Ewww

Remember how I told you that Willa attacked the giraffe yesterday, effectively removing him of some black fuzzy hair? I remember thinking, "Wow, she's got a fist full of black fuzz and she likes to put her hands in her mouth, I'd better get this cleaned up." Her nimble fingers were too fast for me! This morning I found a few of the black fuzzy hairs in her diaper, gross! I'm assuming they didn't hurt her, but pretty gross how they went all the way through and still came out intact.

Willa is FIVE Months!

Today is Willa's five month birthday!  Hip hip hooray!  I can't believe that we have had Willa with us so long, being a parent still feels so new.  We love our Willa-bear so much.  To celebrate, I thought of what I could do that would be fun for Willa.  First of all, I let her sleep in this morning (sarcasm, I never wake a sleeping baby if I can help it) - she slept almost eleven hours!  She can't eat cake and ice cream yet, so as the parent always sacrifices for the good of the child, I will eat it for her.  Actually, nix the cake - I would have to bake it and that's not going to happen today.  I will, however, eat chocolate chip cookies and delicious ice cream in honor Willa's five month birthday.  I'd better eat enough of it that she can get some of the flavor coming in through the milk.  See what a good mom I am?

Here are some pictures we took this morning next to her giraffe.  My friend Katie told us to take her picture next to the same stuffed animal each month so that we could see how big she had grown.  Unfortunately, Willa was very cheerful this morning but not so inclined to smile.  She can be tricksy like that, she'll only smile if she feels like it.  Maybe it didn't help that I tried to position her very sweetly with the giraffe and instead she attacked it and ripped out some of its hair so I had to pull it away for a few minutes.

One forced smile - Ryan's hand is tickling her.  All the pictures are fuzzy because she's quite the little mover lately.

Stare down contest with giraffe:

Fakes out giraffe and gets ready to give a life-ending bite:

These days Willa can grab items with TWO hands and is getting very accurate with her reaches.  She loves to immediately put these items in her mouth.  Sometimes she gets frustrated when she can't get them to her mouth, but she also gets frustrated when they do get to her mouth and she doesn't know what to do with them from there.  Life is so hard.  She likes to grab our faces and put them in her mouth, which results in large, slobbery, and very sweet kisses.

These days we call her Willa, Willabeast, Wildebeast, Willabear, Willis, Wilster, and Sweetie Pie :)

Willa started laughing around three months but now she does so more often; however, she's still pretty coy with her laughs.  Sometimes she will laugh at everything we do, then next day she won't laugh at anything.  She has recently started liking to get her diaper changed.  She started kicking, smiling, and sometimes laughing - especially when we use the cool wipes on her warm behind.  

She is very observant and follows us with her head and eyes all the time.  If either of us says something she'll immediately swing her head around to see who is talking.  

She is STRANGER shy already!  Willa is a mama's girl and even takes time to warm up to dad if he has been working more than usual.  Some days she is good for the babysitter, other days she is crying when I come back but immediately stops it and starts smiling once I hold her - the little stinker!  Since the babysitter is quite possibly the nicest person on the planet, I think it's Willa's issue to get over.  Any ideas on how to get her over this?  Even if I'm right there and someone else tries to hold her she will look at me and her bottom lip will start to quiver.   Maybe I just need to get out more.  It's exhausting to get out of the house with a baby, though!

She has also just started finding her voice and likes to coo and make sounds.  She's very good at making raspberries and she also likes to do a raspberry-like gurgle in her throat when she's not happy.  This is actually good, if she's upset when she's in the carseat or somewhere where she has to soothe herself she will do this now instead of screaming (most of the time).  She is also sleep-trained!  She babywised herself.  Occasionally, if I keep her up for too long she will have a hard time going to sleep herself, but she will lay in bed with her pacifier in just doing that throat gurgle in a really sad tone for a few minutes before she goes to sleep.

This is Willa on our morning run today.  It was drizzling a little so I put the rain canopy on.  This stroller is SAWEET!  It deserves, and will get, its own post.  She likes to sleep during the run.  I like to look out over the stroller and see her little feet laying still or starting to twitch as she wakes up.

We sure love our Willa!

Hair

Obviously, when you are pregnant you wonder what the baby will look like.  I was mainly concerned with her hair.  I loved babies with hair and I had had a lot of hair as a baby; however, how much hair is too much?  Ryan is fair, but he does grow a good set of hair and a magnificent beard.  We wondered if we would have a wolf-child.

+=

Eek, we would have to create a fund for laser-hair removal instead of college!  Or, we could fully embrace the Persian-ness by dousing ourselves in perfume and keeping a hot pot of wax permanently on the stove.  (By the way, I do not wish to make fun of anyone suffering from Hypertrichosis, it is really an unfortunate disease.)

As a side note, the baby birthing classes were really big on "skin to skin" contact with your new baby and "wearing" the infant.  The baby reflexes of closing the fist and also curling the toes inward intrigued us; supposedly these reflexes are leftover from when we were primates and the baby needed to hold onto the mother.  Ryan decided that he would wear the baby on his chest, under his clothing.  The baby would grip his chest with her hands and feet just like an ape child.  Eventually, like Gollum, the baby would grow lean and lose all her hair.  A thin milky covering would coat her eyes and whenever Ryan would open his shirt, the baby would violently jump and hiss.

Back to hair.  I was more concerned that the baby would have no hair than that she would turn into a wolf-child.  Despite his head of hair, Ryan was pretty fair.  So that I wouldn't be disappointed, I decided that the baby probably wouldn't have any hair but that was okay because all of Ryan's nieces and nephews had still been adorable sans much hair.

Towards the end of the delivery, the nurses started talking but I really couldn't understand what they were saying so I looked at Ryan.  He looked and smiled and said that she had LOTS of hair.  I was so convinced that she would be bald that I was actually disappointed at first!  I blame it on the hormones and the fact that I was actually pushing a baby out right then.  It didn't take me long to fall in love with this baby's hair.

Newborn

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

She will be five months in a few days and I can't get her hair to stick straight up anymore; it's so long that it just flops over.  If we skip giving her a bath, her hair stops smelling like baby and starts smelling like hair, it is getting too thick on top to use the baby brush and sometimes we don't get all the shampoo washed out, every day I have to work through some snarls in the back. Even though sometimes she looks like she's wearing a really bad toupee and maybe her hair is detracting from the cuteness, I love her hair!  As Willa gets older she looks more and more like Ryan except for her hair color, but in the beginning she was 100% me!  At the time, I felt kind of bad about that - I thought Ryan would feel a little left out.  Now, I love that she looked so much like me in the beginning; I feel like we have a special hair connection.

Almost Five Months

I tried to get a spikey-haired shot, but I couldn't pull it off.  Does someone have tips on how to do this?  I put hair gel in and it just ended up giving her the "wet hair" look, which is so 1992.

Rodeo!

Yippee Yo Kaiyea

Willa is feeling better now so we took the day to go to the Houston rodeo. We went with my good friend and old roommate Carol and her two kids. Thanks for the deep-fried oreo, Carol!

Willa and I wore matching outfits: cowboy boots, jeans, and cowboy shirt. Don't judge how I look, Ryan informs me that I shouldn't have tucked my jeans. By the time I get Willa fed, changed, and ready to go I usually rush out the door so that we can get going before she gets cranky, therefore I don't always look at myself in the mirror. Willa looks cute, here is a close-up. Again, I was rushing to get out the door so the photo isn't the best.

Has anyone ever seen Food Inc? It's kind of like a horror movie but about animals and farming practices in America. Lots of my friends watched it and decided to eat more "friendly" meat afterwards; we can't afford "friendly" meat, so I just look at the documentary and the farming practices as a testament to Capitalism a la Ayn Rand: capitalism is strong, let the stronger crush the weaker.

Back to the rodeo, there was a livestock show that included a fun area to teach kids about farm animals. Everything looked very clean and sweet from the rodeo. They showed a video of a little chicken pecking around outside in the grass instead of showing the dark, windowless barns where the chickens are basically living on top of each other.

This photo isn't that good but I liked how they had live turkeys, then signs about how many turkeys we eat. It seems kind of harsh at a petting zoo to explain to the kids how you eat those animals; that's farm life, I guess.

We had a great time, even though navigating around with three little kids was exhausting. I felt very brave even attempting the outing. I'd also like to have a small moment of silence for the parking and efficiency of Disneyland.

The Houston rodeo is the largest indoor rodeo in the world. They have the big rodeo events in the evening along with a concert. Tonight Rascal Flatts was playing (not that we were going) and Janet Jackson was a few nights ago. I imagine that it's kind of like a bigger Stadium of Fire. It was fun seeing all the animals, the cows were huge! They even had honeybees and worms there, though I don't think the worms were getting judged. The largest earthworm ever found was 22 feet! The worms here were just part of the kid's exhibit, they had piles of dirt the kids could search through for worms, ewww.

This is Dr. Alyson

Isn't she beautiful? Alyson is one of my best friends from home; she is super smart and a DOCTOR. What's better, she's a pediatrician. I take advantage of this by constantly texting her things like, "Willa's spit up was a weird color," or "Can I take some Benadryl?" Dr. Alyson is always so great to respond to all my texts, phone calls, and emails. I think my favorite thing is that Dr. Alyson works in an ER so she is always thinking of worst case scenarios. "She's probably okay, but if she does it again take her to the ER for...." Dr. Alyson freaks out and this allows me to keep my cool and be the calm one. I say to her, "I think I'll wait a few days, then take her to the ER if she's not feeling better." If Dr. Alyson didn't voice my fears, then I would voice them and become irrational. Since I hear them coming from her, I can snap out of it. Dr. Alyson works in Virginia but decided that she wants to move closer to family so now she is looking for jobs in Utah. If she moves to Utah, everyone should take their kids to her because she is the best doctor and your kids will love her. She's just about as tiny as they are so they won't be intimidated at all. I thought about secretly filling out applications for her down here in Houston. Wouldn't that be funny if she got a job in Houston that she didn't remember she had applied for? However, then I realized that if she worked down here I would have to make an appointment and pay the copay instead of texting at all hours and getting information for free. Maybe Alyson should install some device on her phone that charges 50 cents for each text from friends with sick kids.

Willa is sick. Yesterday morning she was grumpy when she woke up, which is not normal. After we took Ryan to the bus I decided to call the doctor to make an appointment. She's got a good fever going on, but it's not the flu. Here is what a miserable baby looks like, so sad.

The plus side of this is that finally she will let me cuddle her and hold her as she falls asleep. The past month or so she decided she HATED being rocked or held as she fell asleep. She would prefer if we just laid her down in bed wide awake. If this were the only paternity test available, then it would be a clincher that she was Ryan's child. Nooo touchy! Unfortunately, now that she wants to be held all the time, I'm getting very little done. On the upside, I now get to watch Kathie Lee and Hoda in the morning without feeling guilty. I think the best way to describe Kathie Lee and Hoda is by quoting Joel McHale when he was on their show, "Do you guys ever WATCH yourselves?!!"

Moving In, Moving Up

After many promises (or threats) of doing so, we are starting a blog.  Don't get too excited, this will probably be a blog to mainly brag about and show adorable pictures of Willa.  I also promise to add in lots of stories about going to the doctor to get shots and how Willa was so brave but mommy was so sad.

To update you on our lives, here is a brief recap.
Ryan graduated from law school

I had a baby

Willa was born in October; we find very cute holiday outfits for new babies

We moved to Texas - this is our new apartment complex, a testimony to the wonders of photography and how a good photo can really improve upon a place; however, we have a TWO bedroom apartment, for just more than half the price of our Los Angeles cupboard

Ryan attempts to give Willa a hairstyle similar to his, she is not amused

Various other adorable photos of Willa

We are adjusting to life Texas style while trying not to appropriate Texas fashion styles.  The livin' is large here, literally, and Ryan likes to joke that drivers try to run him off the road because they don't like to see anyone exercising.   Overall, the people are very nice.  I got a job as an adjunct English professor at a local community college - let the Community references begin, and Ryan is doing some contract work for another lawyer.  I got called to the YW presidency a few weeks ago.  I've found that you really have to watch yourselves when you're with the youth.  One of the young women asked me if I was going to girl's camp.  I responded, "No way!" before I realized that maybe that's not the best example for young girls.  I tried to soften my response with, "It's just hard with a baby, maybe I'll be able to come up for a day!"  Ryan is working with the cub scouts.  If you want to know what it's like, imagine yourself in an enclosed space with hyper eight year olds.

That's our update.  Hopefully we will post somewhat regularly, but no promises.  Also, if you know Ryan then you will remember that he expects you to expect the unexpected.