Back in the Promised Land

Just thought I would let you all know that we arrived safely in Alexandria this afternoon... and not a moment too soon. See Jonathan failed to mention the crucial fact that our beloved labrador retriever, Maggie, was also accompanying us on this excursion.... in the Camry... in the front seat of the Camry... for two whole days. Lets just say we are all doing a lot better now that we have showered, napped, and filled up on a little Chinese Kitchen (yep, that's right) and gumbo.  And thanks to our internal clocks being set on Eastern time we are now headed to bed! If I don't post again before Christmas I hope you all have a blessed holiday! And don't worry, I will eventually post the wonderful video of "When Grace Met Santa" before too long. That child does have one powerful set of lungs!

Daddy Update #9

Well, we're getting ready to head home for the first time since Grace arrived.  As an irrationally devoted Louisiana Native, I'm VERY excited that my daughter is finally visiting where her mother and I come from.  We're driving down to Memphis today and then on to Alexandria on Saturday.  There will be plenty to do.  You see, when you have to fit everything you need in a Toyota Camry (as incredible a car as that is...99 and lookin' fine), you don't do things like "buy presents" before the 22nd.  

Our trip will start off with a Nida/Davis duck hunt less than 100 yards from the beautiful (well, sometimes) Red River.  Then, we'll shop and shop and shop until my millions of family members have gifts.  Then, a trip to Natchitoches to introduce grace to superfluous Christmas decorations and funnel cakes...Oh, and she'll meet her uncle Joe for the very first time!  I can't wait to get home!

Daddy Update #8: Spit-up and adam

Hola folks.  I just had to put up a blog his morning.  You see, I've got a fear.  My fear is that, in some loving and tender moment between my daughter and I, I will end-up with spit-up on, near, or in my mouth.  We play all sorts of games where Grace winds up upside down and dangling over my head.  We roll her back and forth all the time.  This fear is far from irrational.  At any moment, this kid could puke all over me.

Well, this morning was the morning that my fears were realized.  The unfortunate thing, for my wife, is that I did not experience this, she did.  We were all laying there in bed this morning and playing and snuggling when...blauhhh...right on Abbie's mouth.  My first thought was, where is the burp pad?  My second thought was, "would Abbie get mad at me if I found the camera first so that I could share this event with everyone else?".  I concluded that she would've been mad and that any humor y'all experienced would be at my expense (I mean, and hers too, I guess).  So, no pictures.

Okay, that is all.

It's the Beginning of the End....

....of the world as we know it here in the Nida house. Grace is now a mobile little thing, and let me tell you she is loving every minute of her new found independence. She is rolling all over our house! Well, as long as there is room to roll to the right cause you see, she hasn't discovered that she can roll to the left more than one roll at a time yet. She is so funny. We will put her at one end of her room and she will roll to the other end... pausing of course to play with some of her toys along the way. When she can't roll any more she will just beat on whatever she happens to run into... be it the wall, a piece of furniture or whatever. Then we will turn her around and she will go back the other way, but she absolutely will not roll to the left more that once at a timeno matter how much prompting we give her. Too funny! Ahh... the days of leaving her unattended in her room on the floor, on our bed, wherever, are now behind us... sniff sniff... It's time to get out the plastic outlet plugs and begin the task of baby proofing!

Here are some pictures of some of the places Grace explored the other day...


She found her closet.



Boy, the door frame was sure fun to beat on!



She found out how to get under her little side table.



She was not exactly thrilled when she ended up stuck under the rocking chair.



She even found her toy box, propped up her feet, and started pulling some of her toys out to play.


"Look Mommy I can roll!"


As much as she loved rolling this week she still liked it when I went to pick her up.



Now for a few random pictures. Its been a while since I have posted some, so I had a lot to share.

Grace is perfecting her singing technique here. She has to be on top of her game for some caroling this year.



"I'm gonna get you Mom!"



Grace also practiced her reading skills. Her favorite subjects this week seemed to be cows and sheep.

"What are you lookin at?"



The sheep has a coat of soft white wool. She munches grass until she's full... Here's a cow looking at you. Feel her nose. She might say "Moo!" (No, I did not have to look at the book to remember the words... Mommy has got this one mem-o-rised!)

"Reading can be fun!"

It never hurts to include a few bath time pictures...

Rub-a-dub-dub... there's a Grace in the tub!


She gets excited and breathes really heavy and quick and makes this face where she scrunches up her little nose. Bath time can be sooo exciting!


Meet Gracie Loo-Hoo.


I think I'll gel her hair like this for Sunday. What would all the Cliftonites say?!?!



What fun times we have!!!



Sweet girl sitting up and rocking and ready for Wed. night church.

6 Months Check-Up

Well, we took Grace to the doctor yesterday for her 6 month well baby visit. She received her 5 regular vaccines plus the first dose of the flu vaccine. We go for the second dose of the flu vaccine next month. Grace did not seem to do as well this time around with the shots. She never ran fever or anything, but she was just really cranky like she didn't know what she wanted. I would rock her and she would act like she wanted to play on the floor. But when I would put her on the floor she would be ready to be picked up again in just a couple of minutes. She also took close to a 2-1/2 hr. nap yesterday afternoon... something that never happens anymore. She really seemed to like her bath last night, so I let her play in the warm water for close to 30 minutes. We'll see how she is doing today once she wakes up from her morning nap.

 Every time that we go to the doctor we go over the hip issue. This is how it usually goes: the doctor does her regular routine of questions and physical exam and then at the end when she bends Grace's legs she always asks about her hips. We always tell her about how we have been going to the orthopedist and how the dr. there says she is doing well. This time however, Grace was not so keen on having the nice doctor move her legs in all kinds of crazy ways, and she got mad! She cried and refused to bend her knees. That's when the doctor noticed that one of her legs is a little shorter than the other. (I think actually that this means one hip is a little higher than the other.) We then, of course, had the discussion about what the orthopedist had said, and the doc seemed to be confident that if they said she was ok that she really is in fact ok. But I am just not so sure about this whole thing now. I really don't want her to have to wear a sling, but hey, if it will correct any possible problem I say let's go ahead and do it! It sounds much better than having to have surgery later or Grace having one leg shorter than the other for the rest of her life. I mean... I am a big fan of disability sports and all, and I have always been ok with the idea of having a special needs kid, but I would really rather Grace just be on the normal school softball team if I can help it. So I may call and get a second opinion from another doc. just to make me feel a little better. I will keep you updated on the situation.

Anyway, we are so blessed to have had such a healthy kiddo! We have not even had to so much as think about taking her to see the doctor for a sick visit so far! Maybe we'll make it through the winter (knock on wood here). Here are the growing girls stats:

length - 25.5 in  percentile - 25-50%

weight - 15lb 12.6 oz percentile - 50%

head - 44 percentile - 90-95%

ps. I know there haven't been many new pictures lately... this is not due however to the lack of picture taking. It is due to the lack of me taking the time to get the pictures from the camera to the computer. So stay tuned because I will eventually get around to it and then there will be picture updates for days!!!

Happy Half-Birthday Grace!!!

Grace, as of 8:24 this evening you are 6 months old! I really can't believe how much you have grown and changed in 6 short months!

These are some of the things that you can do...

• roll all the way across your room with no help
• sit up briefly with no help
• eat a whole serving of carrots
• say "ma-ma" and "ba-ba" and other babble
• squeal with delight
• pick up toys, pass them from one hand to the other, shake them and put them in your mouth
• jump in your jumperoo
• sleep 11 hours every night without waking up
• stay up for 2-3 hours at a time
• smile at people

These are some of the things that you enjoy...

• going to the park
• rolling on the floor
• your little green frog rattle
• bath time
• standing up (with help of course)
• being outside
• Elliott the elephant
• snuggling
• talking and singing
• the camera
• seeing daddy walk into the room (you always smile your biggest smiles when this happens)
• maggie
• getting out of the house
• Eric Carle books
• bed time

These are some things that Mommy and Daddy love about you...

• the way you smile and stretch when we wake you up in the morning
• the way you love to cuddle
• your crazy hair
• your sweet and funny facial expressions
• the way you smell after a bath
• the way you smile at us when you see us
• the way you concentrate really hard when you are trying to figure something out
• that we can see all of our families in the way you look
• your sweet little voice and the noises you make
• that you are ours

These are some pictures of how you have grown...

7 weeks

12 weeks

22 weeks

30 weeks

Just a couple of minutes old

Just home from the hospital

4 days old

1 weeks old

1 month old

2 months old

3 months old

4 months old

5 months old

6 months old!

Grace, you are a testimony to the fact that the Lord is indeed abundantly gracious in His blessings. We thank Him every day for letting us be your parents.

Love,

"Ma-Ma" and Daddy

Gobble Gobble Gobble

Here are some pictures from our fun Thanksgiving weekend...


This was actually taken this afternoon after Grace's hip doctor appointment. She is still doing well, and we don't have to go back again till after she starts to walk! Yipeeeeeee!!!


Saturday we decorated our Christmas tree. Here is Grace helping unpack the Christmas box with all the ornaments and decorations in it.



She was very interested in the ornaments.


Here she is by the undecorated tree. She seemed to like the tree until she touched it. She did NOT like the way it felt and cried. In her defense it is a pretty prickly tree, and she does not exactly get the concept of gently touching anything yet.


This morning she played in her pjs by the tree while it was snowing outside. How appropriate. I can't wait for Christmas morning :)



Happy to be home and rested after Thanksgiving dinner.



Grace with her PawPaw at Huber's farm for some turkey! We went to Huber Farm (the same place where we picked apples and pumpkins this fall) for Thanksgiving dinner this year. I have had a full Thanksgiving dinner at my house before and just wasn't up to it this year. So we took a nice drive through the country and ate family style at the farm. It wasn't our home cooking, but it was a lot less work. My parents did bring a ham, and we had it with some sweet potatoes and roasted broccoli at a later meal. And since we had all that leftover ham I have still been able to make plenty of "leftover" type meals. We spent less than $20 this week at the grocery store because of it!

This is what we have done (or are planning to do) with our leftover ham. Maybe you can get some ideas:

1. bean soup - cook down a couple of onions, carrots and great northern beans with the ham bone. Season with sage and thyme.

2. stuffed baked potatoes - bake your potatoes and then fill them with cheese, ham, broccoli, and whatever else you like

3. split pea soup - pretty much like the bean soup except with split peas and chopped ham

4. ham sandwiches

5. omelets - fill em with ham, tomatoes, mushrooms, onion, cheese and whatever else you like


With Aunt MA. They really bonded this trip.



It was pretty cold up in Indiana. Here is the girl in her hat ready to see the sights!



Grace and my mom really bonded this visit also. Mom taught her the first of many lessons. She taught her how to fake cough... thanks mom. Now when Grace needs a little extra attention she has a very clear way of letting us know... ahem. Do you like her Thanksgiving day outfit!?! Well, it didn't make it to the meal. Grace had some diaper issues that found their way onto the tights, but she got to wear her warm quilted overalls to the farm instead. It actually worked out great because it was colder than I had expected it to be.



We waited and waited and waited for everybody to arrive. Grace passed the time by playing with her fun fishbowl toy, napping, and eating.



This has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but I think that there is definitely some teething going on at out house. Grace went to town on this teething ring one day. She totally zoned out and chewed on the thing for about 7 minutes solid while staring at the ceiling light. Nothing phased her... not even the picture taking.

Carrots...

So I have no idea what is going on with my kiddo lately. OK, maybe I have a few guesses. She is either needing more food in the evening or teething or in a growth spurt or in a combination of any of the three. Let's just say that my usually sweet and agreeable baby is a little... umm... discontent in the evenings. She is always sucking or chewing on something, and I can't tell if she is teething or hungry. I have never experienced either situation really, so I don't have much to go on. I have really tried to hold off on the rice cereal thing until she seems "ready." But I am not sure what "ready" means exactly. When she seems extra hungry at night I will give her a little rice cereal. Sometimes she eats a good bit, and other times she is totally not interested. I never really  push the point and always just give her as much as she seems to want and call it a day. Yesterday I decided that she really might be hungry and ready for real baby food. So Grace and I went to the store (which could be an entire post on its own dealing with the subject of how normal everyday shoppers turn into crazy people around the holidays) and picked up some carrot baby food! Below is the video of the evening's main event... narrated by my wonderful husband. 

There were two more new events that were not caught on video:

1. Carrot spit up and 2. Carrot poopy diaper

Can you say grooooosssssss!!!!

So even after the baby food thing I am still not sure what is going on. My guess is that she is teething, and since I can see no sign of the itty bitty pearly whites yet my fear is that we may just be in for a good long bout of grumpy baby syndrome. Just in time for the holidays!

The Longest Post Ever!

This has to be the longest blog I have ever written. There is so much to fill you in on!!! 

First of all, I have to say that I uploaded the pictures in the wrong order, so you are getting our most recent happenings first and then we will work our way back from there to when we were still wearing shorts and spending great amounts of time outside everyday :)

The big news of the week around here is that Grace is sitting up!!! She does a great job of sitting with a little help and does a pretty good job of balancing by herself for about 15 seconds or so before she topples over or I catch her or she falls forward and catches herself on her hands. It is so exciting to think that she might be sitting up well enough at Christmas to play on the floor with her cousins and her toys! 

She has also been talking up a storm! She has now mastered the "words" ba-ba and my personal favorite ma-ma! She really is a funny little thing when she talks. She speaks with such purpose and conviction like she is really really trying to get a point across. It is hilarious.

Grace is also getting to be more inquisitive... if that was possible. She is very very interested in absolutely everything that she sees. Life is going to get interesting around here when she figures out how to move herself around.

Did you notice her little onesie? It was our souvenir from our extended stay in Memphis... the Memphis airport that is!!! Grace and I are now expert fliers, and I am now over my nursing in public phobia. Grace and I made a trip to Arkansas this month for Jenny's wedding. It was a whirlwind weekend but we had a wonderful time! 

Here is how our travel schedule went:

Thursday AM -  fly from Louisville to Memphis - Memphis to Ft. Smith. 

Thursday PM - shop shop shop and eat eat eat

Friday AM - drive to Magnolia

Friday PM - rehearsal and shower for Jenny

Saturday AM - meet Aunt Debbie, Aunt Jody, Cousin David, Cousin John and see Granny and Papa

Saturday PM - Wedding Fun!!!

Sunday AM - Drive to Ft. Smith

Sunday PM - Visit Great Grandmother Mitchiner

Monday AM - Fly to Memphis

Monday PM - Fly to Lexington???

Yes, that's right, Lexington. We were supposed to be back in Louisville by 11:20am, but after a delayed flight out of Ft. Smith, then a delayed twice and then cancelled flight out of Memphis the airport wanted us to fly to Atlanta at 7:00 pm and then fly us into Louisville around midnight. I was seriously about to cry when I noticed that there was a flight that would get us to Lexington at 9:00. The nice lady at Delta helped us and Jonathan came and got us at the bluegrass airport!!! We were all asleep in our beds by midnight! Grace was such a trooper the whole time. She was actually very content what with all the different things to look at and people to see. She never cried at all the whole time. The only really scary thing was that I was down to 2 diapers by the time we got home. Whew! I am now an expert Mommy traveler :)

It is sooo cold here. I always forget how cold it is in the winter and then we have a couple of weeks of cold weather and it all comes back to me. This morning the wind chill was in the teens and our high today was 36. I have had to warm up the car every morning this week before heading out to work. I am always having to cover Grace up with blankets when she is downstairs. She doesn't really seem to mind. Thank goodness my mom got her all those warm fleece footie pjs! We are gonna wear them out this winter!

Grace has even experienced SNOW!!!

You can't see the flakes in the pictures, but do you see the one on her pants!!! We have had flurries about three times so far, but this time they were heavy enough to be legitimate. I bundled her up and took her outside. She did not really seem to notice the snow... I think she was a little concerned that she was having to sit in her chair outside in the cold. We only had about 1/4" on the ground the next morning and it melted as soon as the sun came up, but nothing will put you in the holiday spirit like a little snow flurry or two!

Grace does not have enough hair for real pig-tails yet, so we just had to get her a hat with pig-tails. Not really, but isn't that hat (and the baby wearing it) the cutest thing you ever did see! In my opinion a hat never hurts the cuteness factor of a kid. Needless to say there are lots of cute kiddos here in Louisville in the wintertime!

She fell asleep like this on the way home from church last Sunday. I took a picture and then turned the hat around so she could breath... sleeping with a hat over your face seems like a complete violation of every SIDS warning out there.

One of the great things about the weather being so cold is that there is an abundance of snuggle  time in our house. This morning Grace Jonathan and I stayed on our bed under the covers for an hour just playing and talking. What a great way to spend a wintry Saturday morning.

Here are a couple of pictures from our visit with Great Grandmother Mitchiner (my grandmother). She loved getting to see little Grace, and we had fun getting to see her!

I love this picture. We are actually all looking at the camera and smiling!!!

Grace smiling in her PawPaw's arms... too sweet.

Jonathan took the next couple of pictures one morning while I was at work. I LOVE them. Notice the incredibly happy baby and the - how shall I say it - interesting wardrobe ensemble. Pants pulled up over an un-buttoned un-tucked onesie, and sweater buttoned twice and positioned little awkward-like. Hey, at least it all matches! This is Grace in a classic state of Daddy time. Daddy time is the BEST!

Remember at the beginning of this blog where I said the pictures were in condescending order. Well, here is where we enter the "boy, shouldn't Abbie have blogged about that like a month ago" part of the post. And yes, I should have blogged about this about a month ago, but alas, the pictures were still on my camera until this evening. What can I say, we have been swamped lately.

We really took advantage of our park this fall. We went at least once a day, some days 2 or 3 times!!! Now that it is cold, we are having to make other arrangements in order to get the kiddo some out of the house time every day. These winter time excursions are in general not as healthy or cost effective as our wonderful walks in the park. I mean, it is so hard to take a stroll around Target without picking up at least one thing that you really do need. Ahhh, spring will be so wonderful!

Maggie enjoyed our very frequent outings!

Grace with the pretty fall leaves.

A "family shadow" portrait of us on "our" swing. This is the swing where I would sit and talk to all of y'all on the phone! 

Grace and me in front of the pretty red trees!

Our street in the fall. I love our little neighborhood.

This was taken at the beginning of the month when Grace was just starting to sit up well with support. 

AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! 

I have a voice!!!!

Can you hear me!!!!! 

I hope you enjoyed The Longest Post Ever. Hopefully I will do better about updating from now on, but honestly with the holidays coming up I may have to add volume 2 to this title....