Analie’s jeans are getting too short.
She pulled to a (hesitant) stand today.
I had to trim her hair to avoid baby mullet.
Her knees are scuffed from crawling so much.
My baby is growing up.
Feb18
Author Archives: jennawoestman
Feb17
Resident CHAOS
You know the kind of morning where you wake up with a start but you can’t quite figure out why? And then you hear your puppy bark in his kennel? And you realize he’s barking because your daughter is awake and REALLY MAD that she is still in bed? And then you discover your dishwasher came unscrewed from the cabinet, so when you open it to get out clean coffee mugs the whole apparatus clunks forward onto the floor? And then you give your husband a haircut on the carpet, but your 15 month old and puppy keep trying to eat the hair you just buzzed off?
Good morning, Jenna!
And you know what? It has been a great morning. One laugh right after another.
Especially this:
And that would be my daughter. Gnawing on Angus’s elk horn. This is gross on two levels:
- She has an elk horn in her mouth.
- Angus has been all up in that elk horn’s business for weeks now.
(But she’s playing IN HIS KENNEL right now, though, so why not just let chew on his teethers, too? I don’t think she realizes she’s not a puppy.)
Breaking News: Joey just informed me the dishwasher can’t be fixed until Tuesday. This means I will be bracing for impact all weekend when I load or unload…maybe I will just get paper plates to use until the stuff he just put in the holes dries?
Bring on the chaos! We’re rolling with it today.
Feb16
And SO IT BEGINS
This morning after Ana drank her bottle we were playing tickles with her. And then she remembered that my iPhone, which I think is the baby version of Gollum’s Precious, was on the nightstand.
She extended her arm and made her “I REALLY NEED THAT!!” noise and gave me her cutest begging face.
But I said NO.
Can you believe it?
MY NERVE.
But she was not deterred. She turned her head and flashed her Daddy her biggest, toothiest, cheesiest grin and made her asking noise. Because if Mama says no, try Daddy!
She still does not have my iPhone.
Feb12
Your Mind = Blown
Feb11
Freeze frame
I’m kneeling on the floor of my den. My feet are going numb because I’ve been in this position for so long, but I can’t move. I’m watching my little girl shuffle away from me on her knees, “walking” behind her wooden push toy.
I feel like I’m watching myself in a movie.
When did she get so big?
She’s stopped shuffling and is now methodically pulling the books out of their bin, and she’s trying to hold them all at once. Their glossy covers are sliding against each other; she’s spending more time trying to catch the one that got away than actually feeling satisfied with the amount of books in her lap.
She’s so happy in the corner with her pile books.
Every single day I wish I could push the “pause” button. Or, if in some alternate reality, I could be the one whose baby stayed little for always.
I know some day I’ll wake up and she’ll be grown.
But I try not to think about it.
(Although I’m pretty sure Angus wishes she were grown now. She climbed into his dog bed with him and is laying on top of him. He’s completely squashed. That dog has the patience of Job.)
Feb7
Early Learning Activities: Week 3 (What Changed That Sound?)
This week’s activity is super easy. Do you have:
- a teething baby?
- blocks, or something like them?
- a folding chair?
- a cardboard box?
- some other random object? (we used a empty shape sorting cube)
Please be advised that it’s possible to complete this activity without a teething baby. In fact, if you can pull that one off I’d recommend it. (Analie’s teeth are causing us all a great amount of headache today. Poor thing.)
OK here’s what you do.
First, take you fussy child and put it on the ground near the supplies needed for this activity. Congratulations. Step 1 is complete. (This was the most difficult of the steps for Analie this afternoon. She did not want to sit on the ground.)
Next, grab some blocks and bang them together. Hopefully your baby will imitate you. Analie thought this was so awesome, then we traded blocks back and forth for awhile and tested them all out to make sure they all worked. Yay! They did!
Then I showed Analie how to bang the blocks on the seat of the metal folding chair. GUYS. She thought that noise was AMAZING. (And she made so much noise that my headache from teething baby’s whining is officially worse. But it was better than hearing a whiny baby!)
After we banged blocks on the chair, I switched her to the cardboard box. She thought the dull sound that it made was super funny. I wasn’t expecting that!
We also banged the blocks on the shape sorter, which made a hollow, wooden noise. Analie wasn’t enthralled by it, though. Fine by me…it was a really annoying sound!
Poor little girl would need to take snuggle breaks about every 30 seconds, and it kind of cracked me up.
*bang! bang! bang!* and then she’d lay her head on me for a few moments, sit back up and start back into *bang! bang! bang!*
Good luck! I hope your teething baby is less whiny than mine.
Feb6
Radio-Flying
For her birthday, Analie got the Cadillac of Radio-Flyer wagons.
This wagon is not messing around. It has six different seat configurations (drawing table, snack tray, with friends, without friends, flatbed, etc…) storage caddies, cupholders, and a UV protectant shade.
And safety harnesses.
Since it was gorgeous weather, we decided to (finally) set the thing up today and go for a spin around the driveway. Analie invited her BFF Maddie to come play wagons and ride in her swing.
First of all, let’s all just have a giggle over the size difference. Analie and Maddie are one day apart. On the growth charts, they’re about 80% apart. (Analie is the bottom 10%, Maddie is top 10%.) It hilariouses me every time I see it.
And is this child not CUTE? I would totally give her spoonfuls of sugar but her mommy would kill me in my sleep if she found out.
Analie was munching on Bunnies (her current favorite snack – do not get between the child and her bunnies) and Cheerios as they rode around the yard. I’m trying to get her bigger but it’s not working.
Poor Maddie looked like she was suffering the entire ride, but I think it was just too bright outside for her. I giggle when I look at the pictures, though.
Am I a meanie?
She looks like one of those celebrities with their hands out to indicate, “Please, no pictures!”
Aaaaaaand then Maddie discovered that Analie had food.
I love Analie’s look of MOMMY, SHE IS TOUCHING MY BUNNIES!
There is no question as to what what Maddie wants. And also no question that Analie doesn’t want to share her bunnies. (Just look at those selfish, pursed lips.)
Poor girl.
Look at my child’s gloating face…
Maddie was ready to be done with the wagon after 15 minutes or so, and then she got to experience…THE SWING.
So cute.
I love babies in swings. They have this look of WOAH! LIFE IS SO AWESOME! all over their faces; I just wish I could bottle it up and store it for rainy days.
When Ana’s swinging she always looks like her head is going to pop off from all her pressurized excitement.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to stay like that forever?
Feb4
Bathing Cutie
Analie loves to go in the bathroom these days. Because in the bathroom are all kinds of delightful treats like tooth brushing! and hand washing! and bathtime!
Oh, and there’s the washcloth drawer that I let her empty. She loves that too, maybe more than all the other stuff combined.
While in the bath, we let her brush her teeth which, I KNOW, is probably some kind of safety hazard. Especially since she loves to lean down to the water, submerge her face and inhale.
So then she comes up sputtering with a toothbrush in her mouth.
And she thinks it’s hilarious.
She also learned to pull up onto her knees a few weeks ago, which I think is so cute. Her tiny little arms gripping the tub ledge, soft rolls of chunk still visible. I hate that she’s losing her baby chunk.
I need to feed her more marshmallows or something. (Wait, that’s the wrong kind of chunk.)
Ana got a squirty flower bath toy for Christmas, and it’s her current favorite thing in the bath.
I’ve been squirting it at her since she got it, and a few weeks ago she figured out how to refill it with water and squirt herself.
And what, you ask, is her favorite thing to squirt?
Her face.
OF COURSE! (When I squirt it at her face she opens her mouth and tries to catch and swallow as much as possible. It’s the most hilarious thing.)
As soon as the flower runs out of water she always looks at it, with her face dripping wet, like WOW THAT WAS SO AWESOME!
Then she fills the flower back up with water and does it all over again.
And that is why you can’t give this child a bath without full body waders on. She takes bath time by the horns and shows it who is BOSS.
Joie de vivre.
Feb3
TODAY is the best day of my life!
Well, maybe you’ve heard that the Superbowl is coming to Indy on Sunday?
It’s just a little football game.
But you know what the BIG news was? THE TODAY SHOW WAS BROADCASTING FROM DOWNTOWN!
Guys. I love the Today show. It’s, like, my favorite.
One of the things on my Bucket List was being in “the crowd” on the Today show. For serious. (And now that I’ve written it down I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it.)
So last week when they announced they were broadcasting from Indy this week on Friday – Monday, we were SO in. In fact, this is how in we were: Joey took the morning off to make this happen for me. He is a rockstar.
THANKS, JOEY!!!
A couple days ago, Angel’s husband Chang also became a rockstar because HE took the day off so she could come with us!
And that’s how it became a party at my house at 6:00 a.m. this morning.
Should I mention that I was so excited last night that I couldn’t sleep until after 1 am? So when the alarm went off at 5:30, it felt super lame. But we got up, we got ready, and we got in the car.
We drove down and parked in one of the garages near the convention center. I am not going to disclose how much we paid for parking because it was a shameful amount of money, but I know from a Very Reliable Source that the cost for that same garage has increased by $20.00 in the last 4 hours. I think that makes me feel less bad?
Angel brought her carrier and we loaded Analie up.
Analie was fully dressed in an undershirt, leggings and socks underneath her PJs, was also wearing a hoodie and covered in several blankets. Oh, and a hat.
Poor girl was so tired and confused.
But she was a champ! She didn’t fuss at all the entire morning; she just looked around sleepily at everything. YAY ANA!
We ran upstairs and walked the two or three blocks to the broadcast site, and I think half of Indianapolis had beaten us there! It was packed with screaming people waving their signs. We didn’t get very close, but that’s OK. Just being part of the crowd was so fun.
See that big gray post in the right third of the shot? And that cute little lady in the white jacket? That’s ANN CURRY, guys.
We heard buzz in the crowds behind us that Al was going to zipline at 7:30, so since our spot wasn’t very good for watching the broadcast, we moved to see if we could see Al go flying above our heads.
Sure enough, we did! (That’s him in the top right of the photo.) He totally looked right at me.
We lined up on the street by the end of the zipline and waited with a small crowd for a few minutes while Al did the weather from up in the tower.
Ana did all the beautiful coloring on that sign herself. (And she got it all over her foot in the process.)
AND THEN AL ROKER WALKED PAST US. (Also some IMPD officers.)
After that we decided to walk through Superbowl Village and over to Monument Circle and see the big Superbowl letters.
That’s when we realized how cold it was outside.
And by this point, our Miss decided she’d really rather not be in the carrier for awhile. She wanted to be able to actually see what was going on. (She’s too short to see much over the carrier. Poor thing’s going to be a midget.)
Superbowl Village was OK, I guess. It probably would have been ten times cooler if things were open. But it was 7:45 am, and most visitors were probably still having their coffee in their hotel bathrobes at that time of day.
IF they were awake at all.
Analie was getting to the point where she was wondering why SHE was awake. (We did not pose her like this. It was hilarious.)
We made it to the Superbowl letters just as the sun was coming up!
And you’re wondering what Angel’s sign says? Uh…”Chang is the Baby Ninja”. I was really tired last night when I made it and it was the best thing I could come up with at the time.
After Monument Circle we all realized we were starving. So we hit up a Panera and got bagels and tried to warm up some.
Have you ever seen a more sleepy pair of eyes in the entire world? (I even put her to bed at 5:30 last night knowing we’d be getting her up an hour early!) We’re going to have another early night tonight, I think.
I am so glad we were crazy and got up early to do this. Sure, you’d need a magnifying glass to find us on TV (we found ourselves!), but just being a part of the spirit of everything was so worth it. It made me feel like I was part of something in my adopted hometown.
Now I need to feed an early lunch to my exhausted baby girl so I can put her down for an early nap. Then Angus needs a bath. You don’t want to know why.
And we’re back to business as usual.
Feb2
Analie has eight teeth. COUNT ‘EM.
This afternoon the weather was gorgeous, so we went outside to go mudding in the backyard.
I dressed Analie in her most awkward pair of pants, two pairs of socks, and two undershirts, thinking they might get ruined if she got super muddy.
But I needn’t have worried about her clothes. She’s not into getting dirty, although I tried really hard to show her how to dig in the mud.
She does love Angus, though, so he tempted her to at least crawl a tiny bit off the blanket twice. And then he got too far away so she went right back to where it was dry.
But how sweet is that smile?
My little girl is getting so big. I love this stage; the curious wonder of a stick or rock she dislodged from the grass, the fascination she has with picking furry bits of moss off the ground and handing them to me proudly.
Oh…baby girl…can we freeze time?
