Babe in Toyland

I made a fun discovery this week while running errands at the local K-mart. I was making my rounds in the baby section getting some more baby oatmeal and a new pack of pacies to replace the one I lost recently on a walk, when I saw the baby TOYS.
It's so exciting! With Eliza's 6 month bday, she has made a big step in the baby world!

But one of the most exciting for me is that all the coolest toys all say "For ages 6m+!" Meaning it's play time in the Meldau Morrison house!
Steve and I used to joke about the reason we wanted kids was so we'd get to play again! And in many ways that's come true! It seems like the sillier we get, the more Eliza is entertained by us and the more laughs we're able to squeeze out of her.So I found some baby keys that Eliza was chewing on before we even left the store that also make some funny noises (which I'm sure we'll be sick of in about a week). And also found these really neat balls that have different textures to help the babies grab them. Eliza really likes them, and I'm hoping they'll motivate her to MOVE! She already scoots after them when she plays on her tummy!
Our favorite new toy is definitely the baby keyboard! Eliza was playing with it before we left the store too and now she's even learned to sing along. Perhaps she inherited the Morrison talent for musical instruments (sorry Meldau's, but you know the truth about our musical (in)abilities-- hard work and practice can only take us so far).

Another discovery she's made this week is that she now knows how to pick up her paci off of the ground and put it back in her mouth all by herself! This may seem like a small thing, but O NO! This is ground breaking! And this skill also provides minutes of entertainment for the times where she ends up putting the paci in backwards.

One of Steve's and my favorite new toys is our new Baby Einstein Baby Neptune: Discovering Water DVD that we got for cheap at Sam's! It's got neat music and some very neat nature clips along with some great corny puppet shows! Eliza we'll sit and watch (not quietly) only if we're sitting and watching with her! Which is how I am-- I always make Steve sit and watch my shows and movies with me too. Steve definitely lives with 2 very demanding women...
Another favorite new activity for Eliza is "walking." She loves for us to walk her around the apartment, especially when it involves chasing the puppy. Whenever she gets close to mika she screams with delight! She's gotten so fond of walking that now all we have to do is pull her into a standing position and hold her arms, and she starts kicking her legs forward and walking along! Once I'm ready to be done "walking," I'll try to put her back into a sitting position, and she locks her legs and won't let me!

She's so much more interested in "walking" and standing up against the couch or chair rather than tummy time or just sitting. But I still make her have some mandatory tummy time every day, and I've seen some improvement.

Her attention span with even her coolest new toys still is fairly minimal. Every minute or so she looks up to "check" on Steve and me, and if we're not close at hand she'll watch us walking back and forth or voice her displeasure. I keep thinking that she shouldn't have been a firstborn child because she just loves people (and animals) so much! Much more than any inanimate objects. She loves just watching all the older kids playing at the gym's child care center. Such a funny interactive child!

But what is it that never fails to bring this smile to Eliza's face....?...Mika! Poor mika! He's such a good sport with Eliza. She grabs him any chance she gets. Steve said he thinks we should shave mika... I don't think I'm ready for that quite yet.
With all the fun play time we've been having lately, by 6:30 or 7pm Eliza looks like this...


And did I mention that this wild woman is actually a cuddler?? She's all about cuddling in my lap and arms lately. She's such a sweetheart, and especially right after her nap, she snuggles up with me and her blankey for a good little while before she starts babbling to me and then squirming away to her toyland!

Another Perfect Day...

So as sleep exhausted as we often are in this house, I have to admit that when it comes time for me to finally drag myself out of bed, I still get that rush of excitement and anticipation like its Christmas morning!

But MY present takes the form of none other than Eliza Mae.

Whether it's screaming from her crib, the oh-so-subtle karate kicks in the stomach, or slobbery fingers pinching my face, I love having Eliza to wake up to. I don't necessarily love to wake up, but I love this gift of a child in my life!

This is because when I scoop her out of her crib and she cuddles her cheek against mine, wiping her tears from her cheeks onto me ...

or when I sit up in bed and seeing her face change from bored to delighted, I'm excited to have a day with her. (oh yeah- and Mika too)On occasion people (non-mothers both men and women) will ask me, "Sooo, what did you do this week?"

At first I was taken aback by this question. I usually answered, "oh, ya know, same old stuff!" while inside I wondered, What had I done all week long? Nothing! I stayed at home... alllll 7 days long. And that kind of made me feel little and unimportant.
At my job, in order to be reimbursed by medicaid for our services, we have to fill out an Activity Log that catalogs the interactions and services we've done for and with the clients at the end of each day and week. This is how we formulate our bill for them.

So as I've considered the previously mentioned question more, especially as I have begun working part time, I realized that the people asking me that question don't really want the real answer.

They don't really want to hear that ...

I nursed Eliza 59 times for a total of approximately 33 hours.

I sang I Caught Myself a Baby Bumble Bee 42 times
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 21 times
I am a Child of God 25 times
Itsy Bitsy Spider 8 times
Rubber Ducky 10 times
You are my Sunshine 16 times
Apricot Tree 22 times

As soon as we start singing this, she stops crying! It's amazing!

I changed 46 diapers, 6 of which were poop explosions meaning I was wiping, scrubbing and rinsing off poop from bottoms, legs, feet, socks, onesies, and pants for about 70 minutes during the week.

I mixed and served baby oatmeal/rice cereal 12 times meaning that I made fake "MMmm, Yummy" sounds while "chewing" 64 times. I also saw about 19 cute smiles hiding behind adorable apple/carrot/peas/cereal goatees!

I held a juice bottle up to baby's lips while my arm cramped for a total of about 17 times.

I woke up before 5 am four times.I took 15 walks carrying a squirming baby backpack on my back while simultaneously leading a half-blind/half-deaf doggy around some wooded trails and apartment buildings (usually while singing the above mentioned songs) totaling about 105 minutes.

I peeked through our front door's peep hole to see if I saw Steve walking down the sidewalk finally coming home from work about 6 times.
I went to 3 aerobics classes and picked up a baby that was crying and grumpy from the childcare center each time.

I read about 7 different board/squishy books about 43 times while making up funny high pitched animal sounds to go along with them.I rode in a car with a screaming baby who hates her car seat for a total of about 50 minutes.

I soothed my crying baby about 70 times.

I covered my baby in noisy kisses and raspberries about 85 times in hopes that she would crack a smile.

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror while holding the baby and smiling and saying "Who's That?" about 21 times.I said "Mamamamama" about 85 times "Dadadadada" 35 times and "Babababa" 55 times.

I thought I heard baby crying (but was actually hearing nothing) 6 times.

I got pinched in the face, cheeks, mouth, eyes, nose, ear, arm, hair, glasses, etc an average of 10 times a day-- total of 70 times a week. Ouch!I converted 45 different household objects into entertaining baby toys.

and much more...

And I'm excited to start a new week too!

I know that it's just a simple question from people who aren't sure how to make conversation with someone whose daily lives are composed of such different activities than theirs are composed of (oh, no! I ended the sentence w/ a preposition!!). But hopefully this will help answer their question.

So what did I do this week?

Nothing much... but we managed to somehow stay busy...

Eliza the Elephant!

Friday night was our ward's Halloween Extravaganza! So we brought our favorite elephant along! SO cute!
Eliza mostly liked chewing on her costume, but we thought she made an adorable elephant!
Steve convinced me to dress up too, so I donned a bed sheet and employed my toga/tunica making skills from my Latin class days in middle school and high school and became a home-made "muse" ancient greek style.
Here's Steve and Eliza in their costumes (Steve's shirt says costume on it) and the pumpkin that Steve painted!
Here's Eliza getting a little over-stimulated by all the people and sounds in the church gym!


Here's a video of Eliza the Elephant dancing to the Ghost Busters song (while simultaneously attempting to eat her own ear)!! Enjoy!

Slobber of LOVE

My discovery of the week is... ...cleaning!!
There's my clean team! Yesterday was a cleaning Saturday. Our apartment really needed a deep clean. Steve and Eliza helped by dusting and rearranging some book shelves. Picture above is our new favorite baby mechanism that my mom got us off ebay! It's a great hiker kinda backpack and is SO comfy for all of us involved while walking the dog or just doing chores around the house!

But it was actually relieving and kinda fun for me to devote a whole day to scrubbing bath tubs and dishes, packing away too-small clothing, washing and ironing linens, etc. Never thought I'd be able to say that! This probably means that my apartment is about as clean as most of yours on your messy days, but I'm still trying!

Saturday was always cleaning day in the Meldau house, so it just felt right to get some long needed chores done that day. There's something refreshing about pushing up your sleeves and getting sweaty while puttin' your "shoulder to the wheel" and wearing the "worker's seal" (although I'm not sure Steve would agree...). Grandpa Buzz would be so proud!

Eliza's getting old enough now that I am able to have more time where I'm not completely worn out and she's not totally screaming to eat every hour. She even let me get a whole load of dishes loaded while she watched me from her swing on Friday while Steve was at work-- usually we just have to wait until after she's asleep to get them done!

So those of you in Virginia already know this, but here in Charlottesville the season has suddenly become fall! Seriously it was in the 90's on a Wednesday and then it was a blustery 60's-70's Thursday with leaves falling everywhere.

So I busted out some of the winter clothes I had for Eliza, and they've proved to be a bit big. I tried to buy big so that they would last for more of the cold season, fall and winter. Most of them are in 12 mnth sizes to 18 mnths. This means that her little hands are covered by sleeves a lot of the time (but they're nice and toasty hands!) and I also have to roll up some pants that hang over her feet (also toasty). I'm sure she'll grow into them soon enough, though!

Eliza's discovery of the week is...

...probably shrieking, grabbing Steve's glasses and applesauce! She can shriek so loud sometimes it's really surprising--but it's happy, playful shrieking. And she's become quite adept at yanking off Steve's glasses (and mine when I haven't put in my contacts yet-- but I've been doing contacts more and more as her grabbing has increased in strength and frequency).

She also likes to grab my hair and taste it, but perhaps I've mentioned that before.

And she loves applesauce. She ate a whole jar in one sitting at lunch today. Crazy kid! Steve says she inherited this from him b/c applesauce was his favorite snack from like age 1 to 13 until popcorn usurped its number one spot.

Bumbo Breakfast time before church with Daddy!

Eliza's favorite activity of the week besides sitting up SO well and all the time is... she likes to hang upside down. She lies down on my lap when I'm on the couch or a chair and she hangs her head upside down and just looks all around at all the upside down things for a really long time. Steve and I found this kinda strange, but I read in a baby development book that 5-6 mnth. olds like these kind of changed perspectives. Interesting.

Our least favorite development of Eliza's this week besides poop explosions 5 out of the last 7 days is... her wiggling!! She wiggles ALL the time! Almost anytime we hold her in our laps (except when she's upside down) or in our arms or in chairs or car seats or when she's EATING, she's wriggling and sliding all over. Steve sat down with her last night to read stories and 2 pages later she was lying sideways like between his knees (if you can picture it- it was crazy). Maybe we can get a picture later. But she's already getting hard to keep up with! She will sit still if we put a mirror in front of her, though. We hope this doesn't foreshadow too much of a narcissistic future.

Most slobbery skill of Eliza's this week is... KISSES! Yes, she gives kisses-- huge, wet, eat your face kisses. No point in wearing make-up these days. But I never loved slobber so much!! The Slobber of Love...

Inspirational Video...

This is why I hope to have a second child someday...

p.s. this is absolutely in no way an announcement at all...

Blowing Bubbles

Here's a video of Eliza performing one of her favorite new tricks that I talked about in a previous post. She takes a little while to get started, but then it's a blast!

Best First Day Ever!!

So today was my first real day training at my job. It went pretty well-- I didn't feel too overwhelmed, and I don't think I annoyed too many people while shadowing them. But the definite highlight of my day came at 3pm- Acudetox, pictured below:

Yes, that was my ear for 45 minutes today.

Part of my training included participating in the Acupuncture Detoxification Group that my work (the Mental Health Wellness Recovery Center) employs in order to target some of the outer ears' reflex points to help ease addictions.

A lot of the mentally ill clients we're working with also come in with substance abuse problems along with their mental health problems, so this treatment helps ease their detox. But it also is great just for relaxation too, and the even better news is that I get to be trained to lead the group later on!

Steve asked me how it didn't hurt. To me it just felt kinda like putting on earrings.

So from 3-3:45, I got to lean back and read a 1988 National Geographic article on Nepal while listening to sounds of the ocean and hopefully conquering my Ben & Jerry's Phish Food addiction once and for all (jk)! Not bad for a first day, huh?

Announcing...

Eliza now has TWO teeth!!

Here's our sad little munchkin. She kept chewing and biting down on her bottle instead of drinking out of it. She had been SO fussy on Sunday and then was waking up every hour screaming on Sunday night. We gave her tylenol, and she did a little better.

I felt her gums again this evening, and then sure enough, there was her second tooth! Right next to the first one on the bottom! Good work, Baby!

Not a future Popeye...

We tried feeding Eliza spinach tonight. Here's how it went....

Discoveries of the Month!!

I have neglected my discovery of the week(s) theme this last month! While we were down in SC, I didn't know how to upload pictures onto my parent's computer so I thought the post would be too boring with only writing.

Eliza has such a long list for her last like 3-4 wks. of accomplishments, though!

One of the biggest Discoveries of the Week is...

...She has a tooth! A very sharp tooth too! It's her bottom right, but unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of it. She always sticks her tongue out over it. She's really funny with it b/c it seems like now that she has a tooth she thinks she needs to incorporate in her talking and so she talks with her tongue over it... aka, she lisps! It's really cute and she also blows lots more bubbles now and does these tongue spray things too.


Eliza also learned how to grab her feet last month and is truly in love with them! Such a fascinating thing! I'm impressed at how easily she literally folds in half to stick her toes in her mouth!

Another discovery is that she now babbles, "mamamamama...!" Any mother would of course like to think that this is an affectionate gesture, and that their baby knows who their "mamamama" is, but I don't think I'll delude myself too much. Maybe that's how the name mama came to be, though? It was the first things babies learned to say so people assigned it as the mother's "name?"

But it is still sweet because when she starts saying it, steve or my mom or abby will be like, "Oh, do you want your Mama?" And she usually does (...want to eat).


When I'm holding Eliza, she really likes to put her arm around my neck like in this picture. It's really sweet-- sometimes it even involves her stroking my hair... but that often turns into yanking my hair, which is much less sweet.

A few other favorite babbles are "bababa" and "ieieie." Sometimes she employs the latter when she sees new people so we're pretending that she totally knows how to say hi!

The other day in Relief Society, I had her sitting on my lap, and she was getting bored. So I picked her up and let her stand on my lap, and when I stood her up she saw the lady sitting behind me and let out a very loud and excited, "IE!" and grinned at her. My visiting teacher was talking to me after class and said, "I didn't know Eliza could talk already!" So funny!

Eliza has also learned how to sit up or "tri-pod" as my mom the nurse practitioner in-training/pediatric RN told me it is referred to in the medical field. She can hold herself in a sitting position by placing her hands kinda in her lap holding her up. Although, this last week she's been able to sit up all on her own for longer and longer periods of time w/o slowly sliding onto her belly or side!



We also have had some fun developments in the food department of Eliza's life. This week we purchased our first baby foods- our pediatrician's recommendation was to start her on veggies so that she didn't develop too much of a sweet tooth preference for only fruit. So we bought some organic, no preservatives peas, carrots, and spinach! So guess which one we tried first. That's right, Dad, your favorite- PEAS!!

And Eliza's review is two thumbs up! She finished that jar off in no time! I tasted a little that got on my finger and it was totally just like squished peas and so I thought it tasted fine. We tried carrots tonight, and she ate those even quicker than the peas. I love her little green and orange "mustaches" she gets while eating. It so cute to see her smiling through a face full of green slop for some reason...

Eliza LOVES to be a "big girl" or one of the grown-ups, especially at the table. As soon as she sees one of us drinking out of a cup she leans in with her mouth wide open waiting to get a drink! It's really funny and not subtle in the least. In the picture above, I put her in her bumbo on the table while I was gathering some stuff together to get out the door.

When I turned around, I saw that she had grabbed that empty cup I had left on the table and was trying to drink out of it! Smart girl! We just have to be really careful what we leave within arm's reach these days.

Eliza's favorite song of the week is "I caught myself a baby bumble bee!" I think b/c it has really fun hand movements and b/c it's a pretty catchy tune, you have to admit. It's an infamous song in our family ever since Robby went out and really did catch a not-so-baby bumblebee in an attempt to make his mommy oh so proud of him and got oh so stung when he was like 3 years old. Robby has no guile!

Eliza's favorite activity of the week is reading with us while concurrently doing tummy time... at least, that gets to be her favorite activity b/c I'm trying to strengthen up her tummy time abilities. I've been trying to get her to catch on to the wonder of tummy time for a while, but she hates the part where I leave to go put dishes away or get dressed, so... she grows sick of it and starts crying very quickly.

So I've finally given in and decided that if we're going to fit any tummy time in at all, one of us probably just needs to sit with her while she's on her tummy. So we read books to her and sing to her and talk with her and grab toys and all of a sudden her tummy time attention span has quadrupled! Good work baby!



And my favorite accomplishment of Eliza's this week? No doubt about it, it was definitely when she was sitting up on the floor and I brought the soccer ball over to her, and instead of reaching for it with her hand which is clearly a ridiculous thing to do with a soccer ball, she started kicking it with her feet... That's MY baby!!!!! I'm so proud.

The Individual that is Eliza Mae Meldau Morrison

Baby Amy

Eliza can sit up!

Baby Steve

Here are some larger pics of Steve and I as babies around when we were Eliza's age. Our observations from the pictures are that Steve had WAY more hair than Eliza does which surprised us b/c we thought she had his hair. But actually her hair reminds us of Katy's baby picture! Eliza started out really dark, as you'll notice in some of our older posts. But now most of it is so blonde it hardly shows up in the pictures. My mom said the same thing happened with Kate. So maybe she'll have gorgeous brown hair like Katy!

Katy in 83

The shape of Eliza's face does seem to greatly resemble Steve's, and this is why I personally think that so many people say she looks JUST like him. We think that the shape of Eliza's eyes is similar to mine, but the color seems more like my Oma's (grandmother's) a deep, vibrant blue. So maybe she got the Swedish coloring! And it's hard to decide, but for now we think that she has a "Meldau" nose.Robby in 87

I also was looking at my sister, Abby's baby picture, and I think that Eliza looks SO much like her as far as her size and cheeks! Eliza does have Steve's ears, though (unattached lobes), and Steve and I disagree on whose chin she has (he thinks she has his, but I think his looked much more manly than hers does).

She definitely has a very spunky personality and is so interactive! She is just so keyed in on the people and animals (or all living things) around her! We call her a schmoozer (sp?) b/c whenever we are visiting or meeting new people she gushes smiles and giggles for them and puts on quite a performance pulling out all her tricks of babbling, laughing, and tongue lisping! If you've met her in this last month and she was awake, you know what I'm talking about!

So these are our musings and (un) official statements on her "heritage." It's just fun for us to talk about, but she's obviously her own little person who we have so much fun learning more and more about each day!!

Feel free to voice your opinions!

Who Do I Look Like?