6 Months

Last Thursday Annalise graduated from the Beaverton Mom's Group! She talked loudly for everyone to hear, performed her rolling abilities with gusto, and cried when the leader tried to hold her. She looked so precious in her graduation cap.


On Friday morning we attended our first meeting of the Portland division of Attachment Parenting International and had a lovely time playing with toys and babies and sharing our sleep struggles with folks that weren't going to just suggest letting our Buggy-Boo cry it out. We are joining the association and looking forward to the monthly group meetings.

On Friday night we attended a very lovely karaoke party at the delightful Hillyard home. Though I was certain that Annalise had no idea what hit her when Pixie mauled her, my assumption was sadly mistaken. The two large and friendly dogs at the Hillyards have always been very well-accepted by Annalise, but when we went over there after her bite, one of them came up and put his nose to her stomach and she nearly brought down the house with her terrified screams and cries. It was so sad to see. I had no idea she knew what had happened to her, or that she would be afraid of dogs now. It was so sad. I tried again a little later, showing her the dog from arm's length but when he began moving his head quickly she exploded into terrified tears again. My poor poor poor little traumatized angel. :(

Sunday was Valentine's Day and the day before we opened the mail to find THE CUTEST ever headbands for our little baldy that anyone has ever seen. THANK YOU CRAFTY MARY ANN! Here you see the ridiculously fabulous packaging it came in, and Annalise modeling her new oh-so-trendy headgear.

Sunday morning I woke up to a surprise breakfast in bed of eggs, toast, and hot homemade bread pudding. Dave also created a handmade card and wrote me a poem and quickly found himself the recipient of both much gratitude for his thoughtfulness and many smooches to his face. That night we went to his parents' house and he and his dad cooked me and his mom a delicious dinner. It is obvious that Dave is following in the footsteps of a line of lovely Fuhriman men!

Yesterday my Buggy-Wug turned six months old! We had a doctor's appointment which started off with the nurse making a mistake AS SHE DOES AT EVERY APPOINTMENT. They tried to tell me Bugsy's head had made a giant leap in size from two months ago when it was only 60th percentile in size and I was like, Uh... no and they were like Uh, yes and I was like No way, and they were like yes yes yes and I was like You better check and then they checked and it turned out the nurse typed everything in wrong and because of my insistence they realized they had to redo everything and come up with all new percentiles. When the doctor laughed and was like, Oh the nurse must've made a mistake, Dave's eyes met mine over her head as he knew I've had it up to HERE with the nurse making mistakes.

So the CORRECT numbers are:

Head size: 44 1/2 cm, 90th percentile

Height: 27 inches, 90th percentile

Weight: 17 pounds, 75th percentile

So Sweet Pea's very large noggin that I always think is enormous is exactly proportional to her very tall self. The doctor proceeded to express that she believes the only good option for babies is to sleep in their own rooms and cry it out as means of sleep-training. Since there is never only one way and those ways certainly don't match our ways, we will be parting ways. I am excited to find a pediatrician with similar values and priorities to guide us.

The poor Buggy-Boo got two shots and the nurse, who really couldn't be more incompetent, used one band-aid to cover the pricks but when I changed the baby a bit later I found that the band-aid had accidently been placed so that it didn't cover EITHER wound and blood had gotten everywhere. In the words of my favorite blogger, MINUS TEN POINTS FOR HER.

In Sixth Month news, Annalise can sit unassisted for a few seconds at a time. She also once scootched herself two inches forward in pursuit of her binkie. Based upon my response, one might have wondered if she'd completed the Boston Marathon. She loves to touch people's faces, and has become so strong that no swaddler can contain her, thus compelling us to duct tape her prior to every snooze-inducing attempt. If we do not, she scrubs at her eyes until she wakes up APPROXIMATELY EVERY 15 MINUTES ALL NIGHT LONG and don't ask me how I know that.

Today after morning sign language class, we began attending an afternoon Gymboree class and Annalise was extremely keen on meeting the other babies and the millions of stimulating toys and activities. She was a tiny bit less keen on the instructor trying to hold her right away. She is the most precious, angelic, fabulous, adorable, inquisitive, scrumptious person I know. She just keeps getting better.

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RANDOM PICS:

Grandma Fuhriman bought her this outfit and as I tried to memorialize it, Annalise was nothing if not CRYSTAL CLEAR in her feelings toward said memorialization.

Every day when I wake up after it's rained, the trees look so beautiful, sparkling in the light like they've been laced with spun glass. I am striving to accurately capture that beauty. I'm not there yet but I will keep trying.

Our sweetie-pie-pants: