Five Months

Dear Sofia,
Six days ago you turned five months old. I promise I am not a lazy mother, and I know I probably should have written this sooner, but this week has been crazy and exhausting (most are). I am just glad I got around writing it before you turned six months!

This past month you have grown into a giant smiley baby. You smile ALL the time, and your dad and I LOVE it. You smile when we talk to you, when you wake from the night's sleep or a nap, when you see the cats, when you get your diaper changed. You dislike getting your clothes changed and having your nose wiped so those are a few times when you're not smiling. And when you're fussy...man, watch out!

You were sick this past weekend (mama's 30th birthday weekend), and we knew something was wrong when we tried and tried to get you to smile and you just looked at us. Like you wanted to smile but couldn't. Sure enough, your doctor said you had picked up some type of virus, but you battled your fever like a champ (with the help of tylenol) and the only thing left of your sickness is a stuffy nose (that you hate having wiped). You hated being at the doctor's office getting poked and prodded. You had your nostrils swiped to check for flu and your finger pricked to check for any bacterial sickness. You screamed bloody murder! It was all I could do to comfort you. Your dad and I both stayed home a day with you this week to be with you as you got over your sickness. You are back to your pleasant smiling self again.

You love to play games like peek-a-boo and the "near/far" game that I borrowed from Sesame Street. I run up to the mirror with you in my arms and say "near" then run backwards and say "far" and repeat it over and over. You like it when I put you really close to the mirror. It makes you laugh, and your laugh is the most wonderful sound in the entire world. You also like seeing your mom and dad jump up and down while yelling "JUMP! This is how we jump! JUMP!" Yes, we look like two crazy people, but you LOVE it! You also love it when I dance around the house with you in my arms.

You have lots of toys, but you I think you love your Fisher Price fish bowl and your aquarium best. Times you have awakened in the middle of the night, your dad will take you over to your crib and let you watch your aquarium. This calms you down. You also love this Winnie the Pooh teething ring that plays the Winnie the Pooh song. You really love anything you can chew on, including your pacifier.



You've become great with your hands! You're really good at picking things up. You can grab the pacifier from our hands and put it in your mouth the right way. You can turn off light switches. You can't turn them on yet, but you can turn them off. You also love grabbing at my face. You grab at daddy's face too. It's sweet the way you smile and grab at our lips or noses or cheeks.

We think you'll be crawling soon, but you're not yet. You can kind of scoot a little if we put you on the bed. And you leave a little drool trail like a snail. It's cute. You don't have any teeth yet either, but you drool and chew on things like crazy.

I have kept you on breastmilk this whole time, and for that I am very proud. Your dad and I are going to start you on solids soon though. We bought rice cereal for you during our last trip to the grocery store. You are so big. At the doctor's office you weighed in at 17 lbs 13 oz!

Sofia, you are growing so fast. Sometimes I wish I could keep you the size you are because you are so beautiful and amazing and perfect just the way you are and I feel like there aren't enough hours in a day to enjoy and love you. But I know that you'll only grow more beautiful and amazing and perfect as you already have. I wish I could spend more time with you, Sofia, I do. I cherish every moment I have with you. Yes, even when it takes over an hour to get you to go to sleep at night. Even when you wake up in the middle of the night and won't go back to sleep. I know how lucky and blessed I am to have such a beautiful, amazing baby in my life. Sofia, I treasure you. You are my world. Always know that your mom and dad love you more than anything in the world.

Love,
Mom

Silver Linings

Not such a bad day. I got some of the biggest smiles ever from Sofia tonight while I danced around with her in front of the mirror. She even let out some pretty big adorable laughs. And I gave her bath and put her to bed and now she is sleeping like a angel. These are moments I treasure. And Robert loaded the dishwasher.

Happy Birthday to Me

A less than great birthday so far. Not that I expected fireworks or anything, but you know. We celebrated yesterday by going out to eat, but first we took Sofia to the Children's Museum here in Houston. She's only almost five months, so she couldn't play with most of the stuff, but we mainly took her to see all the other kids and stuff. It was neat. Then we went out to eat, which was a casual thing. Just the three of us. Sofia slept through all of dinner until they brought us the check and she woke up screaming. Poor thing had been kind of cranky a lot of the day. She wasn't her usual smiling self. When we finally got home we took her temperature and she had over 101 degrees! She was burning up! She had been waking up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night for the past few nights, but we didn't think anything of it. Turns out she's sick. My poor angel.

So my day today has basically been taking care of a sick baby. She's in better spirits today now that we have her on the tylenol. Robert had to go to work like he always does on Sundays and I'm left here to think about how old I'm getting all by myself. He doesn't turn 30 until April.

So. Here I am. In a messy house. Sick baby is napping. Only one of my sisters has called me to wish me a happy birthday. I have three sisters and one brother. And one of my only friends from high school that I still talk to occasionally. Which was actually really cool because he had all this dirt on people I knew in high school so we had a good laugh. My cousin text messaged me a happy birthday. My best friend (the only friend from high school that I talk to frequently) still hasn't called. Five bucks says she forgets. It wouldn't be the first time. Oh, well, hopefully the year won't suck.

Hmmmph

Today Robert asked me if I wanted to invite friends out to dinner in honor of my 30th birthday, which happens to be this Sunday. I told him "no" for a few reasons. Number one, I don't like reminding people of my birthday. I feel like I'm asking them to to wish me a happy birthday or buy me a present. I'd rather skip the reminders and make my friends feel guilty later when it comes up that they missed my birthday. I say all this because I'm good at remembering birthdays. I don't think it's too much to ask that the few people with whom I do occasionally socialize remember my birthday. Number two, I realize that I look like crap about 90% of the time and I am okay with this, since the only people who see much of me outside of work are my husband and my child. I manage to make myself presentable for work, but still show up most days in jeans. But let's face it. I haven't had a hair cut since June for my baby shower and I have only a limited number of clothes that fit me. I don't have much time to beautify myself. Hell, I don't have time to really write this right now with the squirming baby on my lap getting squirmier and squirmier by the second. Dinner with the husband and baby sounds fine to me. I think I'll go in jeans and a t-shirt. Seriously.

So yeah, 30. Jeez. And no, I'm not posting this to remind everyone. Just thinking aloud thank you very much.

Another Monday

I was stuck at work today, which really sucked because I didn't do much of anything. One of those very unproductive days. Tomorrow, on the other hand, I will be in meetings all day long, but probably still not very productive. I hate meetings. They suck.

I worked from home one day last week, but was only able to get a little work done when Sofia decided to nap. And for some reason she has been taking 30-minute naps. That day in particular, she took a grand total of two naps. 30 minutes a piece. So, working was tough, but we did work on her crawling technique. No, she can't crawl yet, but I think she's catching on. I can tell she wants to get to something when I put it out of her reach and she starts making these crawling motions. It's funny, it looks like she's swimming on the floor. So I've been getting behind her and pushing on her feet and she manages to push herself toward whatever she wants. She's been fussier than usual, and I wonder if she'll start teething soon. She's been chewing everything in sight, so maybe.

My group at work got a new boss. Announced last week, effective in about a week. All I can do is hope that he's not an asshole and that he's fair. I mean, I know the guy, but you know how you can know people and think they're cool and all and then you get them into a management or higher-up positions and suddenly they turn into assholes? Yeah, well, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that doesn't happen here. He invited everyone out on Friday to happy hour at a bar near work and bought everyone a few drinks. Funny enough, I went since Robert was home for Sofia, just to make an appearance, but I ended up not even hanging out with the people I work with. I stayed for a few beers, but I missed my little one so much I couldn't take it and went home. She was very happy to see me. It made my day.

Happy hour was pretty dorky. I used to go all the time because Robert used to work every Friday night until 12:30 am so I'd go with friends, but that shift stopped when I was pregnant. It seemed a lot more fun back then, but not so much on Friday. There is always some drama going on. It was weird being in a bar. I hadn't set foot in one in over a year. Since before I got pregnant!

Hmmm, this weekend we also bought a book about sign language for babies (who knows? It just might work!). Has anyone out there tried this? We ordered the movie Melinda and Melinda but didn't finish it, and I was a sucker and joined a children's book of the month club. I ordered some books and got ten books for two bucks. Of course, I probably missed some fine print and owe them one of my future children, but I did it anyway.

On another note, I guess my delurking post wasn't quite a smashing success, as I only got four comments. But it's the quality, not quantity, right? AND I LOVE those who commented! So thanks!

C'mon and Delurk!

I am running late for work and eating cereal and I'm still here to remind you all that this is delurking week. Just see for youself at Beth's, and Chris's and Kelly's...and I'm sure lots of other people have reminders (thank you Sheryl). So delurk already! Or you know, comment if you're not a lurker, but a reader nonetheless! And I promise to do the same!

My Girl

I had the girl to myself all weekend. Well, the weekend's not over yet, but the husband went out of town and is driving in tomorrow. But he has to work all afternoon, so even if he does come home before work, he'll only see us for a couple of measly hours at most. Anyway, so I have Sofia all to myself. And I have been soaking all her beauty and cuteness and endless smiles up like a sponge.

Today we watched the Baby Einstein "Baby MacDonald" DVD. You know, farms and farm animals. Sofia couldn't pull her eyes away from the TV. And the funny thing? The cats couldn't either! They were mesmerized. It was so funny.

On another note, I think she'll be switching to the stage 3 diapers as soon as we finish the stage 2 diapers she has. I can't deal with the poop leakage every time she goes! The laundry is overwhelming. The scrubbing...

Back to Business

First day back at work? Sucked. I got little sleep thanks to Sofia's sleep schedule being all out of whack. Even at 11 pm last night, she flailed her little arms spastically when we placed her on our bed, in her crib, or in her pack and play. The child would not calm down. I went to bed late and went in to work eeeaaarrrly. Rough day.

Well, it's 10:42 pm and the child is asleep. Let's hope it's not a nap.

Lately I've felt as though my brain is oozing out of my ear, I can't remember anything. I felt brain dead at work today. Even with my cup of shitty coffee.

I also ate way too many cookies today.
I think that I could lose weight a lot faster if I just stopped eating cookies, but it's just too hard. Last night I fit into some prepregnancy pants. Well, okay, not exactly fit into them. I could zip up and button them, but I had some extra stuff hanging over the sides, and no decent individual would wear pants that tight (nor would they wear pants with that much cathair on them -- it seems my cats have taken to sleeping in the closet). Still, zipping and buttoning them is progress. And for that I am happy.

Oh, well, on with the week. The sooner I deal with it, the sooner it will be over. Right?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a good Christmas or Channukah or Kwanzaa and a festive New Year's Eve. We are (finally) back home after a four hour drive earlier today into town. I was gone the entire week since I was off. I figured I'd stay at my parents' house and visit with them, the rest of my family and my best friend. I did and I'm glad I stayed. Even though I missed Robert the couple of days I didn't see him. And he missed Sofia like crazy. Talk about a lot of driving. We drove in on Christmas Eve, I stayed but Robert drove back into Houston the Tuesday after Christmas. Then he drove back to San Antonio on Friday and back into Houston today (with myself and Sofia). I'll be happy to not make that drive for a long time! Especially since Sofia has taken to really hating her carseat. She cries and cries for long stretches. A four hour drive is not fun. We also have to stop and change her at least once. It's rough.

Anyway, we were in San Antonio for Christmas, then for New Year's. We spent New Year's Eve at my older sister's house with all my siblings but one (I'm one of five) and some friends. It was fun except Sofia stayed up until midnight right along with everyone. She fell asleep at 9 pm and I thought she was down for the night, but she woke at 10 pm and stayed awake until the end of the night. My sister lives in the 'hood, and everyone around there pops fireworks. Yes, even with the so-called "burn ban" in Texas and the fact that we were completely inside city limits. This made for a very loud evening. Of course I was a little concerned with the noise, but we made it through the night and Sofia fell asleep when we got back to my parents' house. She kept falling asleep later and later as the week went by, so hopefully I can get her back on her sleep schedule without too much of a problem. She's napping now.

We had a rough week leading up to Christmas. Car trouble with both cars, then repairs costing a small fortune. Robert was deathly ill, and Sofia got an ear infection. So, the Friday before Christmas Eve, our sick family drove around and shopped for Christmas presents. We managed to get everything, but Christmas weekend was just crazy and rushed. At least we got to spend time with family and I got that whole week with my parents. They got their granddaughter fix. They could not get enough of that child. Everytime I came out with the baby, one of them would swoop in and snatch her up. They took care of her a couple of evenings while I was gone for a few hours. They were more than happy to. This was nice as we have no sitter where we live.

This visit really made me think more of relocating closer to my family. I know four hours isn't really that far, but now that we have Sofia, it's really rough making that drive and packing all her stuff. The husband agrees that we should try to relocate. We'll see if it's possible.

I hope 2006 brings lots of good things and I hope that Sofia grows bigger and stronger and smarter each day. I can't believe that this time next year Sofia will be walking and talking. Amazing. Good luck to you all in this new year!