Six Months Old!

My, how the last 6 months have flown by! Our little Sadie Beth is so much fun as she is learning and doing new things all the time. She now has 2, possibly 3 teeth. Either she has 2 coming in right now, or it is 1 tooth that is partially cracked - I guess time will tell. Sadie Beth sure does love her daddy. She lights up whenever he walks in the room. One of her new tricks is that she will "growl" back at you. She will do it for both of us, but especially for David. Sometimes, if I start laughing really hard, she laughs too....I find it really fun, so we laugh a lot!

I went in to get her from a nap one day and saw this - adorable little baby feet - minus the socks she originally wore. One day we were playing in bed and I was wrapping Sadie Beth up in this blanket. She thought it was real fun.

She's still a little wobbly sitting on her own, but has gotten drastically better in the last few days. She's getting good enough that I don't worry if I leave the room for a few moments.

During her independent play time I will often open our bedroom window. Sadie Beth LOVES watching what is going on outside. It's so cute watching her play in the pack and play.
She managed to get her leg out of the tub one day during bath time when I had my back turned. She was pretty proud of herself.

So, my baby who will have NOTHING to do with a bottle decided she was a big fan of sippy cups...for, oh, about 3 days...and then she decided to forget how to get the liquid out and realized how much fun it was to chew on them. Here, however, is proof that she was drinking from them. We have a soft-spout cup that she will drink out of sometimes still.
Very surprised Sadie Beth...in the midst of one of her favorite activities--feet chewing.
We got this fun mirror to put in Sadie Beth's crib, h0ping it would coax her to turn her head in the opposite direction. During one of our visits to the pediatrician, he commented that she has some neck tightness and her head is flatter on one side. I think it has gotten better and she enjoys the mirror very much. This is about the time she really started to enjoy some tummy time.
Yucky, yucky, yucky vitamins. They are disgusting. I gag smelling them, so I can only imagine how she feels about swallowing them. Most of the time she is a pretty good sport about it. Unfortunately I'm not very consistent about giving them to her - bad mommy! Check out those chubby little baby legs!

Sadie Beth still won't roll from her back to her stomach - I think she is probably perfectly capable of it but has very little use for doing so. :)
Doesn't she look like a cute little puppy with the sock in her mouth?

Chewing on things...
...makes me very...

... happy! (says Sadie Beth).
Sadie Beth's first big snow! It's hard to see it in this picture, but she has a huge smile on her face...until I had her touch it...and then she just looked perturbed with mommy.
So, Sadie Beth ate her cereal great for about a week and a half, and then she decided no more. Are you noticing a trend? She pretty much just likes Mommy's milk - from the original source too. Right now we are on a solids hiatus, but will resume our efforts pretty soon.
Happy girl bear!

Look how little...here she was just 2 days old! She's growing up too fast.

The "Poop" face

I have tons of smiles to post soon, but for now I will focus on the serious side of Sadie Beth. I never expected my life to involve so much thought about pooh...and I'm not referring to the silly ol' bear all stuffed with fluffy. However, since becoming a mommy, its become quite a regular topic of conversation...especially since my sweet baby girl isn't always so "regular." If you've been around the last few months, you might have learned that Sadie Beth is a sporadic poo-er. In fact, up until now it wasn't unusual for her to do her business only once a week or so. When it was time, it was important to set the "mood" and I'm only slightly joking. She wouldn't do it unless she was in a very calm, relaxed state. I guess she was just too busy and was afraid to miss anything otherwise. When I could tell she was getting to that point, I would turn the lights down, lay her down on the floor on top of the boppy pillow and she would go to town. The hilarious part of all of this was the faces she would make. I tried for a long time to get a picture of the "poop" face, but was always too slow. But now I have! So, enjoy the serious side of Sadie Beth....

However, times they are a-changin! Now that we have wandered into the wonderful world of cereal, my little bug is a machine. She has expanded her horizons and has found a new spot that works for her. Each day when I give her her cereal we have to take a little "pooh" break...

And because we have briefly shifted our focus for this post...many people will frequently comment about how happy Sadie Beth seems to be. And she is...the majority of the time. However, she has her stinker moments just like any other baby. Each day Sadie Beth has some independent play time (which she is doing now) in her pack-n-play. We started with about 5 minutes and have worked our way to longer periods. Most of the time she does great. Eg. She has been happily playing for the last 25 minutes...(don't worry I'll get her in just a minute - 30 minutes is the longest she goes). I think this is important so that she can learn to entertain her self, and it is also good for developing a good attention span/concentration/etc. However, this particular day, we decided to put her in her crib to play with her new mirror toy for awhile. I think she could hear David and I laughing in the kitchen and decided was not about missing all the fun!

The funny part? I would walk to the door and she would smile while fussing. :) Needless to say, we rescued her and all was right with the world once again. A more smiley post will come soon...I have lots of Sadie Beth cuteness to share.

The pictures say it all...

Really, these pictures are priceless, but for a quick commentary...today was the first day that Sadie Beth had any "solids" and she responded to them in typical Sadie Beth fashion. You see, from the beginning, our pediatrician has commented that it is likely that she has a little bit of a hypersensitive gag reflex. This is one possible explanation for the projectile vomiting we dealt with for the first 3 months or so of her life. Anytime she encounters anything "new," Sadie Beth responds with gagging....whether it be vitamins, medicine, gas drops, tylenol, etc. She might eventually come to like it (eg. tylenol and gas drops), but the first response is always a bit dramatic. And so it is with brown rice cereal...

Really?

I was getting worried...
"What are you making me eat?" says Sadie Beth.

oh dear...
Daddy gives it a try.
See, it's not too bad!

So I think she finished only slightly worse for the wear. The cereal must have gone right through her, because my baby who only poops every 4-5 days and then only in her "poo position" - (while relaxing on the boppy pillow in the morning on the floor) - decided to do her business before we even finished eating! what a riot. :)

I have a lot more to post, but this will do for now.

February = Fun!!

Who makes freezing cold weather fun? Sadie Beth Balzer does!!! Who can get enough of this? We have been having such a blast with our sweet little girl, who is growing and changing so much each day. February has been full of lots of exciting stuff for Sadie Beth...new developmental milestones all the time it seems. As mentioned before, she has a tooth now and probably is working on #2 considering how much time she spends gnawing on whatever she can get near her mouth (toys, fingers, my shoulder, etc). She is now rolling from her stomach to her back and sitting up without help! She is also now "choosing" between toys (putting one down to pick up another), whereas she used to simply play with the one she was given. It was funny when she would get tired of the toy she was given and would start fussing out of frustration but wouldn't put it down. I'm not sure she realized that she could.
Another new fun development is that Sadie Beth absolutely adores her Daddy! It's not that she ever disliked him, but now any time David walks in the room, talks to her, or gives her any attention whatsoever, she LIGHTS up completely...usually with big smiles and a few jumpy bounces. We have continued our Wednesday playdates at Abby's house. It is so great to have that mid-week break and social time with friends. And the babies are actually starting to notice each other's presence too. Last week Amelia and Sadie Beth were holding hands and smiling at each other. Elijah is enjoy his time with the ladies in this picture!
Sadie Beth continues to love her exersaucer....so do I since I can get so much done while she is playing in it. Usually she is good for 20 minutes or so which means I can at least get started on dinner or do some cleaning.

We will be sad to return the bouncy seat to Jason and Jodee soon because Sadie Beth has enjoyed it so much...but even sadder that our friends will be moving all the way across the country. Thanks to the Upchurch's for letting us use this great toy...we'll miss you!
Aren't sleeping babies sweet?
Another funny story...one day Sadie Beth and I were playing on the couch. I don't remember how exactly it happened, but she fell and landed as pictured below, face planted in between the cushions. I expected her to not be so happy about this but she thought it was HYSTERICAL and sat like that laughing into the couch. Rather than helping her up immediately, I took advantage of this fun photo opp.
Showin' off for the camera...
"Ohmygoodness, I have feet!!!" says Sadie Beth. This has been a new discovery over the last 2-3 weeks. I have started letting her go barefoot more at home just because she loves trying to grab her feet.

This is a horrible picture of me, but too cute for Sadie Beth. We had just gotten home from church. We were given this outfit by our friends Keet and Hillary. Sadie Beth was having fun standing and bouncing up and down on our bed. Please ignore the dishevled bedsheets...we barely make it to church on time let alone get the bed made. :)

This was the teething weekend. Sadie Beth was fussy-fussy and wasn't happy no matter what you did. So David put her on the couch like this....suprisingly, she thought it was kindof fun.

This was one of the first times Sadie Beth was sitting up by herself. Unfortunately, right after I took the picture, she toppled over before I could catch her and wasn't too thrilled. I felt bad, but at least she will learn resiliency.
I spend a lot of my day simply exchanging smiles with this sweet little bug...it's pretty much on of my favorite things in the whole world to see her smile. Some people might think this is a waste of time, but I know I will never regret one minute of it.

More exersaucer fun. When she plays in the exersaucer, often she is very focused...at this moment in time, the object of her concentration was the flower as she attempted to see just how much of it she could get in her mouth.

Sitting up all by herself...don't you love the perfect straight posture? She stayed sitting up for quite awhile here.
Sadie Beth likes her Gloworm that her Great Granpa and Great Grandma Shelton gave her for Christmas. She likes the different melodies that it play.

That's all for now....thanks for reading!

Tooth Time!!!

Sadie Beth has a tooth! You can hardly see it, but it has officially broken through the surface as of 2/9/08. I'm kindof relieved to see it because I thought her "teething" might have all been in my head. You know, like when moms will claim that their babies are cranky for months on end because they are "teething" when really they are just cranky. For the last few weeks Sadie Beth has been always gumming something, often times like her mouth is causing her pain. I haven't wanted to give her Tylenol just for the heck of it, but this week I have several times...I'm just glad to know it was for good reason. I guess that means I should trust my intuition.
This picture here pretty much illustrates how you will find her these days...hands in the mouth. Most of the time she deals with it pretty well but she's been a bit more cranky than normal off and on the past couple of weeks. Let's just hope that she doesn't figure out how to bite Mommy while she's nursing. That won't be fun.
P.S. - oh the joys of poopy diapers...about 5 minutes after this picture was taken Sadie Beth was lying on the floor and had a MAJOR blowout...it made it up to her armpits...TMI, I know. I was just glad she pooped. We get excited about those sorts of things these days...oh dear. :)