Open Mouth Insert Foot

Today was a big day, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with it being Halloween.

This morning Betty found her feet! She was nekkid on the diaper stand when she grabbed her foot, looked at it with delight, and stuck it in her mouth. This was so funny I called to Steele to get the camera. That’s when we discovered that The Daily Betty has totally gone to Betty’s head. When she saw the camera she stopped eating her foot and grinned. I’ve somehow conditioned this baby to smile for the camera; she is officially a ham.

After all the foot-eating we thought maybe the time was right to try some cereal. We put Betty in her high chair and made the cereal (Earth’s Best organic ceral and Bright Beginnings organic formula in case you are curious) and then, well, I scooped it up on the spoon and stuck the spoon in her mouth. (I guess that’s what you’re supposed to do).

We gave her a few bites and each time she pushed the food out with her tongue and made faces that suggested sadness and betrayal. Oh well! Guess we’ll let her play in the high chair some more and try cereal again next week.

Here are some pics of Betty's cousins in their Halloween costumes: Carmella, Anthony and baby Joseph and Gretchen. Awwww!

UPDATE: This has little to do with Betty, who, for now anyway, is asleep, but you might be interested to know that Tessa was sprayed by a skunk while I was writing this post.

Man's Best Friend

I'm running a day behind...this pic is actually from yesterday. As I mentioned earlier, Betty is really starting to show an interest in Tessa. Tessa, on the other hand, remains unimpressed.

A New Hope

When I suggested that Betty might make a better Yoda, Steele was indignant: "But she's a princess!"

Things here are crazy busy so there's no new picture today.* Instead, by popular request, I'm posting one of Betty in her Halloween costume, along with one from the other day that, in retrospect, is too cute not to share.

*The LAST dissertation chapter is due next week. Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope.

Poo-tee-weet

Three Fun Facts about almost-five-month-old Betty:

She loves to have her socks taken off. I can't explain it except to say that she really seems to enjoy having bare feet after she's been wearing socks for a while.

She likes to chew on our hands/fingers. (Seen here nomming Daddy's hands and listening to Slaughterhouse Five).

She's started to take an interest in Tessa, and laughs and laughs when Tessa licks her.

Let's Go to the Hop

This is a picture of Betty and me hanging out in Daddy's office. Behold the world's cutest socks: faux mary janes with real blue bows on the sides, courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa.

Daddy's Girl

I was in the process of taking a picture of Betty looking up at her blinky sun when Steele got home from work. I snapped the pic right as she caught sight of Daddy. Look at that happy face!

School Spirit

Betty is wearing the S. Carolina shirt and Cocky hat that Papa Joe sent her. The Gamecocks won today, so I don't know why she's got the worried face. Maybe she was also thinking about the Browns game.

Antidote

I spent most of the day in a paper-grading workshop, which is only slightly more fun than it sounds. The only antidote for a Saturday spent reading essays carefully chosen because they are flawed/strange/mediocre is baby hamhocks. Look at those thighs!

Baby Love

Our schedules overlapped today, so we had a sitter out to the house for the first time. Betty was a sitter's dream--she slept the whole time.

Later Steele and Betty visited me on campus, and we stole Daniel away for a few minutes so his mom could meet with a student. Betty and Daniel took turns smiling at each other. Alas, I did not have the camera on me!

Tactical Error

Betty's gotten really good at the rolling over thing, but I think she may have inherited my sense of direction. Today I put her musical flowers out on her blanket during morning playtime and she rolled over to get a closer look, but she rolled the wrong way! She found herself way on the other side of the blanket unable to reach them. Then she proceeded to lift her arms and legs off the ground and make swimmy motions while gazing longingly at the flowers.

Fashion Forward

Betty is wearing an outfit her grandma and grandpa brought her when they came to visit last month. Look closely and you'll see it's got little candy corns all over it! When Grandma showed it to us we didn't think it would fit our wee little Betty. It seemed impossibly huge. Well, Betty must have hit some sort of growth spurt this past month, cause now it fits perfectly and I'm not sure it will even be wearable by Thanksgiving. After that we'll move on to Christmas outfits anyway--as Heidi Klum used to say, back when Project Runway was still cool, "wahn day yoo ahr een, zee nex' day yoo ahr OUT!"

pffffffbt

When I went in to get Betty from her morning nap she grinned at me and said, "pffffffbt!" (with lots of bubbles). So I said, "pffffffbt!" back to her. And then she laughed out loud and said "pffffffbt!" again. This might very well have been our first conversation.

Here she is during her afternoon nap, saying pffffffbt (figuratively) to our attempts to get her to sleep on her back.

1.21 Gigawatts

I read an article the other day that suggests that the Large Hadron Collider keeps breaking down because if it were to work, it would kill us all, and so the Large Hadron Collider is coming back from the future to destroy itself now before that can happen. Yeah, I don't get it either. Physics.

If such a thing were possible, I believe that Future Betty would come back tonight and crash my computer so that I could not post a picture of her butt on the internet. And Betty, if you get beat up for this in second grade when some kid with nothing better to do googles you and finds the archives of this blog...well, I apologize.

But your butt cheeks are simply too cute not to be shared!

Make Way for Ducklings

Betty was born with a full head of dark hair, which soon manifested as a fauxhawk. It began falling out til there were just a few little tufts on the top of her head. Now she has new hair coming in, lighter and fluffier than the hair she was born with. It's hard to see in the pictures, but in real life it's not unlike the fluff on a baby duck.

Hunting and Gathering

Here Betty and Daddy are reading We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Later they went on a hunt for the ingredients for garlic soup, which I'm hoping will help cure my cold/cough.

Steele calls Betty his "shopping buddy." He puts her in the Baby Bjorn and takes care of all the errands while I toil away on job applications and the dissertation. He says she's always good and just hangs out, looking around. I bet it's cute, but I'm sad to say I've never been shopping with them.

Showtime at the Apollo

Betty thinks that I am hilarious. If I laugh, she laughs. And if I rest my chin on the pack n' play and go "ba ba ba ba ba ba," well, you'd think I just invented the yo mama joke from the way she carries on.

Today Betty went to the doctor for her four month checkup. She was such a good girl--sat on my lap and smiled at the doctor (he was able to check that box on his list of milestones without asking). She weighs 13 lbs 12.5 oz, almost exactly twice her birthweight. Yay--we are greenlit for cereal! And she got her shots. It was much harder to watch this time around. Last time I felt bad for her, but back then she was just responding to a stimulus. This time there was so much of her personality in her cry I couldn't take it. I cried a little this time too.

Frog Prince

The love affair continues.

Facebook

This isn't your typical Daily Betty pic since the point of this blog is to provide, duh, daily pictures of Betty, and in this one most of her face is obscured--but I don't care! I love it! I cannot help but laugh everytime I look at this picture of my baby with a book on her face because it captures perfectly how silly she is. She loves to put her toys on her head and then lie there, face covered, sometimes talking to herself, sometimes just chillaxin, always hilarious.

Wednesday Is the New Monday

Betty is astonished to learn that fall break is already over. It was fun seeing Mommy and Daddy in the same place at the same time.

Riding High

Betty's four-month doctor's appointment is coming up, and I'm going to ask him about when to introduce cereal. We're looking forward to feeding her real food, but we aren't going to rush it. In order to make it a smooth transition when the time comes, we're starting early with the ritual if not the food itself. Today we put her in the high chair after her bottle just to get her used to it. We hope she'll think of it as a fun place to be. Today's maiden voyage went just fine, and we gave her one of her new toys to play with (thanks Penny!). Tessa, instinctively, went and stood beneath the high chair--hope she likes pureed squash.

Folsom Prison Blues

The Pack n' Play languished in a corner of my office for a while. Today Steele brought it home and we're giving it another try. Betty 's too mobile now to sit in her chair on the tabletop, but she needs a safe place to hang out when we're in the kitchen. We're hoping it will grow on her--all she needs is a tin cup to bang against the netting.

Runaround Sue

Betty's Great Aunt Sue and Aunt Sue's friend Penny are here for a visit, and we all took a walk down to Tray's studio. Betty is enjoying having some new people to play with.

They're Heeeeeere

Here's Betty lounging around in her crib this afternoon. It seemed such a happy, sunny afternoon--but I know better. There were two ladybugs on the wall when I put her down. Scouts.

This time last year we were blissfully unaware that the infestation was coming. Just in case it happens again we bought some netting to go over the crib, but I'm hoping it won't come to that.

Bookworm

This photo is not staged! As you might imagine, we read to Betty a lot--she's heard Hemingway, Chaucer, C.S. Lewis, Shel Silverstein, other poetry, and many children's books. We do realize that we might as well be reading das Kapital for all she knows. That said, we also know that The Very Hungry Caterpillar is her favorite book. She listens when we read it, and looks at the pictures (especially at the end when the caterpillar, well, I don't want to give away the ending...). Today I was reading it to her and she reached out for it. I handed it over and she took the book in her hands just like a grown up.

Oral Fixation

Betty is a thumbsucker, but it's hard to get a picture of her doing it because the room is dark at bed- or naptime. Today, however, she suddenly got tired while playing, put her head down, and started sucking her thumb. I thought she was going to fall asleep on the floor.

In this pic you can also see where she scratched herself on the nose. She does that a lot. Tonight I put her to bed with her little cuffs folded over her hands. This may help the scratching, but I wonder if she'll be upset that she can't suck her thumb. I'm sure she'll let us know!

Dear Diary

Today Betty is 4 months old. One year ago today I started a pregnancy journal that would eventually grow to be 67 single-spaced typed pages. It's almost as long as my dissertation. (Though to be fair at least half of it is a catalogue of what I was eating--since I didn't take prenatal vitamins I kept careful track of my food). There's some funny stuff in there, in addition to the careful documentation of mac-n-cheese breakfasts.

Oct 6: I felt tired and queasy all afternoon and evening

[...]

Oct 11: Am now referring to the baby as Peanut because something that makes me feel this bad needs a cute name that reminds me to love it. Also "it" is not a good name.

The day to day stuff is funny, but I also wrote about my concerns and plans. I can see now how I had no idea what to expect, and no amount of reading and journaling could have prepared me.

Back to Sleep

We always always always put Betty to sleep on her back. This morning when Steele went to check on her, she was sleeping on her tummy. And when I put her back down for her morning nap, she rolled over onto her tummy before I'd even left the room!

We'll continue to put her to sleep on her back of course, but if she rolls over--oh well. Like I said yesterday, Betty's starting to let us know what she likes, and apparently she likes to sleep on her tummy (with her thumb in her mouth).

Swing Kids

We took Betty to the playground at the campus church today. I swung with her on my lap, and she seemed to have a nice time. Then we went for a walk, and instead of putting her in the carrier and putting it on top of the stroller, we sat her in the stroller facing forward. What a big girl!

On a side note, my hair looks atrocious, but at least I know it and knowing is half the battle. It needs to be colored, straightened, and cut. It is also falling out in big handfuls as the pregnancy books predicted it would do. Ugh. Hopefully I'll have been to a salon before y'all see us over the holidays.

Just Like Mother Used to Make

The bib Betty is wearing here is made especially for babies who drool a lot. It's small and fits equally around the whole head (kind of like those collars they make dogs wear to keep them from licking their stitches). She's not a big drooler, but Betty spits up after every feeding and usually in between. We're hoping she'll grow out of it soon, but for now she has to wear a bib all the time.

Tonight she was extremely fussy during her last feeding, and kept refusing the bottle. We tinkered with the bottle, the nipple, and finally tried giving her some formula instead. She immediately ate the formula. Now, she may just have been tired, but I suspect she might have her daddy's palate. I used to work really hard to make him wonderful homemade birthday cakes and all kinds of cookies and pies before I finally just accepted that he loves boxed cake mix best. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Betty didn't reject homemade milk in favor of the canned stuff.

I would be insulted (after all I've been through to feed this baby!) except I think that it's so neat that she is starting to have opinions. She has likes (her elephant, her cow, her mobile) and dislikes (overalls). It's neat finding out who she is.

Got Milk?

Here's another shot of Betty with her bottle, and you can see how much better she is at holding it after only two days!

Good Night's Sleep

Betty had her first haircut today, but it doesn't count. I had to cut something sticky out. No idea what it was.

In other news, Steele and I have moved back downstairs. Last night was the first night since bringing Betty home that we slept in a different room than the baby. I was a little sad when we went off to bed, but I have to admit that without the nightlight and all the crazy noises Betty makes (she sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and talks to herself for 30 minutes) I slept more deeply than I have in months. And with no alarm going off at 5:00 a.m. Betty seemed to sleep better too. She slept an hour longer than usual.