Let the teething begin! (and please let it end very quickly)

So our big news is Piper's cutting her first tooth! If you can't tell by the verb used to describe the process, it sucks. I didn't get the significance of "cutting" before we had Piper, but just thinking about the little sharp tooth literally cutting its way through her gum to the surface definitely gives me the shivers ... the poor thing must hurt! Which explains her recent fussiness. And the fact that she hasn't slept through the last three nights. Ugh. Teething = a tired, fussy baby and a tired, trying-not-to-be-fussy mama.

I will say though, her teething on my wooden spoons is pretty freaking adorable :-)
(And I know you're not supposed to put Bumbos on the counter, but come on. I'm right there and she's happy as a clam to be up in the action when I'm working on dinner.)

And once that pearly white does pop all the way through, there will definitely be lots of pictures taken. Don't even worry about that ...

The other big accomplishment that we're pretty proud of is that she's mastered the sippy cup! She's definitely proud too. She went through a phase of being super frustrated, trying to figure out how the silly thing worked, but now she loves it. And I love that we can now have the valve in the top so that we don't have a swimming pool all around her high chair after lunch or dinner!

She's currently bouncing in her Graco door jumper. She still LOVES that thing. And I love the exercise it gives her. You'd think with all the jumping her thighs and cankles wouldn't be the same size, but that's ok. As I look outside at a blustery snowy day, I'm glad that she's got some fat on her to keep her nice and cozy.

6 month stats!

While Piper's bouncing in her jumper, I wanted to quickly make note of her latest stats from today's 6 month dr's appointment. So here we go ...

Height: 27 inches - 89 percentile
Weight: 19 pounds - 95 percentile
Head circumference - 17 inches - 75 percentile

So she's tall, chunky, with a bit of a petite head. Don't worry, that thing is chock full of brains.

Oh, and apparently she has stranger anxiety. Or that's how our super nice, baby-loving doctor explained it when Piper went from a smiling baby to SCREAMING and CRYING at the top of her lungs when the pediatrician took her from Reid. Yikes. Should make for an interesting babysitting session tomorrow so that I can interview a Dartmouth candidate ... hope she's good for Kelci!

No longer a little peanut

Just in case there's any question about how much Piper has changed over the last six months, here's the shocking proof ...

3 weeks old:
And now six months old:
Same monkey, same baby, but SOOO many changes!!

Since one of Piper's favorite activities seems to be the bath, we decided to go to the Y today for open swim and introduce her to the huge tub, with lots of screaming children and a lot cooler water. I don't think she really knew what to think at first. She looked very unsure of the situation and chewed on her bottom lip for the first five minutes or so - the lower lip chewing is new by the way. It started a few days ago and used to be just when she was eating, but now it happens at random times. The whole bottom lip disappears and she sucks sucks sucks. It's hilarious, but anyway, back to the pool, after she got used to the new surroundings and volume level, she really seemed to enjoy herself. She splashed and kicked and liked "swimming" with her daddy and me. She definitely got a lot more comfortable and even put her head back when she was swimming on her back with me. Reid's still thinking her sport is going to be tennis, but based on what I saw today, I'm thinking we should have named her Micheala Phelps Hutchins. Those frog legs were insane!

Publish Post

Many more firsts ...

We need to catch up a bit here since somehow, three weeks have once again passed since I've been on here. Simply put, I blame the holidays. Between Piper's baptism (December 20) and Christmas, we hosted 33 people for dinner, and then there was everything else that went with the holidays. The candy making (so worth it), traveling to Middlebury, spending time with friends and family. It was all great, but definitely left me exhausted.

Backing up to the baptism ... Piper was baptized at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Queensbury, and clearly she found the entire process to be quite exhausting. She wore the same gown as my sister and I, which was very special. I was worried that it wouldn't fit her, but as long as we didn't button the top button, she was good to go.

And then Piper's first Christmas!! She was a rock star. We hosted the Hutchins' family Christmas dinner and she was passed around all day and loved by all. With a few intermittent naps, including in her cousin Ellen's arms, she made it through the day with mostly smiles. She did start to melt down late afternoon, but I don't blame her for that ... and then she slept for 13 hours straight that night to recuperate. So adorable. And even though this picture is blurry, I love it because you can see how happy she is that Santa came :-)

And here she is at Nana and Papa's house in her new chair with the stocking Santa brought her there. She's spoiled, for sure.


Also around Christmas, she started being less verbal. Before, she used to "talk" up a storm, but she's definitely chilled out on that and is working on physical stuff - mainly sitting up. It's crazy because she went from needing to be propped up by one of us or pillows, to all of a sudden she's her own little person, sitting up and playing with toys. Um, seriously?! It kind of freaks me out because she looks like a little kid when she does that. She does still topple over every once in a while, but she must have some core muscles under her Buddha belly because for the most part, she can hold her own. This was yesterday up in her room (and she's playing with the pants that had just come off instead of her toys, but close enough) ...

And I almost forgot! She also went for her first cross-country ski on New Year's Eve with Reid and I, Aunt Kendra and Aunt Sara. She rocked her backpack for the first time and appeared to enjoy every minute - that is, until she fell asleep, but that took a while.


So what's Piper up to these days when she's not sitting up or skiing? Well, she's still loving food (if you can't tell by her cheeks). She's added lots of additional fruits and a few veggies to her repertoire and has even tried to feed herself (huge mess). She's still sleeping like a champ, packing it in for about 12 straight hours a night, and then not doing much napping during the day. I can usually count on a 30-45 minute nap about two hours after she wakes up in the morning. Then after that, there isn't usually much ... maybe a 15 or 20 minute cat nap or two. So we play a bunch! She LOVES her bouncer and bounces for 30 minutes at a time. She's still into her exersaucer and has figured out how to turn around in it. And then of course there's sitting up and playing. Probably her favorite toy right now is the Baby See and Say that my parents got her for Christmas, but she has fun playing with just about anything - including the Wall Street Journal or an empty card board box. She's SIX MONTHS tomorrow. Insane. In some ways, I can't believe so much time has passed since she's joined our family, and then in others, I can't believe it's only been that short of a time because it feels like we've been loving her forever. She's our little peanut butter and we love her like crazy.

Kissy face

And since this is her baby book, I'm a bad mom for forgetting to post that Piper gives kisses now! The first one was last Thursday (December 10). I was sitting on the couch burping her and she leans into my face with an open mouth, smashes her lips on me for a second and makes a little "mmmm" sound. Absolutely adorable. Of course I melted into a puddle on the floor. When Reid got home, I told him about it and I don't think he believed me until she did it to him the next night. It's super cute too because she gives a kiss and then leans back with a gigantic smile on her face. She is simply the best!

And her first experience with snow was on December 5. I'm not sure she really enjoyed it all that much since she slept through most of the walk, but here we are when we got back from her walk through our winter wonderland ...


I'm also going to try to do more of these mini posts versus waiting to have a good chunk of time to actually write. Especially with the holidays, those are hard to come by, but I'm definitely going to miss lots of fun things if I only post every 18 days ... she's changing so quickly now, it's unbelievable.

Since she is still taking a little snooze, there's one other super cute thing I wanted to note. She curls her toes over all the time. I'm not sure if she's trying to keep her giant feet from looking big or what, but whether in socks or in bare feet, those little toes are crammed right over. And maybe it's because I'm her mom, but I think it's the cutest thing in the whole world.

Tummy to back roll complete, finally!

Most babies roll over from their tummy to their back first ... but not Piper. She's been rolling over from her back to her front for a long time now, but until this afternoon, seemed to be completely opposed to rolling over the "easy" way. In fact, she would put her arms out straight to her side if you tried to help her to prevent the roll. Reid has said many times this will help her if she wants to be a wrestler later ... great. Well this afternoon she finally rolled over on her own to complete the back to front to back roll series. Great job, Piper!

And here she is with her favorite pooch, Zoe. I think Zoe's her favorite because she has all of this fantastic fur to grab onto and yank. Luckily, Zoe doesn't seem to mind :-)

Adventures in eating

Picture this:

Piper's sitting face forward on my lap. Just in front of her is a bowl of Chocolate Trifecta ice cream with rainbow sprinkles that I am stirring around and around (I prefer soft serve, so I make it myself with some elbow grease). Piper is staring at the bowl. She's talking ... mmm's, and ga's. Even an ah-goo here and there. I take the spoon and put some ice cream on it and bring it up to my mouth. As I lift the spoon from the bowl, Piper opens her mouth in anticipation and talks even louder. She does this with every bite I take.

Oh yes, our little one is all of a sudden VERY into food. Everything we put into our mouths is interesting - and she wants some.

As far as what Piper puts into her mouth, I decided about a month ago that I wanted to make her baby food and ordered a Beaba Babycook. It arrived last week, and with last Thursday also being the king of all food holidays, we decided that the grownups shouldn't be the only people living out gastronomic fantasies and broke out the mini appliance to make Piper applesauce to mix in with her cereal. In short, she loved it. It's hilarious because when she's into what she's eating, she makes lots of noise. That's how I could tell that she liked the oatmeal and multi grain cereals way more than the rice cereal ... she tells us all about it. With the apple added to the cereal, her noises grew louder! Yesterday we added pureed pears for the first time, and so far, I can't tell which she likes better, but she definitely likes them both. And even though it may not look it from this picture, she's getting a lot better at eating. She knows to open her mouth when the spoon is coming in and way less is coming back out. She's an eating machine.

And with all that eating, she's doing a great job of maintaining the back fat rolls and butt cheek cellulite. Bananas are next and then we'll be onto veggies! Honestly I enjoy every minute of feeding her since it's so blatantly obvious how much fun she's having throughout the process :-) I'm also almost done a great book on raising an adventurous eater - Hungry Monkey - and am really looking forward to when she can eat what we eat, just mashed up. For those with little ones, and little ones on the way, I highly recommend it. Not only is it a quick/easy read (perfect while pumping!), but he ends each chapter with recipes. I've yet to try them, but am looking forward to it!