Well after some feeding problems, lots of stress, and major diet changes Callie is now up to 17 pounds! She is still very much petite for her age (which is amusing, considering that she was abnormally LARGE when she was born) but is no longer on the cusp of being worrisome.

Sadly, I noticed a new trend last week - she's weaning :( I mean, I am actually quite glad about it because she thinks biting me is the funniest thing ever and has never been a good nurser, but the problem comes in that she won't really take the sippy cup as much as she should, yet. She only gets maybe two ounces at a given time right now and she needs WAY more liquids in her diet if she only breastfeeds twice a day as it currently stands. I was planning on gradually weaning her anyway over the next few months, but now that it is happening I am a little sad. She's growing up SO fast. She is eating her solids quite well still, and is even trying some finger food and table food now, but I am hesitant to do too much of that just yet in case she develops some sensitivities or even outright allergies to certain items.

She is sitting up (well, tripoding) much better now, and until she purposely topples over to grab another toy she can support herself for a few minutes at a time with no chair, and pretty consistently in her high chair. STILL not crawling, but she is REALLY trying, and starting to crawl on her elbows, army-style.

Daddy has been out of town a lot recently (including tonight) and we miss him very much. It is snowing now too, we've got five inches on the ground and will soon be adding more. Anchorage clocked a record 138 accidents in one day after the snow fell, nearly double the previous year's total. Needless to say the baby and I are NOT going out of the house much, except to church which is quite close by.

Thanks to daddy's hard work the dining room will be operational, complete with a real table and chairs, later this week. The kid's bedrooms only need new light fixtures and some baseboard, so that can be crossed off the list soon as well.

We pulled my old camera out of storage so once daddy brings it back from Valdez, we will clock some new Callie images. She is doing so much now it drives me crazy to not have a way to capture them, and the video camera has it in for me. I know if I touch it again it will probably explode (just to spite me).

We have NOT forgotten baby pictures! I PROMISE!

Well we have been bad about updates, my apologies on that. The camera is still out of commission which is a shame, but we're making do.

No big news, lots of little news. Callie is eating two solid meals a day and can drink quite well from a sippy cup if she is laying down (she hasn't gotten the 'tip' motion down very well yet!) Her favorite foods seem to vary week by week, but right now the consistent favorite seems to be yogurt. She doesn't get it often, but she always inhales it when she does.

No actual crawling yet, but she is trying to rock and definitely pivots on her chest. She also barrel-rolls wherever she wants to go. No real talking, but the noises are getting more varied. Her new favorite is "Abuuuu". She basically blows a raspberry on the buuuu part, and it is very cute. We think she is trying to claim we abuse her, since she usually starts doing this when she is whining.

She is really liking the nursery at church and apparently is a total angel when there, even after a few hours. She likes watching the other older babies play and enjoys all the noise, I think. Everyone loves her (especially the pastor, now that he won't be having anymore little ones).

The DOWNSIDE of the nursery, obviously, is illness. I was helping last Sunday and noticed three babies with various levels of sniffling and green snot bubbles. And sure enough, Callie now has a stuffy nose that is keeping her from sleeping and is dribbling down her lip. She's pretty miserable, and since the FDA doesn't trust us to properly dose our own kids and is trying to ban kid's cold and cough medicine, we just have to wait it out.

We're making headway on the home renovations, finally. Thanks to some babysitting by Grandma and Grandpa Giessel we now have the tile and plumbing in the laundry room, and all the tile is sealed as of last night. So tonight we will get a LEAST the washer and dryer hooked back up (THANK YOU LORD!) and possibly the sink in as well if daddy gets the right Y threads. Slowly, but surely, things are getting put together. Now that the tile is done the rest of the wood can go in, we can tear up the carpet on the stairs, actually get a dining room table in here. It's working out very well, and daddy is doing a VERY good job.

With the exception of illness she is sleeping very well most nights, in her own room. She has also gained a LOT of weight because of the solids. We will know for sure in a few weeks but I believe she has gone up some percentiles for her size which is a good thing. All in all, things are going well for all of us.

With any luck we will get the camera fixed soon. Mommy has a cruddy old HP that will work in the meantime, so we will try to get SOME images up, but no promises!

One other thing, my Camera broke. Minolta is out of the camera business now, and Sony (who Minolta sold their camera division to) wants $211 to fix it. So, long story short, it may be a little while before pictures reappear on this site.

So, yesterday I was trying to feed Callie. She was having avocado, which she likes. She ate it all and started crying because she was still hungry, so we can't defrost avocado very quickly, so we mixed up some prune juice and rice cereal. We gave her a bite of it.

Now let me paint the picture for you. When Callie wants food, she opens her mouth. When she doesn't get food, she starts screaming. She had her bowl of food on the tray, along with her nonnie (passifier).

After the first bite of prune juice and rice cereal, I offered her another spoonful, but she kept her mouth shut. I said, "come on Callie, don't you want more food?" She looked at me, looked at the bowl, looked around a bit at the tray until she very clearly spotted her nonnie, she very clearly and deliberately reached out, grabbed the nonnie, and stuck it in her mouth. There was no klutzing aroudn with the nonnie, there was no fumbling, it was one very clean, very deliberate motion to grab that and stick it in her mouth. Taryl and I both just started cracking up and she started looking at us like, "what is so funny?" I said, "she's done". Taryl suggested pulling out the nonnie and trying another bite of food. I asked her how Callie could possibly be more clear that she wasn't having any more of that and that she was done.

So, under pediatrician-induced duress, we started Callie on solids.

Eh.

Meh.

She likes them, now. She hated them at first. Her FAVORITE is... gag me... prune juice with rice cereal. Yeah. And she likes slighted salted avocados, watered down with aforementioned rice cereal added. Mmm mm good?

Um, sure kiddo, if you say so.

And the one thing she SHOULD like, bananas, she hates. Like, sad face, grimace, spit out, cry and scream until she gets her prunes.

Weirdo.

And alas, my little one is growing up SO fast. She is five months old with some change. And she's *almost* crawling, and babbling away, tossing toys to watch us go fetch, drooling all down her front, back, top of her head... she can basically stand, with much wiggling, and is getting stronger everyday. We have weaned her off her swaddling with good results, so with the exception of a crib she is even sleeping like a big girl.

I am VERY happy to see how she has progressed and grown, and am amazed I haven't irrevocably screwed her up for life yet. 5 months down, 211 months to go.

So apparently someone deleted my last post here. And since there are only two people with update permission, I have to conclude that I did it while sleeping, since Taryl would never delete my posts.

Anyway, new Callie pictures are posted. Think of it as a treasure hunt to find them.

And to be fair to the Grandparents, since Grandma Ross got her picture posted on the homepage (however briefly), here is a picture of Grandma Davidson:

Well we have survived the last wave of guests with flying colors. Grandma and Grandpa Davidson (teehee!) came up for a very brief visit from the sweltering heat of California. Callie was excited to get new interactive spitup rags and Mommy and Daddy were excited to not have to be completely on hand 24/7 for the first time in ages. All around, a fun weekend.

Callie took her new toys up though Hatcher's Pass and Independence Mine, which was beautiful but windy. She even off-roaded with them on a trail that was about 1/2 a mile of vertical hiking, which SHE thought was fun and her chariots may have been less thrilled about. Callie was not a happy baby toward the end of the trek, due to missing naps, but all and all it worked out very well.

The next day Callie led the group out to Girdwood and McHugh creek to hike, but the wind once again felled all progress. So we headed up t FlatTop for the best views of Anchorage around and then had a barbecue with Grandma and Grandpa Giessel. They cooked us all yummy salmon and steak, and we had a very nice time of the evening, with mommy only marginally nervous and Callie making a fashionably late debut in the last hour, after having her well-deserved nap.

As with the last grandparent visit it was over way too soon, and Callie is looking forward to visiting everyone at Christmas *cough*presents*cough*.

Pictures taken (liberally and often) by Grandma Naeners will be posted shortly.

Okay, it's late so I'll be brief (I know, ever-so-rare!)

New Callie pictures up, at last. We've got a few more to upload in the next few days as well and our apologies for the huge time gap, we've been more than busy!

More to come soon!

Yay! Callie rolled over about two months ago, but it was a fluke and she never tried again. Then two days ago I looked down and noticed my tummy-time baby was on her back. Set her down again, and she was on her back again. I missed the actual rolling, but it obviously occurred. Then today, I set her down on her tummy and slowly but surely, she raised one arm, lowered another, and rolled. She didn't even cheat by throwing her head to the side.

Yay for my big girl!

Sorry about the lack of updates, we've been pretty busy and not had much time to grab the camera or blog.

Callie has started babbling and giggling CONSTANTLY (especially when she is avoiding naps) and just learned how to blow raspberries and spit bubbles proficiently. It's cute until you realize that she drools like a Saint Bernard anyway and all her shirts (plus ours) end up drenched.

If we let her hold our hands she can stay standing (with some wobbling) for a good few minutes. If we can get her to stay on her tummy for more than one minute without screaming, she can hold her head up and lift her chest completely for several minutes before getting tired.

AAAAND yesterday we finally got her to roll over again, from her belly to her back. She did it twice with me and once with Peter home. We can't leave her on ANY surface at all now, because the minute she hits her back she is arching and squirming every which way, and rolling onto her sides with regularity. It is overcoming her arm that stops her from rolling all the way.

Let's see, no other real developments. We're still finishing the house and rather behind on that as Peter has been working long hours to keep up with project deadlines. And we still haven't found a suitable church though the one we went to last week shows promise. So, as always, life goes on and Callie keeps growing. We will try to be better about updates :)

OK, so we have the coolest kid in the world. I have to admit, at first, I was like.... hmm, ok, so she poops and eats... yeah... and? But now she has gotten a lot more fun. She's giggling and laughing and well, playing. The first time I was tossing her and she laughed, I was like, "Oh no! What was that noise? What did I do?" I then took a look at her face and she had the biggest smile and I realized that she was laughing. I tried it again, yep, sure enough... That was a laugh. I discovered that I don't even really need to toss her, just make big sweeping bouncing motions and she will start smiling really big and start laughing.

So things have been CRAZY this past week and a half or so. We closed on our new house, which is great! Thing is, flooring and painting plus a million little details need to be worked out before we can truly settle, so we're still mostly in boxes until we at least get the family room livable this next weekend. Callie has been quite a busy baby indeed, while her parents got to loaf around and sleep ;)

Callie has grown in leaps and bounds over the past two weeks. She went from kind of a spud that needed a lot of rocking and carrying to much more self-sufficient. She will play in her bouncer or on her playmat alone for a good half hour, longer if I keep a running dialogue going (which everyone who knows me understands isn't hard, I specialize in one-sided conversing!) I think she thinks her toys are talking back, so she doesn't get mad and scream at their unresponsiveness as quickly as she used to!

She's started kicking and grabbing at things a lot more, like toys, mommy's hair and daddy's goatee, the phone, etc etc. Consequently, when she is hungry and I'm just not fast enough she has learned how to punch at the milk bar rather impatiently. It beats pinching, I suppose.

She seems to undergo her biggest developmental leaps when we're barely looking. For example, we were hauling nearly everything we could shove into a U-Haul from the storage unit and she was fussing the entire time. When I finally went over to her to deal with her, she fussed, then look up at me, smiled, and then broke out into her first real laugh. I have absolutely no idea what was so amusing, probably that she has two normally (insane) autonomous adults at her beck and call, but she really let one out. It was SOOOO cute! Peter was able to get a repeat performance by tossing her up in the air. Not the safest activity, but as with all kids when it gets a danger label the fun increases exponentially.

Though she hates it passionately and screams her head off, we finally reverted back to swaddling. She *likes* having her limbs free, but isn't all that good at them yet and thus wakes herself up, knocks out her pacifier every three seconds, jabs herself in the eye etc etc. So Peter finally got fed up and straightjacketed her with her blanket, and wouldn't you know, after ten minutes of HOWLING she fell asleep.

And stayed asleep.

For EIGHT hours!!!! WOOOOOHOOOO!!!!!!

Making sure it was not a fluke, we did it again the next night, and I made sure to not just let her fall asleep when she was sleepy but pick her up out of her toys, swaddle and lay her down in a dark room, and make naptime very official (I know, I know, I should have done it all along but until about a month ago parenting was more preventative than proactive). And she slept, and slept, and slept. She is nor regularly going 7-10 hours at night without a feed or one very brief one around 5:00 am when daddy wakes up. And she naps every two hours or so for about an hour or two..... IT'S GREAT! She seems happier (probably because now we finally have a good routine down, being settled in our own home again) and Peter and I hadn't realized how unrested we were until we actually got uninterrupted rest. It's just not the same in three hour increments.

So now we have a player, a giggler, (a pooper and spitter) and a sleeper! This isn't so bad afterall :)

.... Or perhaps I just jinxed us terribly :(

PS: Forgive me anyone who I owe letters (Grandma, I'm looking at you), phonecalls, or any other such updates and correspondence. We now finally have phone and internet hooked up but we're so busy around here time is sparse at best. I have NOT forgotten you and neither has Peter, life has just intervened. Look forward to hearing from us shortly but in the meantime we will attempt to keep this website as updated as possible.

We have no inter-web at home at the moment, so this site will get updated probably next week once we get inter-web again.

So Callie endured 20 hours of travel on thursday, as we all packed up and headed to Grand Rapids, Michigan for Peter's old roommates' wedding. We all got up at 3:30 am and headed to Anchorage International Airport for our 6:00 flight out. Callie did very well and slept or dozed on and off the entire flight to Seattle. She woke up and fussed a little once we got there, but was definitely manageable as we shuffled through the port.

However we then received bad news - Chicago was experiencing horrible windstorms, thumderstorms, and had a tornado warning enacted, so our plane was delayed nearly three hours! It was not, suffice to say, the best news we could have gotten. Still, we waited and walked the Princess around to keep her calm, got a few good pictures of her doing various things around the airport, and finally got boarded to Chicago around 3:00 pacific time.

The flight to Chicago was around 4 hours and Callie slept THE ENTIRE TIME! The lady in front of us was shocked to see we had a baby, she had no idea until we landed and Callie started cooing at the seat in front of us. By the way, O'hare is the worst layout of any airport we've ever been in. It is HORRID!

We left the airport at 10:30 central time and headed to the car rental place, grabbed a vehicle and were on the road to Grand Rapids by 11:30 or so. It was a LOOONG night, and by 4:30 we were checked into our (very lovely) hotel here in Michigan. Callie held up very well and allowed us to go to sleep when we were ready, rather than fussing for an hour, and we all got up at 2:30 this afternoon to continue our day.

Peter took Callie and me to Calvin College, his alma mater, to see the campus and say hi to a professor or two, we went shopping, had dinner, and settled in for a relaxing evening which daddy fully deserves. Tomorrow is lunch with Adam Glon (Pete's old roommate) and Ted's wedding (Pete's other old roommate) plus a drive out to see Great Grandma Giessel to conclude the day. Pictures and updates, as always, will be forthcoming!

So, I come here to visit, and AAK! Someone flowered the site. I blame Taryl.

Anyway, Callie is starting to talk a lot more, and by talk, I don't mean English, I mean she speaks in Callie, which is currently indecipherable to anyone but Callie. Its cute though. We really need to get a camcorder (and a house, but thats another story). Anyway, its really cute and she is working very hard on developing language skills.

Pictures have once again been updated, as Callie is finishing her second month of life. There's some particularly good ones of her smiling that should please grandparents and other sundry visitors.

Today mommy got a new(ish) car to tide her over for a year or so and for the first time Callie and mommy went out alone. Let me say it was a frazzling experience. I don't think my brain is so used to multitasking trips like that ("Do I have the diaper bag, is the car locked, where is her pacifier, oh no she's giving me the hungry-face!"). While mommy floundered a bit Callie took it like a champ. We were out for around five hours and she fussed maybe a total of three minutes, two of which were in the car. These errands included Toys 'r Us to buy a new (wonderful, lightweight, and cheap) stroller, Costco (which is a zoo at any given time) and THE DMV!!!! The last stop was arguably the most taxing - a hundred people mulling around loudly, long waits, and annoying automated voices. And yet, with some carefully executed stroller-rolling Callie barely stirred. And she was cooed over by a good three dozen people, from scary homeless men to other moms. Apparently we have a beautiful, quiet baby (I could have told them that!)

She was great, and didn't even ask to be fed while we were out (due to some judicious timing on my part, I think!) Overall Callie is a very portable baby. We can camp with her, take her across international borders, househunt all day, and go to the absolute mess that is any DMV. She sometimes fusses a little later on because of overstimulation but overall she's a piece of cake.

Now, the only thing this trip out really got be thinking was "How in the heck can I manage outings with MULTIPLE children??? ONE who stayed PUT was tough enough!"

Siblings, it seems, may take a little more organizational skills than I currently have. But today Callie met another baby who was nearly her age (a few days difference) and she was all smiles and coos. Way to tug mommy's heartstrings! Makes me want to give her a playmate just to see that goofy toothless smile again. Who knows what will happen come Christmas time!

We went camping this last weekend, and Callie did quite well. New pictures of it are posted in the pictures section.

We made the first part of the big move with only a few hiccups along the road. Callie slept most of the trip, though she got a little lonely in the back seat, and 2 days of driving later we made it to Anchorage.

Sadly, between the long move and the busy days of house hunting, trailer unloading, and general busyness around town Callie's schedule has gotten all thrown off, as we feared it might. She's now only sleeping in two to three hour stretches at night and fusses nearly all morning long, for reasons we can't quite pin down. She's a champ in the car and has been very patient as we pack her and unload her every half hour when on the road, but she's definitely making us pay for it in terms of sleep hours. Not helping the situation is the daylight hours of Anchorage this time of year. It never goes completely dark and at around midnight the sun is JUST setting enough that it seems like evening. It is nice to have so much light when one wants to DO things, but not the best for getting the biological clock set for bedtimes.

Peter began his new job at Reid-Middleton and within a day they sent him all the way out to Bethel to check out the rust on a structure out there. Coincidently that was also the day the inspection for the house we're looking at was set for, and miraculously he made it him several hours early on an earlier flight and got to go to the inspection.

The house our offer was accepted on is quite a nice property on the outskirts of the municipality of Anchorage, in an area called Eagle River. It's around 1700 sq. feet, 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, with .25 acres of land to it. Not bad for under $300,000! It's in great shape and the inspection, which was extremely thorough (you know it's good when two civil/structural engineers are impressed with the guy), yielded no red flags of any sort. There's little fixes here and there, like servicing the furnace and caulking better around the windows, replacing some flooring and such... but nothing we won't be able to handle. All in all this is looking like our place! Now if only the house in Juneau would close...

I apologize for the lack of pictures from the move and of Callie in the past few weeks but things have been crazy and extremely stressful. We will do our best and if all else fails you'll get to see pictures of her helping us touch up the new house. And HOPEFULLY she'll remember that she does indeed know how to sleep through the night!

New pictures updated today.

Callie also had her checkup today. She's up to 21 inches long (53 cm) and 10 pounds 4 ounces (4649 grams).

So she's continuing to grow. Not sleep (at least not last night), but she's growing.

Callie weighed in this week at nine pounds fourteen ounces, and is looking very healthy and right on track. She has started babbling a lot more and crying less (with the exception of a long fussy period before bedtime). She's sleeping through the night, most nights, from around 11pm to 5am. Needless to say we're rather excited about that development.

And Callie can kiss this place goodbye because we sold! It's almost time for her first big trip and I think she'll do great.

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Mommy feels like her c-section never even happened, it is healing extremely well, and the entire family is looking forward to the long summer ahead.

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Today the DOT Bridge section threw Callie another baby shower (basically an excuse for a party) and gave her some lovely toys and clothes. A special thank you to Pooh Bear and Wilma for the beautiful handmade quilt that we received. It is the PERFECT color scheme and matches what I wanted to do for Callie's nursery almost exactly. She is one lucky little girl, and we're lucky to have her.

Thanks DOT! It was a very nice afternoon and we appreciate all your thoughts and support.