Some New Pictures

Month seven pictures are up. Look on the right side of the page or click here. The gallery includes more pictures of her first solids and just hanging around the house. I love taking pictures of her outside in the late afternoon but it's hard to shoot inside in low light because she is just so wiggly! I am asking Santa to bring me a new digital SLR for Christmas. I have a nice Canon EOS A2 35 mm outfit that I bought in college but it's getting harder to find and develop film. And since we take a ton of pictures I thought it might be time to upgrade.

Any recommendations for digital SLRs are welcome! I am leaning toward a Canon Rebel XS but if there is a different model of camera or Rebel that you prefer, leave me a comment and let me know why!

Shelby's New Friends

Shelby made some great new friends at school. They're super friendly, love to hang around and never leave her side. They love to socialize, have sleepovers and are with her morning, noon and night. Who are these new BFFs?

GERMS.

I knew it was inevitable. I knew she'd get sick. I knew she'd build the immune system of steel in her first few months. But it still stinks. She's been icky for a month now with what seems like cold on top of cold and I think her nose has been runny since before Labor Day. Yesterday she came down with a lovely case of conjunctivitis, aka pink eye. We were at the doctor's office TWICE today! I took her in the morning because she was crabby and up all night Sunday with a cough. I wanted to rule out ear or respiratory infection so off we went. She kept rubbing her face this morning and I thought she was rubbing her runny nose but in hindsight she was probably trying to rub her eye, even though the telltale goop and redness had not appeared yet. I dropped her off at school and got a phone call a few hours later... the goop showed up! So back to doctor's office we went for a prescription for eye drops.

Everyone tells you that school is great for socialization. That it's good for babies to be around other babies. Unfortunately those pesky germs love to socialize, too!

First Solids!

Big milestone! Shelby tasted her first solids this weekend! "Solids" is a bit of a stretch ... it was pretty much milk with a few traces of rice cereal mixed in. She seemed a little confused and most of it ended up on her bib, but it was a good start. She seemed more interested in chewing on the handle of the spoon than actually eating what was offered on the other end. She looks so cute sitting in the high chair - like a little person at the dinner table. We'll keep trying the rice cereal for a while and then move onto veggies and fruits in a few weeks.

Does anyone have a good book to recommend as far as creating a schedule for introducing different foods and making your own baby food?

Six Months Old

Shelby is six months old today. I know it's so cliche and parents say it all the time, but the time really does go by so fast. I can't believe six months ago today we were driving to the hospital in the last snow flurry of winter. That afternoon I held my baby girl in my arms for the first time. And here we are today, half way to a year old. There's so much to celebrate. So much to be thankful for. So much to look forward to.

Here are some observations about Shelby at six months:

• It seems like she does something new every day. One day it's sticking out her tongue. Another day it's blowing raspberries. But everything is so cute and you can tell things like sticking out her tongue are really amusing to her.
• She's become really good at grabbing and manipulating objects. She can pick individual toys out of a box one at a time and turns them over and over in her hands, inspecting every detail. This weekend we were at a friend's house and she was able to pick up these flat foam numbers off the floor. Quite the dextrous girl!
• Although she caught her first cold and it seems like she's had a runny nose for the entire month of September, Shelby is overall a healthy girl. We feel extremely fortunate.
• She absolutely loves her thumb. She only sucks on it when she is feeling tired or overwhelmed, so it's a very useful tool in determining when she needs a nap! It's sort of amazing how quickly it calms her down when she's feeling the least bit upset... BAM! Thumb in the mouth for a few seconds and it's all better again. I know thumb sucking is probably bad, but she was never a pacifier fan and anything that she can do to self soothe is okay with me. We'll think about thumb weaning later but right now it's fine.
• Speaking of naps, she's really predictable with napping. She can usually stay up for right around two hours before becoming sleepy. She goes down easily and usually naps for at least 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours. Right when I gave up trying to predict or "schedule" sleep, she became pretty predictable... go figure! We do cue based naps based on how long she's been up since her last nap. She usually takes three naps a day and we've been inching her bedtime earlier in place of a fourth early evening nap and she is doing fine. Last night she slept for 10 hours, ate and went back to sleep! I might have to eat my words one day, but we have not had to do any sleep training or "cry it out" and I don't ever want to. I'm too much of a softie.
• She absolutely loves to sit up and it's opened up a whole new perspective on the world. It's wonderful to be able to plop her down on the carpet and just watch her play with books and toys. You can tell she's very curious about books and she will hold the pages of board books and stare at the pictures, right before she tries to eat the book.
• She loves to talk and sing. She is really finding her voice and makes the funniest high pitched cooing noises. She does it a lot in the car and I sometimes wonder if she is "singing" along to the radio.
• She's becoming so much fun and her personality is really emerging. It's easy to make her laugh. She really is a happy, easygoing baby and rarely gets fussy or cries.
• She's getting heavy! I'd guess she is over 15 pounds now.
• She just recently became aware of the cat. They have staring contests. O'Malley tries to act aloof but you can tell he is really curious about her.
• She can pop up to a standing position if you hold her hands and gently pull upward. Her legs are getting strong and although tummy time is still not her favorite activity I know she will be crawling in no time at all. Her legs are so strong that it sometimes hurts if she kicks you.
• Her hair started thinning out a little bit at around three months but there is new hair growing in and it's getting thick again. I think she's going to have a lot of hair.
• She loves to chomp on her feet. I love it when babies grab their feet and ever since she was born I would talk about how much I could not wait for the day when she could grab her feet and now she can. It's so adorable!

When I was pregnant, someone told me, "The days are long but the years are short." Truer words have never been spoken. We love you, baby girl!

Big Girl in a Highchair

I think Sunday night frozen yogurt is becoming a tradition. We usually eat a big lunch on Sunday afternoon and then we aren't that hungry for dinner. So we just go out early before Shelby's bedtime and get fro yo. For dinner. I know. Bad parents. We were discussing today how we would have to radically alter our eating habits once Shelby gets old enough to eat the same foods as us. We probably don't want our baby growing up on nothing but peanut butter sandwiches, bananas and NutriGrain bars.

The big highlight of this week is that Shelby is old enough to sit in a highchair now. It's ridiculously cute. No more sitting strapped into a car seat while we eat out... now it's nonstop fun of reaching for our food and tossing her toy on the ground over and over again. What a fun game. She's becoming really interested in food and I'm excited to start solids soon. Even if it does mean we have to start eating more vegetables.

First Trip to Athens

Shelby made her first trip to Athens this weekend as a baby bulldog! We visited the tailgate for a while that morning and went back to a friend's house while Scott went to the game. We will not be taking her to an actual game any time soon! I loved seeing all the babies and kids (and babies to be!) at our tailgate and I am looking forward to all of them growing up and playing together.

Mega Video Update

Here's a video compilation of Shelby from about 2 months to 5 months. It's long - about 9 minutes - but oh so cute. I look back at those early months and wish she could stay small forever but she's really becoming a lot of fun as she grows bigger, stronger and more curious about her surroundings.

Our Yellow Daisy

Today we ventured out to the Yellow Daisy Festival in Stone Mountain. We'd never been before and discussed on the drive out there how it's criminal that we live so close to Stone Mountain Park and never go. We used to bike a lot and went out there a few times to ride, but we haven't been in a couple of years. It's really beautiful out there and we can't wait until Shelby is a little older and we can ride bikes, hike and explore with her. For now, she was content to get pushed in the stroller as we checked out the massive amount of craft vendors tucked into the shady trails. I had no idea this festival was so huge - you could have easily done all of your Christmas shopping there in one day. We only bought one thing - a personalized wooden "Shelby" letter puzzle. I was tempted to buy some really cute handmade baby clothes and giant hair bows but resisted. Maybe next year when she has more hair! The weather was perfect and we had a good time... I guess going to local weekend festivals is just what you do when you have kids!

I would also like to add that despite being named the Yellow Daisy Festival, I did not actually see a single yellow daisy. I envisioned dressing Shelby in a yellow dress and plunking her down in a field of daisies for a photo opp, but that didn't happen so we just had to settle for a picture in our back yard.

Shelby's First Cold

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Shelby caught her first cold sometime last week and here we are a week later still sucking giant globs of green snot out of her nose with the aspirator. We feel so bad for her and it's awful to listen to her "snarfy" breathing but there is really nothing to do except for making her as comfortable as possible and waiting it out. We've been sucking boogers out of her nose and running the humidifier while she sleeps ad it seems to be helping. I just wish she could blow her nose! With the falling temperatures (frigid nights below 80 degrees! Brrrr!) we also switched her from sleeping in onesies to sleeping in footie pajamas and man are those things cute.

I hate Shelby being sick but I also consider ourselves lucky that she made it to almost six months without catching a bug. Hooray for breast milk antibodies! I am sure this winter will be a long one and we'll be passing colds back and forth every week. Shelby even passed her cold onto me this week and I hardly ever get sick. Is this a preview of things to come? Better stock up now on the zinc, Emergen C and neti pot saline refills. It was probably just my punishment for making her wear that ridiculous tu tu when Halloween is still over a month away.

Dylan McKay + Shelby 4 EVA

Shelby got her first foray into geekdom today when we took her to DragonCon. She was very popular in her cute tutu costume and people were stopping us and asking to take her picture. I was nervous about keeping her out all day in a huge mass of people, but she did great. She snoozed in her stroller and took a bottle from Scott while we were in a speaker panel. I think she loved looking at all the colorful characters dressed up in every kind of sci fi and fantasy costume imaginable.

The highlight of the day was a photo opp with Luke Perry. I was a huge 90210 fan back in the early 90s and he was my first celebrity crush. He thought Shelby was adorable and kept kissing her face and squeezing her feet. It was really funny and my 13-year-old self would have never believed that one day Dylan McKay would be kissing on my baby.

Baby Bulldog

Shelby's first Georgia game day!