Crazy (it's already) eight...baptism...Halloween

Eight months sounds so much older than seven, but that’s how old Mirabella is as of Sunday (Sunday, November 1st) and she is keeping us on our toes. After army crawling for about a month and a half, she started a full on crawl with her stomach off the ground a couple weeks ago. She’s fast! Her favorite thing to do continues to be standing up, and unfortunately for us, her favorite places to prop herself up on are the most dangerous! We’ve been saying no a lot to her, and she gets it because she stops what she’s doing, but it’s not enough yet that she knows not to continue.

Our coffee tables, one of which is glass, and our fireplace ledges with their ultra straight edges are the places she likes best. Although we’ve found that she’ll stand up pretty much anywhere she can climb up to, and that seems to be everywhere!











The other day she kept crawling into the bathroom from our bedroom, so after getting tired of picking her up and bringing her back there, I shut the door. I walked out of our bedroom and less than a minute later she was crying. When I came back, she was standing up against the door as if she was begging me to let her back in. She is so good and standing up and moving back and forth from one end of a ledge or table to another. Mirabella’s even become a show off; she’ll hold herself up on an object with one hand, and when she thinks she’s especially cool, she bends down to pick something up (usually her pacifier) off the floor with her other hand.


She could almost pull herself up from laying down to sitting at seven months, but now she’s been pulling herself up from laying down to sitting to standing without much effort! She’s been doing this for three weeks, with the help of whatever she can climb up on. She does it so much that we lowered her crib for the first time on Monday, October 12th and she was getting better at it, so much that we lowered it again to its lowest setting on Saturday, October 31st. Our girl makes us very proud with all she is accomplishing.




We thought we still had some time before Mirabella would be able to climb over the edges of our sunken great room to move on to the next room, but two weeks ago, she conquered the fete she had been trying hard for. It seemed like every day for a week prior that she would try to get over the littler barrier (there are two, one leading to our main hallway and one leading to our kitchen). When she finally got over the step leading up to our kitchen, she lost interest in it!

Step to the kitchen


And she finally makes it over





Step to the front hallway


Still a chatterbox with no real words (although we do hear “hi” a lot), Mirabella has learned how to get our attention with a loud sound. If we don’t come, she’ll do it until we will, or until we look at her. It’s her call to us, or to whomever she wants attention from at that moment. Laughter abounds with our child too! It’s the best sound imaginable to us and yippee for us, she laughs a lot.

Mirabella goes to bed between 7-8:30 at night and she wakes up most mornings at about 6-6:30. We’ve been lucky on many weekend mornings that she lets us sleep in a little more when she doesn’t get up until 7-8! There are still occasional wakeups in the night for us to locate her pacifier, but for the most part, she’s a wonderful sleeper. The teething gets her up sometimes, or keeps her up sometimes, but that doesn’t happen often, thank goodness. We’ve been fortunate with her sleeping habits.

Her teeth are getting more noticeable, but no more have cut since the two on the bottom came. We love seeing those choppers when she smiles! It seems like Mirabella likes the way her tongue feels between her lips. I guess she’s trying to take after another MJ, Michael Jordan. It’s not like she’s sticking it out in a bad way or anything, it’s like she does it just past her lips because she likes the new feeling. It could be that she likes the new feeling of it with two teeth in. She’ll even roll it up a little sometimes.

I was determined to get a good shot of her two first teeth


And here's that tongue








Daycare gets better every day and we think Mirabella really likes it there. She has been so happy when I get there to pick her up (Jeff brings her there and I pick her up) and we’ve been getting good reports from Inez too. A wonderful part about it is how the other kids react to her. One of the older girls has been asking to put her blanket on her before we leave. "I can tuck her in nice and snug," she says, almost verbatim. A few girls in particular always want to make sure to get in their goodbyes to “the baby”, most days with hugs and sometimes with kisses too, and the other day, one even called her “Something-something-abella” as she said her goodbye. I was thrilled! Inez asked me at the end of Mirabella’s first week there if we were calling her by any nicknames since saying Mirabella can be tough for the kids. I said that mostly we still always call her Mirabella, but begrudgingly I said that if they wanted to shorten it up, I thought maybe Bella would be fine. I did not want to say that. Don’t get me wrong, I like the name, but she’s not a Bella to me. Not yet anyway.

Tom and Jason, our brothers, have taken a liking to Bella (and my dad, Belle), so it seemed more natural than Mira right now---although I did throw in that Mira would be fine too because I just was not prepared to commit to Bella. I wasn’t prepared for giving her a nickname of any kind right now really. I’m not ready for Mirabella to go away (even though I know someday we may not have a choice in the matter), even if it’s just to the 1-5 year olds at daycare. So I was more than pleased when one of the 2 year olds said goodbye to Something-something-abella. And even though I couldn’t make out the first part, I know she didn’t say Bella and it made me happy! I make a point to say Mirabella a lot when I’m there, so maybe they’ll keep catching on. Hey, if my five year old nephew can say her four syllable first name and four syllable last name combined effortlessly, and our friends’ kids can at the very least say Mirabella at their 2-4 year old ages (some even say her full name without a hitch), I know it can be done!

OK, I have an update to those last two paragraphs since I wrote them. Today when I picked up Mirabella, as we were leaving, one of the girls said, "Bye, Mirabella!" and she did it a couple of times. Then another woman walked in the door and the same little girl said, "This baby's new. Her name's Mirabella." Awesome! Inez told me that she says, "Her name's not Bella, her mommy calls her Mirabella. That's her name." I am not making this up! Needless to say, I think that little girl's my favorite. :)

Mirabella is eating four bottles a day with formula, usually seven ounces in each unless she gets stubborn (usually at daycare) and refuses some. At daycare she gets less formula than she would at home typically, maybe because she’s too busy to be bothered by eating when there is so much to do. She’s pretty good with us and we can keep her focused enough to finish most bottles. She eats solids three to four times a day now, pureed fruits and/or vegetables (we haven’t done any meats yet), two to three of those feedings include rice cereal. Why are they called solids when they are pureed? Anyway, when we were at Kristin and Brent’s last Friday (Friday, October 30th), their son Jack, who is two weeks older than Mirabella, was eating chopped up toast---so it became our doorway into trying something new. Mirabella had one little square of the toast and then Kristin brought out some veggie puffs which we put in front of her. It was fun to watch Mirabella ponder what to do. Every other thing goes into her mouth, but it didn’t seem as natural for her at first to put what should go in there in there. With a bit of prodding, she was on her way to enjoying a new experience. The next day I went out and stocked up on different puffy things and yogurt melts and she has been having a good time feeding those to herself.

One bummer was that we're pretty certain Mirabella caught her first cold this month. Her only real symptom was her congested, plugged up nose. And when it wasn't congested, it was runny. The blue bulb that we got from the hospital has been in full use and she hates having us suck out the chaos in her nose. But wow, she could very well have lost a pound with all that's come out (yuck, sorry for anyone reading this while eating). It started the Wednesday before Halloween (Wednesday, October 28th) and it's gotten significantly better, but it's not fully cleared up. Regardless, if this is her first cold, it's mild which makes us very happy. Oh, and we can't blame it on daycare since her daddy was sick just before she got this muck. Who knows where it came from, but thank goodness it's almost gone.

Some more photos from the last month











This picture is funny because even though these pants were on her, completely buttoned, seconds earlier, she crawled right out of them.


Mirabella loves the bath. They've gotten even easier for us now that she's sitting up, but not for long. Since she's starting to climb, it's only a matter of time that she figures out she can do it in the bathtub too. She's just starting to test the limits.


Also this past month, Mirabella was baptized on Sunday, October 11th. About 20 of us celebrated the day at the church service and later at our house for brunch. With the service being at 11:00 and so many people being around at our house, Mirabella saw no point in napping, and for a girl with no naps (minus a cat nap on the way to the service), she did great the whole day! As Jeff and I stood up in front of the church with Mirabella’s Godparents, Jason and Leah, Mirabella teared up when the water hit her forehead. She started to cry, but not for long, thanks to the help of her pacifier. She even let one of the pastors display her in front of the congregation, carrying her around to each section.

We had Mirabella’s gown custom made for her in hopes that it could be passed down and it was gorgeous. The woman who made it embroidered her name and baptism date inside. It came with a matching bonnet too. The set turned out even more beautifully than we could have hoped for; seeing her in her gown for the first time was one of the best parts of the day.








The ceremony





Mirabella with her Godparents, Jason and Leah




















The after baptism party at our house required a costume change











A fun time was had by the guest of honor as she opened her presents








I couldn’t complete this post without mentioning that Mirabella spent her first Halloween as a ninja! She was the most adorable ninja we’ve ever seen, but she looked hilarious. You couldn’t help but to laugh when you saw her, which everyone who saw her in costume did! It was definitely the Do-rag that made it. My parents were nice enough to come to our house to pass out candy and watch Mirabella while Jeff and I went to the Gopher football game that night. Somewhere along the way my parents started counting the kids that would come to their house (and my dorky self has started the habit of doing the same). We had 58 trick-or-treaters come to our house!

Thanks to Tricia, my mom and me, Mirabella had three Halloween outfits to wear besides her actual costume.









Nice view of the choppers in this one


World's smallest (and cutest) ninja








We brought her over to Nana and Papi's the next day all dressed up. I love the second picture where it looks like they are in conversation over a glass of wine!




It was a fabulous month filled with joy, mostly because of all the things Mirabella did. As always, we’re anticipating the many more things in store.

Nezzie

This week brought a new first for our daughter, and for us. Mirabella started going to a new daycare on Monday (Monday, October 19th)...a real life daycare, with real life kids and all! It seems to be going pretty well, but it’s quite an adjustment for Jeff and me since we were so spoiled with our previous childcare situation. Yes, last week was the end of the reign for our Childcare Goddess, Mary. We were very sad to see her go, but we were so lucky and blessed to have had her watching over our angel baby during my transition back to work and beyond. Thoughts of letting Mirabella out of our sight for full days at a time during her earliest months were the hardest to imagine. Mary came through with the most generous offer and having her there with Mirabella at that time gave us so much comfort and piece of mind. We were, and always will be, so grateful to her. We know our baby loved being with her and judging by the tears in Mary’s eyes on that last day (Thursday, October 15th; I had that Friday off), she loved being with Mirabella too.

When we nailed down all the details with Mary originally, we agreed to evaluate the arrangement after six months. We were also clear that there would be no hard feelings if it wasn’t going to continue working out for either one of us. Of course, when Mary first told me that day a few months into it that she was sadly going to have to “give her notice”, it didn’t stop me from tackling her, throwing her down and screaming, “NOooooo, you can’t do it! I won’t let you!” I picked her up a couple minutes later and all was fine after she gently reminded me we agreed there would be no hard feelings.

In all seriousness, Mary has a daughter in college and a son who just started driving. After being used to pretty much being on her own schedule lately, having an infant around every second of the day kind of throws a wrench in the mix. Of course, those are my words and Mary wouldn't say it like that, but we completely understood where she was coming from. Plus, her husband travels for his job, and having a more freed up schedule will allow Mary to tag along sometimes. Let’s just face it: she’s got it good, that Mary! She didn’t need to work. She didn’t need to have a baby around every day. She did it for us. And now that Mirabella is almost ready to get out on her own, who needs her anyway, really? Mirabella’s got things to do. Kids to see. (Colds to catch.) I am of course joking about not needing Mary. It was really difficult to see the greatest childcare situation-next to us doing it ourselves-on earth end. We are extremely thankful to have had this type of arrangement come our way and we will always love Mary for giving us that. You’re the best, Mary!

So onto the next childcare phase...I happened to be leaving Mary’s with Mirabella one day early in September and was chatting with another neighbor on the way home. I casually mentioned that we were on a daycare search and Suzanne provided me with a glowing recommendation. The next week Jeff and I had an interview with Inez, the woman Suzanne spoke of, and by the next week, we had it all set up. Inez had taken care of Suzanne’s granddaughter from seven weeks old until she went off to kindergarten this year. Having this recommendation made us feel much better and although it's still new, so far, so good. It is conveniently located just a couple miles from our house and there are currently eight kids that go there (or eight plus Mirabella, I can’t remember). The kids range from 1-5 in age. They affectionately call Inez, Nezzie.

The other kids seem to like her being there and Mirabella appears to like it there now too. It took a few days to warm up, but she's coming around. On Monday when I came to get her, she was in Inez's arms and did some wimpering when she saw me. It was almost as if she was saying, "Why did you leave me here? Well, I don't really care why at this point, I'm just so happy you came back!" On Tuesday, she was in Inez's arms again when I arrived, but gave me some smiles as she reached for me. By Wednesday when I came, she was on the floor playing with toys, chatting and smiling. It's going to take more time to fully gauge everything, but each day has shown improvement!



And just like that, off she went.

First snow

September saw some beautiful, hot days, but sadly it looks like that meant we were cheated out of fall. The first snow came early this year (Saturday, October 10th) with below average temps for long stretches (I'm calling it a stretch we're in now in hopes that it'll go away, but it's looking doubtful). The snow didn't stick around, but the dreary weather did. At the first sign of snow, I bundled up Mirabella and took advantage of a few photo ops. She didn't know what to make of it right away, but she quickly became curious and then started to play in it. At least it was pretty, even if it came much too soon!

Cutest fan

It's easy to see how the Twins pulled out a victory a couple Sundays ago (Sunday, October 3rd)-not to mention their tie breaker on Tuesday, October 5th-with this chickie cheering them on. We'll have to ignore what happened during the Yankees series, but it was a good run.




This hairdo is not a result of static. It's permanent, at least for now! Mine was like that too as a baby, lucky Mirabella.

First tooth

At just over seven months, this past Thursday (Thursday, October 8th), Mirabella sprouted her first tooth! Mary, our neighbor who watches her, spotted it and let me know when I went to pick her up that day. She wondered if we already knew, but it was big news to us. It has just barely popped out, in the bottom middle. Mirabella's not so good at showing it off yet---even through all the prodding, we've only gotten a couple quick glimpses.

Jeff and I had a few rough nights of sleep over the week prior to the discovery, with her waking up a couple times and us not being successful at getting her back down for some time. We thought it could be that she was teething, but with how many times that has crossed our minds, didn't think much of it. Now that we know that's what it was, those rough nights weren't so rough after some stories we've heard. Let's hope she remains as much of a trooper when all her choppers poke through!

2nd tooth: Tuesday, October 13th (bottom middle)

Lucky number seven (months and October 7th)

Mirabella is a whopping seven months old as of last Thursday (Thursday, October 1st)! Every day we look at her and can’t believe how much she’s growing into a little girl. This process is going far too quickly. People tell you it will, but it goes even faster.

She’s forcing us to think much more about childproofing our house, although we haven’t really taken any major measure to do so yet. I suppose we still think we have time, but really, she’s hard to leave unattended for even short periods of time. She is great at entertaining herself, allowing for a quick blow dry of the hair or shave of the face (for Jeff on that latter one, thank you very much), and she’s never far from eyesight, but that girl can move! Mirabella is almost full on crawling. It’s more than an army crawl now, but not quite the real thing. She still favors her arms. Her legs, getting more action than before, follow somewhat clumsily, but it doesn’t faze her. If she wants to get somewhere (or something) she’s on a mission until she gets there. And she’ll do it fast.

Mirabella has always liked being on her feet, but for the last couple weeks she’s been able to hang on to something and stand on her own. It makes her look like such a little girl and not much of a baby at all anymore. Of course one of us is right there with her sheltering her from a fall or bump on whatever she’s holding on to, but she can hold her own for some time. We’ll have to lower her crib soon because she’s started becoming obsessed with climbing, on whatever is big enough to support her (mostly she loves to do it on Jeff and me), and she’s almost doing it well enough to get up on her feet. Mirabella can just about pull herself up from lying down to sitting now too. For now, she has to be just slightly at an upward angle to get there, but soon those tummy muscles will get her all the way up from being totally flat on her back to sitting on her rear.

One new challenge we’ve encountered over the last weeks is her squirminess on the changing pad, or wherever we change her diaper. She’s far too busy to be bothered by a diaper change; there are just more important things to do! It’s not so bad when changing a # 1, but with how nasty those # 2 diapers are from the formula and solids, man, it can be a nightmare! If anyone has suggestions for help with this, we’re all ears.





This last month, she’s really gotten good at eating and like her mama, quite prefers the act. More food is staying down versus hanging out on her face or bib. It seems like is has become less of a game and more of something yummy she wants to enjoy. She’s quick to open her mouth as soon as she sees the spoon with whatever glop of mush is on the menu that day coming her way. And if she’s distracted, an “ahhh” a few times from us with our mouths open usually does the trick at refocusing her and she obliges us with a wide open, gummy mouth. She’s taking four 6 1/2 to 7 ounce bottles of formula (had to finally buy our first can last week) and we added another solid feeding last week, so she eats them twice a day. Mirabella’s face has started to show disgust for rice cereal, sometimes followed by a gag by our drama queen unless it’s mixed with fruit or vegetables. Now that her pallet has acquired those new tastes, I can’t say it’s shocking what her preference is.

Surprisingly with shy parents such as Jeff and me (haha), Mirabella is a consummate chatter box. We eat up the sounds that she makes. There is a vocabulary of vowel sounds, some of which we can get her to mimic on cue at times. She’s a really good singer too, carrying out those sounds at length. The discovery of her ability to make "p" sounds has made her proud these last few weeks.

Even though Mirabella grows bigger every day, and even with a new one on the way, our seven month old is still our baby!


Snoozing on daddy









Papi's birthday




No longer in use at our house, for obvious reasons.



Spending time with Papa


...and Papi


...and Nana



It was gorgeous on the last Saturday in September (Saturday, September 26th), so we took a road trip to Gustavus to watch our first football game in their new stadium. Mirabella looked so old that day in her little blue jeans and shoes!






Experimenting with camera settings, clearly not the correct ones (our first attempt at picture taking with our new camera...finally!)






Off to Grandma and Papa's after the game so Jeff and I could attend the Service to Humanity Gala for United Hospital thanks to an invitation from some friends of ours. It was our second time going and we had another great time, except for the fact that two years in a row I have been unable to have a taste from the complimentary Grey Goose martini bar. Shucks! Hopefully we get invited back next year.





Big congratulations on the baby front to:

Mike and Jodi who are expecting their second child in March of 2010

Nate and Nicole who are expecting their sixth child (yep, they'll have a crew of six!) in March of 2010

Chrissy and James who are expecting their first child in April of 2010

Mike, Melissa (and Makayla) on their second child, Brayden Andre Joseph born on August 30th

Matt and Tami on the birth of their first child, Josie Ann born on September 4th

Bill and Marci (and Isaak and Sydney) on the birth of their third child, William Edward born on September 20th

And on another front...today, October 7th, marks three years of marriage for Jeff and me! We are off to dinner tonight to celebrate at Biaggi’s, where we closed down the place to hold our wedding reception. Maybe if I wish hard enough, when we walk in our cake will be sitting in that same corner! This is the first time in three years (and probably more) that I can remember it not being pretty outside. This time of year has usually proven to be close to perfect, but this year, we're in a slump of dreariness. Today will give us a little break from the rain and cold when it might edge up to 60 degrees, but it'll be short lived. Mere 40s is what we're expecting for the weekend, just in time for Mirabella's baptism on Sunday (Sunday, October 11th). Brrrr!

So many wonderful things have happened in my life during these past three years thanks to my husband. Happy third anniversary, babe. I love you!

M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A...yay Gophers!

The night after we took Mirabella to her first Twins game, Jeff and I continued our sporting event weekend with our first trip to TCF Bank Stadium for the Gopher football season opener (Saturday, September 12th). The weather was perfect for sitting outside and the new stadium is outstanding! I found myself getting emotional prior to the game starting and at first, blamed it on pregnancy hormones…until I realized that I wasn’t the only one. The tears weren’t limited to the ladies either. The whole experience was just so cool! We were so happy to be there. We won too!


Walking up to the stadium after tailgating for a few hours prior to game time




This HD scoreboard (there are two at the stadium, the other is smaller) is the third largest in college football.


These F16 jets flew over the top of the stadium before the game was set to begin.