Party in the MLA

I wouldn't say that Betty has enjoyed her first MLA, but who in their right mind does enjoy MLA? She's been doing fine sleeping in the pack n' play, but living in a hotel room with a baby, even The Best Baby Ever, has its disadvantages. The 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. sleep schedule, which is, at home, a wonderous and wonderful thing (and the main reason I was able to write my dissertation last semester) is not quite so much fun when you're sharing a room with the sleeper. Note: I am not complaining. If Betty wants to sleep 12 hour nightly stretches until she is in high school, this if fine with me! But I can't say that eating my $20 room service hamburger while sitting on the toilet has been the highlight of my week. I give a paper tomorrow (quite possibly to an empty room seeing as how my presentation is scheduled for after the hotel check out time--thanks MLA) and then, mercifully, we are free to go have 2nd Christmas in Cleveland. Get the cookies ready Chris, because vacation will finally have started!!!

Pics of Betty coming later this week.

King of the Road

We left Spartanburg this afternoon and headed northwards for the MLA convention in Philly. We decided to divide the trip up into two days. Betty was a great little traveler today, sleeping most of the time. Right now we're at a Best Western at King's Dominion outside of Richmond. It's the off season, so it's just us and the snowbirds. Betty's never been in a motel before. And we haven't all slept in a room together since July or so. Right now it's about 2 hours past Betty's bedtime and she's having a ball in her pack n' play. This could be a long night.

Baby's First Christmas

Betty had a wonderful first Christmas! She and Gretchen were both angels at the Christmas Eve party and all day Christmas Day. Betty was a little scared by the ripping paper during the gift exchange, but she soon got the hang of it and seemed to like her presents. It's not time to put away the Santa hat yet. We're looking forward to even more Christmas when Betty gets to meet her Ohio cousins!

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

All I Want For Christmas

The idea of a "white Christmas" in South Carolina is pretty much metaphorical--note the green grass and short sleeves.

In other (song-related) news, Betty is cutting her two (top) front teeth!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Betty went over to her cousin Gretchen's house to play today. They had lots of fun smiling at each other, holding hands, and rolling around on the floor.

Rockin Around the Christmas Tree

Here Papa Joe shows Betty the Christmas tree. It is a lot less scary than the train, which has remained in the station for the time being. Tonight Mommy and Daddy took advantage of the free babysitting and went out on a date--the first one since Betty was born.

Polar Express

Years ago Joe bought a toy train set to put around the Christmas tree, and he's been dreaming ever since about showing it to future grandchildren. The train is awesome...lots of blinky lights and stuff. But it also has a very loud whistle and if you've never actually seen a train before, well, it can be kind of scary. Poor Betty.

Snow Day 2

Well, as you know, it snowed. This afternoon we took a walk outside so Betty could experience her first snow. We bundled her up in her coat and Bjorn and Bjorn cover. It was only after we got out there that I realized Betty has no mittens! So Daddy held her hands the whole time. Note to self: get mittens before heading to Philly and Cleveland.

Snow Day!

The artwork on the wall behind Betty is a print my dad got for me when I was a baby. I love it. When we move to a new place where I have a little more input on the decor I'm going to put it up in Betty's room.

Despite her smiley face here, Betty didn't have a great night last night. Either she caught my cold or the flu shot(s) made her a bit sick because at about 10:30 she suddenly screamed. The baby monitor went nuts and we ran upstairs to her. She cried for maybe an hour and seemed freaked out by her stuffy nose. She had a bottle with some Tylenol and then went back down for a full night's sleep. It was pretty unnerving since we are totally snowed in right now.

I don't know how much snow we have but it's definitely more than 6 inches and still coming down. I can't believe the power and internet are working, but our travel plans are on hold. Until VDot plows the back roads, we're stuck.

Bumbles Bounce

Standing up is fun. But that's nothing compared to bouncing in the bouncy chair. The concept seems obvious enough to us, but Betty just caught on to it yesterday. It is hilarious to watch her boing boing boing up and down. Video coming soon.

Also, today she went for her 6 month checkup, and everything went fine. She's 16 lbs. and some change.

Assorted Fails

Well, the writing and grading continue, which means another old picture for the DB! Had Daddy managed to plan ahead a little bit, he would have charged the camera battery and all that, and the world would have seen Betty loving her new favorite food, green beans. Instead, we've had our interns dig up this old file photo of Betty about to go after one of the toys strewn about the nursery floor.

Take a Stand

Following Gretchen's lead, Betty has over the past week been letting us pull her into a sitting position and then pulling herself up on our hands to standing. And not only can Betty stand, she loves doing it. As far as Betty knows, we just invented fun itself.

P.S. Happy Birthday Steele!

Exam Week

Today's DB is a "classic" picture of Betty proto-crawling around and virtually ignoring her lavish play mat thing in favor of an exciting burp cloth. It's "Classic" in the sense of "classic rock": No interminable Dire Straits songs, but the picture is old (from several days ago). So maybe "classic" can best be defined as "Mommy's dissertation and Daddy's exam essay grading ain't gonna finish themselves."

Field Biology

Back in the day, Betty used to chill in her bouncy chair after a bottle. These days she likes to jump around in her jungle-command-pod-thing after breakfast and explore its virtual rainforest by batting at the animals and trying to eat them. Here she is hard at work species counting.

Krampus

Betty was pretty fussy today, and she's been drooling quite a bit. We think she might be getting more teeth. If so, it would explain why she is so finicky at the bottle lately too. Of course, by "pretty fussy" I mean smiling only 50% of the time. Here's a grouchy Betty heading out to Kroger with Daddy.

Study Break

We're in the eye of the storm--those halcyon moments between the end of classes and the start of exams. That means I got to work from home today, and Betty helped. OK, mainly she chewed on the desk, but she's good for morale.

A lot happened in Betty's life this past week, and I didn't mention any of it on the blog. To catch you up:

• We toured what will probably be her daycare next semester. (I'll post more about daycare later)
• Betty has actually started to eat her food. "Like" is probably too strong a word, but she has swallowed apples, carrots, and sweet potatoes.
  
• Betty crawled for real tonight--coordinated hands-n-knees crawling. Ack!
• We lowered her crib mattress because of the crawling and because she's starting to show signs of pulling up on things.

Sun Salutation

Thanks mainly to the command center Daddy got her, Betty has made impressive progress in just one week. She'll stand up if you help her by pulling on her arms, and she frequently pushes up into the position you see here. This is also a basic yoga position--downward facing dog. I've been doing yoga off and on for about 12 years. I did yoga fairly often while pregnant, and there for a while I was going to an Ashtanga yoga class here on campus before the semester got the better of me. Betty, however, has much better form than I do and sometimes she just goes into poses naturally. I got to thinking about the goals of yoga, and it makes sense that a baby would be better at it than anyone.

Poker Face

This is one of my favorite Betty faces. I don't know why she does it, but it cracks me up every time.

Wascawy Wabbit

Pardon the gross bib in the otherwise cute pic. Betty still spits up fairly often, so a bib is still part of her daily ensemble. Thanks to all the beta carotene, her spit up now stains things yellow-orange. Ew. On a positive note, we have found something she likes...Betty likes carrots!

Fun Old Fashioned Family Christmas

December is always busy, but this year it's busier than ever. On December 17 I have to turn in the draft of my entire dissertation so that my committee has time to read it before my February 5th defense. And of course there's all the usual stress related to the end of the semester. Housework of any kind has been given low priority status, and for a while there it looked like we weren't going to put up decorations. But then I saw Joseph having fun with his Christmas tree, and I just couldn't bear for Betty's first Christmas to be un-festive (even if she won't remember it). Plus I needed somewhere to put the adorable Baby's First Christmas ornament Papaw and Kay Kay sent. So we put up the tree. We didn't put up many other decorations, and we didn't even put out all the ornaments. But we have a tree, and lights, and tinsel, and Betty likes it. If she ever asks about her first Christmas I can show her this picture. I probably won't mention, however, that there were only three stockings hung by our chimney with care: mine, Steele's and the dog's.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

Today Betty is six months old!

I get these automatic emails from Babycenter that tell me what milestones my baby will be reaching. Today's email said: "Once your baby can sit up, it's only a matter of time, strength, and coordination before that translates to a lunge forward onto hands and knees [...] most take off between 7 and 9 months." Betty crawled across the floor to Daddy's laptop and typed the following scathing rebuttal: "0’P???????’ vb ds t nrtn f cfx xdz saΩΩß≈ bjnyjmf dcx." Already she seems to have mastered the use of the rhetorical question. And irony.

Oh, and don't let the pic fool you. She hates sweet potatos too.

Outtake

We've tried (and failed) several times over the past few days to take a picture for our Christmas card. You'd think it would be the baby and the dog who are the problem, but, in reality, it's Betty's awkward and un-photogenic parents who keep ruining the pictures. She is a seasoned professional. Here's one of the outtakes. Thanks, Tray, for spending your Saturday morning taking pictures of us!

And yes, it snowed here today. No, Betty didn't go out in it. Yes, it would have made a nice photo. But by the time it started I'd already gone to the office to upload the pic we finally chose.

The Not So Hungry Caterpillar

Betty can't get enough of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She really loves that book! This pic was taken after I used it as bait to get her to practice crawling. I like The Very Hungry Caterpillar too, for many reasons, not least of which is the message that if you eat junk food you'll get a stomachache and that you really ought to stick to eating nice green leaves.

Betty, unfortunately, is causing us some concern with her eating habits. Before Thanksgiving she typically ate 35 ounces a day. Since Thanksgiving she's eating only about 25 plus a few bites of babyfood. (We've tried rice cereal, peas, prunes, and apples). I'm not sure if she's scaling back after a growth spurt, if suddenly she doesn't like formula (which now makes up 75% of her diet), if she gets bored while eating, or what. I called the doctor and they said that it was normal when introducing solids for the baby to feel full and to reject the bottle, but she's not eating much solid food either. She seems to hate everything we give her and spits it out (actual spitting, not the tongue thrust reflex). We're trying to go against our natures--Steele and I both thrive on worry--and just let Betty dictate how much she wants to eat, but I want her to be a healthy kid and a good eater. If for no other reason than I want Steele to be outnumbered when it comes to meal planning. If anyone out there has advice, suggestions, etc. please comment here or message me directly.

Command and Control

Dad's got a new hobby these days that pretty much involves going shopping with Betty for the coolest, most complicated toys he can find! Here's Betty in her new jumper-exerciser-play-bouncy-whatever-thing, which totally looks impressive, plays music, and makes all sorts of jungle noises.* She seems to be getting the hang of it, even if she's only having half the fun Daddy had putting it together.

*Nerd readers of the Daily Betty will of course note that the machine allows Betty Davros-like control over all Daleks in a four-mile radius.

Santa Baby

Tonight was the Hampden-Sydney tree lighting ceremony, so Betty donned her Santa suit for the occasion. Unfortunately, it was raining, so the ceremony was moved to the post office. (I guess the idea was for everyone to stand in the post office and look out the window at the tree as the College president went out in the rain to plug in the extension cord.) I'm actually not sure because we didn't stick around long enough to find out. It was Betty's suppertime and she didn't want to be hanging around the P.O. We took this pic in my office...hey Betty, people are supposed to sit in Santa's lap, not the other way around!

On Your Mark, Get Set, Go!

As it turns out, Betty can sit up. Also? She can crawl. It's maybe not the most coordinated thing you ever saw--looks sort of like what Army guys do on one of those ropes course training exercises--but it's definitely a deliberate forward motion. Soon after this photo was taken she crawled away and began chewing on the oscillating fan. I turned her around and she went after the mechanical snail that Kay Kay and Papaw sent her. Video of Betty crawling after the snail will be posted tomorrow on facebook.

Update: The video didn't really turn out...too much yakking in the background by me and Steele about which of us saw her crawl first. I'll be sure to get a better one tonight minus the commentary!