At 7 months, my sweet Sassafras has just passed the half-year mark and is growing at light speed.

Every week she is learning something new.  A few weeks ago, she started doing this thing where she scrunches her entire face when something delights her.

And just this past week, she began using her pincer grasp and successfully put a Super Puff IN HER MOUTH.  She is also learning how to hold her own bottle, although most of the time she forgets to hold it up and instead pushes it down, causing the nipple to fly out and spray her face (and mine) with milk.  We are working on it.

For the past couple of weeks, she has also been desperately trying to master crawling.  I think it may be a matter of days before we have a crawler on our hands, but for now she will continue to develop buff arms from doing this all day long:

At this point in time, she still has ZERO teeth, but I swear one morning she is going to wake up and have a full set of teeth.  That will scare the crap out of me.

In the last month, we have enjoyed seeing Aliya’s personality develop.  There is no doubt she is her father’s daughter.  She feels things intensely and she is not afraid to let you know!  She loves being with others, is extremely curious and observant (I believe she was this way since birth), and is a determined little girl.  She likes to win people over with her gummy smile and her head tilt.  She already loves to babble and if you are wondering where her volume comes from, I have one guess.

I am learning to slow down and enjoy moments with my daughter because I am realizing that they are fleeting.  The first couple months of motherhood were marked heavily by postpartum depression – an unexpected, terrifying and dark time in my life which I hope to never revisit.  Most days I was trying to survive, to stay afloat just long enough to keep from drowning and losing myself (and my sanity) altogether.  My heart still aches when I think about that time, but I am so thankful for my sweet Sassafras.  I am certain that nothing could have prepared me for this, but every day my  heart is expanding and I am changing because of this little girl:

“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
I do believe I have been changed for the better.”

Wicked - “For Good”

It doesn’t quite match the 55+ books I read in 2010, and as you can see the list stops after the month of June.

Number of books read so far in 2012:  ZILCH

I hope to read at least one book in 2012.

February
1) Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott
2) Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff
3) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

March
4) A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen
5) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
6) The Girlfriends’ Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood by Vicki Iovine
7) A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
8) The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee
9) Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
10) Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

April
11) The Aquariums of Pyongyang by Kang Chol-Hwan
12) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
13) The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
14) The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest
15) Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth
16) Drinking Closer to Home by Jessica Anya Blau

May
17) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
18) Bossypants by Tina Fey

June
19) Raising Great Kids:  Parenting with Grace and Truth by Henry Cloud and John Townsend
20) What to Expect When You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff
21) On Writing by Stephen King

• The amount of spit-up in my hair or on my clothes will determine if it is wash-worthy.
• The amount of spit-up in her hair or on her clothes will determine if it is wash-worthy.
• I will eat something that has fallen on the floor if it means getting out the door faster.
• My reaction to being peed on:  “Pee is sterile.”
• I can do all the animal sounds during one feeding of solids.  Twice.  And a song.  Or two.
• I stopped saying, “My child/baby will never . . .”
• When people without children say, “I understand . . .” I laugh in their face.  Or in my head.
• I appreciate SILENCE.
• I have become a neat FREAK.
• My new hangout curfew is 7:30 PM.
• I have learned that poops-up-the-back most often happen right before work or in a public place.
• Boogers, sharts, pooplosions, and projectile vomit no longer faze me.
• I have learned to do things one-handed.
• I think anyone who is pregnant or has baby urges before her child turns one is batshit crazy.  Or super.  But probably crazy.

***The other day I met a woman with a 10-month old who is pregnant with her second child due in 2 weeks.  <insert expletive/emoticon>  She and her husband must have had “relations” just seconds after she gave birth to the first one.

• I cherish sleep.  I will never complain about only getting five hours of sleep again.

Mommies out there, would you care to share yours?

My little bombshell:

VS.

These are too cute!!!  If I buy one, do I have to buy the other?

Damn you Old Navy!

Take Our Poll

I sometimes wonder how we ended up with such a happy baby.  I have about a thousand SMILEY pictures of Aliya.  I am that parent.  One of these days, I am going to miss her gummy grin.

Miss Sassafras, meet Smiley:

I love that she smiles with her entire face.  Sometimes when I am feeding her, she will wait for me to make eye contact with her and then smile with her eyes.  Her eyebrows go up and her big eyes will become tiny half  moons.  And when she’s really excited, she’ll let the milk dribble out the side of her mouth, down her chin and all the way to the back of her neck.  That’s always fun.

During pregnancy, I loved reading about all of the ways our baby was developing in my belly.  First she learned how to curl her fingers and toes.  And then before I knew it, she was giving me full-fledged punches and kicks each day to remind me that she was growing strong and there to keep me company (for the rest of my life).

And then she was born.  And I have been able to see her grow, change, and develop right before my very eyes.

First she learned how to track with her eyes.  “Do you see me?  Do you see Mommy?”

Then she learned how to hold her head up for more than ten seconds at a time.

Then she learned how to smile.  And then I died.

Then she learned how to sleep on her own without Mommy or Daddy shuffling up and down the hallway in a sleep-deprived stupor.  This was nothing short of a miracle.

Soon after she learned how to roll from her back onto her tummy.  And then we became sleep-deprived again.

Then she learned how to grab and take hold of things.  Here is a picture of when she first learned how to grab her toys:

In the past few months she has become an expert grabber (my hair is her object of choice), roller, laugh machine, and solid-food eater.  In recent weeks she has learned to vigorously shake her head “no” (“doree doree” for you Koreans), and I am getting the sense that it will be a matter of weeks before she begins to crawl.  For now, she is a swivel machine which means that one minute she will be pointing north, and then 15 seconds later she will be pointing southwest.

I am awaiting many more “firsts” with my girl – her first words, first steps . . . and I know the day will come when she can wipe her own ass.  That will be revolutionary.

1st Trimester

And Kevin looked like this:

Post-ACL Surgery

These were fun times.  My husband was incapacitated from knee surgery and you could usually find me slung over a toilet, puking my guts out somewhere due to the alien growing inside of me.

Here we are now:

Christmas 2011

Ferry Building in San Francisco, CA

What a difference a year makes. 

I am brimming with anticipation and excitement as I look forward to this new year as a family of THREE – a year of many “firsts” and learning for all of us.

“Here we go yo / Here we go yo / So what so what so what’s the scenario?”

There have been so many different emotions swirling around this past week – sadness, anxiety, excitement, fear, guilt, and anticipation just to name a few.

Moms forewarned me that I wouldn’t really know how I would feel about returning to work until Aliya was here.  They were right.

I’ve flip-flopped a few times already since she’s been born.  Days after she was born, I couldn’t imagine ever leaving her.  And then about three weeks later, I was sure I was ready to go back to work, where I might find a bit of my “old” self lingering around somewhere.  Five months later, I’m somewhere in between.

I just love my Sassafras to pieces.

Since Miss Sass has been going through her 4 month sleep regression, I thought I would dedicate today’s post to sleep.

You know how they say absence makes the heart grow fonder?  Or how you never really know how much you love something (or someone) until it’s gone?  I’m sure “they” probably weren’t talking about sleep, but “they” probably weren’t sleep-deprived first-time parents either.

I never realized how much I loved sleep until it was gone.

I should have listened to those nurses who told me to try to sleep during labor.  “You’ll need all your energy for pushing!”  What they failed to mention was that I wouldn’t be sleeping for the next two months.

At the hospital I probably slept a total of five hours during our two-night stay.  And as we headed home, I thought, “Oh, it’ll be nice to finally get some sleep in my bed now without those nurses coming in every hour!”  Foolish.

I’m fairly certain that during those first two weeks with baby home I was running off of pure adrenaline.  I was so thrilled to be with my daughter and have her home.  In fact, during one of my first middle-of-the-night feedings I wept as I stared at my beautiful baby girl.  I was so grateful, and having experienced a miscarriage with the first pregnancy I knew that being able to carry and deliver a healthy baby was nothing short of a miracle.  Two weeks later, I was crying for other reasons.

Even when by some miracle my Miss Sass was sleeping, I could not sleep.  Perhaps it had to do with my funky brain chemistry or hormone levels after childbirth, but my anxiety levels were off the charts.  If she slept for two hours during the day I would think, “Wake her up, she’s not going to sleep tonight!”  Or if she slept for 30 minutes I would think, “Good God, why is she not sleeping?”  If she cried while I was nursing, I would wonder, “Is she still hungry?  Did she eat too much?  Is the milk coming out too fast for her?  Or maybe it’s not fast enough?”  If she pooped a lot it was, “Does she have diarrhea?  Does her tummy hurt?”  If she pooped too little it was, “Is she dehydrated?  Do I need to feed her more?  Maybe she’s constipated?”

What didn’t help was when well-meaning doctors or moms would tell me to just sleep when the baby sleeps.  Or, “Gee, you really need to rest.”  Ya think?  Oh, just sleep when the baby sleeps, that’s all!  Thanks for the tip!

When you are not sleeping, each day feels like an eternity and you begin to wonder if you’re going to be able to live another day with a little life-sucker attached to your chest.  And you look at every mom you know with wonder and amazement and ask, “How on earth did you survive this?”

Because moms are amazing, that’s how.

These are a few of my FAVORITE things:

Fisher Price Newborn Rock ‘n Play Sleeper – We acquired this from my sister who used this with my nephew when was first born.  We used to put Miss Sassafras to sleep in this all the time when she was a newborn!  It is so much more convenient than a bassinet.  It’s about half the cost, and it’s also super light and portable.  Plus, you can use it to rock your newborn to sleep and give your arms a rest.

Miracle Blanket – We tried several different swaddling blankets, but this one seemed to work the best for us and our baby.  It is super easy to use and we still use it to swaddle Miss Sass from the waist down.

Fisher Price Precious Planets 2-in-1 Projection Mobile – After weeks of watching her smile at the ceiling fan, I caved in and bought my child a mobile.  Coolness factors:  1) It plays Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, nature sounds, as well as heartbeat sounds (which works wonders at lulling Miss Sass to sleep); 2) You can remove the “mobile” part as the baby gets older and the device projects animal figurines onto the ceiling.

Cloud B Sleep Sheep On-the-Go – This was gifted to us and I never even knew it existed!  Great little white noise/sound machine.

Summer Infant Day and Night Video Monitor – I read a lot of reviews on different monitors (both on-line and in my Baby Bargains book) and are very happy with this one!  We can check on our little one when she’s sleeping and be put at ease.

Wubbanub Infant Pacifier – Fellow mama Sadie introduced this to me and is super cute and ingenious!  The plush stuffed animal attached to the paci helps it stay in your baby’s mouth and stay asleep.

Is it any wonder that 100% of my favorite things are in one way or another related to SLEEP?  It is amazing how much money you will spend on books and products just to get your child to sleep.  You can hardly put a price on your sleep, especially in those weeks when you are getting none.

What are some of your favorite things?