Onward & Upward

I don't suppose any of you know how to teach a baby to crawl/walk/fly? Because Iris would really appreciate some instruction. She spends her days now desperately trying to climb our faces and launch into the great beyond, if you count the free fall from the height of a fully grown adult 'the great beyond.' She's like a tiny dictator with pointy fingernails, and she's not afraid to use them. I walked into the room yesterday and noticed that Kyle had a big gash across is nose that he hadn't noticed at all, he was receiving such a harsh beating from the wee one. If you'd like to spend any time with Iris, all I'm saying is this: watch your soft parts. She can smell weakness.

So, ah. Please excuse my crappy picture taking skills/lack thereof. I was never that girl at the party with the camera, demanding that everyone huddle in and look engaging. Just not my style. I was the one rolling her eyes at the aforementioned girl. I hear there are actually some people who take photos, print them out on this fancy glossy paper, then like, put them in books, behind little sheets of plastic. This thing, this book with photographs and plastic, I believe is called a photo album? Fancy. Don't even get me started on scrapbooking. The fact that people have created scrapbooks for long enough for the word to become verbified (shut up. it's a word.) is beyond me. I salute your patience and dedication, scrapbookers of the world. Consider this (spreads arms in grand, sweeping fashion across all of blogdom) the closest thing to scrapbooking you'll ever see me create:

Why is Mom leering over my shoulder like I did something wrong? Man she looks pale...

A wild Kelley tends to avoid water in its natural habitat, but can be fooled by realistic-looking tree trunks and faux stone facades into treading the murky waters of the Stonycreek Inn pool.

More pictures up on Picasa - and an earnest request: Those who would seek to print every photo as it becomes available on Picasa, please remember that pictures of Mug in her swimming suit don't just hurt Mug herself, they hurt the world. Be kind to the world. Don't. Print. Them.

Reinhards? Let me know when you have pics from your camera available for upload! Thanks!

Monastic

We introduced carrots into Iris' repertoire of foods, thereby doubling the number of things she eats, if you don't count her fingers in that list. She seemed...bemused. Definitely made a face like she was eating earwax, but every time I went for a new spoonful she dove at the thing like she'd never tasted anything so exquisite in her life. So I'm counting the experience in the plus column. I took a bunch of pictures of the carrot adventure, but I didn't post them. You'll have to trust me when I tell you that the following picture was the best of the bunch, which you'll see shortly is not saying much.

Put the camera down and make with the carrots, woman.

For the past, oh I don't know, like two or three nights in a row, we've agreed to do something as a family in the evening, then helplessly watched as Iris passed out well before dark. She's sort of reverted back to her 6:00-6:30 bedtime, only to wake up every 15-60 minutes (really) to be bounced back to sleep. I've tried to just go with it and consider her officially awake, but she always falls back into a pretty solid sleep within minutes of waking up. Just wanted to know we were still there or something, I guess. Tonight we were supposed to go out to dinner with friends, so I decided to get Iris all cleaned up and in her jammies so that we could just eat, come home, and toss the baby in bed. Nobody at Ruby Tuesday is going to complain about anyone showing up to dinner in their PJ's, especially if that person is 5 months old. Everything happened as planned as long as you leave out the eating and coming home bits, because she didn't make it more than 15 minutes past bath time before totally sacking out. So yet again, I sent Kyle on without me, instructed him not to return without something containing bacon and cheese, and went back to my trashy vampire romance novel (no, not Twilight. Way worse. Embarrassingly worse. But soooo good). Don't judge.

As I wrapped Iris up in her post-bath ducky towel tonight, I remembered being a little kid, no telling how old, and my Dad giving me a bath. I always wanted two towels, because getting out of the tub is so cold, and you need one around your body and over your head if you're doing it right. Every night as the towel went over my head, I'd be all grumped out that I had to get out of the tub and that bed time was inevitable, and probably sometime during the bath, soap had been within 50 yards of my face so clearly it got in my eyes (rolls eyes dramatically). Then Dad would say, "It's Sister Mary Megan!" You can't really argue with the fact that habits look like fancy polyester towels, and neither could my four-year-old self, so I'd always grudgingly laugh in spite of myself. If I'd been articulate in any way, I would have explained to him that he's not allowed to be funny when I'm trying so hard to stay pissed off, but he'd had a good point.

It's Sister Mary Iris, of the order of the yellow duckies.

Shakira Is Spanish For Funny (aka the linky love post)

I took some more pictures of The Whiz recently but (say it with me now) the upload cord thingie is in the room where she's sleeping! Nice work. Must stop this nasty habit of leaving important items near The Sleep. Oh well, it just means that I have to post again really soon, and since I bagged out on that whole 'posting every day for a month' thing, it's good to have some incentive. But seriously? I feel like we could talk or not talk for hours and still have things to not talk about. Now everybody go out and watch Best In Show.

So the moral of the story is that things are still same, same, same around here. Iris is in some sort of transition, but mainly only because I refuse to believe that what we're experiencing is the new normal. Though I did express that exact thought to Kyle yesterday. Huh. No, let's not think about that for now. What is happening is that she is teething and growing, which is what babies do, and which are also by their very nature transitional states, so what we have here is definitely a phase or two. Babies don't really need all that much sleep anyway, do they? Hah! Ha ha ha! Ah, crap.

*****************

I was reminded today of the Showbiz Pizza Band. Referring to it as anything else (I'm looking at you, Chuck E. Cheese) shall be forever understood to be blasphemous around these parts. Anyway, I found out that those awesome animatronic buddies are quite versatile. It has nothing to do with anything, but I found this discovery to be so amusing that I simply could not keep it to myself. I'm giving like that. Enjoy.

busted.

I know I didn't post yesterday. Like I said, nothing doing over here. So it was kind of intentional, and kind of like I forgot. And you know what? I'm not really even posting now, I've just come back to tell you I'm not here. Sort of like that one Paul Simon song, but far, far less depressing.

Anyway, catch you later dudes. Super busy + teething baby = ACK.

Yahtzee!

The title really has nothing to do with anything, but I'm running out of ideas and I have always enjoyed that word. Yahtzee! Canasta! Oooh, canasta is fun too. Huh.

One of the major pitfalls of posting every day is that you're forced to stare your mundanity in the face. We just aren't that interesting. Iris is pretty cute, and there is a certain level of audience captivation she can muster, but really only for so long. And how much do you guys really want me to tell you that omg she chewed on her hand again! Then she giggled and smacked me in the face and farted. Then! She chewed on both her hands at the same time! Enthralling, I know. She is pretty fun in person though, and baby farts do have a certain charm to them, if ever the passing of gas were going to be charming. But good blog fodder it is not.

It could be that I'm losing my drive here. I need an assignment. I'm getting boring in general. Listen, I told Iris that I liked her little gums and that stylish thing she was doing with her hair today, and this is what she said to me:

"Bla-gaaaglelaaaaa."

Indeed. When you start boring the baby, you know it's time to do something about it. I shall strive to bring you actual content tomorrow (er. soon. ish. we'll see), but in the meantime, as always, enjoy the new photos (I'm posting from our desktop, so I think I'll be able to get this next bunch to picasa, but if not, check back tomorrow).

Fussy is the new black.

I have come to the conclusion that Iris is going through A Thing. I realized that I've been rationalizing her recent fussiness with vaccinations and teething, but what's really happening is that thing that babies do right before they process a growth spurt. Which I guess is also one of the things I use to rationalize fussiness, but I think I'm right here.

Have I mentioned the crunches here before? I know I've told the story in person a million times to various folks, but just to be sure I'll recap quickly: every time Iris is laying on her back, she curls up and picks her feet up and sits in this perfect death-to-abs-style crunch. It is like her big red flag that says "hey I'm about to figure something out soon." Last time it happened she started grunting and talking and trying to intone like an actual conversation was happening, when she had been the silent inquisitive baby the day before. It is her standard position now, but every time something like the big chattiness burst happens, the crunches really ramp up and become somewhat of a hindrance. They are worse when she's tired, or overly hungry and speaking of overly hungry, did anyone else know that babies go on hunger strikes because the world is just too interesting?

(awesome aside time: Kyle just mentioned that Iris has been watching a lot of the 30 Day Shred, so that might explain her drive to crunch it up.)

Anyway - what's happening is that Iris is usually a bit hungrier than she should be*, and it's harder for her to sleep because of that and the crunches, and everything being so mind bogglingly interesting. I have seen her go from dead asleep to cinching up like a fish out of water for no identifiable reason at all. Which is neat because it's always followed by her turning to glare at me for obviously forcing her to do that sit-up just then. Gah. It will pass soon though, and then I'll be able to tell you that Iris is not only three feet taller than me, but she speaks German and just wrote an ode to rice cereal in iambic pentameter.

*Trust me. She eats. She just doesn't do it in a timely fashion, and then she's super death hungry and consumes like half a day's feedings in an hour.

In which Iris divulges the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything...

...and then she whipped out her towel to chew on it for a bit, and really delve into the core of the issue, pontificating, some might even say masticating at length on what the answer could be. That is, until she fell over, found a fresh diaper and headed off for her nap.

And when I say nap, I do mean in her crib. Her crib that is in her room. Someone get me a stretcher because that fact continues to knock me out cold every time I think of it. Iris in her crib? does...not...compute...? crazy.

I'm gonna wrap this up here because I really don't have much else for you, but I wanted to assure you that she finally stopped being so sad sometime around bedtime yesterday, and now this miracle crib sleeping thing is happening.

It's not you, it's me.

*This post was saved from late yesterday. The internet is still being fickle and it decided that this is the number of photos I get to post, and that's final. Fine then. I still can't tell if it's my connection or Blogger or what. So just replace every instance of "today" with "yesterday" and it will remain a fairly accurate post.*

Oh Friends, Iris Luella had a sad day today. She really wanted to be cheerful; she certainly wanted to be distracted as much as possible. To put it mildly, she is very uncomfortable right now. Her shot yesterday left her today with a very mild fever and no appetite. Plus, her gums seem to hurt her so badly that she is almost frantic in her attempts to keep her hand or just something in her mouth at all times. She slept on and off all day, mostly alternating one hour asleep to an hour an a half awake since 7:30 this morning.

We were going to take her to a local baseball game, then to see her friend Gus's Dad play some tunes at Cooper's Landing. Once we realized that following those original plans would result in a well-cooked baby and very little time at home, we revised a bit. I sorted through all of the baby clothes in our house (it's ridiculous), and Iris napped at will. I managed to sort of document the most convivial moments of her day. Mind you, there wasn't much good humor available to Iris today, so you'll have to be impressed that she is not actively scowling in the following pictures.

The rest of the photos did actually make it to Picasa, so that's nice. Iris is still on some sort of hunger/happiness strike. It's pitiful. There is a massive storm going on outside, so we couldn't take her anywhere even if she was being cooperative. Sadness all around. Boo. I feel like there were other things I wanted to tell you, but the encompassing sound of baby misery has overthrown my thought process to the point of complete distraction. It is remarkable how pervasive that sound is. Must be some sort of biological caveman thing. I'm off.

this is tricky

Hey guys! Our internet connection is being wonky so I am actually posting this from my phone. Bet you thought I wouldn't squeeze in an update today! I'm very resourceful.

I have a real post all typed up and ready to go, so hopefully that happens tomorrow. I think some photos might have managed to load to picasa before the signal crapped out,so check there if you're so inclined.

Hopefully more soon...

The Future

Well, the great beast that is the pediarix vaccine 2.0 has knocked Iris out again. She fell immediately to sleep at 3:20 when the shot was administered, and as far as I know, is still passed out. So guess what happens tomorrow then? That's right, it's Franzia time. Maybe it won't be, you never can tell with these things. Maybe her age difference between then and now will allow for her to bounce back a little better from this round. But it could happen. So I'm prepared if it does, you understand. Anyway.

Being that the child is asleep, pictures are obviously a no-go at this point, but I'll entertain you with statistics. Sometime I'll have to figure out how to get a little illustrated growth chart up here, but for now, I give you bullets:

• Length: 25.5 inches (82.14 %tile)
• Head Circumference: 16.5 inches (67.1%tile)
• Weight: 16lbs. 2oz. (87.03%tile)

I don't know about you, but I think it is one of the coolest things ever that she's so big. It means she interacts like a little bit older baby and does a bunch of fun stuff like squeal and giggle, and...lick her shirt. It's awesome. Plus everybody knows chubby babies are way more fun to chew on. So bring on the big sleep, big baby! Dom knows what's up.

foooood.

Against common practice and in fact, direct doctor's orders, we decided to go ahead and give Iris some "real" food prior to the six month mark. We're rebels in that way. Renegade baby cereal slingers, if you will. She'd been fascinated with watching us eat for weeks, mimicking chewing anytime she saw it. She's been teething for probably almost three months now and there are still no signs of actual teeth, just a really slobbery baby who wants a bite of your pizza.

We figured not much of the stuff would actually get down her throat anyway - it's more of training session, I guess. So for the last week or so she's been happily accepting little bites of cereal, then gleefully opening her mouth and leaning forward so that it drools out in neat little patterns. I can only assume the visual effect is what she was going for. Anyway, yesterday, it finally clicked for her. Each time I brought the spoon to the bowl, she immediately stopped work on all swallowing or chewing (and I do use that word in its loosest sense), to open her mouth for the next bite. I feel a small sense of accomplishment that the bouncy/arms flapping dance she did each time the next bite came around was probably something she learned by watching me. Behold:

Mmmm. Gruel.

A Challenge

Hi! It's good to see you! I was totally going to write you like a billion posts, but then the baby switched bedtimes again, and the cat is still trying to poop on her, and we went out of town like three weekends in a row or something, and then we forgot to pay the gravity bill, but you understand I really tried.

Some items for consideration:

1. Speaking of going out of town, last weekend we went to Kansas City, MO (ok, let's be proper here, we went to Liberty, MO, the home of William Jewell College, and some damn fine cake cookies). Iris got to meet her Dad's side of the family for the very first time, and we totally forgot the camera - omg don't shoot! But! It's okay! Grandma Kelley was on it. Crisis averted. (p.s. Grandma Kelley, wanna throw me some pictures? Thanks!)


2. Funny thing about forgetting the camera is that it was out of batteries anyway, so a fat lot of good it would have done us to bring it. You could say it's the thought that counts, but in this situation, no, not really, it's the taking pictures that counts. What say you look at this to distract yourself? *A Warning: Only click on this link if you are in no way offended by bad words, rude language, and chickens. This link is WILDLY inappropriate for viewing at work or anywhere else you want to maintain the respect of your peers - seriously.* See? I knew you were going to click on it, even though I totally warned you that it would offend! But you're not angry at me for forgetting the camera anymore are you? You're angry because I made you read the f-word like seventy bajillion times. You're welcome.


3. I was reminded last weekend by certain Fans of The Whiz who shall remain unnamed (most of their names start with "Kell" and end with "ey." Rhymes with Jelly. ahem.) that this blog is something that they check every day, waiting for new updates and photos and the like. I realize I have been an infrequent blogger at best, so I propose A Challenge: I will publish a post every day for the next month, perhaps even including photos and everything, but I do ask something in return. I would like to know who reads this thing. Who are ya? There are seven people who "follow" this blog (by actually having clicked on the "follow this blog" button over there on the side), and commenting has dwindled to just the Grandmas (not that I don't love seeing your comments! I need your comments. They make me feel like I'm a good writer and smart and pretty).


4. To sum up: I challenge me to post every day, and I challenge you to leave a comment so that I know who you are. If you'd like, you can even ask a question you'd like to see answered here. A good example: "How did you get your hair to be so shiny?" or "What do you think about koala bears?" (answers: Pert Plus; and they're cute, sorta shifty, but not bears.)
   

Edited to add: Just to be sure, I commented on this post anonymously to make sure that you don't have to sign up for anything to do so, and you don't (that's the deleted comment you see). So. No excuses people.