The first tooth!

So, Meredith is 8 1/2 months old and is just popping her first tooth. As expected, it is the bottom front (right side). It must be a weird feeling in her mouth because I've noticed her sticking her tongue out like she's feeling it or something. It really cut through the skin this past weekend and it was kinda funny because our babysitter was convinced that it happened yesterday while she was keeping her. At least I was there to see this 'first'. It really bothers me to think that someone else gets to see (or thinks she sees) her other 'firsts'. I know I can't be there for everything, but this whole work thing really stinks because I feel like I'm missing out on so much. She still LOVES to say mamamamamama though...very loudly too! (funny note: when she says dada it is really quiet, almost like a whisper, but with mama she is hollering!) I'm sure there will come a time when I won't want to spend as much time with her, but it's just not here yet.
It's really interesting how different babies are in getting teeth. I work with a girl who's son is over 2 months younger than Meredith and he has 3 or 4 teeth on the bottom and it already cutting the top teeth too! Meredith has done a great job so far...not getting overly fussy or really bothering her eating or sleeping. Of course, I suppose that could be yet to come, but she has been so good natured so far that I would be surprised!
Another cute thing is that lately when she sees other babies, whether on tv or in person, she gets so excited! She just starts wiggling, smiling and 'talking'! Chris had her at Lowe's last weekend and there was another little boy in a stroller nearby and Chris said it was the cutest thing ever because they were both so enthralled with eachother. She is so aware of her surroundings and she doesn't miss a thing!
Another funny note: I had to buy her new socks this weekend because all of her infant socks are way too small and the heel ends up in the arch of her foot and basically fall off. I ended up buying them from the girls department and they fit like a glove! They are for shoe size 3-5! This baby has some Smith blood for sure!

I'll try to get a picture of the tooth soon....if she'll cooperate!

Just a Wednesday

This has been a pretty crazy week so far. Our babysitter is on vacation this week, so my mother in-law & step father-in law have been here keeping Meredith for the past 3 days. They just left when we got home from work today. Chris has teacher workdays tomorrow & Friday. They took her to get some pictures taken today and it sounds like they turned out really cute.
Meredith has been doing so well. I can feel one of her teeth really cutting through her gum now, so it can't be far away. Her newest favorite thing is making raspberries ( I think that's what you call it when she slobbers and blows bubbles, while making noise!). She also kindof huffs & puffs when she gets upset now. Almost like she's making a put put sound while blowing air out at the same time.
Chris got her a walker the other day since she is so determined to pull up and stand up. She doesn't really like it yet because we think she thinks it is too much like her exersaucer, which no longer appeases her for any amount of time. She has stood by herself for a few seconds at a time and is just determined to be on the move all the time.
Nothing else too exciting going on. School is really hard. No surprise there. I didn't even get to see her awake on Monday because she was sleeping when I left at the crack of dawn and was in bed for the night when I got home. That totally bummed me out. Just to see her for a few minutes makes my day. These are the sacrifices I'm making I guess. Better be worth it when I get this stupid degree.

8 Months old!

I can hardly believe Meredith is 8 months old! Chris was out of town this weekend (took his dad to NYC to see the Yankees) so it was just the two of us. I had a lot of fun just playing with her and trying to keep up with her! There is no longer any time of the day that she isn't mobile. She will sit still long enough to eat, but then it is off to the next adventure. Another favorite thing right now is seeing her reflection in our stainless steel trash can! It is so funny because she'll be crawling through the kitchen and see her reflection and she just giggles and cackles and pulls up so she can bang on it. I have a picture, but still need to upload it.
I think she has also entered the separation anxiety phase. The babysitter says she has been quite fussy during the day, but she is totally fine at home. There could be some other considerations there too, but I think it is mostly the separation thing. Chris kinda took over when he got home last night so that I could study for my Finance exam that I have tonight (UGH!) and she got all fussy when I left the room. I guess in a sick way, it makes me feel good to know that she is attached to me and definitely knows that I'm her mommy, but then again I don't want her to be upset either.
Oh, I figured out a way to keep her semi-still on the changing table. Give her a book to chew on! If I move fast, I can get her changed without having to wrestle with her! Not every time, but close.
I know I'm kinda behind the boat on this, but I've really just recently started giving her finger foods. It just makes me so nervous that she's going to choke! This is when I'm looking for the owner's manual that should have come along with her!

Another word!

Just a quick note. Meredith said 'dada' last night. Chris was pretty excited :)
But remember, 'mama' was first!! HA!

Almost 8 months!

These are some of Meredith's favorite things lately:
-Newspapers or magazines...really paper of any sort that she can crumple & tear.
-measuring cups ..just gave her some from the cabinet one day and she loves them because they are connected by a ring and make lots of noise when she bangs them on her tray.
-her new bath toys that are perfect to chew on...still lots of chewing...still no teeth.
-the little springy door stop thing that goes 'boing'... she tries to chew on this too!
-not so fond of the exersaucer anymore because it confines her too much! She pulls up her legs when you try to put her in!
-the stairs have quickly entered her radar...she heads that way and stops and turns around to look at us and kinda giggles and turns back around and crawls faster!
-the sippy cup mostly gets thrown on the floor, but she likes to chew on the spout
-she loved prunes the other day!
-cords of any sort....we may have to move the floor lamp out of our living room!
-small animals like Allison's chihuahua, Stella & mom's cats....they just have to get over her getting so excited and screaming at them!!
-just being on the move all the time. She plays so hard and barely wants to stop long enough to eat, but the bottle is still an absolute favorite...the whining starts as soon as she sees it.
-she also gets excited when she gets in her highchair now because she loves to eat. (I'm very excited because she doesn't even flinch when I give her new foods. She seems to like them all!)
- Almost forgot about her toes....she can sit in her carseat and pull her toes up and chew on them!!

Pictures from August

Cousins at the beach!

Yumm! Celery!

What a big girl!

Meredith is becoming more and more of a little person every day. Her sweet, funny personality is just overflowing! She is babbling all the time and I must admit that she sounds like a little chinese baby!! She has been saying something along the lines of 'deng deng deng' and it just cracks me up! It is like she is really talking to us now. By the way, her favorite word is still mamamama :) When I got home from class last night she actually looked at me and said mama, which made me extremely happy, but it may have just been the first thing that popped out of her mouth too.
Meredith is also standing up in her crib now. My mom was over on Saturday and she had just asked me if she was standing in her crib yet and I said no, but I know it's soon. About 10 minutes later I went to get her up from her nap and there she was, standing up and chewing (well, gumming) the railing (now I understand why those plastic covers are on the railing!). When she saw me, she just grinned from ear to ear and seemed quite proud of herself. Overall, she is just a really happy baby. Just that one night a week at school is making me miss her. I wish I could be there for every minute these days.
We had a bridal shower for my sister Hillary on Saturday, which was a lot of fun. Meredith actually spent the night at Mom's house on Friday night (only the 2nd time!), which made it a lot easier to get everything ready for the shower. Her wedding is right at 2 months away, so it's sneaking up quickly, which also means I need to get serious about this bridesmaid dress if I don't want to look like a giant blob...ugh. At this point, I know I will be a blob, it just how big of a blob.

I am really bad about uploading pictures, so some of these are a month old.

Thanks

Thanks to everyone for all of the kind words about Beezer. We are still struggling with it, but are able to think back to all of the happy memories of our sweet boy.

On a happier note, Meredith is just the apple of my eye :) She is crawling like crazy and everything is a new adventure these days. She is very much pulling up on things now and along with that she is bumping into all kinds of things in the process. I can quickly see that our coffee table is going to be a problem because of the corners, so we will either have to move it or pad up the corners! She also loves our bar stools, which aren't all that heavy, so I can see her pulling one over on top of herself....may be losing those for awhile too! I really understand what they say about seeing the wonder in the eyes of a baby. She could be looking at her rubber duckie and the look in her eyes is just the coolest thing ever. Speaking of her rubber duckie, she loved her first one so much that we got her a second one and last night in the bathtub she was just so amazed that there were two. She didn't know which one to grab first and once she got that one she would let go of the first and so on....not to mention we also got a spout cover that is a duck as well now that she is sitting up and oh lord, she saw that thing and just wanted to grab at it. I think all the ducks had her overstimulated!! It was pretty funny for me though :)
She is still sleeping through the night very well (with the exception of Sunday night when she woke up screeeaaaming at 12:30. Thought she might finally be cutting a tooth, but that wasn't the case...still not sure what that was all about!). She is so active during the day that she is just exhausted by the end of the day now.
I am trying to make most of her baby food now and I think I have the hang of it. It took me a few tries to get the consistency right, but I'm at least doing the basics of sweet potatoes, squash, beans, peas....I made her asparagus the other night and she loved it! I'm a firm believer that picky eaters are made that way since they don't know any better, so I'm trying lots of things that will expand her palate! Next is spinach and broccoli! Chris says he is going to start eating more vegetables with her, but I haven't seen any results from that yet!
We just bought her a big girl carseat. We thought it was about time since her legs are hanging off the edge of her baby one. It will still be fine for a secondary seat, but she really seems to like being able to sit up more now and acted all proud when she sat in it!
Oh yeah, she is definitely saying mama now. No doubt. I think she is actually starting to understand what it means, but not quite.

Our Sweet Beezer

It has taken me awhile to write anything or tell anyone about it, but our sweet Beezer passed away on August 21st. He had been staying with Chris' grandparents in High Point for most of the summer because of our different trips. Chris was able to make it in time and be with him until the very end. He still got a little sparkle in his eye when Chris brought him a golf ball and I think he was really hanging on just for Chris.
Just this past Tuesday we took his ashes to Lake Lynn where he spent a lot of time swimming and playing as a puppy and Chris has a lot of wonderful memories of him there. Meredith was there with us and it was obviously very emotional, but exactly how it needed to be for our boy.
He was 16 and a half years old and had a wonderful life. We knew it would come one day, but nevertheless, it has been incredibly difficult on us. Even though Meredith will never remember him, we are thankful that their paths could cross for even a short time. He knew she was 'one of us' and had completely accepted her, which makes us both happy :)
Here is a picture of our two kids!

I feel like everything is going a mile a minute lately...although this work week has been miserable. My boss is on vacation all week, so it's been double duty for me and I am totally worn out! We are heading to Tennessee for the Labor Day weekend so that Meredith can see her grandparents, aunt & uncle....I don't think it matters if Chris and I come anymore. We are just the transportation at this point!
Let's see, what has been going on with Miss Meredith. She has been back at the babysitter's for two weeks now and has gotten into a better routine. It is still hard because she is sound asleep in the morning and Chris has to wake her up to take her next door and then she doesn't ever really get back to sleep. She has been eating her food well. I tried making my own babyfood the other day..green beans in the food processor! She kinda made a funny face when she first ate it because the texture and taste was a little different, but she ate it up! She has been spitting up a lot though. I can't seem to figure out what the deal is. It really wasn't this bad until she started eating more solid foods, but I'm being really careful about not overfeeding her..in fact, I'm giving her quite a bit less than the doctor recommended (I think he told me total bs because there is no way that little body could eat as much as he said!) She is definitely growing & thriving, so she is getting plenty. The only connection I see is that she seems to spit up more with orange veggies than green ones. She seems ok with fruit & cereal, but then again it could be total coincidence too. Similac changed their formula and I thought it was that, so we tried a different kind, which helped a bit, but not a huge amount, so I have no clue. I just know that my clothes have been very colorful lately with the array of carrots, sweet potatoes, peas and formula!! Yumm!
Otherwise, Meredith is just a doll. She is crawling like a mad woman and get so excited over the funniest things. She is obsessed with the cord to this floor lamp we have and she sees it across the room, locks in and off she goes. She breaths really heavy too and makes all of these funny noises like she can hardly stand it. She is really fast too!
She loves her excersaucer and we even had to extend it up to the higher level since she is so long. Oh, the funniest thing in the past week is that I got her a yellow rubber duckie for her bath since she is doing such a good job sitting up and wanting to play in the tub. Well, she thinks this duck is the coolest thing ever.....she sticks it's head in her mouth and just chews on it. She'll just sit there with this duck hanging out of her mouth and it is just hilarious! I think the key is that it feels good on her gums and it fits just right in her mouth. She is so funny!

I am posting some kinda old pictures, but still wanted to put some up...
Crawling with daddy, First food, reading the paper, the pool & happy girl :)

This is one happy girl at the beach. My sister Allison took this picture and I just had to post it!!

The beach

We enjoyed Emerald Isle all of last week with my entire immediate family and one cousin, her fiancé & two daughters. My sister Elizabeth, her husband Chris and her two girls Abigail & Jessica came down from Michigan and it was also the first time they had met Meredith, so it was awesome. The first day we were there my mom got a fish hook stuck in her leg while she was out in the water with my niece….yikes! Ironically, there was a UNC surgeon in the house next to us and he was able to assist her (even more ironic was that he marched for 4 years in the Cavaliers, which is an incredible drum corps for those of you who didn’t know me in my drum corps days!) She was ok and ended up with a tetanus shot and a nasty cut on her leg and her fingers. Of course we wouldn’t have wanted it to happen at all, but at least it got her instead of my 5-year-old niece!! So, that was a heck of a way to start out the week and thankfully, mom quickly recovered.

We surprised Hillary & Joey with a little bridal shower, celebrated Elizabeth & Chris’s 7th anniversary, my 30th birthday (ouch!) and just had a great time overall. Meredith really crawled for the first time….I think she was after a flip flop to chew on…yum. She did really well with all of the kiddos around. They all loved her and wanted to give all kinds of hugs and kisses. Meredith was totally enthralled with my two-year-old niece Jessie. It may have been because she was the closest to her size, but it also could be because she is just a flash zipping by at any given time. Meredith would just watch her run around and she would smile and laugh. She just seemed to have a great time taking it all in and never seemed irritated when there were 4 little girls in her face! We didn’t get her in the actual ocean at all this time, but there was a baby pool at the house that we brought down to the beach and filled with some ocean water and she had a blast splashing around in that. We also brought her pack and play down to the beach and put it under the tent and she played and napped in that so I could actually get some sun time! There was no chance of just laying her on a blanket this time since she would have been all over the place. She is pretty quick when she is on a mission!

We are back to the grind this week. Chris has had teacher workdays this week and will have kids starting tomorrow. Meredith has been back to the babysitter next door, who we discovered will be moving soon. We have been on the hunt for a new sitter and even found someone, but it just didn’t feel right. I’m not sure what we are going to do, but we need to figure something out soon. A true daycare may need to be what we go with, but they are so expensive and the whole thing just makes me insane when I think about it. Wish I would hit the lotto so I could just stay home with her…wishful thinking.
I will try to post some pictures soon. Got lots of good ones at the beach.

Acrobatics

I think my daughter may be an acrobat one day..... it has become an olympic event to change the child's diaper! She doesn't seem to understand that I really can't change it while she is trying to flip over and squirm the entire time. I just had to laugh last night because she had her own agenda which involved getting herself over onto her tummy on the changing table without one care about her silly diaper.
Chris took her for her 6 month pictures yesterday and they turned out pretty well. Not quite as great as her 4 month ones, but what picture of her isn't cute??!!
We are off to the beach on Saturday and can't wait!! Meredith will finally get to meet her Aunt Elizabeth, Uncle Chris and cousins Abby & Jessie!! Yeah!

The stats are in...

We went for Meredith's 6 month check up yesterday and she weighs 18.5 lbs and is 27" long! She falls right in the 90th percentile for pretty much everything. She also had 2 more shots, which were heartbreaking when she got them (I didn't cry this time!!), but overall went much better than her 4 month shots as far as her being fussy afterwards. She slept for most of the afternoon, probably partially due to the Tylenol, but we didn't even have to give her a second dose like last time. The doctor was pleased with her growth and said she is a very healthy little girl! He also said to go full steam ahead on the solid foods 3 times a day, so got a bit more direction from him on how much and all that jazz and went to BJs last night to stock up on food. I keep saying that I want to try to make some, but that would require some free time....maybe once her palate is a little more adjusted to food I can give it a try. We added squash last night and she liked it a lot, although most of it came back up.....very colorful.
Oh, her favorite part at the pediatrician was the crinkly paper that is on the exam table. She had the best time pulling and ripping it and of course, putting it in her mouth....still no teeth.

6 months!

I've been wanting to post some pictures, but since our harddrive crashed I haven't been able to upload any for awhile. Hopefully I will have new pics soon!
It's hard to believe, but Meredith is already 6 months old! She is such a funny little person now! She has developed such a cute little personality and is getting to be such a big girl! In the past week, she has really started sitting up a lot more....with help of course, but she can balance for a few seconds on her own without any support. She really is getting the army crawl down and can pop up onto all fours really fast now! She still hasn't figured out how to move one of her hands forward to truly crawl, but she rocks back and forth and eventually ends up on her belly and pushes off with her feet to scoot forward.
Her first food was peas and that went much better the second time around than the first and then we moved to green beans, which she seemed to like pretty well. Since it has been a week with just the green vegetables, I decided to try a fruit this morning. She seemed to be a bit startled by the applesauce at first since it is so sweet and different from the veggies, but she quickly decided that she liked it and was almost holding her mouth open for more, which has never happened before!
I also put her in the excersaucer this morning and she loved it and played for a good 30-40 minutes in it before she got tired and went down for a nap. I think she is really liking to be more upright lately. I'm wondering how much longer she will put up with her carseat, which is the typical Graco infant one that clicks into the base in the car. It is really reclined and I think she is getting ill when she has to spend any amount of time in it and she tries to pull herself up to a more sitting position, which obviously doesn't go well since she is strapped in! I'm thinking we will be moving to a bigger carseat soon...not to mention that her feet are starting to hang over the edge of the little one!
Chris has been out of town since Thursday. He is out in Arizona visiting his best friend, Randy. They have been playing golf every day and having a good time. I must admit that I'm proud of myself because I think I've done a good job with Meredith all by myself! I don't know how single parents do it day in and day out though. I wore myself out just taking her all the way over to my mom's two days in a row, plus working and doing anything else!
Yesterday we went over to Hillary & Joey's place they will be living in after the wedding to help with some cleaning and painting. It is a cute old bungalow over in Durham. It needs some TLC, but I think it will be a really good starter place for them!
Well, this post is long enough and I should get some other stuff done while Mer is sleeping! She took over a 2 hour long nap yesterday, so maybe she'll do the same today!
Not looking forward to her 6 month pediatrician appointment tomorrow....more shots :(

The remote control!

Meredith’s latest obsession is the big ol’ Time Warner remote control…. (can you tell she has been staying at home with daddy this summer??) You can lay the remote control out with all of her toys and she zeroes in on that thing in an instant. Her whole face lights up and she reaches and scoots and pushes herself until she gets it. She is on the verge of crawling (still not really wanting to sit up all that much) and she will do whatever it takes to get to that remote control! Still no teeth, but I keep thinking it will be anytime, but I have been thinking that for awhile now!
She has been sleeping quite well lately. Like at least twelve hours a night and she has only woken up a few times at night this week....I know, it's amazing. Then she also takes at least two good naps during the day too. I keep telling her that she is being way too easy on her daddy this summer!! It is going to be quite a shock for all of us when Chris goes back to school since we won’t be able to let her sleep in so late, meaning that we will have to get her to bed a lot earlier…which also translates to less time for mommy to see her after work or school :(
Speaking of school, I only have one more class left in this second summer session on Tuesday!! Then I have a few weeks off before fall semester starts...thank the lord! The class isn't all that hard, but the homework is really time consuming, so I have been having some very late nights and early mornings lately.
Oh yeah, we got a new car this week. Traded in my silver galant for a new 2006 black galant...yes, it's my third one, but since I leased the last two they were willing to give us a good deal with the loyalty stuff, so we went with it. I really like it a lot!

Cutest Baby Ever!

I can't believe this was already a month ago, but thought it was too cute not to share!!

Stupid computer

Well, our computer died Friday night, the hard drive is gone, so I’m writing this at work. It was a nice excuse not to do any homework this weekend, but also a pain in the butt when you realize how much you really use the dumb machine. Hillary was nice enough to loan me her laptop so I can get my homework done tonight...Thanks Hill!! Chris is going to call the IT guy at his school today to see if he can fix it. We have an eMachine, which is probably the cheapest computer on the planet, so I guess it’s probably our own fault, but it’s still annoying. We also lost all of the hard files of Meredith’s pictures. Fortunately, I had uploaded all but a few to Snapfish, but that is exactly why the whole digital thing scares me! Film is so much more concrete, but then again digging through a box to find a negative probably would never happen either!

We had a nice weekend. Just vegged out Friday night and slept in on Saturday until I heard my sweet baby playing in her crib around 10:00! Went over to mom & papa’s house to help with the deck construction on Saturday night and had a yummy dinner. Slept in on Sunday too (it was a rough week!), ran some errands and went over to Hillary & Allison’s pool for a cookout last night. Meredith got to swim again and loved it! I think we are going to have a water bug afterall! We thought that swimming would wear her out and she’d sleep well, but it was the opposite. She was up several times last night and at 2am, she was inconsolable, so we gave her another bottle, which helped and she finally fell back asleep. The only thing I can think is that she burned off a bunch more calories in the pool and was just plain old hungry! There was nothing else different about yesterday other than the pool, so who knows. Overall, nights like that are the exception lately. She still wakes up at least once a night, but is usually easily pacified with a pacifier (such a brilliant name!). She has turned into such a happy little girl :)

The Beach

Here are some fun pictures of Meredith lounging on the beach!

We spent the week of the 4th of July down in Charleston, SC/ Folly Beach with my in-laws. The weather was beautiful for all but one day and we had a babysitter who was more than willing to watch Meredith while we spent time down on the beach. Meredith wasn't too thrilled with the beach overall. She laid under the tent out of the sun, but never stayed outside too long. We took her into the water one time to let the waves splash her feet, which wasn't a success. She was definitely taking in the sites and the sounds of the ocean, but the water on her actual body didn't go over well. At least we gave it a try!
She has now gotten to where she can get herself up on all fours and kindof rock back and forth. She made one attempt at trying to move a knee forward, but she ended up on her face. The funny thing is that she doesn't seem to care much about sitting up on her own, but wants to try to crawl instead! She seems to want to skip that one developmental step, but I'm sure it will come with time.
Her latest obsession is tags. We don't need to buy her toys, just give her a burp cloth and she will find that silky gerber tag and just play with it and suck on it for the longest time. Any of her toys that have tags are the same way. I've heard that other babies are the same way, but it is so funny to me!
I think she will have a tooth fairly soon. I can feel the rough spot on her gum where it is trying to break the skin, she still tries to chew on everything and drools buckets.
Work is keeping me ultra busy. I'm having one of those weeks where I wonder why I took a vacation because I'm paying dearly now. School is requiring a lot more time than I planned. There is a ton of homework for every class and it's killing me. The professor seems fairly slack overall, but you still have to put in the effort and turn in the homework. I guess this is technically the half way mark though.