In case you were wondering...

Anna did have a 5 month birthday and we did take pictures. I haven't done a post yet because our computer has died AGAIN and I don't know how to put pictures on this here iPad. But it's coming soon! I promise.

Five Months

Little Miss Anna is five months old today! She's getting soo big! See?


This month she:
Celebrated her first Christmas! We had a great time celebrating with her and travelling all over the east coast.

Had her first trip on a plane, and did a whole lot better than I was expecting! I was pretty much expecting 3 hours of screaming, but she only cried for a few minutes on two separate occasions.

Got her first tooth! Sorta. It's there, I can feel it but you can't quite see it yet.

Discovered squealing and fell in love. She used to smile, babble or giggle when she was happy, cry when she was upset; now it's all squealing all the time. She squeals when she's happy, sad, angry, tired, bored, hungry...it apparently expresses all emotions.

Finally met her cousins! Biological and honorary.

Found her feet and fell in love again. She had noticed her toes before, but now she's really aware that they're great play things.

She's growing and changing so fast that I'm sure I missed something! She is more and more fun every day and we love her to pieces!!

Christmas Gifts for a Four-Month Old

I just got done wrapping Anna's gifts. With her sitting next to me for most of it. It all seems a little futile - wrapping gifts I bought so I can unwrap them later. But it also felt wrong to not have gifts for her (me) to open tonight when we do our family Christmas. So I spent the last 20 minutes wrapping gifts that I will spend 20 minutes unwrapping in a few hours. At least I got to write "From: Mommy and Daddy" on them, which was fun. And actually I wrote "From: Momny and Daddy". Still not quite in the flow with all those bumpy letters. I kept coming up one bump short on the second "m".

Jamie and I discussed how we would do gifts for Anna several weeks ago. It's important to us to raise kids who understand material possessions are not so important and that Christmas is not just a fancy name for Give-Me-Stuff Day. It seemed a little hypocritical to say, "Christmas is about Jesus. Now here's your ridiculously huge pile of presents, most of which you don't need and will only play with for a day or two." So we decided we'd do three gifts: something she could play with, something we wanted her to have and an outfit. We're also giving her a Christmas book and hope in the future to make a new Christmas book or movie a shared gift between the many members of our clan of mini-Hotalens.

Of course, a few days after we came up with this plan all on our own, I read on someone else's blog this little ditty: "Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read." I've now seen that on approximately 39,000 different websites. Blogs, articles, Facebook posts. It's everywhere. Not only are we completely unoriginal with our gift giving plan, but we didn't even make it rhyme. I feel so dull and uncreative.

Maybe when she's older and figures out we're not the only ones who follow that gift giving recipe, I can convince Anna I started it.

Dear Anna

As I've previously stated on many, many occasions, please don't grow up too fast. If at all possible, stay a sweet little peanut of a baby forever.

But please, please for the love of God and all that is good and holy in this world please let your mama get some ding danged sleep!

If you could grow up to the point of sleeping 8 hours a night and then stop right there, that would be perfect. Please and thank you.

All My Love,
Mommy

On a completely unrelated note, parenthood and insomnia do not mix.

Little Rebel

I'm afraid we're gonna have our hands full with this one. She's already blatantly disobeying me. Every day I tell her, "Don't grow up too fast. Stay a baby as long as possible." Clearly, she's not listening.


I think I'm gonna have to ground her.

Da Nile

I would be writing a post about how Anna is 4 months old today, but since she was just born yesterday that can't be so.

So here's a picture of my newborn who is never going to grow up and leave me.

Confession: I was straightening up the living room and decided to move her infant bouncy seat out of the way because she's getting too big for it. I set it in the dining room (where we keep all the baby stuff because we don't actually want or need a dining room) next to the cradle she slept in until she got too big for it. Then I looked at them sitting there next to each other and wondered how in the world she got too big for both of them already. Then I cried.

Confession #2: I got all choked up again typing that. I'm totally gonna be one of those moms whose 5-year-old skips happily into kindergarten without a second glance back at mom while I lose it ugly-style outside the classroom.

"They" Are Crazy

"They" (whoever that may be) say no screen time until 2. No TV, no computer, no iPhone/iPad/iPod, etc.

"They" say it shortens attention spans.

"They" say it impedes intellectual development.

"They" have clearly never seen how hypnotic my cranky 3-month-old becomes when watching this.

The question is, who will tire of it first, me or Anna? I have to say I'm a little concerned that she starts fussing again during Statler and Waldorf's (the two grumpy old men; yes, I did just google that) scene. Because I'm not sure I can have a child who doesn't appreciate how hilarious they are.