Sense of Humor

Keira is just about the happiest baby you will ever encounter. It is very easy to make her smile and her smile has been said to be the best smile anyone has ever seen, make hearts swell, and even spread happiness to the world. She spends most of her time with a contented smirk on her face. As content as she is all the time, it is very difficult to make her laugh. She squeals when she is excited and giggles a little from time to time, but I can count her whole-hearted laughs on one hand.

I have come to learn that, like me, she has a very unique sense of humor. Not just anything will make her laugh, and when something strikes her as humorous she laughs long and hard, but enjoy it while it lasts because it won't be funny again later.

The first belly laugh she made was a few months ago when her favorite sound to make was something like a dog panting. One night I imitated her panting and she thought it was hilarious. She laughed long enough that I could call up my mom to listen to her.

The next time was when I first played boo with her by putting a blanket over her then pulling it off and saying "Boo!"

The next occurrence was one night when I was changing her diaper she was making stubborn grunts while kicking her legs straight and I imitated her grunts which she thought was hysterical.

Some time later I was trying to entertain her so I tossed one of her toys up in the air and she started to chuckle. I did it again and again and she was falling over laughing.

Then tonight I put her in her high chair when I was getting ready to feed her. When I pulled her binky out of her mouth to feed her, she had quite a suction on it so I said "Pop!" when it cane out and she laughed the hardest she has ever laughed. Then I would pretend to suck on her pacifier then pull it away and say "pop" and take turns with her and she was laughing SO LOUD. It woke up Art and he came out to see what was going on. It was the first time he ever heard her laugh like that. Poor guy misses out on so much having to sleep during the day!

The things that make her laugh are so RANDOM and there is no way you could do anything to intentionally make her laugh. It's just whatever strikes her as entertaining at that given time. You could try to get her to laugh even 5 minutes later and she might smile, but you will never get her to laugh. Sometimes I wish she would laugh more often because I love hearing it SO MUCH, but it sure makes me savor the moment all the more when the time comes. I soak up every last drop of that humor and I LOVE IT.

One thing I don't love... she has reached the age of awareness that bed time means that I am going to leave her alone. She has been awesome about bet time up until about a week or two ago then all of the sudden... she could be fast asleep and the moment I lay her in her crib- wide awake and crying. I have been using the 5-10-15 method which, in short, is where you lay them down then come back in after 5 minutes and lay them back down, give them their pacifier and blanket or what not, then walk away. You repeat in intervals increasing by 5 minutes each time until they go to sleep on their own. It teaches them that you aren't going to run in there every time they cry without making them feel abandoned. She hasn't been too happy about this, but she has been doing better each day. She usually never makes it to the 15 minute check without passing out and sometimes goes to sleep without crying at all. It's been difficult, but I refuse to get trapped into rocking her to sleep every night or letting her stay up til odd hours of the night.

She has, however, developed an additional redeeming quality- as if she needed any more to compensate for the bed time troubles- she has learned to give kisses. She kisses me quite often, Grandma and Daddy too, but this was too funny. She was at my mom's house and my mom let her play with a baby doll for the first time. Keira grabbed it and gave it a big kiss! She gave it several open-mouthed smooches, one of which is captured in this picture.

I hope you enjoyed the rare pictures of me showing my braces, because I'm getting them off in 2 weeks! Hooray! I am so happy! After 5 years of orthodontic treatment, I am ready to show off my $10,000+ smile. I am hoping it makes a difference with my jaw joint disorder in the long run, but for now I am just looking forward to enjoying perfectly straight teeth, and I promise to wear my retainers this time.

The Better Part of a Year

My little baby is 8 months old! That is the better part of a year old! I am having a hard time coping with the thought that only 4 months from now she will be one year old. That is just not possible!

In the past month she...

learned how to crawl backward, then forward,

got her first injury requiring up to 20 stitches in her finger,

started standing up in her crib, then pulling herself up on just about everything she can get her hands on,

used her standing skills to pull herself up on the coffee table then side step all the way to the couch then walks across the front of the couch too,

learned how to drink through a straw and a sippy cup,

decided she loves to play patty cake and tries to do the hand motions herself,

started calling me MOM although her favorite sound is "buh".

She loves to touch cats and dogs and will gladly grab handfuls of fur if she gets the opportunity then SQUEALS!

She likes to ride on Daddy's shoulders and holds on to his hair.

She has three teeth- all on the bottom, and she loves to give kisses on your cheek.

I don't know what I ever did without her.

Unfortunately, I am now back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. Try as I may to retain some weight, my body had alternate plans. I can now easily fit into the jeans I bought right before I got pregnant- the jeans I had to buy because I got too skinny for all my other jeans- the jeans I swore I would never let myself fit in again- a juniors size 3 tall. I am putting myself on a weight gain and exercise diet in an attempt to gain some weight because I feel like a bag of bones. I am very uncomfortable in my own body and really don't care for how bony I look right now! Art says I just have to have more babies to make the weight stick, but I am not going to deploy that plan any time soon!

Just a Job

My job search has ended and my days of unemployment are soon behind me. I will start my job as an order tracker at Safeguard Business Systems on the 22nd. I am happy that I won't have to spend all of our savings to hold us over so we can still move this year, but as for the job itself, I wish I were more excited. They are in a good part of town, over in the business area on the west side of Riverpark, and they are paying me what I wanted. I should be thrilled, but the industry is business printing and promotional items which is nowhere close to real estate or law and the job, at least from their description of it, sounds too easy for the set of skills I have aquired over the years. The title alone makes me shudder- order tracker. Buhhh. A big part of me feels like I need to stay in a more glamorous industry and work in a more mentally demanding job, but then I realize that after 6 years straight of full time especially mentally demanding jobs I probably deserve an easy job in an industry that I'm not so emotionally connected to. Just a job to pay the bills.

I also feel a little conflicted spiritually. I really didn't receive any confirmation in my heart that this was the right job for me. I didn't really feel anything to the contrary either. I talked to Art about it and he said that he thinks that just because it isn't exactly the "right" thing for me doesn't mean that I shouldn't do it or that it won't work out. I think he's right. So for now it's "just a job" to me, but who knows- perhaps there is more in store for me than I realize. And maybe after my probation period I can talk them into giving me a better title... like Executive Order Supervisor or something. That would look way better on my resume.

The cutest girl I ever saw...

was sipping cider through a- cider through a straw!

Today we had an impromptu barbecue at Grandma's house and, as usual, Keira was very interested in what I was drinking. I remembered that Aunty Vivian always drinks with a straw and asked her if I could borrow one. I read somewhere that babies learn how to drink with a straw at a young age best because they still have their sucking instinct. Her first instinct was to chew on it, but it only took her a minute to get the hang of it. She was sipping cider- I mean juice- through that straw in no time.

Another fun thing to do with sucking skills... crawl around while sucking on a ribbon. I couldn't let the week pass without posting this picture.

Twenty Stitches

This morning, Keira was fussing for her bottle so I put her down in the middle of the living room to play while I went in to kitchen to make her bottle. Suddenly I heard her start crying- not just any cry but the "I got hurt" cry. I ran into the living room to see what happened and she had used her newly aquired forward crawling skills to approach the bunny's cage and had grabbed the door to the cage with both her hands, one of which was covered in blood.

I immediately burst into tears. I yelled for my husband who had just gotten out of the shower and ran her to the sink to rinse out her wound and assess the damage. Through tear filled eyes I could see that the bunny had bitten the backside of her pointer finger and sliced a huge gouge in her finger leaving a large flap of flesh and skin dangling over the wound. I yelled, "OH MY GOSH! OH MY GOSH! CALL MY MOM! CALL MY MOM!!!" My mom instruced me to put gauze over it and put pressure on it until the bleeding stopped and she came over as fast as she could with first aid supplies.

Keira was done crying after about 30 seconds. It took me more like a 30 minutes. When my mom got here she took one look at it and knew it would need stitches. We called up our trusty pediatrician, Dr. Jones and even though they were closed for lunch, they had us come in right away. About twenty stitches and lots of crying later, here she is right back to happy again. Looks like I have some cage reinforcements to do.

Unemployed

Despite my best efforts to maintain part time employment, I find myself undeniably unemployed. That's right folks, that fantastic job I got that I was so excited about was very short lived. After just four short weeks, they decided that they didn't have enough time in their busy schedules to bother to train someone who didn't already know everything they needed, nor did they have enough money to pay me what we agreed- as if I wasn't very clear with them in my interview that my experience in real estate did not encompass what they wanted me to do and as if THEY didn't set the rate of pay! They never even once sat down to train with me, yet never once expressed any discontentment with my work then out of the blue tell me they don't want me working for them any more.

I have never been so wronged in my entire life. Seriously. There are not enough angry words in the English language to describe my sentiments at this moment.

It's just so crazy because I have never been so sure I received an answer to my prayer than when I accepted that job, and now it's gone. I am not doubting that I made the right decision, but I am sure anxious to know what God has planned for me next! Maybe a stay at home mom??? :)

Bunny's Secret Hideaway

Let's face it, Bunny hasn't gotten much attention around here since the baby was born. It seems as though he has been replaced. As summer drawn near, his coat grows scraggly with no one to groom him. No one to trim his nails. No one to let him out of his cage. At first his neglect provoked angry body slams against the front of his cage and desperate attempts to leap out of the top of his play pen, but as time went on he more or less gave in to his captivity.

One of the many things I hoped to accomplish by switching to a part time job was to let Bunny out to play more, but it had been so long since he had been out to play that he headed straight for trouble as to make up for all the trouble making he could have done had he been out of his cage any length of time. I tried to cut him a deal to let him out on good behavior, but he refused. I can't say I blame the guy for building up such resentment toward me these past 7 months. When I let him out of his cage he doesn't want me to pet him, he doesn't want to play, he heads straight under the couch. I didn't hear any munching sounds, so I didn't think he was sinking his teeth into anything he shouldn't be so I let him be.

Time went on and Bunny got only short escapes from his prison, spending most of his time under the couch. The carpet and baseboards are totally ruined in my living room thanks to his younger days, but I mustered up the courage to assess what kind of new damage he had recently done under the couch. He spent way too much time there for him to NOT be up to something. I got the flashlight and crouched down and there, caught like a deer in the headlights, was Bunny peering out from the inside of my couch through a hole he made in the lining. He made his very own secret hideaway. I got out his old adversary, The Broom, and promptly scooted his furry rump out of there and secured the hole with his other enemy, The Phonebook.

Let this be a lesson that when someone mistreats you and you try to hide from them, they will hunt you down with a broom and ruin all your fun.

Speaking of fun... Baby can sit up on her own now! Quite well too. Here are her 7 month pictures I took at the apartments this week wherein she demonstrated her new skill.