The Binky Challenge

Lately (meaning today and yesterday) Claire has started sucking on her binky upside-down.

I'm not sure if this is because she wants it that way or because she can't quite figure out how to flip it over.

Claire appears to have the dexterity to turn it over.

But she's at a point in life where she just wants to put anything and everything in her mouth, and it seems to be an unspoken challenge to get as much of anything inside as you can without choking.

As you can see, she's not too particular about how the Binky goes in, just that it does.
And yesterday she managed to fit the entire Binky in her mouth except for a very small part before she started gagging, and I pulled it out from her cheeks.

 "They" warn you not to buy passifiers that are not a single piece because they could come apart while the baby is sucking and then cause choking and death. But no one said anything about choking on the whole thing.

I guess not all babies have the cheeks to put whole Binkies inside!

So yeah, she likes her Binky, she's just not very particular about the direction.

Oh yeah, she also sits--kinda.

5 Months

We can't believe that Claire is 5 months old now!

She likes to eat anything, especially paper and cell phones, and is getting very good at sitting and standing with just a little support! Her biggest struggle is tipping over. When she stands, she usually gets tired and squats before she falls over because we're holding both of her arms.

She rolls over from tummy to back with ease and will roll over from back to tummy if you offer your finger for her to pull against.

Although she isn't crawling, Claire does push herself in a circle as she tries to follow toys that she accidentally pushes slightly out of reach.

Claire is very vocal and laughs a lot.
It's not always easy to get her to smile; she really likes to just stare at things. It makes people think she's very serious.



She isn't incredibly attached to anything: her binky, any one finger, any toys or books. She just changes her mind all the time and likes just about everything equally well.

Claire smiles wide when she is kissed on her chubby little cheeks and giggles when you throw her in the air or bounce her on your knee.

She also thinks spontaneous noises are hilarious, like hiccups or sneezes.




If someone is nearby, Claire will often play on her own for up to 10 or 15 minutes.


We just started feeding her solid foods this week, and she loves it!
She still loves bath time with daddy.


Our little Claire-bear is still wearing 6 month clothes and almost fills a size one (3-6 month) shoe.
Her hair is getting more blonde each month, and she has pretty dark blue eyes for sure.

She wakes up twice at night, but I don't think she actually needs to eat. She goes back to sleep almost immediately. We love listening to her talk and giggle by herself when she wakes up in the morning.

She is such a joy to have around, and it is so much fun watching her learn and grow!

Baby's 1st Christmas!

It was our first Christmas as a little family!

We started the season by decorating with festive joy the day after Thanksgiving! Of course we didn't get all the way done that day because we found a TV stand and it took almost the whole day to put it together. Claire loves sparkly Christmas lights!

Once again, as the holiday season rolled around Peter was busy at work trying to finish products. A new board was scheduled to be finished on December 23rd, so Peter offered to work from Utah right after Christmas as long as he could take vacation days the week before.
So together we made cookies and candies for friends and family on Monday, December 19th using my new KitchenAid Stand Mixer!!! Teeheee!

Tuesday we packed for our trip to Utah and finished making cookies. Tuesday evening we attempted to deliver the cookies, but were interrupted before we left the driveway of our apartment complex by a phone call from the boss--some things you just don't ignore!
So an hour later we were on our way out again to deliver our treats.
Short holiday visits with nearby friends were a welcomed break from packing. Which continued briefly that night and on into the next morning when I was finally able to pack Claire's things because she wasn't sleeping.
Packing the car took even longer because we had to include a full-size computer keyboard, 23" monitor, and small CPU for the week after Christmas when Peter would be working remotely. HA! It was packed and squishy! I had to crawl over a bag in order to get in my seat in the back next to Claire. I was sure to take Dramamine in order to avoid inevitable sickness from being in the back seat.

Our original "leave by" time was postponed from 6:30-7am when Claire woke up, to 11am when everything was packed and ready to go. (I know, typically Melanie). But traveling for only half of the day was great for Claire. She woke and slept and played like normal while we were in the car. She was a little more fussy because she wanted to move, but we took breaks every few hours. But by 6:30pm she was out for the night and we were free to go as far down the road as fast as we could without needing a break ourselves and becoming dangerous. We arrived in Utah after 13 hours. Not too bad.

Everyone was so excited to meet Claire!
She was held constantly and was never allowed to cry on the floor :)

 
Once she started crying once she was put in bed, and my dad got her out and brought her upstairs. I accidentally got a bit more upset than I intended when I realized what had happened (we don't take her out of bed at night).

We were able to take Claire to see the lights at Temple square.  Did I mention she loves sparkly Christmas lights?

It got very cold, but luckily grandpa Fetty was there to save the day!

We spent Christmas-time with Melanie's family. Claire had so much fun meeting all the new people in her family!

As always, aunt Janna make the best food

Peter finally got some time to put together his gingerbread train!

 
Claire met her great-grandparents for the first time, and she was all smiles. :)

One of Peter's favorite things about visiting the Jenson family is the card games!

Since we were in Utah, Peter was finally able to sport his favorite beanie.  

On Christmas Claire made out with a bunch of books and new clothes! She did pretty well opening presents. She was really eager to eat the paper so she would grab onto it and hold on tight while either Peter or I pulled and twisted the rest of the box away.

It was so much fun to be together with all of my family. And it was nice to give my arms a break from holding Claire everyday. But I gotta say, getting back into it again has been killer! She must have gained a pound or two over that week and a half that we were gone because I'm not used to the weight any more!

We are so grateful to have such a wonderful family!

Mobile Project

At the request of one of my loyal followers, ;) here is the account of my adventures in making a mobile for my cute daughter!

More than a year ago I saw a clip while watching Studio5 in Utah about making a mobile from paper, ribbon, and an embroidery hoop. I filed that idea away. At the time, I actually thought that a butterfly mobile was really cheesy. Haha.

So now having a daughter who I want to fall asleep in her crib, I decided she needed something to look at while in bed. Hence the need for a mobile.

I found the tutorial online here.

My mom gave me a Cricut cutting machine last Christmas? I think. And so I decided to use the cartridges that I have and go with a butterfly and flower theme.
You may recall that her bedding has both flowers and a few butterflies on it from this post.
So I used my Cricut to cut all of the paper pieces that hang from the mobile. There are 136 punch outs--68 pairs (one on each side of a Zot glue dot). I cut my pieces at 2" and 1.5".

Then I stretched a wire that I found in the jewelry section of JoAnn's across the diameter of the hoop and twisted it around the hoop with pliers to secure it. I crossed a second wire and repeated that step.

Then I cut 20 feet of ribbon to tie around a 12 inch embroidery hoop. I only used the inside piece because I didn't want the tightening knob sticking out. We also decided to count out how many pieces of ribbon I had so I knew how many to tie in each quarter of the hoop. It would have had a few empty inches at the end if we hadn't counted it out. (Peter thought of this after I finished tying the first quarter.)

After tying on all the ribbons, I matched all of the paper pieces up and stuck them together on 20" pieces of fishing line using Medium sized Zots. Most of the time I stretched the Zots to make them cover more space.

Then I arranged all of the pieces of fishing line according to height. (I varied how far apart I glued each shape on every line.) The longest one went in the center of the two wires. Then the next longest went in the middle of the wires, and the rest went along the embroidery hoop.

I glued 3 thick pieces of ribbon around the hoop to tie and hang the mobile from (the length of the roll only allowed me 3 pieces at the size I wanted them to be.)

Then I hung it up in Claire's room.

It took me probably 3 weeks to do all of it just because I only worked on it at night after Claire went to bed and before I went to bed. Cutting the paper definitely took the longest, even with the Cricut. I don't know if it would go faster with a regular punch though. You could punch multiple papers at one time, but I didn't do that. I was going to tie an organza bow at the top to cover the lame knot, but I can't tie a pretty bow apparently. 

Overall, I think it turned out really cute. Obviously we put the picture up before I decided to put up a mobile, so that doesn't look so great. But Claire definitely looked at it for at least the first day. I don't know anymore though because she looks at me when I come into or even near the room.

One other note, I had a hard time finding papers to match her bedding, so I decided to just ignore it and do something that was cute and coordinated.

So maybe you too are interested in making a mobile? It's definitely an easy project to do while watching TV :D

4 Months Old

Here we are at almost four and a half months and I'm just getting to posting!

We kind of missed month three (oops!). But as I recall, I felt at that time she was a lot the same as month two except bigger and a little stronger.

Now at four months she has really changed! She smiles and giggles and plays little games. She still stares in awe when someone or something new comes along, but for the most part she reacts to everything! She stopped babbling temporarily and has instead chosen to communicate her thoughts through high pitched squeals. She isn't necessarily happy or excited when she squeals. She just discovered one day a week or two ago that she could make a funny noise with her voice that made her two favorite people laugh. Ahhh.

We're working on sitting up and pushing up onto her hands for tummy time. Just in the last week she's started sitting straighter in her bumbo seat. She still doesn't roll over regularly. I can tell she's getting over the surprise of it though.

She is still being nursed full-time. While nursing, she enjoys stretching her top arm and whacking me in the face with it.

Since doing a bit of sleep training a couple weeks ago, she sucks her thumb much more. She also has discovered her new favorite chew toy, my hair! She likes to grab a fist full of hair and then suck on her thumb with the hair.

I must have great tasting conditioner! Sleep training has also made bedtime 20 minutes shorter and much happier. If she cries, it's only for about 5 minutes. We're still working on self-soothing for nap times, but it's definitely better! I no longer spend 15-20 minutes rocking her every time she sleeps, unless I want to. It had gotten to the point where she would only go to sleep in my arms, holding a fist-full of hair, and nuzzled into my neck, arm pit, elbow, or cleavage. Now she snuggles for a few minutes and then goes into her crib.

She stopped sleeping all the way through the night, and I don't know if she's actually hungry at night or not. We wake up usually only once, eat then sleep again until 6:30am. It's really not too terrible.

The rest of her schedule only changes slightly every day. She wakes up between 6:30 and 7:30am. Then she eats and goes to sleep again in an hour and a half to two hours all day long. She usually takes 3 naps. The first two had been only 50 minutes, but I recently learned that she would probably sleep another hour if I just let her cry. Today I just picked her up and held her for 5 minutes and she slept another hour and 15 minutes! The last nap is usually about 30-40 minutes at about 5 pm. Every other day we go on a walk around the neighborhood at 4pm and she falls asleep right before we get home. Then from 6-7p we are taking a bath, reading stories, and generally calming down for bed time. She's been falling asleep about 6:45p. Peter said it feels like a date every night because it's like we're escaping from the baby. Hehe!

Most of her hair is still on her head. She does have a ring where it is thinner though. She also has pretty golden strands that shimmer from underneath the dark tips. Her eyes are a sparkly blue like her daddy's.

Her feet are still fairly small. They aren't chubby like the rest of her. She doesn't quite fit into size one shoes which are supposed to be 3-6 months. I can pinch the toe of the shoe while she wears them. But the rest of her is squeezably and deliciously chubby!

She very comfortably wears 6 month clothes and will likely be transitioning into 9 month clothes within the next month. At her pediatrician visit on Wednesday, December 7, she weighed exactly 16 lbs and was 25 inches tall.

This is what she wore to the Doctor's office last week. Everyone thought she was so cute in all of her matching glory! The headband really made the outfit! Thanks Bonnie!

We won't be starting solid foods for at least another month to give her eczema more time to clear up. We don't want to confuse an allergic reaction with that. Her eczema is looking much better. The doctor thinks it is just a temporary baby thing induced by drool. My mom called it "acid spit"!

She has ticklish ribs and likes to play peek-a-boo. I read to her every day, but she's not terribly interested. She also doesn't care to watch tv. She'll look over occasionally but quickly gets bored and squirms away. She laughs a lot when she's tired, but not yet overtired. She doesn't spit-up or drool a ton. She also doesn't cry all the time. She can get whiney though! She also loves to stare at this musical turtle that lights up.

She's stopped crying every time we get in the car. I think it's because we got a mirror for her with dangling animals to look at. She loves to stare at it!

That's about all there is to know about Claire right now. I'm sure I'll get around to posting more later. Being a mom is demanding stuff!