Annie- 11 Months Old

Annie spent the majority of the month with a terrible teething rash. At first I thought it was allergy related but after eliminating all the culprits, she still had this rash. Kalia never had drool rash, and Annie didn't have it when she cut her bottom teeth, so I learned something new as a Mom... and that is that drool rash/teething rash can look like this, and go all over the face, even up to th eyes (even if drool doesn't actually migrate there.) Craziness.

Two different days:

Poor girl...it seems like every month it's a new challeng with her. I love her dearly but she is still a very needy, high-maintenance child.

The ONLY place she is truly happy is right here...Mommy's lap. Cute for pictures, but challenging when I'm trying to get stuff done around the house. She just follows me around and pulls on my pants (sometimes she pulls them right off...drawstring pants, you know.) She freaks out if I leave the room. I can't wait for her to grow out of this stage, because let's face it...it's draining! (I will add though that she is the cutest, happiest, silliest little thing if I just sit down and let her climb all over me. She also is really good if I take her out and about like the grocery store and stuff. So it's really just at home that she is high maintenance.)

She makes up for her whiny beavior by being an amazing sleeper. (I'm sure all the crying and clinging is exhausting!) She sleeps 14 hours at night and two naps during the days (and I put her to bed very early!) At least once a week she takes a four-hour nap in the afternoon, and then still goes sleeps all night. I thank my lucky stars for that Tender Mercy!

Her Daddy calls her "Chubbas." So naturally Kalia has picked it up and it makes me smile to hear her say, "Where's Chubbas?" or "Here you go Chubbas." I love these sweet round cheeks and the double chin. As you can imagine, I am kissing them nonstop.

She will do "Touchdown" on command, which is funny because we don't watch football in our house.

Allergies are STILL causing problems for us. Will I ever figure it all out? I've been letting her try to eat more foods and I thought it was going well (no face rash) but I got too lax...I'd let her snack on Ritz crackers (corn starch) or V8 Fusion juice (Ascorbic Acid/Citric Acid) and then I realized that she was scratching her back and legs and sides, sometimes scratching until she bled. I FEEL TERRIBLE!!! I remember having the impression (back when she was screaming all the time as a newborn) that she was ITCHING and I had that confirmed this week. I just have to be more careful with her. I've been using hydrocortisone cream, gold bond powder, and sometimes Benadryl to try to stop her itching.

She FINALLY added "Mama" to her vocabulary (about time!) She says about 6 or 7 words occasionally. She jabbers nonstop though, and she is VERY EXPRESSIVE. She is always gasping and oohing and ahhing at things. I'm curious to see what this will mean for her personality in the future.

She's in that cute stage of walking where she still holds her arms up to help her balance and wobbles a bit. I never get tired of watching it. No more crawling for this little one.

She will NOT go down the stairs. She will climb up them and then starts crying because she knows she's stuck. I've worked with her at least eight times, showing her how to go down backwards. It ain't happening. She's not a daredevil like her older sis.

I gave her Haircut #3 last month and I've decided to stop trying to tame the Fro. We'll just have to let it grow out!

Can't believe my baby's almost 1...that's not really a baby anymore to me. Boo.

10 Months Old

Blueberries! Her favorite treat. Sometimes her face and hands get stained purple.

Would someone tell me what is going on with these eyes of hers? They have definite brown streaks, but now it looks like they're going LIGHTER but only in certain spots? Cuh-razy! Here's the monthly update on Annaliese, for the Grandmas and for the record:

Weight: 21 lbs

Height: I forgot...I'll fill this in later

She is standing on her own, and has taken 6 or 7 steps. She still prefers crawling and probably will for awhile.

She's putting up with a lot of bullying from Kalia. She'll take it for awhile, but if Kalia holds her and won't let go (7 or 8 times a day) she just starts screaming til I come rescue her. She has a VERY loud yell, one she perfected when she was 2 months old.

She's not really into signing like Kalia was. I've seen her do "more" once or twice, and "milk" but she just looks at me like I'm a weirdo when I do signs with her.

She's at that age where she likes to drop everything on purpose, just to watch it fall. Then she says, "Uh-oh."

She can't have any juice, not even pear or apple, because of the citric acid and ascorbic acid, (it gives her face rashes, cradle cap and makes her cranky) but she LOVES water out of a sippy cup.

I am mixing chamomile tea in with her formula to help her body deal with the allergies and also to help her relax and sleep at night. (I'm a big fan of chamomile myself.)

She says 4 words: Dada, Ni-Ni (ni-night), Uh-oh, and my personal favorite, "Toot" (she says it like the "toot" in "tootsie". I'm still waiting on "mama"

She is a great clapper and gives high fives.

She seems to love music a lot more than Kalia ever did, and I see her bouncing and dancing to music all the time.

She's in the process of cutting all 4 top teeth. She bit me the other day with her razor bottom teeth and almost hit the bone.

She is getting really hard to handle at church. She's almost hyperactive when I try to contain her in the pew. I am confused about this because I thought she was going to be my calm baby.

Still taking 2 naps a day and going to bed at 6 p.m.

Has been nicknamed "Chubbas" by her dad, and so now Kalia calls her that all the time,

Loves to climb up the stairs (but she won't even attempt going down.)

Loves to wave hi to people.

She got called "Thumbelina" by someone at the store the other day. (random!)

9 Months Old

This picture is blurry, but I had to put it up anyway. My mom and my brother and I went to visit Alice Holland (Elder Holland's mother). She was a close friend of my great grandma Esplin, and she is almost 94. Annaliese has never shown any signs of separation anxiety, but it may just be starting. She wasn't really smiling in this picture, she was starting to get a little nervous.

I just had to save it for her so that she can know she was held by my favorite apostle's mom!

No, this is not Annaliese (Man how she's changed! That's what you were thinking, right?) This is Kalia at 9 months. For comparisons sake. It just dawned on me that I created a separate blog for Kalia to do these monthly updates. I even created one for Annaliese, then forgot all about it, and I've been doing monthly updates here. Oh well. I missed her 8 month mark too. So, it's been a BIG few months for her. She is on the GO!!! She learned to crawl, then pull to a stand, and then try to take a step (only one step, then she fell) all in a matter of about 5 weeks. It's so funny when babies first figure out how to pull to a stand and cruise around pieces of furniture. While we were in Colorado, I woke up to see Annaliese, standing there in the dark, going round and round her pack and play, standing and holding on to the sides. It made me smile.

She also learned to pick things up and put them in her mouth, and today I had to pull out skittles and a piece of tape. Actually, she choked on the tape and threw up, and got it out on her own. But besides the choking hazard, her allergies are still challenging us. We tried her on avocado, and it gave her a nasty rash on her neck. (My brother said he has an avocado allergy too!) I also tried her on fresh goats milk. She LOVED the taste and would guzzle it down. And for 3 days, all seemed well. But you know what they say...you need to wait 4 days! And that's when her constipation showed up, and the tiny rash (looks like baby acne) showed up all over her hairline. It got pretty bad, and stayed for about 4 days AFTER we took her off the goats milk. Dang it. If she's that allergic to goats milk, can you imagine if I let her have cows milk? I am on a mission to start making her baby food, and getting her on more solids. She just keeps chugging down that formula, and even though she's super active now, I swear she's just getting fatter. (I won't lie, I love all that fat.) She loves her prunes though, thank goodness since she needs them to help keep her regular sometimes.

It looks like she might have gotten the curly hair gene too. This is about when Kalia's started to curl, but mostly only when its wet:

Those bottom 2 teeth broke through! FINALLY! Those were some tricky little buggers.

Her eyes have a few more streaks of brown in them, but they are still mostly blue. I can't believe how long they are taking to change!! Kalia's were already hazely brown at this age. (See above picture...I cannot get it to move down here.)

She loves to mimic people, and does this funny slurping sound, or she shakes her head no while she smiles really big, or she tries to copy the tone and inflection of sounds that I make to her.

This is what she looks like when she does her slurping sound. Great comic relief.

And for some odd reason, everyone says she looks EXACTLY like her dad. I don't see it, but then, I can't see either of us in either our kids.

9 months...I really love this age.

Well, that was really long, but I needed a break from writing about all the craziness. Tune in tomorrow though, and I'll fill ya in on the latest. I think we've finally found a place to go, maybe even a house of our own.

8 Months Old

7 Months Old

Lately everyone is saying, "She's gotten so big!" And it's weird, because it's like all of a sudden she went from being a little baby to a ....big baby. Or something like that. She is 18.6 lbs and 26 inches (90th percentile). It's going to be weird when my girls are taller than me someday.

Last week I was realizing that her footie pajamas were all a little too small, and I better go dig out the bigger size. That's when it DAWNED on me that Annaliese is 7 months old, and still wearing 3-6 month pajamas. I have to blame this on Kalia. (Hear me out on this one). Kalia started crawling at 4 months, before she could even sit up on her own. And she started taking steps at the age that Annaliese is now (remember the video I posted of her last year, at 7 1/2 months? That movie blows my mind now that I see what a normal 7 month old baby is doing.) Anyway, since I don't know any better, my unconscious mind still thinks that Annaliese is 4 months old.

That was fun for a first-time Mom, but from here on out I know better and I want her to stay SITTING and not CRAWLING or WALKING for AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!! Especially because of her food allergies, I am going to have to keep my floor spotless which is a daunting job as you all know.

About those food allergies-- She is still very allergic to cows milk (thanks to Kalia, who dripped milk all over A's face, we know that she hasn't outgrown that one) and she still has her corn allergy. When ever I see her start spitting up a ton, (or sometimes it's a rash on the back of her neck) I know that I wasn't careful enough. She's on solids now, but several jars of fruit baby food have citric acid added to them. Citric acid is sometimes made from corn starch. And I forgot about that until the spit up started up again. So I have to stay on my toes with her. At least the vegetables don't have anything added but water. She really loves carrots and sweet potatoes. I am very cautious with any baby cereal, but so far rice cereal has been fine.

Here's a few other little things about Annaliese at this age:
1. I cut the mullet!
2. Her eyes are taking their sweet time on changing colors. They are still grey/blue with some brown streaks in them.
3. She has survived some pretty hard falls, one of which she landed face down on the ceramic tile and got a bloody nose (DANG THE BUMBO!)
4. She just started reaching out for people when she wants to go to them.
5. She's drooling again like crazy. And she started waking up at nights. Those bottom teeth better get in soon, PLEASE PLEASE!
6. She found out that standing is pretty cool, and when I go to put her on the floor in a sitting position, she locks her knees and tries to stand. Finally I just put her on her stomach which she HATES, and rolls over to her back and is just stuck there.
7. She's increasingly tolerant of Kalia who likes to hold her, squish her, roll her around, and drag her by the feet. But she does NOT like sharing the Exersaucer. (Sidenote: My mom has a picture of my older sister trying to get in a baby Walker with me, and I'm screaming my head off. I tried to find it at home but I couldn't. It's just funny to see K & A reinacting my old baby pictures.)
8. She gets REALLY UPSET when she doesn't get what she wants. She could be a real challenge when she's older. I usually see it when she's really hungry, and I'm trying to get her bottle ready, and she's reaching for it. and when I won't give it to her, she starts crying so hard it sounds like she's laughing.

9. She has a cute little voice and loves to say ba ba ba and da da da.



10. And for those of you who are wondering, she is still sleeping in a pack and play in our walk-in closet. I can't bring myself to move her in with Kalia yet. Annaliese wakes up at 5:30 for a bottle and then goes back to sleep. I can't bear the thought of Kalia waking up and STAYING awake at that hour.

11. Last but not least, she has a sort-of foot fetish going on. She will rub and scratch her feet on everything. She loves having them massaged. And sometimes when I give her a bottle, she holds onto it with her hands AND Her feet....kind of like a little monkey. I really need to get a picture of it.

6 Months Old

I told you she had a nice mullet going on! It might be time for a little snippity snip.

Happy Half-birthday to my little Anna-leecee. Latest developments:

This month she started holding her own bottle and sitting up. She's started giggling a lot too. And she no longer needs to be swaddled when sleeping. Still as cuddly as ever, and her Daddy calls her Teddy Bear. It's the most fitting nickname...of all time. 'She still seems so YOUNG to me, and I love it. Because, as we mothers love to say, "Where did the time go?"

Weight: 17 lbs (75th percentile) and my arms are starting to get a little muscle back, packing her around all the time, just like this:

Look at the baby. I'm too tired to crop out the parts I'd rather you didn't stare at.

My girls have been sick today. Kalia has been sick all week. I took her to the doctor to give myself peace of mind that it's not swine flu. Long story shortened: It's not. Just the stomach flu. It breaks my heart when she asks so sweetly for food, and I have to tell her no- and she doesn't understand why. I tried to give her rice and applesauce, but they came back up every time. yech. Today Annaliese started. I washed sheets and babies (not together) so many times today, I lost count. Both girls drank Gatorade (G2) all day and loved it. I can't believe I fed my baby Gatorade all day. Oh well. She kept it down. That's all for now folks. I must go sleep.

5 Months Old

Today Annaliese is 5 months old. Sometimes it's hard for me to believe she's that old, Kalia was pulling to a stand at this age. Annaliese is a very content little thing, and is happy to just lay on her back (and roll over occasionally). I'm grateful for a baby who is much slower paced. She is just what I needed. Here's a few things to remember- 5 months old means:

She's found her toes

She grabs everything in sight, usually that's my hair

She's usually pretty quiet, but when she babbles, she really speaks up

Her hair is thinning out (and so is mine!) and she has a lovely mullet

She is fascinated with her big sister, and smiles at her often

She is the squishiest, cuddliest little thing and I can't stop kissing her

She is taking 3 long naps a day, and still sleeping 13 hours at night (and this one took a lot of work to achieve, so we don't take it for granted.)

She gets so excited when I go in after she's been asleep, she starts kicking her legs like crazy and it sure makes me feel loved

Sometimes I can't believe this is the same baby that cried all the time, that never let me put her down, and that wouldn't sleep anywhere but my arms. That seems like a million years ago! She is the complete opposite of Kalia in every way- I can't think of a single way that they are the same, except for their hair color and eye color will probably be the same...anyway, it's just so interesting to me that two little girls could be so different. I think it means they will be even more compatible later on, at least that's how it was with me and my older sis.