And now we are three

I put up the Christmas decorations today, and while I just love the house looking so festive in its twinkly red and green, this has to be my favorite sight of all:

Weight and height update

Short and squatty! I underestimated her height by a lot and her weight by a little. She's 13 lbs 1 oz (35th percentile) and 23.5 inches (20th percentile). She also is not getting a tooth; it's a cyst that will go away on it's own. The doctor said to start feeding her at 6 months, but that we can start giving her rice cereal in a month or so to get her used to the idea of food and learning how to eat. She got four shots today (poor baby) but bounced back and seems fine. Hopefully she'll take a nice long nap this afternoon - she missed her nap because of the appointment.

Healthy happy (but tired) girl!!

I am four months old today!!

Here is what Audrey is up to these days:

• Takes 3-4 naps a day (usually only an hour or so each; if one of them goes longer, then it's only 3 naps that day).
• Sleeps from 7pm-7am (with a 10:30 feeding that we wake her for); she sleeps through the night about 5 out of every 7 nights. We still get those occasional 4am wakings, but she eats just an ounce or two and goes right back to bed and sleeps til 7 or 7:30.
• Not sure about weight or height; she goes to the doctor tomorrow, so I'll update this post with the right weight. My guess is about 13.5 pounds, 25 inches? We'll see how close I am.
• Her clothing is mostly 3-6 months size, but some things are too big (like pants) and she has a few 0-3 months clothes that still fit fine. Her big fat cloth diapers help fill things out some.
  
• She's rolling over from tummy to back all the time and will sometimes do from back to tummy. We often find her in her crib completely rotated around from where we put her down, so we know she's moving quite a bit in there.
• She grasps objects and focuses in on them quite well; at first she didn't do anything with them once she got a hold on them, now they go straight in her mouth.
• She is drooling like crazy and eats her hands all day long. I see a tiny white bump and feel something on her upper gums, but I'm not quite ready to say it's a tooth yet.
  
• Her new favorite way to communicate: growling. She will growl at you and just grin! It's hilarious!
• When I go to get her up from a nap, she just gets so excited that her arms and legs start flapping and I think she will just fly away.
• She's in cloth diapers 90% of the time, and I'm really liking it (sorry, Meg). I think we'll stick with it, for now, anyway.
• Her favorite toys are connecting rings that she plays with in the car, her taggie blanket that she loves to eat, her Jumperoo, and her play mat. We gave the swing away, so it's the end of an era. Seems like just yesterday that it was the only way we could get her to nap.
• She's no longer swaddled, but sleeps in a sleep sack instead. She still sleeps on her back, and I assume she will continue until she turns herself over. She's such a good sleeper, I don't see any need to mess with it.
• The carseat is no longer her nemesis. I wouldn't go so far as to say that she loves it, but it's definitely better these days!
• She's a very happy little girl and only cries if she misses a nap or her schedule gets messed up. Otherwise, it's coos and giggles all day long around here.
  
• She's our favorite girl and we love every second of being her parents!
  

Thanksgiving 2011

Don't worry - we didn't cook her:


First Thanksgiving as a family of three:


Delicious food:
Cousin Anna, just her age:


Watching the game and rooting for Alabama:

Book Review

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is an excellent book about a man named Louis Zamperini, who fought in WWII. He was headed for the Olympic games as a runner before the war, but enlisted when Pearl Harbor was hit in 1941. His story is nearly unbelievable. Over and over he escaped death, only to be found in a worse situation. The tagline of the book reads: "A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption" and it was indeed all those things. I found it compelling and worth every moment. Definitely not for the faint of heart - it's pretty violent, especially when you realize it's real. But a wonderful book about a true hero in every sense of the word.

Movie review

Yep, I saw it. And yep, I loved it!! They did a great job keeping it close to the book and it was just like I pictured it. I think it's my favorite of the four that have come out so far and I can't wait for part two (but I will have to, since it's not coming out for a year!!).

For fear of spoiler alerts, I won't say anything about the plot since people are pretty polarized about it anyway. My sister wants this T-shirt, for example:

So it's not for everybody. But if you enjoy the books or the other movies, definitely see it!! If not, don't! :)

Cousins

So incredibly thankful

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Random adorableness

Sugar and spice:
Watching football with Daddy:
Cuddling with Mommy:
Extreme bed head (WHAT am I going to do with this hair!?!):

New hat (she is naked while wearing a winter hat a) because it is 97,000 degrees outside in late November and b) because she had just soaked an outfit and it was only 1/2 hour until bathtime and I didn't feel like putting her in a new outfit for such a brief time):

Fun morning with friends

I had 5 women and 10 children over this morning for a get together. It was wild and crazy, but we managed to have some fun and talk a bit too.



I made turkey cupcakes:



I even planned a Thanksgiving craft for the kids to do (just call me Martha Stewart):



Babies playing:



The four youngest:

Audrey's Jumperoo

Audrey is getting close to outgrowing her swing so we needed another giant item to take up space in our living room. She's a tiny bit too small for it still - her feet don't reach the ground so I put a pillow below them - but I think she will love it!

Here are all the pieces I had to put together:



Audrey supervised:



Not quite sure about all of this:



Oooh, a flying frog!:



This IS pretty fun:



I take it back, this is the BEST TOY EVER!!!!:

Weekly happenings

Someone nagged gently reminded me that I hadn't blogged in over a week. Yeah, yeah. Life gets busy. And I actually tried to blog late last week but Blogger was being a jerk and not uploading pictures easily. As I'm writing this, I'm still waiting for pictures to upload, so who knows what's going on!

As for happenings around here, Audrey is sleeping through the night (YIPPEE), eating everything she can get her hands on (non food, of course) and drooling like crazy (teeth coming soon, maybe?). She's visited with Grandma, Papa babysat her while I went to the dentist, and she and I discovered Toddler Radio on Pandora Radio and have had numerous dance parties! Love that station! Oh, and we spent some time in the tornado closet today. I'm so ready for it to get cold and stay cold. I've been playing around with my camera but still have yet to learn all the features. So here are some random pics from late last week.

Upcoming post themes:
- Audrey's first Thanksgiving!
- Audrey's new toy, the Jumperoo
- Daddy/daughter day
- And probably some movie and book reviews

So stay tuned and get really excited!!

Audrey discovers the iPad:



Love the hair bows:



Whichever shall I eat first!?!:



Enough with the picture taking, Mom!!:

Audrey's new tricks!

It has taken FOREVER to get video of this. Audrey's been rolling over for about a month now. She actually first rolled over from tummy to back when she was 10 days old - she did it twice. But I decided it was a fluke and didn't count it. At about 10 weeks she did it again, but they were few and far between - she would forget she knew how to do it and just cry until I turned her over. For the last couple of weeks, she's been rolling over once or twice a day, but I can never get it on video! Every time I break out the camera, she stops performing and gets mad. Finally today I got it!! Big girl!





In other news, guess who slept through the night last night!! YIPPEE!!!!!

More birthday and more picture taking!

I am definitely having fun playing with my new camera. I'm not great at it yet, but I'm learning. We went over to my mom's to celebrate my birthday and my sister and her family were there too. So we got some good shots:

Cuteness on the way to Grammy and Papa's:


Shots of Audrey with various family members:



Cousins - we tried to get them to take a nap in the crib together at one point; nothing doing. They had no clue the other one was there but both kept making so much noise that no one slept:


Will with Owen - Audrey looks jealous:


Sweet baby Owen:
More funfetti cake:
My silly family:
Delicious fried chicken for dinner - my favorite:
Beautiful knockout roses on the back porch - who says it's fall?:A Bama family (even though they lost, we are full supporters!):