Oh Monday Morning.

This Morning is painful. We were busy in the house this weekend (pictures and posts will be posted this week on the other blog). Which meant no real down time at all. And thanks to Words With Friends on my iPod I didn't go to sleep until midnight!! (what was I thinking?!)

In major Chandler news: Sophia's two bottom teeth have both broken through!

Thank goodness!! I am hoping that earns us a little break (I have my doubts about that).

This morning Sophia has a doctors appointment to look at a little skin issue she's having on her back. My google skills tell me it is probably baby eczema. But I'm no doctor (I know I've fooled you all for this long haven't I?!). Hopefully the real doctor can give us some answers.

I know you all want pictures. I really did plan on doing a picture post last week--but time escaped me. But I do have this one picture that I think I need to get printed off and a million copies made. Because seriously, this picture is worth ten trillion words!

What is going on behind the scenes.

It is front and center for us. We are exhausted. I lay in bed and wonder if she's crying or if it's just still in my ears from hearing it for most of the day.

For the past few days Sophia has been a different baby. A totally different temperament. We've come to think that she must be teething. We can't think of anything else. But we can't see anything. Not that she'd really let us, the moment we get anywhere near her mouth she moves, she chews, she sticks out her tongue. She doesn't want us to know.

It's hard on the heart, nerves and ears to hear wee little screams all.day.long. Yesterday I broke down and cried with her. What else could I do? I cuddle with her as much as she will let me, and try to help her feel better.



It's heartbreaking right? Little pieces? Tiny little pieces on the floor. If you could hear it...you'd be paralyzed by it. Crushing.



We've tried tablets, tylenol, teethers, motrin, and gel (Not all together). We're working on the right combo to help her feel her best. If these teeth would just come on out!!

[why do her eyes look cross eyed here???]

Thing 1 and Thing 2

What an eventful day at the Chandler Casa. First of all, Operation Phase out Swing is going splendidly! She hasn't hung out in the swing once today. She's taken three naps on the floor. Two of which she put herself to sleep. She slightly fusses (and I think it's because of Thing 2 that I'll get to shortly), and seconds later she's sleeping. She's actually been sleeping through her second solid meal of the day. But that's ok. I'm not pushing solids on a schedule. The one serving already cuts out a bottle. And I have figured out that she needs roughly 35 oz to sleep well at night (she still wakes up once to eat, which that's calculated in the 35 oz). If she misses a bottle she's up 3 or more times at night. So I feel like her getting what she needs from her bottles is just as important (if not more important) than her solids. So we do solids in the morning, and if we get to do dinner...then good. If not...no biggie.

And right now, when she would be eating solids, she's sleeping. She looks like an angel when she sleeps. She looks like an angel all the time, but usually the active, full of energy, want-to-snatch-your-glasses sort of angel. When she sleeps she is so peaceful. Heart.Melt.


Alright the next thing for today, besides the swingless day we've had so far, is she is making crawling progress. A few weeks ago I told my friend Brandi that I wasn't really thinking we were all that close. Her son had started crawling quickly one day. All of a sudden he was mobile. At the time Sophia was showing no signs of wanting to move in the forward direction (or in the backwards direction for that matter). She was ok with rolling left and right. But last week I realized she wasn't as content with that. She makes noise when toys are in a direction she can't get to. She was frustrated. And it's usually out of frustration that we push ourselves to do more, to be more. She wants to do more, she wants to crawl. She wants to be a crawler. I could do with her not actually mastering this for a month. One month to move into our house. I'd prefer to baby proof all at once, as I'm unpacking. Not attempt to do it here and shortly redo it all in a new home. Plus moving with a mobile baby--challenging to say the least.

I know you want to be bombarded with pictures.
*I am trying something new with the pictures. You'll have to let me know if you like it or want me to go back to the old way!

**Figuring this out was a mess. I may have some gray hair now. Geez oh pete! Now lets just hope it looks like what I want it to look like when I hit "publish"

A little of this, a little of that...but all about Sophia.

I know you all miss your strictly Sophia updates. It's been difficult around here, that's the bottom line.

Sophia is teething. At first I wasn't sure. But it became increasingly more clear. I can't see any teeth. The moment anything comes anywhere near her face she wants to gnaw on it, and gnaw on it hard! I let her use my knuckle when all else fails, and I'm now just waiting for the day when there's something solid poking me instead of the gummy mouth that goes to town now. Sophia doesn't make looking for the buds of teeth easy, as I said she'd much rather chew on my finger than let it move her lip to investigate. So I wait. She's a little more needy these days, which I'm ok with. I missed her wanting to be held during her naps, so it's a nice change of pace. It does mean that I don't get to write updates as often. It also means that I don't have much time for things like cleaning and showering. Thankfully Cody has been doing what he can to help out.

Now on to the much dreaded schedule talk. I was on the boat of baby does what baby wants when baby wants to do it. But after realizing how miserable she was on the weekends when her surroundings were different and when we were on the go I decided that we needed to have some sort of schedule in place. And we should do our bed to follow it even when we were out of the house. I am still majorly taking her lead. But I'm keeping better track of her general time line, and I'm going to be making sure we follow it on the weekends and any other time we are out and about. I know that there is a whole camp of parents that strongly disagree with a schedule. But let me be clear, I am not keeping her from eating when she needs to eat, actually on the weekends she sleeps more in the car and ends up skipping a bottle and it ruins everything come the evening. So more than anything this is to insure that come Saturdays and Sundays that she's not sleeping TOO much and that she's not missing bottles because of sleep. Seems easy, but it is usually against all advice to ever wake a sleeping baby. I'm sure there will be some adaptions to this over the upcoming weeks and months. Especially with moving and how that will likely take it's toll on her schedule and her mood.

Sophia's started two new things this week. Well one new thing, and she's just getting better at the other. Her new thing is waving her paci in the air. She used to accidentally brush it out of her mouth, back when her hand coordination was minimal. But now she purposely takes it out. The downside: She can't figure out how to put it back in! So we spend quite a bit of time trying to keep her hands busy when it's wind down time. She knows she's the life of the party, and she knows the tricks that make her tired. She doesn't want to fall for any of it! Her next thing is rolling ALL OVER THE PLACE. Yesterday she rolled all over the living room, seriously just rolling and rolling until she was 8 ft away from where she started. It was one of the few things that made her happy during her crankiness yesterday so I didn't dare pick her up and bring her back to her starting position. With that she's really trying to figure out this whole knees thing. I am realizing that our time of having a stationary baby are quickly coming to an end, and that as soon as we move into the new house we should start on the baby proofing. Even through fully crawling may be a little bit out, I don't think it'll be long until she gets on her knees and inches her way to where she wants to be.

I haven't been weighing Sophia or doing her weekly updates. I've been slacking. But with the house hunting, the paperwork that went along with that, the teething, and the time Cody has had off....we've just been super busy. I will attempt to resume those next week, but if I don't get to it you can be sure it's because I was busy playing/entertaining wee Sophia. And I think that's a darn good reason to miss it! :-)

This picture isn't very good quality, but you can see she's SO HAPPY. Her grin in this picture makes my heart want to explode into a billion pieces. When she spends most of her day cranky lately, it's so great to see her so happy! And just so you know what you're looking at. Her starting point is where the brown couch pillow is. She actually ended up even farther than this picture shows..but she just kept rolling into the pinguin moving him across the room with her.


*I just looked posted and realize you can't really see her grin all that well on here. So you're going to have to trust me, she was a very happy baby!

How is wee Sophia these days?

You may be wanting a Sophia update. Since I didn't do one after her appointment last week. And with the holidays I didn't really write as much as I normally do.

Sophia is pretty much great. She didn't gain quite as much weight as we thought, she's still pushing 19 pounds. She's 26 and a half inches long. You may be wondering why she didn't grow much. Well I had the length wrong before, she was 25 inches long. I think it started off as a typo that just kept going. Oops.

Either way she's still hanging out in the 105th percentile. But the doctor isn't concerned because she's growing with the curve, just above it.

What I really want to talk about is sophia's HILARIOUS personality. It has REALLY come out lately. The girl LOVES to laugh. And she loves to trick people. We call her the pterodactyl now because she screaches and then laughes or blows raspberries in the air afterward. (I want to admit, I had to look up how to spell pterodactyl, because it seems like it would be spelled taradactile...but it's not). She does this silent laugh with her mouth wide open and her eyes squeezed shut, she kicks and flails her arms. She finds so much to be happy about. I love it!

We've been trying food as I've posted before. We've been through Pears, Avocados, Bananas, and Squash. She wasn't a big fan of the avocados or bananas, but I'm thinking it may be the consistency. She loves pears and I'm thinking she may be ready to have more than just an oz because she seems very disappointed when they are gone and she has to have a bottle.

She has learned to roll every which way. Which means she's waking herself up in her sleep more, and becoming even more of a daredevil. Now she has it in her mind to roll over in the bath. The first time she did it I almost cried. Half of her head was in the water and it felt like slow motion pulling her out of the water completely. We've decided it's time for a better tub for her, this week she'll probably be trying out the blow up tub.

We received a camcorder as a Christmas gift, so I plan on taping her a lot more. Every week I'll add a video on with the pictures of Wordless Wednesday. I can't promise that they will all be really interesting, but hopefully I'll be able to catch her personality for you all a little more.

More than anything I want to prove to you that she was a flying dinosaur in a previous life.

We have a roller!!

No longer a baby that we can leave on the bed while we hang clothes in the closet. Now she has to be surrounded by pillows. So the forting of the bed starts.

*She's rolled for a bit before this video. I just finally felt comfortable knowing that she could do it quickly enough to get it on video.

**The mic on my phone video thing is realllly sensitive. So this is REALLLLLY loud. And I sound REALLLLLLY annoying. Just fair warning!

It's time to say goodbye....

To Sophia's old car seat that is. I honestly never would have thought that we would have only used it for four months. When we brought her home in it I thought it was too big for her. That surely she'd be using it for a year! Ok, well at least 8 or 9 months! When Sophia was born (8 pounds 4 ounces) the idea of her being almost 21 pounds seemed such a far away idea. But here we are, for months later...and here she is. Tipping the scales at almost 21 pounds of pun'kin!

Today we went to Babies R Us (whoa the crowds!) to find a new car seat. We had one in mind, good reviews, matched my car, and it had all the right criteria for us. We went there, put Sophia in it. And loved it. It actually also comes with a cup holder and a storage thing that you can put on whenever you'd like. Something we don't need yet, but that will likely come in handy in the next 8 months.

So I think the following pictures pay a proper tribute to Sophia's first car seat.

We start on June 9, 2009 when I received the package from the giving UPS man.


Then we move on to a day that makes my eyes fill with tears. The day we came home from the hospital. She has grown up so much and has developed such a personality since this day!! (August 14, 2009)


A month later she had already changed so much, but we still had no idea of how much she would grow in the next few months! (September 25, 2009)


How adorable is this picture of our little flower? We started realizing in the month of October that she wouldn't be growing at an average pace.....At 2.5 months she was in 3-6 month clothing comfortably. Basically they were just perfect, not too big as they SHOULD have been. (October 31st, 2009)


She was pretty much growing out of 3-6 month clothes at this point. So fast. If you do the math you'll see that she got about a month to a month a half of wear out of 3-6 month clothing. I dragged this stage out as long as possible...basically until her clothes started looking silly. (November 18, 2009)


And then we end with today. Her last day in the car seat. I weighed her yesterday and she was coming in between 20.5 and 21 pounds depending on how I stood on the scale with her. Since the car seat was only good up to 22 pounds....I obviously no longer felt comfortable with it. And I don't think she was very comfortable either! I wouldn't be crammed into this small seat!! (December 19. 2009)


And finally her new car seat. My big girl. I took this with my phone, so the quality isn't as great, but you can see that she's got much more room. Did I mention this new seat has memory foam?! I want my seats to all have memory foam! (December 19, 2009)



*BTW in writing this I was trying to upload my pictures from my camera and a "fall apart" occurred. My computer wouldn't read the new SD card Sophia got me. It's an SDHC (high capacity) and I guess my computer can't read this new card on it's own. I almost cried. Tears were actually in my eyes at one point think that three days worth of pictures were GONE. Thankfully a quick search on google told me this was a common problem, and that I'd need to hook my camera up to the computer using the cord in order to upload them with no issue. Huge sigh of relief.

A Sophia Update

What is the difference between an avocado and a pear? Sophia actually likes pears. Pears are a total success. It's not even that her face is more relaxed with pears, but she ate an oz in about 7 minutes. I couldn't get it into her mouth fast enough. At first I was taking my time between each spoon of pears, and she would demand more with her "AH! AH! AH!"

I moved the food eating back an hour, from 5:30 to 4:30 because I think she takes to it a little better.

We will be trying avocado's again. I read to try a food a least 10 times before deciding that your child doesn't like it. It won't be the next thing we try, but it'll probably be right after that!

In other news....ALL the presents are wrapped. I am so excited about the present from Sophia to Cody. And I really want to show y'all, but if he get a wild hair and decides to check the blog...I don't want him to know. So you will just have to wait until after Christmas. It's one of the two great presents that I think are under the tree!!

Sophia and I are working on rolling over. During tummy time I lay with her and I help her. A couple months ago she rolled over a couple of times in one day. Not intentional...but it happened. Now she wants no part in it. She's ok with the view during tummy time, and the view she gets when I put her on her back..and she really doesn't seem interesting in the change of view happening at her control. She will learn quickly that where there's a will, there's a way. And momma's got a strong will! :-)

On the sleeping front, I am really feeling the desire to break her from the swaddle. But I love my sleep so much. And she's been fantastic about giving me lots of it most nights. I'm terrified of the process of breaking the swaddle. I invision her not wanting to go to sleep, and not wanting to stay asleep. As it stands now, when she breaks free of the swaddle, she wakes up. So I can't imagine she's going to be one of those babies that take to sleep unswaddled with no issues. So if anyone has any ideas besides one arm at a time....please let me know!!!

Sophia is FOUR months old.

I can't even believe it. Four months ago she was born and our lives were forever changed. She has grown and changed so much in the past four months. I look at her and I'm amazed by what she's accomplished in her short beautiful little life.

I weighed her today. I did it twice to be sure. Once she came in at 19 pounds, and the next time 19.5. Go ahead and take a moment to get past the shock. Of course this is unoffical as I'm not using any great technique to weigh her. She's my little chunky monkey...and I love it!

Because of her intake of formula, the pedi and I had already discussed starting Sophia with baby food at 4 months...so basically today. I was playing it by ear. I don't want to rush her. If she took to it well...we'd go for it. If she wanted nothing to do with it..we'd wait. I also wanted to make sure she wasn't in a bad mood because I wanted this to be a fun experience for her. Her first ever REAL food was avocado's. Neither Cody nor I even like avocado's. But I had ready how they were full of good fats and tons of vitamins, and I knew that's exactly what she needed. Avocado's are also a great first food because they are soft (easy to make) and easy on their digestive system. I couldn't really tell if Sophia liked them or not. I was telling her what they were called and how if she liked them life would be much easier when she's older and goes to eat out at Mexican Restaurants. At the beginning she seemed to enjoy it. Over half the way through you could tell she was starting to have enough. Seriously it's all so new...I was NOT going to push her. When she was done we'd quit. She ate almost a whole ounce! At the first cry we stopped. I'm of course watching her closely for any reactions, and we'll try again tomorrow.

Feeding her the avocado's today made me realize that I'm very proud to be feeding her home made baby food. Not that there's anything wrong with jarred food. But I enjoy that she's eating food that doesn't have a ton of extra stuff in it. I like that it's something I have made for her. And I like that one day I can tell her about her fun first food that I don't even think you can buy in a jar!

I did get some pictures of Sophia today. But I am not going to post them until tomorrow. So you'll have to check back then. In the mean time I've got to search for a cookie recipe for a cookie exchange and I need to wrap some presents!

Eventful play time.

I left my camera in the car, UGH. Sophia woke up early from her nap time, so a bottle, a change and some music later I put her in her play gym because she loves to look at herself and smile and talk.

During today's play time she did 2 amazing things.

First, she grabbed her feet (a few times!). She looked shocked. I was smiling like a fool.

Second, she is really trying to get this whole rolling over on purpose thing. About a month or so ago she rolled over two times in a row, but has never really done it again. I'm in no big hurry because I know that right after rolling over comes shooching, then crawling, then cruising, then walking. And I'm in no hurry to rush any of those things. Well she's really working on the rolling over. And if she didn't have quite the belly I think she would have managed it already. She get on her side and then falls back again.


While I'm updating on her achievements, or milestones even, she's still a drooling machine. But She doesn't seem to be cranky because of it (although she has been slightly cranky anyways because of her cold! So I guess who knows). She has her hands in her mouth a lot, but when I stick my knuckle near her mouth she's not chomping down or anything. So I don't know. Maybe it's teething, maybe it's not. I love her gummy little smile, so no rush!!

She's not a ham for the camera just yet.

Well I was hoping to get a great video of her smiling and talking. She talks constantly, and smiles so much. But the moment she see's the camera you'd think she was an actress...no more smiles, no more talking. It's time to be serious baby!

In fact I just put the camera down and she's next to me talking my ear off while I sing to her. You're probably going to tell me to sing while I'm taping her. You'd all love to hear me embarrass myself wouldn't you?!?! Tonight she is loving Chris Cornell. I think she's got good taste in music!

She had an eventful day today. We went to church this morning, then to lunch with her Uncle Cory, Josh, and a friend of theirs. She loves all the attention Josh gives her!! We came home and she was so tired out that she took a long nap while we got a few things done at the house. Including me making some gooey cake bars. We decided that we would start letting Sophia figure out how to work her tongue. Since she already had cereal in her bottles during the day we decided to make a couple table spoons and see how she did with it on it's own and not in a bottle. She did GREAT! She loved figuring it out and she did great with swallowing it (obviously not ALL of it made it to her belly, but more more than I was expecting!).

I will do my best to get a good video this week. I just went through the video's we did tonight and we find them very entertaining, but we don't think that everyone else will so much! :-)

Here are some pictures from today though. (Pardon her shirtlessness in the second picture. We decided to do the cereal thing RIGHT before bath time to keep there from being quite as big of a mess. We had no idea it would go quite so well!

Well that was different.

Tonight has been quite interesting. I am googling in a seperate tab if we're dealing with another wonder week. It sure FEELS like another one. She's fighting sleep. She's insanely happy for part of the day, and then absolutely miserable for other parts. Usually the parts where she's close to getting tired.

Ok well what do you know, week 12 is a wonder week. This makes total sense. Now. I was coming to write a long thing about how miserable she was during her bath tonight. I think now it's because she associates bath time with bed time. She normally LOVES bath time. She kicks and we play "this little piggy" and she is happy. Not tonight. Tonight she screamed until she was beat red. I picked her up and put her on my lap and finished washing her that way. By the time it was said and done I was soaked. She then fought sleep for a good 45 minutes.

But I get it now...this is pretty much exactly like what happened at 8 weeks. Boo to that! I'm looking forward to her "sunny week"!!!

So this seems to be called a "Wonder Week"

First of all thank you to Lauren for finding this link about wonder weeks. I was trying to figure out why Sophia has had a total shift in behavior over the past week. Her son Nathan seems to be going through the same thing, and since they are the same age she figured there had to be a reason. She did a little googling and found it. It seems to majorly explain so much. Why Sophia never wants to sleep, and will fight it ALL DAY LONG. It also suggests a book about wonder weeks, which I plan on checking the library for. I'd like to be better prepared/educated on these since there seem to be many of them in our future.

I also have decided to write the blogs at night now because I take pictures after bath time almost every night, this way I can post them after she's gone to bed. It's a shame that Daddy wasn't home for tonight's photoshoot, but I'll have to try to get pictures of the two of them tomorrow. After all, what the sleeper says is SO TRUE!


Tomorrow I want to make sure to write about our weekend plans (pumpkin patch YAY) and the list of things that I want Sophia to experience. I'm putting this here because Mommy Brain causes me to draw a blank and hopefully this will serve as a reminder!