Kisses

I have been working quite a bit lately, with just two full days off since December 3rd. Tomorrow though, I will reap the rewards with almost two weeks of vacation. As the month has progressed, I have been missing Sunny more and more. Yesterday, I had had a long night and was about to go back to sleep when I remembered I had to go back to work earlier than usual. I only had an hour and a half to spend with Sunny! Alan and I raced over to Jeff and Tammy's. I picked her up and suddenly I could breathe again. Then Alan told me the news:

"If you tell her to give you a kiss, she'll do it." And she did.

Communication is magical. For first few months, Sunny could just cry and hope we stumbled on the answer but now she looks and twists and shouts and smiles. She is just as tickled as Alan and I when we know what she is saying, so to speak. Her life is beginning to have new purposes beyond survival. If she wants a toy, she stretches and strains and screeches to try and get it. She is able to push herself towards it, but then her baby reflexes make her bat it away again and the cycle continues. Eventually, she gets frustrated and Alan or I will push the toy over to her. I interrupted her in these maneuvers in the first picture below, but as the second picture shows, she did not mind too much.



















Despite our growing comprehension of her baby needs, we remain clueless at times. When this happens, as it did this evening, she loses her energy to scream and just sighs, groans and whimpers. Her eyes plead with us to make something right. Sunny whimpered all the way through dinner, but then gave us some smiles and laughs when we played with her on the floor later. It is amazing babies do not get frustrated more often when they are constantly trying to do things they cannot.





Like getting food into their mouths:












We have a park a few blocks from our house and walked there the other day to get some exercises and give Sunny a chance to see other kids playing. As usual, Alan and I could not resist getting a few pictures.





This may be the last post before Christmas, so Merry Christmas fellow Sunny fans.

Thanks

For Thanksgiving this year, Alan and I had our parents over plus my Uncle Ken and Aunt Yvonne and Alan's sister Jenny and her boyfriend, Ian. It was my first year cooking the turkey and fixins', though luckily Tammy, Sandy, and Yvonne all helped me in preparing the feast. Sonia helped keep everything light by laughing and cooing. And pulling beards.



Little Sunny often finds grownups she does not see everyday a little frightening. Because of her separation anxiety, she did not care to be passed around the first day, but by Thanksgiving, she was more at ease. This fear takes hold even if she knows the person wanting to hold her. Funny how just when it gets to the point where I cannot hold her while stirring hot stuff, she does not want to be held by anyone but me or Alan. As you will see below, all the comotion tired her out for awhile, but when it was time for bed, she cried for half an hour to come back and join in the fun.



Besides sweet potatoes, Thanksgiving time brings another kind of baby food: dried leaves. Being inside gets a little old of both of us, and for her and Alan, so we often go on a little outing. This outing was just to our front yard, but she had so much fun! We are pretty laid back about the yard, so there are piles of leaves perfect for a baby. She liked to crush the leaves, bang on them, then give them a lick.



Sunny surprised herself by sitting alone, for a few seconds, just before Thanksgiving.




Random, adorable photo:

Picture day

Can't blog. Got a new camera.

Scootching

This morning I left Sonia in her play gym(for those not in the know- that is a colorful mat with overhanging arches that toys are attached to) and went to put out some mail. I came back in and she was completely off of her gym! She still has not gotten the hang of rolling from her stomach to her back but she found that she could stay on her back on use her legs to scootch around. It is amazing how far she got in a few minutes when I had never seen her do it before. I have always told people that babies learn fast and not to trust them. I should listen to myself. I also have to comment that I think it is a bit sad the word "gym" is used to describe a place for babies to play.



Sunny loves to eat. This is great because so do Alan and I. We had to start giving her four meals a day because she was wanting dinner at five. Today for lunch she had some butternut squash with olive oil and rice cereal. She loved it and ate almost a half cup, which is a huge amount for her. Her love of food and adventurousness with it are such good qualities that I am a bit nervous about doing something wrong and making her picky but hopefully these are inborn traits I cannot change.

Besides craving variety in her food, she also appreciates a change of scene in her day. Again, this is great because so do Alan and I, especially when each of us is alone with her for a whole day. Last Sunday we went to the Rio Grande Nature center. Sonia got to enjoy her new hobby which is pulling leaves off of branches. Her she is looking for unsuspecting leaves.



This week I am getting a new camera, so look for better pictures. Too bad I could not upload that video Alan took of her rolling over, but hopefully I will get more videos in. For our last picture today, I have Sunny getting ready for a photo shoot.

Mobile

Sonia gave us a treat on Halloween- she rolled over! I went to work in the morning and picked her up at Jeff and Tammy's. She had started her rolling antics there and had four rolls under her belt by the time I arrived. I took her home and for a few hours, we could hardly keep her on her back. At this point she has the ability to roll from her back to her left on to her tummy, but cannot reverse this maneuver or roll to her right. As a result, she is both liberated and trapped so we often have to rescue her as you will see in the video. The video is from Alan's video camera instead of my photo camera, so the quality is much better. Argh! Once again, I cannot get the video to load. Well, look for it soon. Instead, I offer a photo of Alan and Sonia. Or should I say, Alan and his Mini-me.




Sunny is just six months and sprouting. She is now 16 lbs 3 oz and 26 inches long. She is average for a six month old and off the charts if we correct for her prematurity.

Our neighbors, Betty and Richard, gave Sunny a couple of dolls that her size. She loves them. I would have thought she was too young to appreciate dolls but she smiles at them and strokes their faces. She looks so sweet and gentle until she tries to bite their heads off.

Laughter the video

Here is the video I described in my last post. It makes me smile every time, but then again, so does anything with Sonia's little face.

Laughter

Oh my dear blog readers...I really thought I could do an entry once a week, but here I have gone almost a month without a post. So much happens that I wish I could report daily, so I feel bad when those of you who live out of town have to go a long time without an update. She is almost 6 months!

Sunny has started laughing a lot more. Alan and Tammy and Jeff and I are all coming up with new ways to make her laugh because what works one day rarely works next. It is so much fun watching her crack up! I got the video below this morning while she was playing and did not know I had the camera. You will see in the video that she tend to stop playing and smiling once she knows the camera is on her...well, you would see but I cannot get the video to upload. Maybe I can put it on YouTube or something...stay tuned.

Food continues to be great fun for her. She really loves butternut squash and avocado, but has also tried peaches, oatmeal, and beans since the last post as well as little tastes of lo mien and pho. The last two came because Alan and I are not able to develop as quickly as Sonia and we forgot to bring food for her when we went out to eat. We will remember next time (I hope) because she reminds us throughout the meal what she wants and generally feels we should attend to her more. She has a point. I cannot wait for her to be old enough to eat what we are eating.



While Sonia has been a lot of fun for the four of us, she is getting pretty nervous around people she does not see as often. Alan and I have started telling her "I'll be back" when we go to a different room in the house because she often starts crying when she notices. Separation anxiety, though in her case it is more, I-have-seen-you-before-but-you-are-not-Mom/Dad/GrandmaTammy/GrandpaJeff anxiety. This causes her to stick out her lower lip and break out in hysterical crying that only returning to one of us can cure. There is actually a word for the lower lip action in Spanish, "Pucheros". It makes me both laugh and cry when I see her little pucheros. I hope this stage improves before Thanksgiving.

As the picture shows below, tummy time is no longer as tortuous. She is starting to reach for things on her side, so I think she will be rolling over in the next few weeks. After that, I will be chasing her around and have even less time to blog, but I really want to keep it up. Partly to keep everyone involved in her life, but also for selfish reasons as it is so fun to look back on these posts.

Toys

Sunny is shining through! She is starting to show us her personality which is great fun. She is also growling. Seriously. Just this morning, she was laying on her changing table, "grrahhh, grrrrr, grrkkkk, grrrrr". You sort of have to be there, but it is so cute. She sounds kind of intense and frustrated when she makes the sound. More than anything, she likes the way it feels in her throat. That and the reaction she gets from grown-ups. It totally cracked me up this morning.

Below is a great picture of Sunny that Lesley's daughter, Holly, took while we were visiting a month ago:



Sonia is not just playing with her voice. Toys have become more and more interesting, although she is still pretty happy with faces and hands. For her, variety is a top priority. We are trying to avoid a mountain of unnecessary toys, but lucky for us, she is content with the ten or so we have on rotation.




It has been really fun introducing her to veggies and fruits. So far she has tried carrots, bananas, green beans, apples, yams, spinach, and squash. All of them except the spinach either I or Tammy just cooked and pureed. Mostly, I think the pure stuff just tastes better but I also want her to have a taste for real food. Not that I am a purist about it. We often add the rice ceral flakes and I do not hesitate to give her a jar when it is what we have. She always makes crazy faces when she is trying something for the first time so it is difficult to know what she really loves, but we tried apples and spinach enough to know she would rather avoid those two.

Of course, there is no toy like an edible toy.

First Bites

Sonia has been looking at our food almost as much as our faces when we eat, so we decided to give her some. We started with rice cereal, though from her faces you would have thought we gave her chopped liver (apologies to all you liver fans). I think she was just getting used to it because at the next meal she smiled as she ate. She tried some bananas at Grandma Tammy and Grandpa Jeff's house. Those were also met with surprise, then acceptance. She remembers to chew and swallow with about every fifth bite so most of what we give her ends up on her rather than in her. It's lots of fun!

We are trying to just boil and mush her food rather than use the jars. In that spirit, I put three carrots to boil for her. I forgot about them until I wondered where that smell was coming from. Luckily, I could scape off the bottom and they just had a slight grilled flavor. Then I tried to puree them with my immersion blender, which gave me a bunch of chunks. So out came the strainer...two hours after I put them to boil I ended up a couple tablespoons of pureed carrot. I then went to Amazon and ordered a food mill. Sonia appreciated my efforts though.



She also laughed for the first time! Alan went to pick her up at Jeff and Tammy's and she just got so overjoyed to see him, she laughed out loud. She smiles at us most mornings these days. It is such a treat to come in and see her start smiling at me in the dark when she sees me. Even though she is slow to wake up, she is happiest in the mornings. I am enjoying being back at work, but it is awfully hard to leave her when she is being so adorable.

Grass

If Sonia is cranky inside, she often relaxes and wakes up out in the sunshine. The intense light used to make her cringe and hide her face. Now she still closes her eyes but she takes little peeks to see if she can open them fully. We have been spending more time sitting in the yard. She pulls on the blades of grass. She tastes them. One day the chickens got out of the coop and were prancing around the yard but she hardly noticed that. On the other hand, she kept craning her neck to get a better view of the ruckus that the hummingbirds were making in the pine tree.








As you can tell from this photo, she is oh-so-close to laughing out loud. She gets so smilely and full of joy sometimes she can hardly make a sound. Eventually a little squeak gets out that is so close to a laugh, but just not quite.

Coy Pond

Sonia has something in common with her Grandpa Jeff and Grandma Tammy. They all love looking at fish.



When she gets fussy at their house, looking at the coy pond is her Grandpa's favorite way to soothe her. It works well, especially when he holds her face down and horizontal so she looks a bit like a fish herself.

Thirteen days ago, Sonia grabbed her rattle. It is amazing how dexterous she has become since then. She swings her hand into place, steadies it, then carefully opens her fingers and places them into position. Then she snaps her finger closed around the rattle or whatever she has fixed on. Amazing since it is something most people do without thinking about it. How is that possible? It is a pretty complex process! She is getting better and better and can now even grab stuff beside her that she cannot see. Luckily, dog hair is too small for her to grasp since her main goal is to get any and all objects to her mouth.

It will not be long before we are feeding her some real food. I almost wrote, 'adult food', but I do not know many adults who even taste rice cereal or strained peas. She looks interested in our food now. We still let her smell our food, but now I feel more like I am teasing her rather than helping her explore. Don't worry- we will post pictures when the big event happens.

Cries

When Sonia cries, she does not always want to be fed or bounced. Just a few days ago, she was screaming and not responding to jiggling and not hungry. It took me a whole ten minutes to figure out she wanted her poopy pants changed. I know, one of the basic things a baby could want, right? The thing is, she never used to mind. Not that I want her in the dirty diaper, but it never used to be the cure for her fussing. Good thing to know.

In addition to diaper, she lets us know when she wants to lie on floor or change position in our arms. It almost sounds like she is saying, "Haaaay". This is also the sound she makes when she wants us to come closer.

Wow, it seems I take days to write entries these days. It is now August 31st. I'll report on more tomorrow, but I thought I would relay the events of today. Sonia got her vaccines today and is completely wiped out. She wakes up to nurse a bit then falls back asleep. Poor baby, but lucky parents. The first time she screamed for hours off and on. I put her down for a minute about an hour ago and she gave me such a pitiful expression. Not a cry, but worse. I picked her back up and put her over my shoulder in a little baby hug. Dinner can wait until Dad gets home.

Travel

It has been a hectic couple of weeks, but we were so happy to see our family and friends. Sonia has an awful lot of loving admirers. I will try to post some of the amazing photos people took when I get them.

During our road trips, first to Dallas and then to Denver and Longmont, Sonia started clasping her hands together and putting them in her mouth. Sometimes she just holds up her hand and studies it, completely ignoring the toy I might be dangling in front of her. This new development came at a perfect time. She started getting a lot more sleep in her right eye without any redness which is classic for a blocked tear duct. Usually these clear up on their own, but in the meantime the poor baby has a messy, goopy eye. Really, I think this is harder on us then it is on Sonia, but now she can rub her eye with her little fist. I try to let her do it, but sometimes I just have to clean the goo. She is not a fan. She fusses when I do it, then lifts her fist to her mouth.

In addition to rubbing her eyes and her mouth, she is holding up her head. She can keep it pretty steady for a good half hour. This picture is from August 15th when we went to see my friend Jessica and her baby, Clyde who is about 3 months older than Sonia. Clyde is sure a charmer, and so active! Jessica and I were marveling at how far babies come in such a short time. In another 4 months or so, Sonia will probably be rolling, sitting, holding her head up all the time.

In the past few weeks, the stars have aligned to let Sonia sleep for 5-6 hours in a row at night. Ahhh... At this point I would not call it her routine, but it sure was nice. Sonia is not one for routines anyway. She does go to bed around nine every night, but she wakes up for the first time anywhere between eleven and three. Some mornings she eats every three hours, sometimes it is every forty five minutes. I remember someone in the NICU telling me that at least she would be on a schedule when she got home, but keeping that feeding-every-three-hour schedule in the NICU sometimes meant waiting to feed her when she was rooting and fussing like crazy and not changing her when we heard her poop an hour before it was time to eat. I felt like I was betraying her trust. I can see enforcing a schedule a bit later when we can distract her and talk to her more. Spoiling? Naw, we just want her to know she can trust us.

Road trip

I am sitting in the back of the car now with Donia, driving back from Dallas. Sonia is sleeping, which is her favorite road trip past time. I am using up my battery and now realizing I am losing my signal. Later...

Fussbudget

As they say, it is a good thing babies are so darn cute. Sometimes cute little Sonia gets some pretty blood-curdling wails going, usually in the afternoon and evening. This is colic. We are lucky because even though she gets awfully upset, we can always find or do something to soothe her. We use a pacifier a lot during these times, which works wonders. Although she used it occasionally in the NICU, I rediscovered the pacifier after spending about two hours one evening trying to nurse her. She would nurse for about five seconds then start screaming, then nurse again, then scream. Finally, I put the pacifier in and like magic, she calmed. It was like, "Whew, at last something that does not squirt milk." Dancing, with a lot of bouncing, is also a good remedy. Alan is her favorite bouncer. Hats off to all the single parents out there because I cannot imagine how difficult it is not to have a partner to take turns with a fretful baby.




Much of the time, she is not fretting. She stays awake more these days and likes to lie on the floor and move her arms and legs. Her limbs are a bit jumpy, so her movements are in little spurts. Adults are de facto stationary creatures, but babies are unconsciously in motion. She will lay there in endless motion until she either falls asleep or something surprises her. When she is surprised, her eyes get big, her hands splay and go to her chest, and her legs extend down. Often, her lips purse as well, somewhat like the picture below, taken with her Grandma Tammy in June.



While she is squirming, she is often smiling. She had great fun at her Grandma Tammy and Grandpa Jeff's house last night. We put her on the ground (on a blanket) while the four of us looked down at her. Wiggle, wiggle, smile, smile. She could not decide who to smile at first! We must have watched her for over half an hour. I feel such a deep connection to her, such love, when she looks into my eyes and grins. I want to tell her: even if you cry all night, honey, I will hold you in my arms and keep you safe and warm.

I love taking pictures of Sonia.

By Hand

The photo above is Sonia surrounded by all the soft, cushy things people made for her. I really did not expect to get even one. I have never been able to stitch or knit more than a square so even attempting one of these projects, let alone completing it, is pretty impressive to me. Babies just inspire generosity and love. I took the picture in part because it is so awesome to see it all at once and in part to show Sonia when she is older. Do not, however, feel guilty if you did not contribute a craft; we all give in different ways.

I have been trying to get pictures of Sonia smiling. When she smiles, they are beautiful, but brief, moments of light. Usually, I do not have the camera handy. If I do, she stops smiling by the time I get it together to shoot. I think the best one is below, though her eyes are smiling more than her mouth.

Now the fun begins. Alan and I make sounds and ooogling faces at her whenever we think she is in the smiling mood. Oddly, the time she is mostly likely to smile seems to be just before or after she cries. It makes me think of a time a few days after I had her. Jeff and Tammy had brought dinner to the hospital for Alan and I. I started to giggle at a story and found I could not stop. Then, I started to cry and found I could not stop that either. It was like laughing opened the emotion gate and everything came tumbling out. I felt much better afterwards.