Uh-oh!

Caroline has had some pretty significant developmental advances in the last couple of weeks. One of my favorites is her newest word: Uh-oh! She doesn't say it consistently yet, but she does say it appropriately, right after she drops something. It has become a really fun game to drop things off of her high chair and say, "Uh-oh!" and then grin at us. We then have about 5 seconds to pick up the object and give it back before Her Majesty gets mad. I remember this game from when Anna was little, and fortunately, it was a fairly short phase. Good times.

She has also started giving kisses. Well, "kisses" is probably not the most accurate description. It's more like she's trying to eat your head, but it's still adorable. She started that about a week ago. I was kissing her cheeks (which are yummy and very kissable!), and she suddenly turned her head and laid a big one on my cheek. Fortunately, I don't mind a little baby slobber, and she just looked so proud of herself afterwards!

Another new trick: clapping. This one just started yesterday. Prior to that she would occasionally "clap" her fists together, but she hadn't quite gotten the hands open to make noise. Yesterday, she was sitting on the floor with her toys and just started clapping her hands and making noise. Again, she looked at me with a huge grin, obviously proud of her new accomplishment!

Still no crawling yet, but Caroline is trying really hard and manages to move herself, even though I can't always figure out how she's accomplished it! She's great at pushing herself backwards on her tummy, but even when she's sitting up, she manages to move herself around. Today, she covered about two square yards without actually using any discernable form of locomotion. She's also figured out the beginnings of how to pull up, and she managed to pull herself up onto her knees in her crib the other day.

Here's a picture of one of Caroline's "push ups". She has the basic idea, but she can't seem to get the arms and legs coordinated.



Here she is, happily playing with her toys. She has recently developed an ability to entertain herself for longer periods than before, so I can actually put her down for more than 5 minutes at a time. Let me just say that it is about time!



And here is one of her favorite new activities: taking things out and putting them back in again. Here, she had her whole basket of toys, which was fun, but it doesn't compare to the fabulous Stride Rite box I gave her a day or two later.



Big Sister Anna has recently taken an interest in the digital camera, and she got a GREAT picture of Caroline the other day. We may have a budding photographer on our hands! And don't you just want to pinch those chubby cheeks?

8 Months Old!

Where has the time gone? My tiny baby girl, who lost so much weight and looked so scrawny for so long, is a chubby, active 8 month old. Her current unofficial stats: 18 lb. 8 oz., which keeps her in about the 60th percentile for weight, and 28 1/2 inches, which is around 95th percentile for height. Her hair, which has always been abundant, has become a source of much hilarity lately. I keep it in pigtails during the day to keep it out of her eyes, but when I take them out at night, she looks just like one of those pencil trolls kids used to have:



Caroline has started talking more and more in the last month. She says "mama" and "dada", and she babbles a lot. She's also starting to recognize and use a couple of signs, including the sign for "milk" which is what we use for nursing. She's still eating solids once a day, and she shows a definite preference for fruit over vegetables. She still doesn't really "get" the sippy cup, and her tongue still tends to thrust out any food that is more solid than the pureed stuff that comes in the jars.

Still no crawling yet. She is getting better at scrunching her knees up underneath herself, but she hasn't gotten the forward momentum thing down yet. If I put her down on the laminate floor in the study, she can kind of slide herself around, though, and she always manages to get herself to any toys that are out of reach, so she's moving -- just not very efficiently yet!



Oh, and she now has THREE teeth! The funny thing is that she got the bottom two just about the time that Anna lost her bottom two. Now, Caroline is getting her top left incisor, and Anna is just about to lose her top left incisor. So we've figured out that as Big Sister is losing them, Little Sister is finding them! Unfortunately, now that she has teeth on the top and bottom, she's figured out how to grind them. Now THAT is a sound that will send shivers down your spine .

I don't have a good picture of Caroline's new teeth yet, but here's one of Anna's first lost one. Now that the second one is gone, she has a big hole in her head!



Speaking of Anna, she made us so proud last Sunday. The children's choir was supposed to sing in church, but Anna was the only kid who showed up. So she sang a solo. She did a beautiful job, and she didn't look nervous at all. When she finished, she just glowed.

Anna has also recently qualified for the gifted and talented program at school. This is a HUGE relief for me because her kindergarten situation this year has been less than fabulous, mostly because there are a lot of discipline problems in her class, and the kids like Anna who don't get in trouble all the time tend to sort of get ignored. They're starting GT instruction this week, and I think they cluster the GT kids in first grade, so hopefully the school situation will look up really soon!

We took the girls to New Mexico and Colorado over spring break, and they got to see snow for the first time. I got a few pictures, and I'll try to post them in the next day or two. In the meantime, here's a picture of my two sweet girls together!



And here's one of Jimmy and Anna goofing off with one of the baby carriers. It's technically a "toddler" carrier, and it's supposed to carry up to 65 pounds. Turns out, they're not exaggerating! Anna weighs about 50 pounds, and Jimmy said it was surprisingly comfortable to wear her. Not that he would want to do it for long, but I guess if you had a monster toddler or something, this would be the backpack for you!

Give me a break!

Most of you know that I am a die-hard baby wearer. I wore Anna in a sling and a Baby Bjorn for most of the first year of her life. With Caroline, I have discovered a whole world of baby carriers, and I've used slings, wraps, Asian-style baby carriers (the current favorite), and several other types of carriers. Both my girls have hated the carseat and/or stroller, but they've loved being up where the action is and close to Mama.

Well.

Consumer Reports just issued an article warning parents against baby slings on their Safety Blog (link here, if you'd like to read the whole article). Why? Because there have apparently been 22 babies injured in baby slings in the last TEN YEARS. Yes, that's 22 babies total, or an average of about 2 a year. Most injuries were related to user error and/or falling while wearing the baby. But Consumer Reports states, "For now, we think there are better ways of transporting infants including strollers, hand-held infant carrier/car seats".

Okay, let's examine this issue. First, Consumer Reports states, "Baby slings may be fashionable among Hollywood stars and other new parents." Never mind that mothers have been carrying their babies in cloth slings for THOUSANDS OF YEARS. So yeah. They're just the latest fashion trend. Second, there were 13,000 children under the age of 3 seen in emergency rooms last year because they fell out of strollers. THIRTEEN THOUSAND. In one year. This is only the kids who fell out of the strollers. That number doesn't even include the number of children who might have been injured when the stroller collapsed or who might have gotten tangled up if they weren't strapped in tightly enough.

So obviously, strollers are not a safer option. But let's examine carseats. Surely they're much safer than slings, since they're designed to keep babies safe in cars, right? Not so much. A quick Google search reveals that Evenflo recalled one of its infant carseats because the handle mechanism could suddenly release, spilling the baby onto the ground. This resulted in 97 injuries over a 10-year period -- far more than the 22 injuries reported from baby slings, and that's just ONE BRAND of carseat. There have also been babies injuried or killed because they were sleeping in the carriers without being strapped in tightly, and they slipped down and suffocated or got tangled in the straps. Oh, and since 85-90% of carseats are installed incorrectly in cars (that number includes the misuse of the harness, which is often left too loose or positioned improperly), the user error rate is obviously pretty high, even when just using them as infant carriers. Parents also tend to prop infant carseats into the child seat part of shopping carts in the grocery store, which can cause the cart to be top heavy and tip over, causing injuries. So adding all of these up results in a much higher number of injures resulting from infant carseat carriers than from baby slings.

Caroline has gotten too big for me to be very comfortable carrying her in a one-shouldered sling these days, so I don't use it very often anymore. Instead, we've gone to a variety of two-shouldered wraps and carriers. But if I have another baby, I will not hesitate to use the sling again. Yes, there's always the slight risk that I could trip and fall while wearing him/her, but that risk would be the same if I were carrying her in my arms (or possibly higher, since I wouldn't have my arms to break the fall), and I don't see anyone advocating that people stop carrying their babies in arms!

This is just one more reason that I have stopped referring to Consumer Reports when I shop. Between this article and their recent infant carseat testing fiasco (they had to rescind all the information they put out because they tested the seats incorrectly), I just can't take them seriously anymore.

New Pictures!

I finally got Anna and Caroline to the portrait studio to get their pictures taken together. They turned out SO GREAT! The photographer was fabulous with both of them and managed to get lots of great smiles from both girls. Caroline was in a great mood, and he managed to get Anna very comfortable and relaxed, which helped because her smile has started to look kind of fake in pictures lately.

As before, I couldn't narrow it down, so I ended up with a TON of pictures. Here are a few for your enjoyment. The first pose is the one that I chose for the large package with lots of sheets. If you'll recall, in Caroline's 2-month pictures, we got a great one with her tongue out. Well, she was in a tongue-sticking-out mood again, and I think this picture is just adorable!



We got a couple of other great pictures of the girls together:




And some individual shots, as well:





There were more good ones, but those are my favorites, overall. Maybe I'll post some more tomorrow!

Official Stats

Caroline went to the doctor yesterday, and we have the new official stats. She is 17 pounds even, which is 75th percentile for weight, and she's 27 1/4 inches long, which is 90th percentile for height, according to the doctor's charts, which are based on formula-fed babies. According to my WHO chart based on breastfed babies, she's in about the 65th percentile for weight and the 97th for height! She's my tall, skinny girl!

Last night, we went to the Outback Steakhouse for Jimmy's birthday. Caroline was happy in her carseat for about 20 minutes, but after that, she wanted out, so I held her the rest of the meal. It was a big grab fest from then on out! First, she reached for my margarita, but I didn't want to share :-) Then she went for my water glass. I did let her have a little sip, but she didn't really know what to do after the water went into her mouth, so she just sort of let it dribble down her chin. Next, she reached for the steak knife. I don't think so! Finally, I decided to let her play with one of those cardboard coasters, figuring it was pretty harmless. Well, she managed to bite off a small chunk of the corner and swallow it! Yikes! But given her reaction to that compared to the rice cereal we've given her the last several nights, I'd say that cardboard must have tasted better!

When we got home, we tried some bananas, and those were definitely more popular than the cereal or the avocado I've given her the last couple of nights. She kept sticking out her tongue and trying to lick the spoon, but she hasn't quite figured out that she needs to open her mouth so we can spoon the food in. I think she got a couple of decent bites into her, though, and she held off on blowing raspberries until after she had swallowed the last little bit, so last night's dinner was a much cleaner affair than the one before!

What a cutie!

Wow, three updates in less than a week! I'm on a roll!

I told Jimmy several days ago that Caroline seems to be a little quieter than Anna was at this age. Anna babbled NONSTOP, and honestly, she hasn't shut up for a single moment since she was Caroline's age! So the other day, I commented on how Caroline just doesn't babble like Anna did.

Apparently Caroline heard me and decided she could NOT be outdone by Big Sister! Over the last two days, she has been doing a lot more babbling. Today in Sunday school, she had everyone in stitches because she talked and laughed and blew raspberries the whole time. Then we went out to lunch after church, and she embarked on a one-sided dialogue that was almost embarrassing in its volume. She's saying lots of "buh" and "bah" and "mah" sounds (yes, I've even heard a couple of Mamas in there, but Jimmy refuses to let them "count"!), and she peppers her "speech" with lots of squeals and squeaks. It's hilarious.

She also learned a new trick at dinner tonight. I tried to feed her some avocado, which was not exactly a hit. After a couple of bites, she decided that thrusting the green mess out with her tongue was not efficient enough, so she decided to try blowing a raspberry instead. So with each bite, she would wait until I pulled the spoon away from her mouth, and then....pphhhhhhbbbbbbttttttt! Green slime all over the place! I have to give her credit for coming up with it so quickly. I think it took Anna at least a month of eating solids before she figured out that trick!

A week of firsts

Caroline seems to have hit a "maturity spurt" over the last week or so and has had a lot of firsts. Monday morning, she cut her first two teeth. They are the front bottom ones, and they are SHARP! She's still trying to chew on whatever comes within her reach, so I've gotten my finger chomped on several times now. I've been amazed at how fast the teeth are growing. Monday, they weren't even really visible, but you could feel the little ridges just above the gumline. Today, you can see them poking above her gums if she opens her mouth. They're so cute, but I already miss her little toothless grin!

Caroline has also learned to sit pretty well on her own this week. Previously, she could balance for a few seconds if I sat her up just right, but she usually fell over fairly quickly. But yesterday afternoon, while we were waiting for Anna's bus, I set her on a towel on the front lawn, and she sat really well for over a minute! She also sat on the living room floor last night for Daddy.



Since Caroline will be six months old tomorrow, we decided to go ahead and start some solids with her yesterday. I was originally going to start with avocado rather than cereal because it actually has some nutritional value (cereal is mostly empty calories), but the avocado I bought several days ago still felt a little firm, so we did some cereal mixed with breastmilk instead. Last night, she actually seemed to like it pretty well and ate about a tablespoon. Tonight when I tried it again, though, she made a disgusted face and refused to eat much. She might have swallowed a tiny bit, but most of it came right back out as soon as I put it in! Anna thinks it's hilarious when she spits her food out!



We've also had some great advances in sleeping over the last few weeks. Around the time I posted about all of our sleep issues, I came across some information about the "4 month sleep regression". According to what I've read, it's very common for babies to become terrible sleepers around the time they're 4 months old, and Caroline is apparently the poster child for this problem. Apparently, this can cause a real problem because many parents decide they have to "do something" about a baby's sleep habits around 4 months because that's the point at which sleep deprivation really starts to wear on you as well. Because of this, lots of parents and babies get really frustrated because the parents are trying to train the baby to sleep at exactly the time that the baby is developmentally programmed to start waking up every half hour or so. Supposedly, most babies are ready to fall back into some more agreeable sleep patterns around 5 months or so.

So just after Caroline turned 5 months old, we started some gentle sleep "training" with her. I'm not a big fan of sticking a baby in a room to cry for hours by him/herself, so for us, this meant that Jimmy started going in if she woke up right after I put her down, rather than me going in and nursing her back to sleep. The first night, she cried for a while, but he managed to calm her down and get her back to sleep. After a few nights, I guess she figured it wasn't worth waking up if she didn't get to nurse, and she started sleeping 5 hours or so before waking! Woo-hoo! She's also going to sleep now without having to be nursed into a coma first, and we've been able to stop swaddling her. She's actually taking naps in the co-sleeper next to our bed instead of the swing now, too. She does occasionally cry a bit after I put her down for a nap or bed, but she rarely cries more than 3-5 minutes, and it's usually more of a "winding down" sort of cry than an outright screaming fit. She's now sleeping at night from about 9-2 and then from about 2:30-5:30 or 6:00, which is a vast improvement over the constant waking from a month ago.

We have a doctor's appointment Monday morning for the official stats. According to my scale, she's weighing somewhere between 16.5-17 pounds, but I have no idea how tall she is these days. It's definitely getting harder and harder to carry her around in the carseat (which adds about 10 pounds on top of the baby weight!), so we do a lot of baby wearing because it's more comfortable. Caroline also seems to like to be up where the action is. Here's a picture of her "helping" Daddy grill burgers the other night.



She also loves to give and receive kisses. Anna managed to capture this one of Caroline kissing me the other day. I just love sweet baby kisses!

Celebrity Baby Sighted in Houston Suburb!

This particular celebrity has been spotted at various malls, grocery stores, and shopping centers in the greater Houston area. It is suspected that she is hiding out in a Houston suburb, spending her time napping and enjoying chauffeured rides in a silver minivan.

Yes, Pebbles Flintstone is alive and well. You may remember the child star from her role in the Saturday morning cartoon The Flintstones.



Here is the star today. She appears to have aged well!



Miss Flintstone has been attempting to travel incognito to avoid the paparazzi, but one astute photographer snapped this picture while she was traveling with her entourage.



When asked if she has anything new in the works, the star commented, "Aaaahhhh baba bebob mamamada brrrrr pbbbbbbt."

Five Months Old!

Today, Caroline is officially five months old. And what a difference a few months make! Looking back on all we went through the first couple of months trying to get the breastfeeding started, I'm really amazed at how far we've come. Caroline has gone from her birth weight of 8 lb. 14 oz. to a low of 7 lb. 8 oz. to a current weight of 16 lb! And that's all on Mama's milk! Woo-hoo!

I was looking through some pictures of her the other night, and I was amazed at how skinny she was. Here's a picture of her when she was around a month old. She was so scrawny!



And here she is with Anna recently. Don't you just want to nibble on those fat little cheeks?



Developmentally, she's doing very well, too. She's still only rolling front to back, but she's working on the back to front thing as well. She can get herself over onto her side from her back, but she can't quite figure out how to get all the way over. I'm sure it will be soon, though! She still loves to stand and bounce, and she enjoys her Jumparoo and her new exersaucer that has lots of spinny, boingy, flippy things on it. She's really showing an interest in toys lately, too, and she grabs and manipulates them pretty well now. She also has learned to spin herself around on her belly pretty well, so if I put a toy just out of her reach on one side, she'll turn herself so that she's facing it. It would appear that we need to start thinking about babyproofing, since she's showing the first signs of becoming mobile!

Unfortunately, one thing that is NOT going well is the sleeping. I've never met such an unsleeping baby! She'll go down for the night fairly easily, but she's up every hour or two until I finally give in and bring her to bed with me, usually around 4 a.m. I don't mind her sleeping with us for a couple of hours in the morning or something, but I refuse to do the all-night co-sleeping thing. For one thing, it's just uncomfortable for me, since she wants to be nursing All Night Long when she's in bed with me. Unfortunately, that means a LOT of getting up and nursing back to sleep, so I'm not getting much sleep, either. She does nap during the day in the swing, but with Anna's school schedule, etc., I've had to wake her up from every single nap over the last 3 days. She's probably overtired (she's been EXTREMELY cranky the last couple of days), which might explain some of the night sleeping problems, but I don't know what to do about it, since I can't very well let my six year old hang out at school for an hour while I let the baby finish her nap! So I'm going to have to think on it and come up with a solution. Somehow.

In other news, Anna won an art contest at school today. She drew a cowboy for the rodeo contest, and she won first place in her class! I think they'll send her picture on for judging against all the winners now, and if she wins again, she'll get a ticket to the rodeo. I haven't seen the picture yet, but as soon as we get it back, I'll be sure to post it here!

The school has also been putting an emphasis on showing character (which they define as "how you act when you think no one is looking") over the last few weeks, and the kids can earn "character tickets" for doing nice things for people and being considerate. Anna has won more character tickets than anyone else in her class! I think the tickets are entered into a drawing at some point, but I'm not sure what the prize is. It sure does make a mommy proud to know that her baby is doing sweet things for people without being asked. She sure is a great kid! And I am a very blessed and lucky mommy!

Christmas!

Yes, I'm REALLY late with this update!

We went to Jimmy's parents' house for Christmas this year. We had a great visit, and Anna enjoyed hanging out with her cousin, Megan, who is 12 years old. It's funny, all of the grandchildren are spaced 6 years apart -- Megan is 12, Anna is 6, and Caroline is 0!

Anyway, while we were there, we had the traditional Swedish Christmas Eve meals. The afternoon meal is bread dipped in a kettle of meat and broth. I'd tell you the Swedish name, but I have no idea how to spell it! But it's delicious, and it generally includes my favorite Swedish dish: lefse. Lefse is a thin potato pancake that resembles a tortilla. You heat it and roll it up with butter and sugar -- YUM! The Christmas Eve evening meal starts with rice pudding (yum!) and finishes with lutefisk, which is cod soaked in lye and then boiled until it becomes a jiggling, gelatinous mass that I not-so-affectionally refer to as "fish jello". This non-Swede has not quite taken to it, but the rest of the family seems to like it. Even Anna, the oh-so-picky eater ate 6 bites (one for every year she's been alive!) and did pretty well with it.

After the evening meal, we opened the presents under the tree. Caroline got a Rainforest Jumparoo, which is a fabulous product that combines the concepts of an exersaucer and a doorway jumper. She loved it, and she spent most of the evening hanging out in it, bouncing and watching everyone open their gifts.



Anna got a variety of gifts, including books, DVDs, and some new nightgowns, which she loved and decided to model for us.



Christmas Day, we did the traditional Swedish feast of St. Lucia, which involves making breakfast in bed for the parents. Anna and Megan prepared the meal, and we all ate around MIL and FIL's bed. After that, it was Santa presents, and then it was off to my aunt's house to have Christmas with my family. It was a busy day, but we had lots of fun!