Long time since my last post - lots of updates

Wow, I haven't posted in a long time! Work has been crazy for the past several weeks, but it is settling back down. Ariella has continued sleeping through the night, so it appears to have stuck. Our air conditioner went out a few weeks ago, and I was afraid that was going to mess her up, since we had to go sleep over at Tyree's mom's house. But, she did great! She's going to bed between 7:30 and 9:30pm, and she stirs around 4am (which is my sign to get up and pump). And, then she eats between 5 and 5:30am.

This past week, though, she's started waking up more (although she doesn't eat when she wakes up - I just give her the pacifier). I'm wondering if it's because her bassinet is getting pretty small for her. We're going to wait to do the transition to her crib until the Fall (when it's a little cooler - our air conditioner is "fixed", but it's under powered). If she wakes up more than once at night, I move her from her bassinet into her boppy pillow in bed with us. She usually does fine after that.

Ariella's been progressing with a LOT of things! She's sitting up unassisted for longer periods of time (maybe 4 seconds rather than 2 - lol). She's really working on mastering that. She likes to be upright. She's started laughing a lot. She had laughed a couple of times previously, but yesterday she laughed so much! She was on my lap in a chair in the study, and she apparently found our dog Merlin to be extremely hilarious! Tyree had his iPhone right on the desk, so we were able to get lots of video of her laughing.

She's continued to enjoy her swimming. A couple of times she didn't really enjoy it, but I figured out why. Her little tummy is too big for the swim diaper to come over it! The weight for the swim diaper is 16 - like 28lbs. She's under 17 lbs. So, there's no way we can go to the next size. So, what I'm doing now is folding the diaper down so that it sits below her belly. That worked well the last two times. She was back to smiling and squealing with delight in the water. She's also progressing with her underwater swims. I'm actually letting go for several seconds, and she kicks herself up to the surface!

Also, this weekend I tried the "baby ice cream". I got the idea from a mom on a newsgroup of Feb 2010 moms on a thread regarding ideas for using frozen BM. Essentially, you blend up frozen BM and serve. It was fun overall. I wound up wasting a LOT of milk, though, so I wouldn't advise anyone do this unless you have a big frozen surplus that you want to use. I essentially ruined an entire 5oz bag because I should have let it thaw more. I let it thaw just enough to be able to get it out of the bag and into my Power Chopper (like a Magic Bullet). Shortly after I started to blend it, I smelled a burning smell. The motor could not handle it. So, then I tried moving it to the regular blender. It did chop it up, but when I was taking it out, it smelled horrible! I guess it still had the burned smell from the chopper.

So, I dumped that out, washed the blender, and then took out another 5oz bag to let thaw longer. After like 30 minutes, I put that in the big blender. It worked with no burning this time. So, we got her in her high chair and Tyree had the video camera (this was a big deal since it's the first time she's eaten anything with a spoon - waiting on solids until 6 months). She ate several baby spoons of it! She didn't spit anything out. A little bit did run out of her mouth, though. It seemed to me, though, that she started to get frustrated that she couldn't eat it faster, but Tyree was worried that she was getting brain freeze. So, we stopped the baby ice cream, and I nursed her. Fun experiment, but she ate maybe .25 - .5oz, so that was a lot of wasted milk.

Ariella had her 3rd photo shoot on Sunday. We did lots of family pictures, too, with it. I had been hesitant to do yet another picture session so soon, but she really changed between the 3 1/2 month pictures and now (5 months 1 week). Here's the link to the pictures:
http://gallery.joannajackson.com/v/baby_jackson_i/sears_photos_july_25__2010/

There's one where she's sitting up with her legs crossed. She looks like such a dainty little lady!

After the photo shoot, we went out to lunch at Houlihan's. This was Ariella's first time at a restaurant! We've been nervous about taking her to restaurants. Granted, she's not really a fussy baby normally, but I would hate to spoil other people's meal if she were to start screaming. But, she did great! We were hoping she'd just sleep the whole time - nope! She was awake the entire time. I did bring a bottle of breast milk for her, though, and I fed her throughout our meals. There was another table close by, and a little boy (maybe 2-3 years old) was crying quite a lot. Even with that, though, Ariella didn't cry at all. We were so proud of her.