February has come and gone and with it, hopefully, the annual Portland crud that infected everyone in our home.  Many people warned us that having a child means that we will get sick more often, yet it was all the adults that were first to succumb to the cold.  First Shaunna the Amazing Nanny got it and then Bonnie got sick.  I though I had managed to outwit the little flubugs with high doses of Zicam and orange juice, but after attending an art show (ack! public contact) I too got hit.  And then wee little Miss Mia got her first cold. 

What a sad state of affairs it was for several weeks!  Mia had to sleep propped up in her swing and still woke herself up frequently with coughing fits.  Bonnie and I took turns taking care of her and each other, all of us tired and cranky.  One night after a particularly stressful day at work Bonnie stopped on the way home to pick up our ‘medicine’ – tequila and limes for the Mamas and Pedialyte for baby.  For what it’s worth, tequila does a far better number of burning through your system than Mucinex can ever claim.

Although Mia has actually fared better than the rest of us tired old souls for several days we had to call her “Bud the Pug” – a tribute to the pug Aunt Marci used to have that rasped and wheezed all day long.    Mia’s spirits stayed high even when her energy was low, and the good news is that she is now back to normal.  The rest of us are still hacking up hairballs, but our baby girl has one kick-ass immune system.

Yesterday we had her latest doctor visit and immunizations.  At 7 months she is right on track both developmentally and physically.  Mia is still a bit of a pixie at just under 15 pounds and 27 inches.  In the last month she has really improved on her ability to sit up by herself for long periods.  She absolutely loves her Jumparoo, and will eat just about any baby food we try.  In the next week or so we’ll start giving her “real” food – mashed bananas and veggies, even though there is no sign of her teeth coming in yet.  Given that I was eating ground up moose meat at 6 weeks I think she can handle a bit more texture!

Oh, and…this is big…for the last F-I-V-E (yes, 5!) nights in a row Mia Lynn has slept through the night!  This is a first since that sunny Sunday in August when we brought her home.  Dare we hope this could last?  Yeah for 7 months!  Yeah for sleep!

Finally, a few random things I’ve learned in the past month:

1. You can’t hum lullabies with a stuffed up nose.
2. “Chicken Pastina” baby food doesn’t mean it has any pasta in it
3. When you hold your baby and look in the mirror, you see her face first, not yours
4. No matter how tired, grumpy and stressed you might be, the first time your baby girl sees you walk in the door and holds her arms out to you, everything else melts away

— All for now,  J.

Note:

You may notice that we are posting photos more frequently – thanks to both Bonnie and I getting iPhones (LOVE IT).   We can snap a photo and immediately email it directly to Flickr.   We’ll do our best to post a “Daily Mia” photo instead of waiting three months and posting them all at once.

Last Sunday Mia Lynn turned 6 months old.

It is hard to believe she has grown and changed so much in the past 6 months, from when we brought home this tiny fragile little being and introduced her to the zoo.  Other days it seems we have been parents for at least 6 YEARS – the days of being just a couple have long faded.   Still, we’ve managed to keep up our every-other-week date nights while acclimating to the fact that it now takes us two hours to get ready to run to the store for another can of formula.

Every week seems to bring tiny new development that have added up so fast we now have a strong little girl who loves to grab handfuls of Dixie, eats baby food apples with gusto and can hold a book and flip the pages all by herself.  As I write this Mia is watching her baby Spanish lesson (actually this just gives me an excuse to learn it myself), yelling out her enthusiasm for las bebe’s while chewing on the corner of her “Mommy Loves” book.   She is so close to crawling (forward!) that Bonnie finally broke down and made a run to Home Depot for baby-proofing supplies.  A friend and neighbor with a little girl a few months older advised us that we only need to baby-proof in 6 inch increments from the floor up as they progress, so we’ll start with everything Dixie height or less.

Two weekends ago I took Mia to visit her Gramma and Grandpa and Uncle Mark in Bend.  She also met our friend Tamra for the first time, and got lots of cuddles from Uncles Norman and Dave.  The big event though was stopping by Gramma’s quilting group (BJ’s Quilting Store’s “Basket Cases.”)  Imagine being cooed and fussed over by a dozen professional grandmothers!  Their nickname for Mia from seeing her pictures is “The Hair” – so we walked into the room to shouts of “The Hair is here!  The Hair is here!”  I can visualize the therapy bill now. 

Speaking of The Hair, Bonnie’s new nickname for our beautiful baby girl is “Mia-Chia.” Aka Mia the Chia Pet.  Yes, her hair continues to grow.  And grow.  At least it has made the curve up and over her head, past the pompadour stage and now lays in ruffs and ringlets in various directions, with a few select natty spots in the back.  I took her to my own hair stylist for a consultation who assured me that “everyone has cowlicks.”  Really?  But one GIANT cowlick?

Quick update on Miss Mia and her perpetual development:

1. We are fully headed into the world of solid food. “Solid” is a bit of a misnomer but that’s what the books call it so we’ll go along. We started a few weeks ago trying to feed Mia rice cereal with a spoon. We quickly aborted that after (a) tasting the nasty crap ourselves and (b) learning that she darn well wasn’t interested yet. So, last week we tried First Peas and she took to them like a kid who didn’t want us to try the cereal again. After a few days of peas and no signs of pea-related trauma, Shaunna tried carrots. Not so much. It probably wasn’t the carrots so much as timing but the resulting expulsion of fluids would make anyone abandon that. We are now onto Sweet Potato with better success. Long live the sweet potato.

2. We actually took a mini-vacation to Seattle a few weekends ago and got to spend a wonderful day with Aunt Marci and Mia’s cousins, Leah and Aaron. Mia received plenty of presents, attention and photo ops. It was great to see the family again since it’s been a few months! We then cruised over to Michelle and Kerry’s for a fabulous dinner party of yummy Indian food. Mia refused to nap and turned into a crazed party animal some time around 8 PM. Grabbing faces, yammering and grunting like a drunken frat boy. So, off we went to the Edgewater for the night. Sunday we saw Jorji, Jason and the girls (pics to follow soon) and then headed home. All in all, a dandy trip.

3. Jillian and Mia headed down to Eugene for a late Christmas visit and spent the day with Nika and her family and then Chris and his family. Again, pics to follow when I can commandeer the camera for a day.

4. And this weekend Jillian, Mia, Dixie and LadyBear are off to Bend for a weekend with Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Mark and visits with friends. I will be staying home with my list of “to dos” and a very empty house except for Pico and Zoe.

Yesterday Mia met with Dr. Tomkoria for her regular check-up and immunization shots. She was a real trooper with the shots and only hollered for a few minutes. She also managed to flip herself over on the exam table several times, happy to display her new abilities!

Maybe our nickname for her should be Stringbean instead of Butterbean. Mia is now 13 lb, 11 oz and is 26.5 inches tall (or I guess you say long if she can’t stand up.) She is in the 25% percentile for her weight and the 90-95th% for her length! (Note to all Grandmas: if you are buying clothes, look for ones with long legs and torso!)

All systems check out just fine, and the doctor is even happy with her weight as she has stayed in the same percentile while growing in length. Thankfully our baby girl is healthy and we have no worries at this point other than the rapidly increasing need to baby-proof the house.

Next doc visit will be in two months…

It is hard to believe but Mia turned 5 months on January 1. We’ve celebrated her first Summer, showed her the leaves turning in the Fall, dressed her up in goofy clothes for Halloween and gave her her first taste of Sweet Potato Casserole at Thanksgiving. For her first Christmas Grandma Judy and Grandpa Julius and Uncle Mark braved the winter weather over the mountains from Bend to bring us goodies and presents. Because it is such a special year for us, we even got a white Christmas, complete with icicles hanging off the roof (Bonnie wondered why she had bought fake ones to hang!)

Mia is growing so fast we almost weekly go through her clothes and see what still fits. At Thanksgiving she was sitting up well with a little support and practicing her finger and hand dexterity. By early December, when Gran and Nana came from Florida (Bonnie’s mom and grandmother) she was having “fun” experimenting with her vocal cords and blowing raspberries. I say “fun” because it is very cute – until you are locked in the house 24/7 due to weather and she’s practicing her high-pitched squeals! I’m pretty sure there were a few dolphins off the coast that were turning in confused circles.

The week of Christmas Mia mastered the art of rolling over – something she had done more by accident in the past, but now happens on a regular basis. Just this past week she started pushing herself across the floor – backwards. Thank God for Google. We quickly researched and found out this is entirely normal and we won’t have to put her in physical therapy.

While the first few months Mia was an angel when it came to eating and sleeping peacefully, she’s recently decided that EVERYTHING is more interesting than a bottle or going to bed. Everything includes the ceiling fan, the dogs, the interesting cloud-shaped spit up on our clothes, the cats, the dogs, the dogs. We now sit in a blackened room with no animals, lights or other stimuli in order to get her to bed – and even then her dreams are so full she has to wake up every few hours to tell us about them. Caffeine and eye drops are our friends.

We recently learned that two of our closest friends are pregnant and both are due in June –  we are excited that Miss Mia will have new playmates soon.  Funny how after just 5 months of parenthood we are the “experts” new parents turn to for recommendations on which stroller to buy, do they really need a diaper wipe warmer, and what the terms “onesie” and “Boppy” mean.  I remember the first time we entered the Babies R’Us and saw the Wall-O’Bottles and almost ran out of the store.  Who knew there were so many to chose from?  But now we confidently discuss the benefits of the rapid-flow nipples and drop-ins.  Mia Lynn has taught us well.