Evil Bunny (and almost crawling)

Well, Autumn has officially developed her first fear -- and it comes in the form of a little stuffed white bunny that vibrates across the floor. The first time we set this evil beast free before her, a total meltdown ensued. This was about the third try, when she was only moderately terrified by it. Toughen up, kid.  Then scroll down for footage of Autumn's current crawling status. Despite bearing a close resemblance to Godzilla, we think she's getting really close! Oh, and please ignore the man-boobs (even though I just brought them to your attention).

 

 

 

 

6 months and crabby

Please don't judge these -- the subject or photographer. These are strictly for the obligatory purpose of documenting Autumn at exactly six months old. She had gotten her six month shots earlier this day and was quite crabby (hence the crab romper, or whatever that thing is). My parents are here visiting this week, so a whole slew of professional pics are on their way...

Wait, is that Newt Gingrich's baby pic? Whose kid is this?

And we've got a couple sweet potato shots...

Plus these I found from a couple weeks ago when it was 80 degrees here in Denver. Autumn loves a good swing...

Six Months and a Confession

I'll indulge you in the confession first -- because, if you're being honest, you'd much rather hear about that first anyway. So here it is...

I bought Autumn one of those ridiculous, expensive, thin rubber, French teething toys. For $17. If you don't have kids, or if you do but they don't hang with celebrity kids on weekends -- you probably don't know about this perplexing phenomenon -- and I'm sure you don't care. But in the world of expensive "must-have" baby accessories, this is one of the few that I was certain we would avoid...

Until Autumn got her hands on Dax's Sophie the Giraffe, and it was all downhill from there. While playing at the Schleen's last weekend, Autumn became truly enamored with Sophie, despite our best efforts to keep her occupied with the cheaper, less high profile teethers. Nikki explained that Sophie now has a new line of mushroom-shaped cousins. Two days later, for her six month birthday, she became the proud new owner of this:

Poor Wally can not handle it. The thing squeaks, feels and looks like a dog toy. The day we brought it out, Wally was so sure it was for him, poor guy. He paced around, whining, howling, even shaking at the anticipation. I had to run to the store to buy him his own, apparently shitty squeaky toy. He still wants the mushroom and spends most of his day trying to figure out how to sneak a moment with it.

But anyway, six months! Autumn's half birthday was last Tuesday, but she's been keeping pretty busy these days, with some of the following:

--Trying her darndest to crawl. She's pulling herself onto hands and knees, and rocking back and forth. She'll lunge forward with both hands and flatten, and sometimes will move one knee forward, but can't coordinate the hands yet.
--Wanting to stand all the time. She can pretty much pull herself up on her own if your hands are at the right level. She also likes to stand up just holding onto the couch or some of the taller toys we have. She can do this on her own and even play with things for up to a minute.
--Trying to walk. She's nowhere close to being able to stand unassisted, but she loves having us hold her hands while she takes steps all over the place. She pretty much likes anything that doesn't involve being in the same place for more than a couple seconds.
--Sitting up. She's pretty much mastered this, and can usually catch herself when she starts to fall.
--Eating. This kid loves to eat. When she sees her bowl of (gross, pasty) cereal, now rice or oatmeal, she gets a huge smile on her face and leans forward with her mouth open...while we're still across the kitchen with the bowl. She's also been eating sweet potatoes for the past few days. She acts like it's no big deal, like she's been eating them forever. We were hoping for some better faces to be honest.
--Sleeping in her crib, unswaddled (finally), in her sleepsack. She started sleeping through the night without any feedings a couple weeks ago, when we stopped swaddling her. She'll still wake up disoriented and cry about once a night (usually before we've gone to bed), but is pretty much sleeping from around 6:45-7:30pm to 6:30-7:30am. We like this a lot.
--Growing like a weed. She's up to 16lb 6oz (59th percentile) and 27 1/4 in (93rd percentile).
--Being awesome. At least we think so. Pics to come, promise...

SB2k11

That is, Spring Break 2011, woo hoo!!

Nothing says spring break like a trip to California, and returning with a cold/ear infection from hell. We've had a great week despite the latter, and thankfully are headed back to the grind tomorrow with a much healthier, happier baby.

Last Saturday Brian and I put our game faces on and braved the airport for Autumn's second plane trip. This was a whole new ballgame. When we flew to Fresno when she was eight weeks old, she was a peaceful, sleepy little newborn. This time, at 5 1/2 months, we had a true beast on our hands. Autumn has never liked to do one thing for more than about 42 seconds, especially when that one thing involves sitting on our laps with no change of scenery. To her credit, she did sleep a little bit on the flight out, and amused herself with toys for about seven minutes -- which only left us with about an hour-and-a-half of pure scrambling to figure out how to keep the other passengers from throwing us out the window. In the end it was all worth it, because we had a great few days in Santa Cruz. My mom, bless her heart, had transformed their condo into Autumn's own playground, complete with an exersaucer, play mat, millions of new toys and books, and of course a few new outfits. Autumn especially loved all of the work she was able to get done on the exersaucer.

Just gettin' my work done on this here exersaucer

While in Santa Cruz, Autumn also experienced the beach for the first time. She's kind of a vampire -- hates the sun. But she did enjoy watching her feet in the sand, and probably the gross, squishy feel of it between her toes. Then she enjoyed eating her sand-covered feet on the stroller ride home. Another first was at the playground, where Autumn fell in love with the bucket seat swing. We've since taken her to the park by our house for some swing action. Pure bliss.

The water was muddy from the aftermath of the recent tsunami

16 pounds of pure muscle

The flight back to Denver was quite a bit easier. At the time we attributed it to our own parental awesomeness -- we were so sure there was something we did that had finally clicked and transformed our daughter into a cuddly, calm little princess. Autumn slept for about 3/4 of the flight, and was somewhat content with her toys for the remainder. But as it turned out, that night she went to bed very congested and cranky, and woke up a snotty, dinosaur-voiced mess. Poor thing could hardly cry. Being new to the sick baby thing, we called her doctor, who wanted us to bring her in to make sure her breathing was okay. Good thing we did, as it turned out that Autumn had a really bad (Doctor: "I can't find something in this room as red as her ear to show you how bad") ear infection. Thank goodness for antibiotics. Autumn was miserable for the rest of the day, but was already starting to get back to her old self by morning. And heading into the new week, she's almost as good as new. Oh, and she got weighed while at the pediatrician's. Sixteen pounds, holy crap! Just five weeks ago she weighed 13lb 12oz. She also jumped from the 45th percentile to 60th, but the doctor is please so we'll take it. We love this chunky monkey!

Chicken Little

I love Uncle El

Is it Halloween yet?

Sittin' pretty

I'll have those eggs please

I just can't take this cereal anymore. Where's my steak?