great pictures

after a really fun christmas eve, with a delicious ham dinner and an evening spent wrapping gifts and making cookies for santa, i got the nicest surprise that the awesome pictures from naomi's aunt laurie and uncle jonathan have been uploaded. here are some of my favorites.

what a happy girl!

looking pensive

chewing on the spot where her first tooth is making its appearance

i just can't believe how much she looks like jeff in this picture. look at this picture from our christmas card from last year. the same exact expression!

wishing everyone a very merry christmas!

on the mend

thank you to everyone who has been keeping us and the sick little peanut in your thoughts over the past week. she finally seems to be starting to feel better. it turned out that they think she was having a bad reaction to the new (stronger) antibiotic she was put on when her pediatrician discovered that her ear infection hadn't gone away and in fact had gotten worse. she's on a modified (baby) version of the BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast, minus the toast) and her tummy slowly seems to be returning to normal.

i can hardly believe that naomi is 8 months old already. she's now the age her cousin gabriella was when naomi was born. that doesn't seem possible. it's bizarre (in a twilight-zone sort of way) how time seems to have sped up so much since she joined our lives.

naomi continues to do lots of really sweet, fun things. last week she was mimicking a sound i was making. her auntie margie heard her do it over the phone, and she did it once when jeff came home from work. but as soon as he got the camcorder out, she wouldn't do it again. of course!

she has also started putting her open mouth on us and on her toys. it looks like she's trying to eat my face when she does it. i can't figure out if she's just adding another sense to the ways she can play with my face, which she loves to poke, pull, pinch, and scratch, or if it's a way of showing affection, or if she's showing that she's hungry.

she also has started hugging us when we carry her. she started doing it when she was very sick last week, and it was so sweet and heartbreaking to feel her little arms grasping around our necks when we held her. even now that she seems to be feeling a bit better, she's continued to hold on when i carry her around.

in very-new news (i haven't even told jeff yet), the skin has finally broken on the top of her gum to make way for that first tooth to pop through. it's on her right side. both of her bottom middle teeth have been vying for that coveted first-tooth position and now it seems righty is going to win the race. it looks so uncomfortable.

naomi has also been waking up a bit when i put her down in her crib. my mom says it's because of the extra air time between me and the mattress now that we've lowered it. she's been able to put herself back to sleep pretty easily, which seems like a good sign. we had gotten her a sleep sheep for christmas (from santa) so that we can start thinking about helping her learn to fall asleep on her own (right now we rock her to sleep every time). so as always she's ahead of the game.

speaking of ahead of the game, she's still crawling all over the place and has gotten very good at it. she has also gotten better at standing up and getting herself back down from a standing position. before she couldn't figure it out, and would get scared and cry until we helped her get back to a sitting or crawling position. she still does that sometimes, but she's definitely learning.

i never know what to say when people tell me she's "advanced." if i had any time to read what to expect the 1st year, i would probably have a better idea of when she's "supposed" to be doing these things. but it just seems to me that all babies do things on their own time. some babies learn to crawl earlier, others learn to talk sooner. but eventually everyone does learn to sit, and walk, and talk.

i have some really great pictures to post from a visit with aunt laurie and uncle jonathan today, so i will add those when i get them.

sick ham and fam

our little peanut has been quite the sick baby these last few days! in fact our whole family has all been very sick. naomi's ear infection never went away--apparently it was resistant to the antibiotic she took so well for 10 days--and now it is very bad and has spread to the other ear. her conjunctivitis also came back, and she has a nasty stomach virus, which jeff and i also caught. so it has been very unpleasant to be part of our family for the last few days. we're getting through it, though. i just wanted to let everyone know where we've been and to thank everyone for all the nice holiday cards we've gotten. i haven't had a chance to check my email since tuesday and phone calls have been even less possible. but i wanted to thank everyone because the cards have really cheered us up these past few days. i hope you're all doing well and staying warm and healthy.

all i want for christmas

last weekend naomi met santa claus. we had waited in line at the mall for an hour and a half (two hours, by the time everything was done) and we were so pleased with the result.


after waiting in that long line, when the moment arrived, i found i wasn't sure how to approach this man dressed up in a red suit who had little kids sitting on his lap all day. i smiled and said, "hi santa, this is naomi." and then to naomi i said, "naomi, this is santa claus." i had previously explained to her how he rides in a sleigh pulled by nine reindeer and he brings presents to all the children in the world on christmas eve.

although she smiled at santa when i introduced him to her, at first she just sat on his lap with her "camera face" on. it's kind of a blank stare like she's trying to figure something out (such as, why is mommy leaving me on this stranger's lap?). i knew i had to do something, so i started jumping up and down, waving my arms in the air and cheering "naomi, naomi!" it did the trick! naomi gave me this huge grin and waved.

so many changes

things can change so quickly around here. if i were a reader, i wouldn't be surprised to come on here one day and find out that naomi learned to drive and is currently on her first date.

naomi is now a "big girl" sleeping in her own bedroom! we woke up sunday night/monday morning to see her standing up with her arms along the top railing of her crib, jumping up and down to try and vault herself up. not good! she sleeps in a sleepsack so we really thought that would deter her from standing up in the crib or being able to maneuver her legs much to get them up. oh well!

since we had to move the crib mattress down, we decided to just move the crib into her room at the same time. it's such a pain to take the whole crib apart, we don't want to have to do it again if we don't have to. i was a little sad, because last night was the first night she and i haven't slept in the same room since she was conceived in august 2008! i did shed a few tears, but on the whole i was less sad than i thought i would be when we moved her out.

naomi has slept really well since we stopped picking her up at the first sign of a whimper. we still give her one "get out of jail free" card every night, when if she cries, we'll pick her up and change her diaper, feed her a bottle, and rock her back to sleep. most nights, she hasn't cried again till she woke up the next morning. last night, her first night in her own bedroom, she even slept all night long for the first time since october! what a good little girl she is.

naomi also had her first ear infection, and her first conjunctivitis, last week! on thursday the daycare called my cell phone (which i basically only have so that they can reach me at any time while i'm at work). i was in a meeting and my heart about stopped when i saw they were calling. they said naomi's eye was gooby and i needed to pick her up in case she had pinkeye. i called the doctor and they said she needed to come in to see if she needed medicine to clear it up. by the time we left for the doctor's appointment, both eyes were now gooby and the whites were pink.

and when the doctor looked in her left ear, she really got upset, poor little thing. i had no idea she had an ear infection. she didn't have a fever or act upset or anything. by friday, though, she was acting a little out of sorts, just a bit fussy, and eating WAY too well for all to be okay. she literally ate twice as much as she usually eats--she almost got up to the magic number that her doctors want her to eat every day. i think her eardrum ruptured that day because i saw some dark specs coming out of her ear, and after that she seemed fine. she's on antibiotics too so that could have something to do with her feeling better. her eyes were better on friday too.

naomi loves to crawl around and explore the house, but her favorite pastime is still standing up while she holds onto things. she's been letting go with one hand and lately she started letting both hands go--she can't stand up on her own, so she falls down and hits her head a lot now. poor little thing! i think i, or the daycare people, catch her about half of the time, and she still cries sometimes when that happens, just because she got scared, i think.

jeff and i have had a great time christmas shopping for naomi this year. we got her a little toy laptop (she loves to play with our real laptop), a cloth dolly, and 2 new teething rings so far. we also want to get her some more books and more things to stuff her stocking with. and we got her a crib soother but i'm not sure if i want to use it now that she's getting so good at climbing around. i am very nervous about her falling out of the crib!

one more brand-new thing is that i noticed naomi was a little irritable today. i really couldn't figure out why. she didn't seem to want to eat, even moreso than usual, and she spent a lot of time chewing on her bottle nipples. usually she eats (very quickly) and then wants nothing more to do with her bottles. tonight when i was getting her ready for her bath, she was laughing a lot and i noticed why she's been grumpy today. two big giant bulges coming through her bottom middle gums! if my own wisdom tooth hadn't been coming in now, i wouldn't have realized that they were, because they aren't on top of the gums where you'd expect them to be. they're more on the front part (the same way my wisdom tooth is coming in...ow). i can't believe my tiny princess is going to have some teeth soon! she'll look so different with little teeth in her mouth.

here are some pictures. all i can get of her these days are standing up pictures mostly, but i managed to get some crawling ones. she loves playing with this toy that jeff's mom and dad got her. she's supposed to either sit in front of it or walk behind pushing it, but she of course wants to pull up on it. so we wedge it in front of her playpen or her swing so that it won't move when she does.

ham for the holidays

last week was naomi's first thanksgiving and we had such a good time. we had dinner at my parents' house like we usually do. their thanksgiving dinner is by far my favorite meal of the entire year. the food is better than any restaurant, and it's just such a wonderful, warm, enjoyable time. it's early in the holiday season, so the stress of all the gifts and christmas shopping hasn't started yet. it's just a nice day to enjoy good food and company, with the promise of the whole season ahead.

during thanksgiving dinner, naomi tried more pureed chicken, and had her first taste of mashed potatoes. she did not like either and did her customary gagging, which is what she does when she doesn't like a food. luckily i had brought along some backups, good old sweet potatoes, squash, and applesauce. yum!

ever since that day, the tuesday before thanksgiving, when naomi learned to pull herself up, that's pretty much all she wants to do. she'll try to pull up on anything, even non-sturdy things like her bathtub, or a tiny office trash can. she's fallen a lot already but i try not to let it bother me too much. sometimes even when she bangs her head on the hardwood floor, she doesn't even cry. usually she does cry, though, so i pick her up, make a show of looking at her head and kissing it, and tell her i've checked it out, and i think it looks like she's okay. usually by then she's stopped crying. if not, i turn her upside down and pretend to be smelling her diaper and saying "pee-you." for some reason she loves this. she always grins and usually laughs a lot.

the weekend after thanksgiving, we spent some time with naomi's cousin gaby. even the allure of playing with TWO other babies (gaby's other cousin, denny, was also there) couldn't pull naomi away from this little table. as soon as she saw it, she made a beeline for it, pulled herself up to stand at it, and then spent the entire day slowly walking around it. a few times i took her off and placed her with the other babies, but she just crawled right back to the little table.

as i've mentioned a lot in previous posts, after a few blissful months of naomi sleeping through the night, she then spent a couple of months hardly sleeping at all! this past week we have started trying to fix the problems we feel we've created. and it actually has been going really well. because of her eating problems, we had been picking naomi up every time she cried, and i know it was hurting more than it helped because by last week, she would sometimes only sleep for a few minutes before waking up and needing to be rocked back to sleep again.

we aren't going cold turkey, and we aren't doing the ferberizing really. we sort of are making up our own method that fits how we want to do it and it seems to be working really well for everyone so far. we basically give naomi one "get out of jail free card" per night. we give her a bath, bottle, and rock her to sleep. then she has one chance later to wake up and get picked up, and we'll feed her and change her diaper to make sure she's full and dry. then we'll rock her back to sleep and that's it for the night. if she wakes up again, it's up to her to get back to sleep on her own.

it's so surprising to me that she's actually sleeping much better now than she was before! there were a couple of unpleasant nights when i caved and picked her up, which i realize only made things worse, but i didn't care at the time. there were two nights when she did wake up after her "get out of jail free card" wakeup, and listening to her cry herself back to sleep was the most upset i've been in a while. i lay in bed and sobbed. (silently, since her crib is still in our bedroom.) i thought to myself, this is our little ham crying. we promised to love her and now she thinks no one loves her enough to pick her up. but you know what? instead of waking up more than 10 times per night (it really had gotten that bad), she has been waking up only 1 or 2 times! and she's been napping a lot better during the day, too.

i know it's not a straight road, and i'm sure we're in for some real doozies when the crying will just not stop. and i'm sure i will cave and pick her up plenty more times. but all in all we've had a pretty good week sleep-wise. i know even this is just a little step, too. eventually we'll need to drop the night-time wake-up we're currently allowing, and then we'll need to teach her to put herself to sleep again. but she is such an amazing baby, as she continues to prove to us every day, so i know she can do it.

we are thankful for...ham

it has been way too long since i updated here, so here i am. this little peanut has been keeping me busy! she never stops moving! except when she's in her carseat and then she cries a lot at being kept still! until she falls asleep, exhausted from all the moving around.

big news in naomiland today--she pulled herself up to standing! she did it this morning and was so proud of herself that she spent all day doing it. no matter where i put her down, she would crawl towards the booster seat which she originally held on to the first time she stood up. we had set it out by the door in preparation for thanksgiving, and it's the perfect height for her to be able to reach easily and hold onto as she pulls herself up to stand.

other big news for us is that i finally got out the 6-9 month clothes...i'd been holding off because she has some really adorable 3-6 month outfits that i figured i could still squeeze her into...and lo and behold, she is already too long for some of them! we've played a lot of dress-up these last few days. it seems her torso is really long...i had to get out the 12-month onesies! but her legs and arms are pretty short, and she can still fit the 9-month pants and shirts. i find it so bizarre that she can still grow so quickly even though she barely eats anything.

speaking of eating, she's now on a different medicine. she had been having trouble lying down flat again, as she did when we first discovered that she had reflux. so her gi specialist upped her prevacid dose. after we started the higher dose, she had been having some really nasty frequent runny poops last week. by the weekend everything she ingested came right out, immediately. she either spit it up, projectile vomited, or had diarrhea. (as an editor, i am ashamed to see how many guesses with the spell-checker it took me to spell that word correctly. that's just one of those words i always misspell.) anyway, so we called the gi specialist and luckily he called us back, even on a sunday, and started her on a different medicine because it seems that she grew to be intolerant of the prevacid. i can't even come close to spelling, or even saying, the new medicine. it starts with an "o."

it was unsettling to see a glimpse (and to be honest, to still be seeing, as the new medicine hasn't kicked in yet) of what naomi was like back in september when the eating problems first began. i had forgotten how much she screamed while she was eating, how she would writhe backwards to get away from the bottle. in my memory, i had sort of convinced myself that we had exaggerated her eating problem. but seeing this brought it all right back. the problem wasn't so much that she wouldn't eat, although that's never pleasant to deal with either. the problem was more that she was in obvious pain while she ate. anyway, we hope that the new medicine will help her get back to her new normal eating habits.

luckily, at least she still loves her solid foods! i made her some chicken puree over the weekend and she really didn't like it! we'll try it again on thanksgiving.

i can hardly believe my tiny princess (as they call her at daycare) is 7 months old. it doesn't seem possible. time is really speeding up now. months have turned into weeks in my mind. soon it will have been a year since our little hamgirl joined our lives, and it will feel like only a couple months have passed.

i haven't uploaded pictures in a while so i'm sharing one of the pictures we're using for our holiday card this year.