Junker's First Show

Stephen's band had their first show as a full band last Wednesday. It went well, and they've been booked to play at the same place again this Friday. It's at Terrapin Beer Brewery (www.terrapinbeer.com), and they have tours at night with live music and "beer tasting" at the end. People bring their dogs, kids, and beach balls, so it's really laid-back and fun. They're expecting about 500 people on Friday, so that will be exciting...



We'd planned to have Stephen's parents watch Bella so that I could go, but a couple of days before the show we found out that it was a family-friendly outdoor event, and that the other band members were bringing their two-year-olds. So we decided to all go to the show together, rather than subject Stephen's parents to Bella's fussiest time of day. (They did get to babysit her while I went to a doctor's appointment, though, and luckily she slept the whole time.) Bella had a great time at the show-- she loves music and she loves being outdoors, and she enjoyed seeing the other kids there. And it was neat for Stephen's parents, who bought Stephen his first instruments and gave him music lessons as a kid, to see their son play on stage.




The band doesn't have any recordings up online yet, but Stephen recently created a facebook page where you can see more pictures from the show (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Junker/100384343348779?ref=ts).

Five Months Old

Bella weighs about 14.5 lbs, and is approximately the size of a mandolin.



She has not rolled over again since the fateful night in her bed which resulted in no more swaddling, but she loves to move her feet around in circles, and standing is her favorite position to be in. She discovered her feet this month, and spends a lot of time trying to get her feet into her mouth. In the last few days she has actually managed to suck on her toes!





She has also found her thumb and has decided that it is the best finger to suck on.



Her eye-hand coordination has improved a lot, and when she reaches for something now, she always get it. It's so cute to watch her concentration as she focuses on an object, then slowly and deliberately reaches for it.



Bella is sleeping through the night almost every night now, from about 8:00 p.m. to around 7:00 a.m. Her naps, however, have gotten on a crazy non-schedule, and many days she will only take a couple of short (like 20 or 30 minutes) naps, with one longer nap in the morning. So I have not been able to get all the things done which I'd envisioned doing during her naps, and I've really had to adjust my expectations of what is possible for me to do while I'm at home with her. This is one of her favorite positions to sleep in:



Bella and I recently started going to the Athen's Mother's Center together, which is a group of mothers and their children who meet twice a week. Stephen and I decided that Bella needed some interaction with other adults and children (she had gotten to the point where she was actually frowning at other people, including my MIL), and that it might be good for me to have interaction with other adults too. It's been a nice way to meet more people, and most notably, we've met another little girl who's five months old, another Isabella who's two, and another mother who moved here from Tucson (and for you Tucson folks-- she lived at Tucson Blvd. and Glenn, which was just a couple of blocks away from our duplex at Mountain and Glenn). Bella loves being around the other children, even though she can't really interact with them yet. She always gives them a huge adorable smile, and I love the way that children seem to be drawn to her (they always want to see and touch the baby).

The Bottle Battle`

I have a confession to make: my baby does not like to drink out of a bottle. In fact, up until last week, she staunchly refused to take a bottle. You might be thinking it's impossible, as I once did, for a baby to dislike the bottle, but I assure you there are babies out there who know the difference between a real nipple and a fake one. My baby happens to be one of them. (I have to admit it is a little flattering that someone prefers my boobies, with all their imperfections, over an imitation, but still...)

I really wanted to breastfeed Bella. We took the class, I read the books. When I found out that I was going to have a surgical birth, rather than a natural one, I really, REALLY wanted to breastfeed Bella. I felt that it would somehow make up for not being able to birth her the way nature intended. And I do think that breastfeeding has gone a long, long way in making up for that. And it was especially important while I was anemic, because it was literally the only way I could bond with Isabella. I couldn't bathe her, push her in the stroller, carry her to the changing table, or even carry her from one room to the next. And since feeding Bella was the only way I really felt indispensable to her, I was in no hurry to give it up, or pass it on to someone else. (Besides, pumping is a big fat pain in the you-know-what.)

So, Bella did not get her first bottle until she was six weeks old, when I realized that I could no longer go out in public, or go all the way to Texas, without first getting a hair cut. After the hair cut, I realized that I only had two shirts which would accommodate a nursing bra as well as a postpartum belly, and that I would need more than two shirts to wear on a two-week trip to Texas. So I left Bella for the first time ever, and Stephen fed her two ounces from a bottle. She took to that bottle quite well.

We didn't have a reason to give her another bottle until about a month later, when we thought we'd try it out to see what happened. She didn't really like that bottle, and drank approximately one ounce of it. Two weeks later, we tried another bottle. She really hated that one. Stephen and I began to panic, realizing that if we (I) ever wanted to do something without Bella attached to my hip (or boob), her eating possibilities were going to have to expand beyond the confines of my chest.

This is when I went back to my baby bible, a.k.a. What to Expect the First Year, and found a sentence which I'd paid no attention to earlier, about how babies need to be introduced to the bottle no later than six weeks, and fed one each day, or they will develop a preference for the breast and refuse the bottle. Whoops... This is where experience had worked against me. After working in a preschool for five years, and babysitting forever and ever, I had never once heard of a baby who wouldn't take a bottle, so I simply skipped over the sound advice that one sentence had to offer. I found one other paragraph in the book with tips to get a baby to bottle-feed if you have missed that golden six-week window of opportunity, and we tried every tip. We tried when she was starving, we tried when she wasn't starving. Stephen tried, I tried. We tried in the morning, the afternoon, the middle of the night. I even tried slipping the bottle into her mouth when she was already feeding from the real thing, all to no avail.

So we gave up, and considered starting her on the cup, which seems like a very messy and difficult endeavor. But we were getting desperate, since my mom's wedding was approaching, and I just KNEW that (in accordance with Murphy's Law) Bella would need to feed in the middle of it, no matter how many measures we took to prevent her from getting hungry at the wrong time. Also, Stephen's show is approaching, when his parents are supposed to babysit Bella, and I will not get to see much of the show if I have to rush home to lend Bella my boob.

Then one day last week, my brain flickered on for a moment, and I had the glorious realization that we should try the bottle again, because Bella is in this phase where she takes every object that is placed in front of her, pulls it into her mouth, and begins sucking on it. What object is better suited for that game than the bottle?? So I let her play with the bottle, and she eventually found the nipple, put it in her mouth, and presto: sucking began.

Bella is now a bottle-sucking veteran of over one week, and we have found that the bottle comes in quite handy at times, such as during the four-hour drive to Alabama. Not having to stop for nursing reduces total travel time by at least 30 minutes. And Bella did get hungry right in the middle of Mom's wedding this weekend, and but she refused to take the bottle there (maybe because of all the strangers, the stress of traveling, and an itchy but adorable pink outfit). So I got to experience breastfeeding in a bridesmaid's dress for the first time ever. In the driver's seat of our car, in the parking lot of the church which I went to before I even had breasts. And for this reason, Stephen and I missed the majority of the reception, I did not get a bite to eat (not even the chocolate-covered strawberries I was so looking forward to), AND we did not get one single picture. Not a one. But I am still super proud of Bella for learning a great new skill.



Bella trying to eat Stephen's nose.



*Disclaimer*

This is NOT meant to discourage anyone from breastfeeding. Only to share the lesson I learned the hard way, which is to introduce the bottle no later than six weeks (and of course no earlier than three to four weeks), and to give it to the baby consistently after that. (Also, never ignore the wise words in What to Expect.) I think breastfeeding is one of the sweetest experiences in the world. Maybe it's nature's way of rewarding mothers after they've gone through the trauma of pregnancy and childbirth. It's incredibly healthy for the baby, way more convenient than bottle-feeding (except for those times when you're wearing a bridesmaid dress), it burns a gazillion calories a day, and it's free.

Also, I'd like to give MAJOR kudos to the women who are unable to nurse their babies, but still pump their milk so that their babies can have the healthiest start possible. That is real sacrifice.

Project One (and the loss of ambition)

When we told our pediatrician that we were taking Bella on a roadtrip to Texas when she was just six weeks old, the pediatrician called us "ambitious." I've decided that was just a nice way of calling us "dumb." And when I think about our very first home improvement project, I can't decide whether "ambitious" or "dumb" would be a better adjective... Before we'd been in our house for even a week, I decided it was a good time to tackle Project One, the kitchen wallpaper. The thing is, neither Stephen nor I had ever stripped wallpaper before. In all of our of 14 homes, I have never even painted a wall, much less peeled the paper from it. Let's just say that next time, if I ever have to undertake a de-wallpapering project again, I will seriously consider hiring a professional instead doing the DIY route.



The first thing I said when I saw the kitchen wallpaper here was, "How could ANYONE live with this wallpaper?!" Our realtor, a HGTV-watching guru, heartily agreed, but she was eager to sell us a house, so she explained that you just spray this stuff on the walls and then peel it off. Sounded simple enough. It would be different if this was a larger, more ornate house, and if the year were something closer to 1992. Then, maybe, it would be okay. But it was truly gross wallpaper-- peeling all over the place, with grease stains that would NOT come off, grease stuck on parts of the paper that had peeled up, and it was just way too overpowering for a house this size and style. And it didn't match the linoleum, and certainly didn't match my dishes. While mom was here to help us move, she took one look at the wallpaper and mentioned it was going to be a "big job" and that they sell something you can use to stick it back ON to the walls in the places where it's peeling off. I'm thinking, Mom, we want to take it OFF the walls, and what do you know about peeling wallpaper, anyways?

Well. Had Stephen and I known how big of a job it was really going to be, we may have decided that we could, in fact, live with it. We were too naive to know what we were getting ourselves into, or else that wallpaper might have stayed there forever. But, in all of my ambition, I had decided this would be Project One, to get done before the fall semester began (because I wanted Stephen's help, and I knew that once the semester began, my honey-do list would fall completely off Stephen's radar). So one morning during our first week here, dear Stephen, armed with $4 worth of wallpaper-stripping paraphernalia, read the instructions on the packages and got right to stripping. This is what our kitchen wall looked like an hour and a half later:



This is when we decided to take a trip to Lowe's, as it was obvious that something wasn't working quite right. Well, the nice lady who manages the wallpaper section was quite pleasant and eager to help and full of know-how about how the whole wallpaper stripping process works. She first suggested we try using the wallpaper stripping steamer, on sale for $100. Then she proceeded to tell us how fabric softener supposedly worked on wallpaper as well. Then I asked her if she'd ever stripped wallpaper herself. She had not.

We left Lowe's armed with a wallpaper stripping kit, by the brand Piranha. Yes, "piranha" is exactly what we wanted to happen to that horrid wallpaper. The kit had a wonderful how-to dvd, which, incidentally, was made circa 1992. So Stephen, still eager to tackle Project One, got right to it once again. He found that the piranha method was NOT working on our particular wallpaper. But he did find his own method, which consisted of peeling off the top layer in whole sheets without spraying or scoring first, and there was a glorious half-hour in which he reveled in his wallpaper murdering skills. (My favorite quote from Project One: "I've always kind of hated wallpaper, but have never been able to destroy it like this!!" I think he released all the frustration that has built up from all the floral wallpaper he's been subjected to living with over the course of his life. It was therapeutic for him, really.)



Then he found that he could spray warm water on the remaining bottom layer, and peel. And peel and peel and peel. Sometimes, even the dry wall underneath joined in on the peeling party. But by the end of day, all the wallpaper was gone. We have been through about three rounds of spackling and sanding since, and there are still spots that need more spackling and sanding. In other words, it has been a month since we started, and this project is still not completed. But that's okay, because it will look as good as new once it receives a fresh coat of paint. Once I decide on a color of paint, that is. For now, we have white cabinets, against white walls, and white linoleum floors. The funny thing is, after all these years of renting places with white walls, I thought we would immediately be painting our own walls a non-white color. Maybe I have just run out of ambition, but we are actually REALLY enjoying the white on white on white look right now...

Settling In

We're making lots of new adjustments lately...

First, the house:

We are enjoying it a lot, although it's been a stressful first month. As I said before, moving with a new baby is not such a good idea, although I am definitely glad that we moved. For this move, I am trying a new method, which is to unpack only the bare necessities, and leave everything else in the garage for an indefinite period of time (I am absolutely getting spoiled to having a garage!). Incidentally, we don't actually need anything in those boxes filling the corner of the garage, and this method is saving my sanity right now by cutting down on the clutter that would otherwise be inside our home. I'm working on making things functional and organized before doing any real decorating... for now, we've just thrown a few paintings on the wall for some color!

Second, the new semester:

School has started back, which means that Stephen is gone and I am officially now alone with Isabella all day. (This job is not as easy as it sounds!) Stephen is teaching four sections of English 102 (or 1102, depending on what school you went to) this fall. He's already getting swamped with papers and quizzes to grade. His big challenge this semester is learning how to better manage his work load so that he can spend his nights and weekends with Bella and me, rather than spending them grading the fine writing of his 94 freshman students. He's done well so far, but at the end of the day he and I are both exhausted!

Taking a walk on the beautiful UGA campus


Bella's first visit to Stephen's office on campus


Our favorite part of the day is our nightly post-supper walk around the neighborhood. We've already met lots of other neighborhood folks, along with their cats and dogs, on our walks. Having Bella along makes it easier to meet people because so many of them want to see what's hiding in our stroller!

Our eighth wedding anniversary was this week. We thought about taking Bella on her first trip to a nice restaurant, but decided we'd have much better chances of a relaxing meal by staying at home. So, I made the foolproof Crock Pot roast, mashed potatoes, carrots, and green beans. Not exactly romantic, but really, who cares? After Bella went to bed, we watched our wedding video, along with some other home videos from 2002. I can't believe how goofy we were, and how much we've changed since then. It would be nice, I think, to be that carefree again, just for a day even. It looked like so much fun to be 19...

Our anniversary entertainment: Bella showing off her Superman (Superbaby) flying skills!


Smelling the anniversary flowers Stephen got for me...


In other news, Bella rolled over for the first time ever this week, but neither of us saw it, much less caught it on camera! She rolled over while she was in her bed, and scared me to death when I saw her face on the mattress. She hasn't rolled over since. However, she did sleep through the night for the second time ever this week, from 8:30 pm. to 6:00 a.m.! (I did not sleep the night, though, because I was so worried about Bella that I had to keep checking on her!)

Sunday morning sleep-in with Mommy and Daddy (Bella's the only one who got to sleep in because she fell asleep in such an odd position on me that it kept me awake! But we loved watching our beautiful little girl sleep and had fun listening to her snore...)


More pictures of the house coming soon... I am really just trying to concentrate on Bella right now, and on keeping my sanity intact with all the adjustments going on, rather than focus on decorating. Bella seems old enough for a routine now, so we are trying to get that down, and are devoting as much time as we can to her.

Four Months Old

Bella turned four months old on the 15th and went in for her check-up today. She weighs 13 lbs (she has doubled her birth weight now!), and is 25.5" long. Her height is in the 95th percentile (!!!), her weight in the 25th, and her head circumference in the 50th. She's definitely my daughter!

Bella's learned lots of new tricks lately. She can hold her head up well with no assistance, she can stand up and support all of her weight (with assistance for balance), she can bring her hands together and bring them to her mouth (and sucking on her fingers has become one of her favorite activities), she can hold objects in her hands, and she's learned how to blow bubbles. She often wakes us up in the morning by talking to her mobile, laughing, and blowing bubbles, which is a sweet way to wake up even when it's at 5:30 a.m. Bella loves her Baby Einstein play yard; She pulls the dangling toys (usually towards her mouth) and has started to kick them too. I've read that three to six months are the "Golden Months" for babies since they are responsive and happy, but not yet mobile. She's definitely a joy to be with! Now that she can completely support her head on her own, Stephen has found lots of new ways to play with her. They are so cute together!

Sleeping has gotten a lot better in the last month. Most nights she only wakes up once during the night. There was one night when we stayed at my mom's house where she slept for 10 hours straight! (I did hear her sucking on her fingers at one point, but she apparently put herself back to sleep on her own.) Mom, of course, takes all the credit for this since it happened in her house.



Bella supporting 13 pounds! Check out those chunky legs!




Check out this neck control!



Bella holding her duck!



Playing with Uncle Lee

We're In!

It has been one crazy week. To bring you up to date, my mom actually did make it to Athens on time to watch Bella while we went to the closing (after miraculously making it through Atlanta with NO TRAFFIC, she got to the duplex 10 minutes before we needed to leave, which was just enough time for me to show her how to swaddle Bella, how to get Bella to sleep, and show her where Bella's toys were). The closing went well, but we were up until 2:00 the following morning moving all of our furniture with the help of Stephen's lead guitarist, Robin, who wore FLIP FLOPS to move heavy furniture in (which might help to explain why it took so long). We did finally lay our heads down in our very own home that night, and the days since then have been a blur. We've apparently been here for a week, but Stephen and I would swear it's only been three days. It's unreal how much there is to do, but thank God there is a garage (our first garage!) to store all of our stuff in until we get around to unpacking it.

We realized that this is the fifth home that we've lived in since we got married eight years ago. Then we started counting how many places we've lived in since we were born. Stephen has lived in four states, seven cities, and this makes the tenth home for him. I've lived in four states, six cities, and this makes the fourteenth home for me. And we don't even have the excuse of our parents being in the military. So can we stop moving for just a little while, please?