Our Lives Lately

1. Played with cups- a new favorite activity.


2. Packed up our apartment. We moved to Orem. For those who have asked, here are the details: about 1600 finished square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, big open kitchen/living room, unfinished basement for storage, 2 covered parking spots, small patio and side yard. While we don't love the inexplicably tiny refrigerator, '90's gold light fixtures, or the random wallpaper border in the half bath; we do love all the space. Hopefully I can post more pictures in the coming weeks as we get things set up in the new place.

Sadie actually loved playing in the bins. At least she did until she stood up against the side tipped it over.


3. Celebrated Cinco de Mayo. Sadie loves refried black beans. Seriously. I think it's probably because they had lots of cheese in them.


4. Read books. Sadie seems to actually enjoy reading books now. Before, she would just shove every page into her mouth. Now she'll touch the pictures and even talk to them. Just don't stay on the same page for too long- she doesn't seem to care much about plot development.


5. Started exploring. Up until last week Sadie only used her crawling to get to things she knew she wanted. Now she'll just cruise the apartment looking for trouble. She isn't comfortable enough in our new place to do that yet.


6. Practiced walking. Anyone who has attempted to hold a babies hands and walk with them has probably discovered that it doesn't take very long for your back to start aching. Daniel moves along with Sadie on a chair with wheels.


7. Pulled hair/grabbed faces. Sadie loves to grab people's faces. I thought most kids did this at an earlier age, but Sadie will often slap/scratch/grab your face when you hold her. She drew blood on a scratch to my neck the other day.

Sleep Update

This is a fairly accurate depiction of how we were all feeling when I last posted about Sadie's sleeping issues. Well...I think we have a daughter who just likes to make us look stupid because later that same day I complained on the blog Sadie cried herself to sleep for her afternoon nap. She followed that up with sleeping through the night. She has now slept through the night for a week (even with the move). The day after I posted she did cut her first tooth but I am not convinced that was the only problem. I like to think that I broke her down mentally.

No matter what the cause- I feel like a whole new woman.
I'm pretty sure Sadie does too.

Somebody please save us

So before I had a kid I was sure that once my children were a few months old I would just let them cry it out if they woke up at night. This is what my mom did with her kids and we all got through it. (Well, except for me, who woke up at least once a night until I was 5 with night terrors.)

This method worked alright for us, but mostly because Sadie just didn't wake up that often (and didn't cry for very long) so we weren't faced with the mental/emotional challenge of letting the world's most stubborn baby "cry it out". Well...starting at the beginning of April Sadie abandoned her healthy sleeping habits. It started with waking up 4 to 6 times per night screaming and it has now extended to outright refusal to take any kind of a nap in her crib. We have attempted to make her cry it out but she wins every time. The longest we ever held out was 2 hours. Yes, we endured 2 long hours of violent thrashing, back-arching and screaming. To add to that struggle, our trashy, meth-head downstairs neighbors pound on their ceiling if we let her cry too much.
Not to be dramatic or anything, but it is ruining our lives!

Anyway, now that we are moving (yes, we are moving THIS Saturday- May 22nd) and Sadie's room will share NO walls with any neighbors whatsoever we are committed to consistently administering the best possible strategy for getting our sleep-through-the-night baby back.

Do any of you have any books/original methods that you would suggest? We are willing to do almost anything.

Looking Forward To...

Where I grew up- captured from Google street view

1. Going to Boston. My sister Alicia is getting married and we'll be staying for a few days after to hang out with my family. We haven't been all together since Christmas 2008. It will definitely be an adventure fitting all 11 adults and 2 babies in this 1940's colonial.

Sadie constantly has her pointer finger extended in what can only be described as a "perma-point"
2. Seeing more pictures like this of my cute little crazy. My friend Janica is starting a photography business and she was looking for models. We all know how cheap I am so I jumped at the chance for free pictures. On top of the just downright adorable photos, there are so many pictures that capture the funny faces I get from Sadie all the time. I cannot wait to get the CD and get some of these in frames.

This is the face I see roughly 70% of the day- Sadie is usually yelling at anyone/anything around her. She is not upset most of the time- sometimes a girl's just gotta be heard.

3. Moving (???). We have been saying we are going to move out of our small apartment for, oh, 2 years now. We thought we'd move when I finished graduate school, but then when I got a job so close by we decided to stay. Then we thought we'd move before Sadie was born but it didn't happen. We looked at buying houses for 6 months after Sadie was born and then decided against it. For the past 3 months we have been looking for a new place to rent. We are fairly certain we will be moving in the next month. Bye bye rent under $600, hello mortgage-type rental payments.

4. Summer swimming. I just bought these new swim suits for Sadie and myself and we can't wait to get in the pool. Sadie just loves to show off her thigh rolls so I am going to give her every opportunity I can!

Baby Hair

Sadie's cousin Will has an awesome blog entry about his hair that inspired me to address Sadie's hair situation.

Sadie was born with some dark hair all over her head. The most notable aspect of her coiffure was the obvious mullet.

A dusting of dark hair on top with flowing locks on the side and back

The hair on top then started to fill in

3 weeks old

The rest of it started to thin out, starting with the sides and working its way down which created the ultra mullet- medium length on top, very short around the middle and sides, and thick in the back.

1 1/2 months old & 3 1/2 months old

Starting in November, a bald spot began to emerge at the back of Sadie's head and the ultra ultra mullet was created


We naively thought that eventually all the hair at the back of her head would fall out. All of the hair thinned out except for a small Hitler patch (named for Die Fuhrer's mustache) underneath her bald spot.

6 months old

9 months old - last week

That stupid patch is holding on strong, BUT I am proudly here to state that Sadie's hair has started growing again on the top of her head! That hair is also growing in blond. The back and sides are a different story- her bald spot is as unsightly as ever and the existing hair is dark brown.



Check out that mop on top. I can actually put it in a little pony tail but there is no need.

This marks the end of a long story about hair.

BCF

West met Midwest last week when Carrie and Will came to Utah for her sister's law school graduation. Will is our one and only nephew and Sadie's forced best cousin forever. (Sadie has both a forced BFF-n-eva and a forced BCF-n-eva. What kind of parents would we be if we didn't determine Sadie's closest buds while she was in the womb?)

We were so excited to meet Will and he did not disappoint.

One of the cutest little boys I've ever seen. He is 4 1/2 months younger than Sadie.

The initial meeting between Uncle Daniel and Will was rough



But it would appear they smoothed things out when Daniel offered his tasty finger.

When Sadie noticed Will she just tried to grab his face and hair like she does with every baby she sees. Will didn't seem to notice Sadie much.

These two actually look much more alike than I had anticipated. Am I just imagining that? They both have some huge cheeks, wide foreheads and bright blue eyes. I guess we'll have to wait a few years to really find out.

Sadie looks concerned here but she is just trying to grab Will's face.

Will longed to be able to hold Sadie's giraffe

Sadie eventually ignored Will and showed off her clapping skills for Carrie's family


Sadie is counting down the days until she can grab Will's face at Alicia's wedding!