Last week while the router was down, I got an award!
Not an artist was sweet enough to give me this*:





I'm now supposed to “Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times.”

So my ten are:

1. Joe
2. Not an Artist
3. My Sensitive Girl Hole
4. CraftyGrrrl
5. Oh Baby!
6. Rocketbride
7. Sock Crazy
8. Naked Knit Girl
9. Knit, Stitch, Click
10. saoilsinn

(*technically it was linked to my livejournal account)

Haven't written in a while! First we all got sick, then the router went down. (But then Joe fixed it. My hero!)
We made it through her first cold pretty well. This was something I had been fearing, but because of the breastfeeding, she only got a bit snotty. Joe and I fared a lot worse. And of course, out of the three of us, I am the one that's still feeling it.

First, her doctor's appointment. She had her 4 month checkup at the beginning of the month. She weighed in at 12lb 5oz, so she's on the same growth rate as before, and she was 26 inches long. The needles were just as traumatic this time,if not more. She wasn't hungry this time, so she didn't want to breastfeed while it was being done. Instead she was looking right at the doctor. When she got the first shot, the look of shock and betrayal on her face before she started screaming was just heartbreaking.

It'a weird how much she's changed in the last little while. Everyone has been commenting on it when they see her. She's a lot less newbornish, and really starting to show more character. A couple of days ago she was playing with Joe and she laughed for no reason that we could figure out. Joe wasn't doing anything that would cue her to laugh, she just found something funny. Then again today, we were all watching Family Guy and twice, she spontaneously laughed at something on the tv with no prompting from us. It's nice to know that she has a sense of humour. We were positive we were going to end up with a sullen child.

She's getting the hang of Peek-A-Boo. She loves it when Joe plays it with her, but when I play it with her, I notice she gets a really worried look on her face. I'm usually holding her when she plays with Joe so I don't know if she looks worried with him too, but I think she gets concerned that I won't come back.

She's also a lot more comfortable on her stomach. She can hold her head and shoulders up no problem. When we go to the library for storytime she really watches the older babies crawling around and tries to figure out what they are doing. She doesn't quite have it yet, but she's trying!

It's really neat seeing her develop. And it seems to be happening in such a huge burst. In the last month her hand eye co-ordination has really improved (she's no longer sticking things into her eye instead of her mouth), she's started noticing and interacting with her environment (the cats are starting to be scared of her!), She's babbling a LOT more, and her sleeping/nap schedule has started to become very regular.

Ok, enough of this. I'll try to be less boring next time.
I've got week 17, 18, 19 and 20 pictures. I forgot to take the week 17 one on the blanket so instead, it's her first time in her excersaucer.

Yesterday she turned over from her back to her belly 3 times! Unfortuntely Joe was the only witness as I was napping. Hopefully I'll get to see her do it today.

Today is a big day here for two reasons. It's Zoë's 4 month birthday and it's also the anniversary of the day I realized I was pregnant.

I remember it well. It had been an interesting December for us last year. Joe was having a bad month and was feeling pretty down and I had spent the entire month either feeling like I was coming down with a cold or getting drunk at various holiday get togethers. It wasn't until the night of the first that I realized I hadn't gotten my period yet and it had been due about 5 days earlier. So I dug out the second pregnancy test of a two pack I had bought earlier in the year thinking: I'll do the test first thing in the morning. That should trigger my period like it always does.
So in the middle of getting ready to go back to work the next day, I dutifully peed on the stick. The test result showed up pretty quickly but I waited the full 5 minutes or so to make sure it didn't change. Then, not quite believing what was happening, I went into the bedroom and woke up Joe. I shoved the test at him and asked him what it meant. he very groggily said 'How should I know? Where's the box?' I gave it to him, he read the instructions and said 'It means you're pregnant.' He later told me that he was pretty pissed off at the time to be woken up after only a couple of hours of sleep - he generally sleeps from 4 or 5am to about noon- to tell me something that was self evident. But he was too out of it to realize exactly what it was he was telling me.
I spent the rest of the day in a bit of a daze. Poor Joe though, once he realized what was going on he couldn't get back to sleep and apparently kept having anxiety attacks because he didn't know how to register the child for kindergarten.

ok, enough of that nostalgia stuff.
Zoë had a great Christmas and got her sleeping schedule screwed up for a week. She got lots of clothes and a couple of small toys. Of course she had no clue what was going on and I enjoyed that because I know next year she will be insane!

pictures this time - week 16 and opening presents!