Flea

Some of you may wonder how Flea is coping with having the new baby around. She basically just pretends that Copper doesn't exist.

Socializing: Part II

For a whole day after my last post I felt great about our new social freedom. Then I got an e-mail from Kellie rallying the girls to get together for dinner. I immediately panicked. I can't go out to dinner at a restaurant without Copper. Aubrey would kill me. She's generally a bit more emotional in the evenings and I could only be gone for about 1.5 hours tops. When Kellie asked if 5:30 works for everyone, I responded that I would need a guarantee that we were seated immediately, our food would be served immediately after ordering and I could only stay for an hour. I wrote it as a joke, but it is actually the truth. If I fed Copper at 4:45, left the house by 5:05, got to the restaurant at 5:30, I would need to leave by 6:15, maybe 6:30, in order to get home in time for a total baby hunger meltdown. That would allow me about 45 minutes to sit and gab with the girls and eat. With that timeframe I would probably have to get my food to go. I guess that I don't have quite as much social freedom as I thought. Good thing Copper is so damned cute because I really enjoy having dinner with the girls. Maybe next time ladies.

Socializing

When Copper was little, well littler, going to see friends in the evening was not a big deal. The kid didn't go to bed before 2am anyways so we didn't see a problem with staying out with her. Now she has a bedtime and God forbid we stray from it for even one night. About a month ago we were invited to watch the fights on a Saturday night at a friend's house and we turned it down because we were getting into a good routine with Copper's bedtime and we didn't want to disrupt it. In hindsight, we should have said "screw it" and went anyways. Is one night really going to do that much harm? Last weekend we did accept an offer to have dinner at a friend's place and we stayed until 10. Did Copper suddenly become a devil child because of a missed bedtime? Nope. She rocked it out. She was great the entire evening and quietly fell asleep in my arms while we all chatted away. When we got home I changed and fed her and was able to quickly get her into her bed. She was great the next day too. We're slowly learning how to modify our lives to include the little one. It's generally not as bad as we think it'll be.

Tummy Time

Supposedly an infant needs to spend considerable time on their tummy in order to learn how to crawl. Copper didn't receive that memo. She's not a big fan of tummy time. About 5 seconds after taking this picture she had a break down. If I'm ever going to be able to brag about how fast my daughter learned how to crawl I'm probably going to have to be a little more proactive with allowing her to learn the basics.

Happy 5 Months!

Copper Jo (aka Bug) turned 5 months old today!

She weighed in at an impressive 17 pounds! In case you were wondering, that'a a gain of about 3 pounds in about a month! Holy growth spurt! Guess that's why she's pretty much outgrown all of her 3-6 month clothes and is starting to fit nicely into 6-9 month clothes.

Hobbies now include:

• Yelling
• Playing with her feet
• Rolling onto her side
• Sitting up unassisted (and then falling over)
• Playing with toys
• Grabbing everything within reach, and
• Putting everything into her mouth

Moving Day

With a bit of encouragement from Aubrey, we decided to have Copper sleep in her room last night. I was running out of excuses as to why she couldn't sleep in there, i.e. the stencils on her dresser weren't painted, the crib skirt wasn't sewn, there wasn't a rug, I hadn't started her bumper, the valences weren't sewn...the list goes on and on. None of them serious reasons for her to not sleep in her room, but valid enough excuses for me. What was crazy about the decision was that as soon as it was made, I was okay with it. She had napped in there Friday and Saturday and didn't have any adverse side effects, so I was willing to try it out. I also thought that I would NEED to sleep in the guest room just in case she started screaming bloody murder, but since she did well with her naps I didn't feel the necessity any more. I got the video monitor set up Saturday afternoon and made sure there weren't any monsters under her bed or in the closet. I put her to bed about 8:30ish last night and she happily snoozed the night away. She made a few little noises throughout the night, but nothing serious. This morning around 6:00, we woke to the sound in the monitor of her farting and pooping. It was pretty funny. I went up stairs and sang our good morning song, just like I do every morning and she smiled at me just like she does every morning.