Children's Tales & Puppy Trails: March 2012

Word is it has been a while since we’ve blogged. At least that’s what I’ve been told… Sorry about that! So, what have we been up to in the last month? Well, Amelia’s time has mainly been spent eating, sleeping, and filling her diaper. More recently she’s been a lot more alert and has started smiling at us. She’s also a lot more active, which makes getting a good photo of the elusive smile nearly impossible!

Amelia went in to the pediatrician on March 16^th for her two-month appointment. Hard to believe my baby is two months old already! She hated her vaccines, and was pretty tired and crabby the rest of the day. Amelia’s eating a ton and growing like a weed. Literally. Here are her most recent stats compared to her two-week stats.

	2 Months (3.16.12)	2 Month Percentile	2 Weeks (1.30.12)	2 Week Percentile
Height:	22 ¾ inches	68%	19 ¾ inches	29%
Weight:	11 lbs. 5.5 oz	66%	7 lbs. 5 oz	20 %
Head Circumference:	39.7 cm	76%	35.8 cm	47%

We take a weekly photo of her in her crib. Putting her 1-week photo next to her 8-week photo shows just how much she’s grown!

I did look at the birth video (taken from the non-business end of things) and realized the song "Trouble" by Pink was playing when Amelia was born. That made me wonder if I have something to worry about. My Dad did always caution me about payback. Karma may come around...
For those of you who are not Pink fans, the lyrics of the chorus are:

I'm trouble
Yeah trouble now
I'm trouble ya'll
I got trouble in my town

Time will tell if the universe was trying to warn us about something. :)

At the end of February we went to Northern Iowa to meet some of Amelia's Great Grandparents.

Great Grandpa Hemann

Great Grandma Hemann

Great Grandma Brandau

The next day, Amelia was away from Mom for the first time. Aunt Amber watched Amelia while we went to help Grandma Marzen paint her house. Amelia + Mya (my 21 month old niece) sounds like a challenge, but Amber did well and Amelia was a happy camper and managed to keep both of her eyes. :) I think Mya had a good time too and was excited to hold the baby (for about 20 seconds each time).

The following weekend, my co-worker Karen watched Amelia for a few hours while we went out for supper. It's amazing how much you can get done in a 3-hour time-span if you have a motive! While Amelia was with Karen, she was very much into a musical lamb. The following week, Karen and I went out for lunch and found a similar musical lamb at The Pumpkin Patch in Ames. Of course, I had to buy it, and Amelia seems to love it.

We've discovered that Amelia loves music. Sometimes when she's fussy, we'll sing to her or put on music and she calms right down. She also loves to be swayed and have her bottom patted. If she's awake, she wants to be able to see what's happening, so we will often sit her in her bouncer near us and she's content to watch and listen to us talk to her. Amelia has also recently discovered she has a tongue, and she spends a large amount of time moving it and sticking it out of her mouth, especially if she's starting to get hungry.

With this wonderful March weather we've been having, Amelia and I have tried to go on at least one walk a day. She's a big fan of her stroller and likes to be moving. Amelia had to try out her sunglasses and cute hat we bought for the summer a little earlier than we anticipated! They barely fit!

Yesterday, we went to Little Padded Seats in West Des Moines after Amelia's appointment and bought an Ergo carrier. We have a sling we've used with Amelia, but now that she wants to see what is going on she gets mad when she's in it. So, we've retired the sling until she has better head control. After a lot of internet research, we purchased the Ergo Performance. So far, she loves it and it is super comfy to wear!

It's crazy how many of our own traits we can see in her so far. She appears to look a whole lot like her Daddy. (He says she's a lucky girl - not sure what he's saying about her Momma!) She also does this "thumb tuck" thing where she puts her thumbs inside her fists. Apparently her father also does this (news to me!). It looks like she's got her Momma's feet. Her eyes are still blue, but are lightening by the pupil. We think her eye color is going to be more like her Daddy's eventually since her Mom has brown eyes.

Sleep. We heart sleep. All of us. Including Amelia. It is WONDERFUL! She's now regularly sleeping for 5 hours at night, and occasionally up to 7. We are so thankful she isn't a baby who wants to get up every two hours for the first year of life!

I need to start writing down all our Amelia related funny quotes. There are many, but of course, now that I'm writing the blog, the only one we can remember is when Amelia was on the verge of sleep and Tom started talking to her excitedly and I whispered, "Don't engage the baby!" It's become a bit of a joke now, and every time one of us is talking too much to Amelia when it is time for her to sleep, we often tell each other not to "engage" her.

Here's a video clip of Amelia on her activity mat:

Here are some more photos from the last month.

Not too shabby for using a remote to control the camera!