Miss Adelaide at 3ish Months

Let's be honest....Adelaide is going to get the shaft when it comes to monthly blog posts about her growth, she's not going to have photographs of every day of her life (at least for the first year) like Zara, and she's certainly not going to get lots of brand news clothes when her sister's hand-me-downs will serve her just fine. Life is tough for child #2.

That does not mean, however, that Adelaide is any less adored by all of us. She is a ray of sunshine in an otherwise difficult time in our lives. I want to jot down just a few things about her at 3.5 months so I don't forget.

Nicknames

Adelaide is quite a mouthful and we often get asked if we use a nickname for her. The short answer is no. The long answer is yes, but it varies.

David feels strongly that if Adelaide wants to shorten her name to any one of the many options available to her, that is her choice but we will not chose it for her. David absolutely detests the fact that even though his name is David and he always introduces himself as such, the majority of people who meet him automatically shorten it to Dave. (I did too when we first met.) He really wants to avoid that for our children. Adelaide is her name and Adelaide is what she shall be called until she informs us otherwise.

Personally, I call her lots of things. All parents have nicknames for their children...it's just the natural order of things. Some of them play off her name and some of them have absolutely no relation to her given name at all. The two most common names I call her are Lady Adelaide of the Cheeks and Smiles. The first because she has the most awesome cheeks in the world and the second because she loves to smile and show off her dimples.

I love the name Adelaide but I also love that it has such a large number of possible nicknames available to chose from including: Addie, Ada, Adele, Della, and Laidy. My favorite of the bunch is Laidy and I secretly sometimes call her that (when no one else is around). Laidy Malone sounds very regal. (Adelaide does mean noble after all.) My least favorite is Addie and I would just a tad disappointed if that was her preferred name. But I do believe it's her choice to decide what she prefers. I did the same, when I changed my name from Amanda to Lizzie in 4th grade and again when I shortened Lizzie to Liz in 9th grade. And for the record, I have never been called Elizabeth.

Stats
Adelaide was an above-average baby at birth (in terms of weight and length) and she has continued to top the charts as she has aged. The last few times I have weighed her, she has measured between 16 and 17 pounds and about 25-26ish inches.

Disposition 
I find Adelaide to be a relatively happy and easy going baby as long as she is properly feed, diapered and burped. She smiles all the time now and we've even managed to elicit a few adorable giggles out of her. (Zara is often the most effective at making her laugh.) She is also surprisingly tolerant of her big sister and cousins' almost incessant need to touch her, poke her, or pinch her cheeks. She rarely cries without reason and often calms down quickly if soothed.

She started to spit up a lot (both in frequency and volume) around week 4-5 and all attempts to discover the root of the troubles were in vain, including my pathetic attempt to eschew dairy. I was beside myself with concern over her constant reflux and it magically seemed to resolve itself during our 4 day cross country drive from Utah to Virginia. I don't know if she really was allergic to Utah or sitting more upright in her carseat for so long helped alleviate her problems but since moving to Virginia 5 weeks ago, she has only had 2 larger-than-average spit ups. It helps to burp her and keep her upright for a little bit after feeding.

Sleep
Sleep issues are the bane of my parenting existence. Zara was the model sleeper until everything went to hell at 4 months and I live in constant terror that Adelaide will wake up one day and decide that sleeping with any sort of regularity is for sissies and putting her down to sleep will not be tolerated. So far, she's a decent sleeper. She cat naps a lot during the day and often falls asleep while nursing and will stay asleep if held. Despite my love of cuddling sleeping babies (seriously, I think the key to world peace has something to do with snuggling sleeping babies), I often have to put her down to attend to her sister or take care of other things around the house. She will occasionally stay asleep, but more often than not, she'll wake up within 15-30 minutes. Depending on what I'm doing, I will wear her in the baby carrier and she will always conk out and sleep in that as long as I keep wearing it.

I do love wearing her and letting her sleep on me, but I also fear having her develop such a need to be held that she won't sleep on her own. By 4 months, Zara would not sleep anywhere but on me for any nap and refused to sleep in a crib so we co-slept for about a year. I don't mind co-sleeping at night, but having to wear and/or hold Zara for all her naps was very hard on me after a few months. I feel a bit selfish saying it, but I force myself to put Adelaide down so that she will eventually learn how to continue to sleep on her own.

She is, however, an excellent nighttime sleeper (knock on wood) and will often fall asleep all on her own. (A skill Zara never developed until much, much later.) I'll often nurse her around 9-9:30pm, wrap her up like a little baby burrito and put her down in her pack n' play still awake. She'll inevitably wrest her arms free after a few minutes of struggling and will munch on her fingers and occasionally whimper just a little bit until she falls asleep, often within 15-20 minutes, and will stay asleep for several hours. Since Zara never did this, I find this behavior in Adelaide to be the mark of angels and worthy of endless praise and adulation. I don't care that other babies have been doing this for centuries....mine is a blessed baby. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that month 4 doesn't unleash the furies of hell like it did with Zara.

Other Observances
Adelaide hates tummy time, but has excellent head control and strong legs. She's great at standing on her own with very little support and assistance.She will often roll from her back to one side or the other. She hasn't attempted to roll from her back to her belly or vice versa. [Update: As of 9/12, Adelaide can roll from her tummy to her back.]

She has entered the oral fixation stage of life and loves to put her fingers or her blanket in her mouth. She has started to drool more (as a result of munching on more) and sometimes acts irritable like she might be teething, but I think she's still got a ways to go until then. She is also quite taken with sucking her thumb, which I have many mixed emotions about.

When she gets excited, she'll start pumping her legs and flapping her arms with a huge grin on her face.

Unless pinned down, she will not allow any blanket to continue covering her for any amount of time.

She also moves around a bunch. She is never exactly where I left her.

She's almost outgrown her 3-6 months clothes, which she has been wearing since she was 6 weeks old.

By this age, it was apparent that Zara's hair had a bit of a curl to it. Adelaide's foretells no such future and is lighter than Zara's was. I think Adelaide's might continue to lighten, so that it's a nice honey blonde or even strawberry blonde.

All in all, we love our Adelaide and couldn't imagine these last 3 months without her. Here's hoping I'll update again before another 3 months have passed. Of course, we need some obligatory pictures:

Virginia Zoo at Norfolk

Last Thursday, my sister Cassy and I took our brood of 6 kids to the Virginia Zoo at Norfolk. Since I grew up attending the San Diego Zoo (one of the best zoos in the world), I have understandably high expectations of zoos. I try to lower my expectations so I don't leave them disappointed. The Virginia Zoo was a delightful zoo. Small enough to enjoy in a day and the enclosures were nice and mostly spacious for all the animals. They had the regular cast of zoo characters and several splash pad areas for the kids to play in between exhibits. We dressed the kids in their swimsuits and took them all around the various "villages" (grouped by area of the world the animals come from) and enjoyed a very nice, surprisingly not too humid day.

This sign made me laugh.

Cute sleeping babies. 

Zara's Third Birthday!

My little girl turned 3 on Saturday! It really is hard to believe that Zara is both so old and so young. I feel like she's been our lives for a long, long time and yet it also seems like just yesterday she was just a baby. I know everyone says that, but it's true. Zara had a fun birthday. On Thursday, Cassy and I took our brood of 6 kids to the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk (photos to come in a separate post) since we wanted to spend most of Saturday working at their new [old] house to get things repaired and painted before moving in. 

I made chicken alfredo bake for dinner (with bread, salad, and pineapple) and then we had vanilla cupcakes with vanilla or strawberry buttercream frosting with Neapolitan ice cream for dessert.

Anxiously awaiting her birthday cupcake and listening to everyone sing Happy Birthday to her. 

Daddy teaching her how to blow out her candle. 

Digging into the goodness.

Zara and David have the same EXACT face. Ha! Love my girls (David too). 

I just threw this one in because I love Adelaide's face in this one. It screams, "What am I doing here?!?!"

A very rare family photo. 

Zara was very excited about her toys. I let her have her first birthday present after dinner--the Fish and Splish bath toy set from B. Toys. (For the record, B. Toys are some of my very favorite.) Zara loves bathtime and I thought she'd have a great time with this set.

Bath time! Love that wild mane. 

In fact, all her cousins felt the need to join her for bath time, even if they'd already had a bath already. It made it hard to get any actual bathing done. But they all loved the toys. 

After her bath, Zara opened her other presents: new set of socks, a book of Hello Kitty stickers, and a new outfit from her grandparents. But her very favorite was the Super Girl cape from her Aunt Cassy that has her name written on it. Now she matches all her cousins and they all run around being super together.

There's so much I could say about Zara and what a sweet, special person she is, and how lucky we feel to be her parents, but I'll refrain for now. I just love this kid so much and look forward to watching her grow for many more years to come.

Life at this Moment

It's been a little while since my last post. I've been putting off writing anything, hoping to have good news to share (i.e. David or me finding a job) but alas, there's nothing to report on that end yet. The girls are good, though both a little sick right now, sadly. (I hope to have a girl-centric post soon.)

The last two months have been very busy ones for our family. David finished his contract at Utah Retirement Systems (URS) where he completed a really amazing project that he is justifiably very, very proud of. I won't even attempt to explain what he did, but basically he's an Excel and VBA master and he created a user add-in that runs all sorts of financial models and simulations to help URS better analyze risk in their portfolio. I am proud to say that I understand enough of what David does to understand what I just wrote.  But that's about it.

I also finished up my job as the History Internship Coordinator at BYU which was very sad and bittersweet. The position was newly created when I was hired, so it was my baby and I really got to define the position for myself. It was honestly the perfect job for me at this point in my life: part-time, flexible hours, and still very fulfilling. I knew I would be leaving this summer and so they had intended to hire my replacement before Adelaide was born. They hired someone at the end of May, intending for me to train her in June, but after one day of training, she decided to quit so they had to go through the whole process again. In some ways it was nice, because we ended up staying in Provo longer than we expected and so I was able to continue working while they re-posted the job position and interviewed potential candidates. But they still weren't able to hire someone before we left the area, but I've since talked to my replacement and feel pretty confident that she'll do a great job following what I set up. I will really miss that job and will be forever proud of what I was able to accomplish there.

We knew we didn't want to stay in Provo past July, when both our jobs and money would be winding up. So we packed up our cute little Provo house, filled a moving truck with all our belongings (ABF, you pack the truck, they drive it), and drove across the country to Newport News, VA to live with my sister Cassy and her family, who kindly consented to take us in while we look for work. We knew we wanted to end up in this general area (Virginia/DC/Maryland) and figured we'd have more luck if we actually lived closer to the area, rather than a whole country away. So here we are. We love being here and feel very good about settling in this area (at least for the next few years) and hope that our faith will be rewarded with good jobs for both of us in the very near future. Hopefully I will get to post again soon with good news on that front.

One Month of Adelaide

It's hard to believe that Adelaide has been around for a whole month already. She's a fun little baby. Generally pretty mellow and content and happiest when she's being held. By my calculations, Adelaide is weighing in around 11 and a half pounds and measures 23 inches. She's still a big baby, which is good, because she's hearty enough to withstand Zara's affections.

Here's a few photos of Adelaide at one month:

Last Saturday, we hit the Provo River Trail to go on a family walk so I've included a few photos of our walk as well.

Bridal Veil Falls

David and Zara running along the trail.

Adelaide just hung out in her stroller. 

Adelaide's Blessing

My cousin got married last week and his nuptials prompted several family members to come into town for the event including my parents, grandma and several cousins. We wanted to take advantage of their presence and decided to bless Adelaide at my aunt's house last Sunday, on Father's Day. My dad, Uncle Mark, and several cousins and cousins-in-law were able to participate in the blessing.

David blessed Adelaide to be a good example to those around her, including her siblings, and to get a good education so that she can achieve anything she wants to in this life.

I really liked being able to bless Adelaide at home--and not in church--and to have it just be an intimate moment with family members.

Adelaide with Great-Grandma Hayman

Zara loves being a big sister. 

Andrew Harrison (cousin), my dad, Zara (she was not a blessing participant), David (with Adelaide), Mark Harrison (uncle), Justin Marshall (cousin's husband) and Justin Harrison (cousin)

Our little family