Eliza Visits Santa

Eliza is 3 months old (yesterday)!

I had to take this month's Raggedy Ann picture because Brian was at work. Not such a great picture, but I think you can see the growth!

In the past month, Eliza has learned to babble lots of consonant sounds, push herself up really well when she's on her belly, and laugh out loud. She also tries to sit up on her own when she's propped up on her Boppy or in her booster chair. She rolled over on Thanksgiving, but we think it was a fluke because she was on a soft bed and she had a bit of help from the slope of the mattress. Hopefully she'll roll over on her own soon!

We put up the Christmas tree today. For the first time ever, I had to have an artificial tree and colored lights (I'll tell you about that later). I'm not thrilled, but the baby seems to enjoy it.



This afternoon, Brian has to cover the local Christmas festival/parade. I think we're going to take the baby and see how she does. The baby's first Christmas is so exciting!

Thanksgiving recap and Eliza's portraits

Eliza's portrait sitting went really well. She didn't want to smile, but we got some cute poses in an adorable outfit. As promised, we had a much better experience with Sears. While we got great personal attention, there were lots of people there and they all seemed to have an 11AM appointment. I'm beginning to think double/triple booking is standard in the portrait industry. They were finishing up people who were there before, trying to deal with the people who were waiting, and trying to troubleshoot package delivery problems for someone who showed up at the last minute. I can tell you that if we weren't being so exclusively catered to, we would have had quite a wait. We were interrupted pretty much constantly while trying to pick out our pictures, so ultimately, that probably cut down on our order. All in all, though, it was a really great experience and we got really great first pictures of Eliza.

Thanksgiving, of course, didn't go according to plan at all. We didn't even get some Tofurkey. I'll pass up the details, but I will tell you that we plan to do holidays in Mayfield from now on.

Also, we have other news to share later. I'll let Brian deliver that himself. I hope you guys had a great holiday!

Road trip and a continuation of the portrait story...

After I posted about our unfortunate experience at Olan Mills, I was contacted via the blog by someone claiming he could make sure we have a better experience if we go to Sears Portrait Studio. He left his email address. I dropped him an email this weekend, and it turns out, this guy is the CEO of the company that owns Sears Portrait Studio and Picture Me Portrait Studio. He arranged for the studio in Lexington (where we'll be on Wednesday)to call and set up an appointment for us. They've been very, very nice and we'll have Eliza's Christmas portrait taken on Wednesday. We'll let you know how it goes.

Also, thanks Mr. Cataldo. We appreciate your kindness.

Tomorrow evening we'll be heading to Lexington to hang with Cheryl for a day and then we'll be off to Louisville for the big turkey!

Christmas Portrait

Last night we took Eliza to have a Christmas portrait taken. The original idea was to have some family portraits taken, but money's tight and we had a coupon for free baby portraits. You wouldn't believe the nightmare that experience was.

After debating whether we should keep the baby's appointment at Olan Mills or switch to Sears portrait studio, we opted for Olan Mills. When we arrived, they had a very large family in front of us and a crying baby in the studio having her picture taken. We had a very unsavory-looking photograher being assisted by two greasy-haired girls in dirty sweatpants. We were informed that the family in front of us were running late so we'd have to wait.

We sat in the studio while the photographer photographed the screaming baby and sold portrait packages to the waiting family (who bought every possible pose). In the meantime, Eliza went from baby, camera-ready to extremely hungry demon baby. When the baby begins to look like Bill O'Reilly, it's time to feed her. At that point, we'd been sitting there for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the lady with the screaming baby disappeared before she even had a chance to look at her pictures.

Finally, after we sat for an hour, waited and listened to the ridiculous banter between her crack assisting team (actual dialogue: "I think misspelled VOID!"), watched the photographer stop in the middle of everything else to give a family directions over the phone, fed the baby, and took down the customer service number so we can report thist nuttiness, it was Eliza's turn. She put her in one pose and got a fairly cute picture. Eliza didn't look happy, but she wasn't crying. Perfect. Then we had to stop so she could give phone directions again. Then she put Eliza on her tummy and Eliza immediately started crying. She tried to get her calm for about 30 seconds and then looked at us and said "do you want to reschedule?". At that point, we were done. We ordered our free pictures from the first pose and then left.

What a nightmare!

(almost) Turkey Time!

We're less than a week away from Eliza's first Thanksgiving.

We're loading up the car and heading to Louisville this year, which should be an interesting trip. We made it fairly well the last time, but there was a lot less traffic then.

I'm working on a way to get Eliza some turkey on Thanksgiving, but my research shows that 3-month-olds aren't supposed to get poultry. She likes soy formula, though, so perhaps Tofurkey is in order.

Eliza is 12 weeks! Next week, tattoos and driving cars.

Eliza is 12 weeks today. The time since August has flown by. Just a few seconds ago, she woke up laughing. No doubt dreaming about the goofy dances I was doing while watching Yo Gabba Gabba this morning. I can't wait 'til she laughs spontaneously. Here is swinging in her swing while apparently dressed as Dippin Dots.

Photographic Contrasts - A big photo dump

I've never exactly been an ace with a camera. This past weekend, I decided to dress Eliza up in a little Christmas onesie and attempt to take some Christmasy shots. Heh. What I ended up with were some out of focus 90s alternarock album covers.








Brian is a much better photographer. On Sunday afternooon, we went to Brian's Dad's house to see his stepmother's new grandson Luke and have dinner with all the other grandkids/parents. See? Brian's pictures are much more impressive.


Yes, I am wearing a plastic tiara! Thanks for asking!





Left to right:
Austin, Hannah, Eliza, Jennifer Elizabeth (pretty name! Love those Elizabeths), Luke, Hunter

Unusual lullaby

Last night we had dinner at Brian's Aunt Darlene's house. Brian's cousins Zach and Mallory were there and provided some comedic entertainment.

Zach seems to really like Eliza and he decided he wanted to hold her. He had her thrown over his shoulder like a pro, so one of the other adults on hand suggested he sing to the baby. Without missing a beat, he launched into a rendition of "Welcome to the Jungle". I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

Two posts in one day! Amish Paradise.

Brian had a picture published in the Louisville Courier-Journal today. The local Amish refuse to place orange triangles on the backs of their buggies, so Brian covered the trial of a few of accused. I ran out early this morning to grab a paper so we could check it out. Eliza and Brian seemed to have a grand time hanging out in bed and reading the paper.

Really bad at updating.

I've been really bad with the updates lately. Eliza is 11 weeks old now and she's learning to laugh. The other day, she laughed out loud in her sleep. We haven't heard a chuckle like that during waking hours yet, but we're hopeful that it isn't far off.

I took some video the other night, but it always encodes much darker than it looks on tape. Here's some video of Brian and Eliza playing.

Like a Surgeon

The pediatrician recommended that Eliza see a surgeon for her umbilical hernia. We'd had a couple of doctors tell us that we shouldn't worry and it would clear up by the time she's a year or two old. That's why we were surprised when a local general surgeon recommended surgery.

That didn't sound quite right to me, given the fact that EVERYTHING I'd read seemed to indicate otherwise. I decided we'd take Eliza to Kosair's in Louisville for a top notch second opinion, which we did this past week. Turns out, they seemed shocked that a surgeon would want to touch it. They said no surgery unless it doesn't correct itself by age 4. Otherwise, they'd only fix it if she needed to go under general anesthesia for something else.

We're completely relieved.

In other news, Eliza is babbling like she's going to skip small words and start speaking full sentences. I reportedly said my first word at three months, so maybe we have a little prodigy on my hands.

History

Since I was unsuitable to be in front of the camera, Brian had to pose with Eliza for her picture with history.

SHOT through the heart and you're to blame. You give vaccination a bad name!

Poor Eliza had her first ever vaccinations today. Three shots and an oral vaccine. She screamed in pain with all three jabs and then I unexpectedly burst into tears. I honestly didn't think I'd cry, but the sound of that shriek hit me right in the gut. She managed to fall asleep for the rest of our outing. She even smiled a bit once we got home. However, while I was feeding her a couple of hours later, she started sobbing once again. I gave her a bit of Tylenol and now she's sleeping in her booster chair. I hope she's feeling better when she wakes up from her nap.

I honestly didn't expect that to be as difficult as it turned out to be. My poor little baby.