Holiday Photos of Hallie

Here are five of the thirteen shots of Hallie we got last night. Thank goodness we borrowed Mark and Vanessa's Digital SLR Nikon camera; our lovely but very small Sony was not equipped for the kind of shots we needed to take of the walking and crawling princess. Hallie has become a very fast walker, and not just a super-speedy crawler, so she headed off in some direction (usually dangerous) as soon as we placed her near a wrapped faux present or particularly fetching ornament. I am not sure how old a child needs to be before they heed photo-taking directions, but hopefully it'll coincide with our next holiday shot in approximately a year. Meanwhile, we feel lucky that she was smiley and hamming it up despite her lack of a nap and that her vivacious personality shines through in these shots.







In other news: Hallie spent Saturday and Sunday with her cousins and had a really good time. I missed her a lot, but had a huge amount of work to do that kept me busy. While in New Jersey, her cousins taught her how to shake her head 'no', which she thinks is hilarious. We're trying to get this on film and if we do, I'll post it (strikes me that I haven't done a movie in pretty much forever). But even though she uses 'no' in a lot of contexts where its usage is unwarranted, she definitely knows what it means. She has been using it consistently to signal the end of a meal (usually around 3-3.5 ounces into it, which is fine). I suspect that she'll be using it (and hopefully, someday, its oral analogue) with us a whole lot more and in many different settings. Woe is us.

And, finally, on the feeding front: she had a great day yesterday (Sunday). Four poops, no vomit. Our third emesis-free day in that many weeks. It could be related to the pureed baked beans we gave her for breakfast, lunch, and dinner two days in a row. She also got fruit and some stage 2 stuff, but those beans were apparently potent and does make one question the expression 'full of beans.'

I was hoping that we'd be able to congratulate ourselves today on a new record, but no such luck. She had a small 'urp' during her pre first nap bottle, but we were not even counting that. Problem was that, despite napping a whole 1.5 hours today, our kid was in no mood to go to bed after dinner. So Sharon had her on the futon and Hallie was her usual playful self and was thumping all over the place. This is not a good thing to do if you have weak sphincters after downing 3.5 ounces of bottle. So up it, and perhaps some of dinner, came. I guess the laundry gods thought that three loads this weekend was not quite penance enough for me. One bath and a new bottle later and hopefully we'll make up for, dare I say it, spilled milk. But we're still waiting for our record. Any betting fools out there? I should start a pool for guesses about when we'll finally hit that important two-vomit-free-days-in-a-row milestone.

(NOTE: This post was begun on Saturday with the uploading of images but text was added on Monday)