It's the Little Things

Our church organized an event involving 12 other local churches to package 1 million meals in one day. The meals will be going to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and countries in Africa. And we did it! The whole time I was working (standing up) I had Elena Rose in one arm, and I would pour into a funnel with the other arm, then I would grab the bag and hand it to the person who was weighing it. The weight was very important because they had to meet the airline regulations; if the weight was over, whatever they put the meals in would not be able to load. I had to change arms a lot! My biceps were burning, and now they're pretty sore. But it was worth it. All the meals I worked on will be going to Malawi, and I have no idea how many meals my team made; we had a good assembly line going and just kept moving. The meals were made of lentils, rice, chicken powder, and spices. Each meal had over 2,000 calories, so I'm guessing there was a lot in the chicken powder. I'm happy to know that there will be less empty tummies for many children out there.

I learned a little bit about the Dominican Republic. If you don't have "Dominican Republic blood," you're not allowed to go to high school and the only thing you can really do is work with sugar cane. But they told us about a boy in a small village there who was naked trying to bath in a mud puddle when a church member went and asked him where the local church was. The church worked with this little boy and watched him grow. He was somehow able to attend high school, and he just graduated from medical school and he was at our church today; amazing! God is good.

It's funny how simple things can make the baby so happy. Last night she was fussy and having a hard time. She's cutting her first top tooth and it's really bothering her. Nothing seemed to help last night, so I suggested that Jorge give her a cup of water to play with, and then she was totally happy and had a blast.

She's starting to respond to questions, especially when we ask about Ginger and Charlie. She immediately looks toward the backyard. She's starting to point, so in the picture below she's actually pointing at the dogs (and also kind of shrugging for some reason!).

She likes yogurt now! I have to give her everything several times before she actually likes it and will finish it, so this was the first time she had a good amount of yogurt. And yes, I'm feeding her on the floor, because it was the easiest thing at the time, and what difference does it make? And yes, those are baby knee pads! We just got them to cushion her poor knees on our tile, and they also have silicone on them so there's some grip.

Don't I have the cutest baby in the whole world? I think so! And she's also the sweetest baby in the whole world.

March for Babies

This morning we did the March for Babies walk. The number one cause of newborn death is premature birth, so the work that March of Dimes does is very important. We walked with Mandy and Matt Storm, our friends who have two-year-old twin girls, Analyn and Maggie. The twins were born at 28 weeks gestation, but you'd never know that now. Mandy and Matt do the walk every year to support the March of Dimes and their work to promote healthier, stronger babies.

Team Storm (Jorge, Elena Rose, Amber, Maggie, Mandy, Matt, and Analyn)
As you can see, Elena Rose was having a pretty good time when we got started. She was bouncing up and down in her stroller. There was a lot going on.

Analyn and Maggie were doing pretty good, too!

But as you can imagine, it's difficult to amuse a 9 month old and 2 year old twins for a 3 mile walk. So we eventually took them all out of the strollers. Elena Rose went into a carrier for the rest of the walk.

Analyn rode the front wheel of her stroller.

Then laid across it. You can see Maggie's in Mandy's arms.

Then Maggie sat on Mandy's shoulders.

Then they took turns pushing each other in Elena's stroller.

It was very rewarding. Team Storm raised $1,485 to help future babies. Thank you to everyone who supported us. Our goal is to raise more than $2,000 next year so that there will be more little miracles like Analyn and Maggie.

We worked up quite an appetite and went out to eat after. It was a really good day.

If you want to see pictures that show how far Analyn and Maggie have come, you can click on this link they created for their fundraising efforts: http://web.me.com/mstorm2/March_of_Dimes_2011/March_of_Dimes_2011.html

Playdates

I started taking Elena Rose to a friend's house on Thursday mornings before I go to work in the afternoon. Miriam has us over; her daughter Alana will be 1 year old next week. They have fun together; Elena Rose is shy in the beginning and mostly watches what the other babies do. Then near the end she starts exploring more and has a good time. They're pretty good together, but we're always ready to intervene when the babies get close and start reaching toward each other, just in case!

Miriam & Alana

Elena Rose playing with a picnic basket

Carefully checking out the kitchen

Cute little friends

This is her at home with one of her dolls

Just Another Day

We tried out a new sippie cup today. We've had one that she sometimes sucks on, and we introduced another one to see if she would like it more. She really likes it! You can see in the picture one little cheerio-shaped puff in the middle of the tray. Today's the first time she's put them in her mouth. She loves to eat them, but she would just open her mouth for us to feed her, which is funny because she puts practically everything else in her mouth. But now she can feed them to herself, and even though she doesn't always make it, she tries!

She also loves her baby dolls now. She held both of them for a long time tonight, between bathtime and bedtime, and just rocked and bounced, smiling.

She's so cute.

Sleep Training

We started sleep training! I still bring her to bed with me when she wakes during the night, but we're helping her learn to fall asleep on her own. We're not working on naps yet, but we'll get there soon. Gotta start somewhere, right? So I've been getting her ready for bed after bathtime, then I sit with her in the rocking chair in the nursery and read her a bedtime story, with the sound machine and her lullaby music on. I like to read her Goodnight Moon because it's super short, all about going to bed, and I use a really soft tone and it seems to relax her. Then I turn off the light with no nightlight so it's almost pitch black, and I nurse her. Then she's super sleepy but not asleep and I give her a pacifier and put her in her crib. (We used to have to swaddle her to move her from the couch to her crib without waking her, especially after we lowered her crib mattress). She loves soft blankets, the fuzzy ones, and always holds them on her face to soothe herself, so after putting her in her crib I hand her a fuzzy blanket and she cuddles with it. The first two nights she held the blanket to her face and passed out, without even a whine. Then last night she was a little more awake and she fussed, but didn't cry. She sat up a few times and I didn't stop her because I didn't want a power struggle, so I would let her sit for a few seconds and fuss, then I would reassure her and lay her on her back and hand her the blanket. After about 5-10 minutes she fell asleep. Then tonight she just cuddled with her blanket and fell asleep right away. Later I will start putting her in there when she's more awake, and also working on it during the day for napping. So I think this is going very well, maybe because we waited awhile to start it.

Happy Easter

This was Elena Rose’s first Easter. I thought about giving her a basket, but she doesn’t know the difference, so we’re going to wait until next year. We had wanted to put her in a cute little dress, but the weather wasn’t on our side. So she wore a really warm jumper and that was her Easter outfit. We went to church in the morning and they had a really good service. Elena Rose was with us in the auditorium and got a little fussy, so Jorge took her out to the church’s coffeehouse and finished watching the service from there. They have screens in the coffeehouse; it’s a high tech place. While they were in there Elena Rose grabbed Jorge’s cheek and gave him a big kiss. That’s the first time. Other than that, she’s only kissed me and my grandma. She kept kissing him over and over, and did it again when I came out of the auditorium. Now she gives us kisses when we ask for them. She is such an affectionate baby, probably because Jorge and I are both really affectionate with her. She loves hugs, cuddling, kisses, and leaning her forehead on my face. Needless to say, Jorge absolutely melted when he got his kiss. So that was our Easter.

Easter morning

After the church service

Elena Rose also started crawling up on her hands and knees on Saturday. She still does the army crawl too, especially if she gets really excited about something. But the day before Easter while Jorge was getting ready I was standing in the bathroom doorway and I set the baby down on the floor. She automatically started crawling, the right way, and it was the cutest thing in the world. Each time she moved a knee forward it only moved a little bit, and it seemed like she was really concentrating. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want her to stop, so I tugged on Jorge’s arm so he could see. She is really growing so fast. I realize this when I look at pictures of when she was younger. She had so many rolls, and she’s grown so much in length that it’s really stretched her out. She does still have rolls though, she’s a healthy baby!

Something else that’s exciting is that she had her first bath in the actual bathtub! Up to now we bathed her in the infant tub in the sink. She was getting a little big for it, and we wanted her to have space to play, so we finally had a plumber come out and unclog the bathtub drain (after living in this house for almost 2 years; other things took priority), then I gave the tub a really good scrubdown and it was ready. Elena Rose really enjoyed it. She splashed and had a lot of fun. I’m sure that bath time is going to be one of her favorite times of day, and I enjoy seeing her play and have fun, so it’s one of my favorite times, too.

Lions and Tigers and Bears . . .

We went to the San Diego Zoo last week! Beautiful weather and wonderful animals. But geez, were we tired after! And it's extremely difficult to make a 3 hour drive both ways in one day with a 9 month old. Elena Rose was awake for the last hour of each drive, and it was up to me to entertain her and soothe her when she fussed . . . and I was feeling carsick so that part of the trip was not fun. But we saw a lot of beautiful animals while we were there. We realized though, that with a lot of the animals that were farther away Elena Rose much preferred to look at the people walking by her. But with the bigger animals and the ones that moved a lot, like the giraffes (which were one of my favorites; one of her teething toys is called Sophie Giraffe, so now I call all giraffes Sophie), elephants, monkeys, and birds. Our favorite animal by the end of the day was the meerkat. They were so cute! I didn't really know anything about them, but one of them is always on guard to protect the whole group, and it stands there like a statue while the rest are in their holes.
The Sophies

Jorge and Elena Rose; it was hot so we really enjoyed the ice cream cones!

A mama hippo with her baby

The meerkat

Reflections

So much happens in so little time when you have a little one! I can't believe my baby is 9 months old. We had her well-baby check and she is growing exponentially. She is in the 78th percentile for her weight, and the 92nd percentile for her height. Not sure how that happened, in the first few months she was way above average in weight (89th percentile) and below average in height. Just shows how much babies change in such a short time. But the most important thing that came out of the appointment was just confirmation that she is a happy, healthy baby. And it was also obvious how much she HATES strangers touching her. She really had a hard time when the doctor was listening to her lungs, and she kept reaching for me and trying to rub her face on my arm; so cute.

Recently, we needed to buy a couple new pacifiers, since they have a way of disappearing. We decided to try out a new kind because they're pretty much the same, right? So wrong! I was holding Elena Rose and Jorge brought the pacifier up to her. She opened her mouth and leaned forward as usual without even looking at it, and as soon as she closed her mouth around it a look of disgust came over her face and she spit it out. This happened several times, but we're making progress.

There is also a new little person in the world, April's daughter Destiny, who was born on April 12th. She was over 8 pounds, which just makes me realize how small Elena Rose was when she was born. Here's one of her pictures from the hospital.

I'll never see the world the same way again since having Elena Rose. Having another baby in the family makes me reflect on how my life has changed since having a daughter. Here are the things that come to mind:

• It strengthened my faith


• I count my blessings every day


• My focus is on my family


• My patience and ability to adapt to different situations is tested on a regular basis

Here we are on a walk. We stopped so that I could show her the bright roses. She really liked them. Jorge was in front of us with Ginger and Charlie.

Chewing on a rubber ducky.

Healthy Again

Our happy girl is back! For the most part anyway. She has been doing well during the daytime and just has a hard time at night. For the last two nights she's woken up between 1 and 3 and cried for an hour or 2. I've been so exhausted my eyes have been hurting! Hopefully we'll get lots of rest this weekend. We're very happy to see her smiling and talking again, it was so hard to see her not feeling well for such a long time. One new development: she's got the army crawl down, always on her elbows. Pretty soon she's going to be all over the place; I have no idea how I'm going to get ready in the mornings. Time for childproofing! Her crib mattress was lowered after we took this picture. She's always pulling her socks off now, we can't seem to keep them on her feet. Having a good time in her pack n play. This doesn't happen very often!

One Nasty Bug

Ah, Elena Rose got her first ear infection! Which turned into infections. After a doctor's appointment, two trips to urgent care, two types of antibiotics, and a full-body rash, she is finally showing improvement. She's not 100%, but she's a lot better. Nights have been rough, and I missed 2 days of work and Jorge missed 3 so we could stay home with her. But throughout this awful, painful ordeal she's been quite a trooper, smiling and laughing when the Advil kicked in and she felt better. Here are some pictures of her managing to have some fun between her bouts of discomfort.

I'm looking forward to having a decent night's sleep, but I don't know when that will happen.

On a different note, take a look at our new neighbor. That's right, just outside of our front door a bird decided to build a nest. This means that I'm usually going through the garage instead of the front door so that I don't disturb the poor things; but man, is it inconvenient! I have to admit it's super cute, though, and whenever I'm walking up I see its little neck stretch out to watch me. And I think it's adorable that he built his whole little nest out of tiny twigs (and we got to watch the process) to start a family.