Annabella is 4 months old today

Time really flies. When I look at her newborn pictures, I can't believe how tiny she was. Or how different she is now. The past 4 months have been tough. Having a new baby at home is not so easy. But when I'm thinking back over this time, I'm just so sad that it's going by so quickly.

I'm sad that I'll never see the silly exaggerated grin that lit up her face when she was first learning to smile. She'd look up at me when I first got her in the mornings, and I think it must have taken every muscle in her face to make that smile. And she'd hold that goofy grin for 2 or 3 seconds before losing it. I didn't realize that within a few days she'd have this smiling thing down and it wouldn't look the same again.

I'm sad that I'll never hear those first few squeals of excitement, when she was just learning how to make those noises. I think those squeals were what pure bliss must sound like. I didn't realize that as she gained more control over her voice, that her squeals wouldn't quite be the same.

I'm sad that she'll never sleep with her head buried in my chest again, with her little feet pulled up under her. It was the only way she'd sleep for weeks. And it was so frustrating because we were so tired and just so in need of sleep, and we'd have to stay awake holding her so she could sleep. And now I miss my tiny baby that could fit on just my chest, and loved being there. My baby still loves to cuddle while she sleeps, but she's just too big to sleep that way now. And she stopped liking it when she started to discover the world more. She wanted to be able to see what was going on around her, and sleeping on Mommy's chest went out the window.

I'm sad that my little baby isn't so little anymore. She needs Mommy less and less. And while it's pretty darn awesome to see her becoming this little person with her own personality and ideas, I'd like to hold onto her just the way she is now, for just a little while longer. Before she changes on me again.

Annabella is learning to play

She reaches out and grabs ahold of her toys now, and sometimes even jams them in her mouth. She kicks her butterfly that hangs on her crib and it plays music. She wiggles around in her jumparoo and stops to notice the noises it makes. She bats her hands at toys hanging above her.

I can't even tell you how cool all this is.

Annabella is sick, and now I am too.

This is actually her second cold, but this one is much worse than the first one.  She sounds all hoarse and is super fussy and just seems miserable overall.  Of course she was all smiley when I took her to the doctor though.  Gotta make Mommy look crazy and overworried.

And now my nose is drippy and I'm starting to get miserable too.  

Fun times at our house these days.

My daughter has discovered boys.

Today I learned that Annabella is quite the flirt.

Ms Jacki, Annabella's daycare teacher, told me that she'd put Annabella and Cooper together in this play area. Apparently Annabella and Cooper spent their time together stroking each other's faces, holding hands, and linking arms.

And when Cooper would look away at something else, my darling daughter would scream.

If this is what she's like at 3.5 months, I can't imagine what her teenage years are gonna bring.

Rollover Video

Here's a video of her 2nd or third roll. It didn't happen this way the first time, but we found that she's more likely to turn if she's imitating me. We think that makes it extra cute.

Guess who just rolled over?

My beautiful baby girl, that's who.

My baby is 3 months old (plus some)

And she's huge. I think she went through a growth spurt over Christmas break, because she was waking me up every 3 hours to eat and she suddenly doesn't fit into a bunch of her clothes.

She squeals with delight.

She reaches out and grabs ahold of things. She especially likes grabbing onto her feet. She only does this though if she's not being entertained by anything else and is happy.

She fights sleep like a madwoman. We are so happy we figured out that swaddling was key to our success early on. Now her new Swaddle-Me's and her paci are the only way to get her down for the night.

She's super moody. Some days she smiles up at me from her crib as I get her in the morning and is just so excited for the day. Some days she wants her food now and doesn't understand why she has to wait the 10 seconds it takes to get everything set up, and lets me know by shrieking. Some days she's just still soooo tired.

She loves to suck on her fingers. She's a noisy sucker though, and we've been rudely awakened by her finger sucking in the middle of the night more than once. Thankfully we finally recognize that particular noise and go immediately back to sleep instead of sneaking up quietly to check on her.

She's super fussy when she's sleepy. And she cries even louder when you give her the paci even though it will be the golden ticket towards finding that sleep. But if you hold her just so, and play with the paci in her mouth just so, and rock just so, for just a minute or 2, she'll often slip happily into sleep in your arms. Unless of course it's bedtime. Then you can rock and shush and dance and sing and feed and burp and console her off and on for an hour before the sleep she so desparately needs will come.

She's my favorite thing in the world, and I love her like crazy.

A post for the grandparents

I shared some of the pictures from my Shutterfly account so that you can easily order prints of Annabella yourself. This is the site: http://annabellag.shutterfly.com/

Please let me know if you find my email address off of that site. I'm still trying to keep this site at least a little bit anonymous so that crazy strangers can't track me down, at least not easily.

I've added all the professional pix we had taken up there, but only a few of the others. Let me know if there are specific pix you would like me to add.

I will periodically add pictures up there. I think you can request to automatically receive emails when pictures are added, but I might have to do some work to get that working.

Call me if you need help setting up an account or figuring out how the site works.