A bit of a hiatus (and SAHD Tip Twelve)

Wow, that weekend sort of got away from me.  Sorry for the silence over the last few days.  My wife's school was closed Friday and Monday, and all of my shifts were cancelled for the weekend, so we enjoyed a mini-vacation.  Actually, outside of spending four hours clearing the driveway on Saturday morning, I didn't leave the house.  Which you think would've meant plenty of time to update this thing, but for some reason it kept slipping my mind.

I'm very thankful for time I get to spend with El and Mom together.  It's usually limited to weekend mornings and brief periods of time on weeknights.  That's what made this weekend so awesome.  On top of that, El is continuing to develop.  She's now mastered rolling both ways, and linked a few rolls together to get herself most of the way across the livingroom floor (which is worrisome).  Sitting up is her next, great challenge, but she's starting to get there:

But then again, she might need a little more work.

She'll get there, though.  And finally, a SAHD tip that was driven home (again) this weekend:

SAHD Tip Twelve - Make your peace with the fact that you're going to get baby poop on you.  It's going to happen.  Unless you walk around wearing a hazmat suit, but then you'll just have to clean your hazmat suit.  Turns out it's not nearly as bad as you might think.  That's not to say it's awesome, but it will happen and you will survive.

Rolling from tummy to back is so last month

If the title didn't give it away, El figured out how to roll from her back to her front today!  The best part was that she rolled over, turned her head to look at me, and gave me a huge, proud smile.  She knew she had just done something awesome.  While Mom was, unfortunately, at work during the big premiere, El did roll over for her two or three times after she got home.  Here's the big, strong girl still beaming from her accomplishment:

To make the day even better, Mom has a snow day tomorrow, and ye olde bookshoppe called to tell me not to come in, so we both have the day off!  The only one who loses out is Grandma B, who won't get some Friday El time this week (don't worry, though, she saw El on Wednesday).  Stay warm tomorrow!

SAHD Tip Eleven

SAHD Tip Eleven - The Diaper Genie is awesome.  I don't know how people without one take care of dirty diapers, and I don't want to know.  So part one of this tip is to seriously consider buying yourself one.  The way it's designed, the dirty diapers are sealed off so it doesn't stink up the room.  The major drawback is that the refills are pretty expensive.  So here's the second part of the tip (which was given to me by Uncle S and Aunt C) - only put the stinky diapers in the genie.  Toss the wet ones into the regular garbage, 'cause they don't smell that bad.  And you're going to be changing more wet diapers than soiled, so that's a large amount you'll be cutting out.

On an unrelated note, the Litter Genie is likewise awesome.  I'm actually cleaning the litter about once a day instead of once a week.  Although I'm pretty sure the agreement when my wife and I got our cat was that I wouldn't do the litter.  How the heck did she trick me into it?  Feminine wiles. . .

Five months

So I should have blogged about this yesterday, but little El is five months!  We celebrated in our new, traditional fashion: cupcakes from a local shop (she, of course, can't partake yet) and a monthly photo shoot with Mom.  I think they came out great!

And yes, that is a wookie, made by our friend Beth.  But there's a bow in its hair, so you know it's a girl wookie.  The funny thing here is if you compare the size difference between El and the wookie to just four months ago:

She was also a lot less cooperative back then.  It's already so interesting to look at those first pictures we took of her and to see how different she is.  I also love getting to watch her personality and sense of humor develop.  It's certainly a crazy ride.

I'm a lucky guy

I could make that statement for many reasons.  My wife, my family, my friends.  But as I was lying on the floor next to El, and she was smiling and generally being cute, I just thought about how lucky I am.  I have an opportunity that most dads I know don't.  While it does stink to say hi and bye to my wife in the same breath as she gets home and I leave for work or class, I get to spend all day with my kickass daughter.  Today I managed to get some good smiles too, in a move inspired by Aunt C and Cousin Em:

Come to our house and admire our cute baby

Having friends over is definitely a weirder concept when you have a baby.  Before, you can just invite people over whenever.  As long as you don't have plans and they don't have plans, there're no worries.  But once you have a kid, the dynamic sort of changes.  While you can guarantee that your schedule is open, you can never really predict what your kid's mood is going to be, if they're going to nap that day, or if they're going to spit up all over you right after you put on your nice clothes.  Well, my wife and I had some of our closest friends over today, and El was an adorable hostess.  She was staring at them the entire time, smiling, playing. . .it was a good day all around.  So now when we invite people over, hopefully we can invite them to come to our house and admire our cute baby.

The socks are comin' off

As I've mentioned, one of El's latest fascinations is with her own feet.  If she's on her back, they come up near her face.  If she's sitting in our laps, she tries to flop forward and bring her face down to them.  I've gone into the nursery to get her up from a nap, and the toes of her socks have been wet.  But today she decided to take it up a notch:

There's only one problem with her getting those socks off - her feet are cold enough with them on (which is clearly something she inherited from Mom).  Of course, she doesn't seem to mind her yeti feet, so I guess it's not a big deal.