happy and smiley and her personality was still shining through.

Aww, not feeling so hot. :(

Yep, Still Growing! :)

Because we did the pediatrician check I know that just shy of five months she was weighing in at 16 pounds. Most babies double their birth weight by five months, but Hannah's birth weight was so high I am not surprised she hasn't yet. If she had come out at 8 pounds she would have doubled...which is a totally normal weight, so I'm not worried at all. There's no doubt she is steadily growing! Frequently with her pajamas the losing factor is the feet...her feet are often too long for the pjs before length becomes a factor! Clothes wise the 3-6 month outfits are mainly too small and the six month outfits are either just right or are starting to become too tight. It makes me sad because her six month clothing collection is probably the most extensive and is full of so many beautiful outfits that I absolutely love.

Gearing up to sort some of the 0-6 month size things that Hannah has outgrown! We are onto box 2! Yikes!

Her eyes are currently a beautiful hazel and I would absolutely love to hit "freeze" and keep them exactly the way they are - they are green with brown streaks and it's just a really stunning combination. In the back, her hair is still a dark brown, but her eyebrows and the top of her head have undeniable hints of red...I so hope she will be an auburn! For her sake, because I have so deeply loved having red hair, it has always been one of the absolute favorite physical qualities about myself. I would be so happy to know I gave her that gift. Only time will tell!

Look at those beautiful eyes!

The Pups

The pups adore Hannah and Hannah absolutely loves her puppies!!! Chance is becoming more and more comfortable with Hannah's attempts to snuggle. The trickiest thing is keeping Hannah from licking the dogs. Hahaha. She is at the stage where everything is meant to be nommed on so when she gets to pet Chance or grab his fur she automatically tries to bury her head (and open ready-to-taste-the-world mouth) into the dog. We supervise extensively and are working on it! Hannah and Holly love to play! Holly does a fun nuzzling thing with her nose that makes Hannah laugh and laugh. And even though Holly does still try to slip into puppy play mode (which is only a problem if she wants to do the play biting part), I have been amazed by her patience with Hannah and how un phased she is when Hannah yanks on her ear, or goes to pet her and grabs her face instead. (Again, all majorly supervised...but they are all doing great!)

licking party? I have no idea! This photo so so so cracks me up. But seriously...we really try to not let her lick the puppies

Hannah super happy, Chance very protective

Daddy

Daniel's morning routine will never be the same! I have to leave fifteen to thirty minutes after he wakes up and from that point he is on his own with Hannah. He puts her in the jogging stroller to run, showers, eats breakfast all while mastering the art of keeping the Hannah happy. And since daycare is beside his work he is the main one on duty to drop off and pick up. They are bonding and surviving the frustrating moments when Hannah wants to be held....and all you need to do is get dressed first but she cries while you throw your clothes on (one of my least favorite type of Hannah moments). Overall though I think it's been good for them. She lights up when he walks in the room and if we were sitting on the couch she tries to demand his continual attention, eye contact, and smiles. She reaches for him and they are just adorable together.

Daniel also flew out to California again for another week at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and this time he got to take a day trip out to Goldstone - the military base that houses the United State's portion of the DSN (Deep Space Network). The further away the spacecraft and its signal, the larger the satellite dish needs to be! So...the DSN is a series of utterly massive satellite dishes that communicate with our most "far out" space craft. He's currently working on New Horizons (the one going past Pluto...eta - next summer!) and they will be using a series of three 70 METER dishes (located at Goldstone, CA; Madrid, Spain; and Canberra, Australia) to receive all the data from the device as it cruises by the planet. Yep. They still call it a planet because when they launched the device it technically was one still. He had a great trip, was really in awe of the dishes and facilities, and probably enjoyed a night on uninterrupted sleep (I told him not to tell me, haha).

at JPL

with coworkers at JPL - Daniel is an official "escort" now

some of the massive dishes at Goldstone...hard to grasp proportions

at Goldstone! hard to really capture size and proportion

one of the largest satellite dishes in the world, part of the DSN (deep space network) at Goldstone, CA

Mommy

I am still doing really well and so loving the heart melting moments and joy of being Hannah's mom. It has been a bizarre month at work - there was a fire in the server room at my school, which wiped out connectivity for the school (and was right down the hall from my office). So between smoke damage, water damage, no wifi, no email server, no interoffice phone network, and some days no electricity (and therefore no AC), I was asked to work from home for just over two weeks. As I would call every few days to check in the general notion was "do you have AC and wifi where you are? Good, then stay there!" The upside of this situation was that I regained the time I generally lost driving - so I could sleep in a good bit, ran errands after I finished work at 4, had time to cook dinner some evenings before Daniel and Hannah came home, would work out at the pool before they came home, or on some awesome afternoons I would spring Hannah as soon as I could get there after 4 pm. The downside? Holy social isolation. Just as I had embraced the notion of being back out in the work world with other people I was isolated to home. When I was home with Hannah in the months prior I would take Hannah out and we would go somewhere almost every single day, doing social things to meet other moms 1-3 times a week. While I could work from a coffee shop or a lunch place to get out, I was still tethered to my working pumping schedule (and it's miserable to pump in your car in July/August) and we had canceled the dog walker until I started commuting again, so I had to work that in as well. I also had a really hard time sitting at home working on my job when all I could think about around me were all of the jobs that I had neglected around the house since I had Hannah. Dust was suddenly noticeable everywhere, etc. So for me? Nope. Not meant to work from home. If I did the conditions would have to be different. But it was temporary and I did really enjoy the extra sleep, extra moments with Hannah, and the extra time in the afternoon!

One of the work from home days I left at 4 with the puppies, we picked Hannah up from daycare, and went for a long walk through the lush forests around here! Lovely afternoon!!! She also LOVES her new ergo 360!

On the upside - I am really excited about my job and otherwise enjoying it. I am really really really enjoying Hannah and the time I get to spend with her. I do have a bit of a guilty mom complex. Not for working necessarily, but I feel very compelled to spend every moment I can with Hannah (I really want to as well) but frequently at the detriment to myself. On the weekends I catch myself falling into the mentality that having a job is what I do for myself, it's selfish to want more than that or to spend any time doing other things (like organizing or cooking anything extra than the bare necessities or taking a few minutes for winding down computer time). It sounds ridiculous. But it's definitely something I struggle with. I have a hard time even justifying going to the gym to swim by myself. I'm working on finding balance. But really, there's only so much time in the day...and while Hannah is awake, it's hard not to soak up every last second of those loving, gummy smiles!

Even though I am busy and even though it can be very crazy around here, deep down there is a wonderful confident, beaming happiness inside me. I feel like we have finally figured out all the pieces to our Maryland puzzle and have a real idea of what the picture looks like and I am so excited about what we have found. My big leap seems so...miraculously purposeful and fulfilled. :)

So Hannah is growing, smiling, and a beautifully spirited, happy baby! We have visited family in SC and seen all four of the grandparents this month! She has gotten to sleep in both of her grandmother's arms this month too. She also met our dear friends Patrick and Casey! We also survived a car trip to SC and back...even though on the way down we had food poisoning or a stomach bug and just had a hell of a time makin g it there and surviving the first day. Daniel's mom also visited for an entire week while Daniel was in California and got to really soak in some quality Hannah time. Daniel and I also celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary (we bought the tickets on our anniversary - this was the actual event) and went to a lovely dinner in DC and saw the Broadway Lion King production at the Kennedy Center and have our first long night out since we had Hannah five months prior. (Much needed and much enjoyed!) She's sitting up, she's grabbing her toes, and greets us with a beautiful beaming, gummy smile every morning! :)