Top Teeth

Can you see them peeking out? I tried to insert arrows to point to them, but my lame computer skills prevented that.

indecision

I am not a decisive person. Decisions often make me uncomfortable, I go over and over in my head, did I do the right thing, did I make the right one?

Friday I took Aubrey to get her pictures taken professionally at Portrait Innovations. This was the first time we had done it since the newborn ones in the hospital. Aubrey was very cooperative, no crying or fussing. It was so much fun, she got to sit in a couple different chairs, play with stuffed animals and flowers, change outfits a bunch of times. The photographer and helper person were very friendly and easy to work with. Five backgrounds and 97 shots later, we were done.

Then came the hard part.

The package that I went in for was a great deal. Only $9.95 for a ton of pictures, way more than you really need. The catch is that it is all in one pose. What? I have to choose one pose out of the 100 that you took!?! AAAAhhhh! I am so not good at deciding these things. Which is where they get you of course. I picked out the poses that I liked--I narrowed it all the way down to twelve. The phototgrapher was very helpful with the narrowing process. He would take two pictures that were similar and like an eye doctor say, "Which is better: A or B?" and toggle back and forth until I could choose. Then the dude says okay, if you get all those your total will be $249.95 or something like that. Me: "Ummmm....I am not really looking to spend quite that much money (gulp)..." So back to the whole which do you like better, A or B? I am sure inwardly the photog was rolling his eyes, but outwardly he was very patient.

All told I picked three poses--and didn't end up spending too much. Now I just have to erase those other pictures from my mind and tell myself that yes I did pick the best ones.

Next time I think I will make Bill come. He is much better at the deciding than I am.

Ticklish

Update: Nighttime part two

Last night was night two of letting Aubrey cry herself to sleep. I almost didn't want to put her in bed, I felt so mean. Well, I put her down at 8pm, patted her tummy, said good night and walked out of the room. It took her about a minute to start crying, and then she only cried for 10 minutes! It wasn't like screaming crying either, just fussy crying.

Aubrey then slept until 7:30am without a peep! AMAZING!

What? Did she catch on already? I am hoping this was not just a fluke, but it was sooo nice to have a full nights sleep. :) Yay Baby!

Valentine's Day Parent Style

Also known as "What happened to my baby?"

The day started out great. Aubrey woke up happy at her normal time, we played for a while, dressed in a cute v-day outfit, took pictures. Then she didn't really want to eat her breakfast and started getting fussy. After some more playing I got her to take a nap, a good 1.5 hours. Still very typical day. Then we went and had a nice lunch with Bill near his work, came home, Aubrey ate a big lunch and we played for a while longer. She was so cute, she tried to put a pacifier in my mouth! She recently learned how to pick one up and put it in her own mouth, then she tried to put it in my mouth, it was adorable. After a nice afternoon nap, Bill came home with dinner and we opened cards and presents and enjoyed dinner with Aubrey on our laps.

I started getting her ready for bed around 7:30pm. Read a book, get in jammies, etc. with the goal of getting her to sleep around 8pm. Bill and were going to enjoy some wine and cheesecake and watch a movie once she was asleep. Now typically she has been sleeping from about 8:30pm to 7:30am with one waking to eat around 4am. Last night, I would put her down and she would start crying. Pick her up, she would be almost instantly soothed and falling right back to sleep, put her back down, instant crying. This went on until 1 am! Now before this I was not an advocate of letting babies cry it out, but that is because I had such a good sleeper. We tried everything last night. Tylenol and oragel for teething pain, swaddling, unswaddling, pacifier, extra nursing, humidifier, stuffed animal in the bed, and she was having none of it. So finally we gave up and just put her in her crib to cry and she cried until about 2am and then slept until 7am. That was the longest hour ever! I just sat on the end of the bed, "Bill, am I doing the right thing? I feel like a horrible mother. What if she needs something and just can't tell me." As Bill pointed out it probably was a combination of her developing separation anxiety, learning that when she cries I come, and possible teething pain. We also figured that nothing really was wrong with her because as soon as we picked her up she would go to sleep.

So that was our "romantic" Valentines evening. And I still feel so upset about letting her cry last night, probably partly because I only had four hours of sleep. I think I'll be crying it out too tonight.

Happy Valentine's Day from our little sweetheart

stripey cuteness