School Pictures

Adelaida had her fall school pictures taken last month. Two things strike me about her in these pictures: she isn't smiling (I think she was too confused by the loud, weird noises the photographer was taking to smile) and her eyes look extremely brown.

A Schedule for Adelaida

Adelaida sleeping in her bouncy chair, one week old

After Adelaida was born, we made it a point to continue doing things we had done before she arrived: things like hiking, going out for dinner occasionally, shopping, and working around the house. We certainly weren't going to leave her behind for any of these events, so got into the habit of taking her with us, wherever we went. She has always been a happy, content baby and was able to sleep anywhere (in the hiking backpack, in the car, in our arms), so this worked out well for all of us.

one-month-old Adelaida sleeps on her Grandpa Steve's chest	sleeping on her Daddy's chest at eight months old

eleven months old, asleep in her crib, legs through the crib slats, with one sock on the floor!

In addition to sleeping well during the day, no matter where she was, Adelaida has also been very good about sleeping in her crib at night. She's been sleeping through the night (most nights) since she was about six weeks old. She'd wake up once during the night about two or three nights a week, want to be fed, then go right back to sleep -- all very reasonable for such a young infant! Because she slept so well from such a young age, Dale and I have always gotten up and taken care of her during the night, never thinking about "weaning" her from the middle-of-the-night feedings.

Adelaida sleeping in her crib, eight months old

All that changed about a month ago, when I started waking Adelaida up before I went to sleep (one to two hours after she had gone to sleep) for an extra nursing session. Within a week, she was waking up every night crying, wanting to be nursed in the middle of the night -- sometimes three or four times a night! I was really struggling with getting enough sleep and considered putting her back to bed without nursing her, but it was just so much easier to nurse her than listen to her cry! And so we found ourselves in a pattern of waking up several times a night with a baby who formerly slept through the night consistently.

asleep in the car, six months old

A month or so before her nighttime sleep patterns changed, we noticed that Adelaida didn't sleep very well (or very often, or very long) unless she was in her crib. She would still sleep in the car, but often for only five or ten minutes of the thirty-minute drive in to Albuquerque, and sleeping on Dale's or my chest during a walk was becoming a rarity. Of course she still needed a lot of daytime sleep, but kept herself awake whenever there were interesting things to see, and refused to sleep when she was over-tired.

All of this added up to a cranky baby, which is not like Adelaida!

before she was mobile, Adelaida often slept in the closet when we traveled! (seven months old)

Earlier this week, we decided to make some changes, starting with a more consistent routine that included frequent naptimes in her own bed. At the same time, I stopped feeding her before I went to bed and are increasing the amount of time between nursings at night. Our new routine goes something like this:

between 5:45 and 6:30: wake up (if she's still asleep at 6:30, we will wake her up)

6:30 - 8:00: nurse, get dressed, eat "first breakfast," play, nurse

8:00 - 9:00: naptime (if she's still asleep at 9:00, wake her up)

9:00 - 12:00: eat "second breakfast," nurse, play, eat lunch, nurse

12:00 - 2:15: naptime (if she's still asleep at 2:15, wake her up)

2:15 - 4:30: nurse, eat midafternoon snack, play, nurse

4:30 - 5:30: naptime (if she's still asleep at 5:30, wake her up)

5:30 - 7:00: play, eat dinner, nurse, play

7:00 - 8:00: bath, pajamas, nurse, quiet play, nurse

8:00 bedtime

A happy, well-rested eleven-month-old baby!

We've only be sticking to this routine for a few days, but it has worked wonderfully! She has been happier during the day, goes down for her naps without any protest, and is sleeping longer stretches at night (including ten hours last night!). This is the happy Adelaida we know and love :)

Learning to crawl

Note: this post has two videos, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the video, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

This post is a little belated, as Adelaida has been crawling for about two months now (and has reached the point where she prefers cruising to crawling), but the videos were so great that I just had to share them with you. They were taken at the beginning of October, when Adelaida was just learning to make crawling motions and could even propel herself forward, although not very fast. Adelaida learned to make these crawling motions on carpet at our house and couldn't quite figure out what to do on her Uncle BJ and Auntie Rachel's hardwood floors. Adelaida loves her farm animals puzzle.





Together, the videos are two minutes long, and she had been trying to get to the puzzle for a while before I got the camera! If nothing else, she is certainly a determined little girl.

Thanksgiving

It's already a week past Thanksgiving, but I wanted to post this list of things Adelaida is thankful for.

Daddy and Momma

Snuffles Jr

Ms. Vickie and Mrs. Adrienne

mushrooms   gravity (most of the time)

Grandpa Steve and Grandma Mary Jo   combines!

bows for her hair   Murphy and Maggie   playing peek-a-boo

Mamaw   books   tomatoes

 trips to visit family, and having family visit

her friends Shreya, Connor, Anara, and Hamilton

Nonna and Poppa   her music table

all her aunts and uncles    drinking water out of a cup   Legos!

cute little dresses and her elfin-coat

GG and Papaw and Nana and all the other people who love her

puzzles and whiffle balls

naps in the car
being tickled   bathtime

alpacas   the playstructure at the zoo

her friend Liz, who always comes up with great blog post ideas :)

Fun in the Playstructure

The Albuquerque zoo has lots of great features: a big open grassy area for running around, a flock of peacocks (and peahens and peachicks) that roam the zoo loose, excellent animal enclosures that allow you to get close to the animals, and lots of cute baby animals. In my opinion, though, the very best feature of our zoo is the kids play structure in the middle of the zoo! It is a multi-story foam and canvas structure, complete with really fast slides and rope swings and zip lines. The sign outside the structure area says "anyone under four feet may use this play area," but the zoo is generally so empty (at least on weekdays and in the winter) that I've gone in to the structure with Adelaida several times. (We have an annual pass for the zoo and often meet other moms and kids at the zoo for playdates.)

We have so much fun playing there! I took a few pictures of us in the play structure and wanted to share them with you all.

This is Adelaida in an area with a woven canvas floor and large foam noodles hanging from the ceiling.


Adelaida hasn't yet learned to crawl to me when I call her (she could take some lessons from Maggie and Murphy in that!), so I had to tempt her across this section by placing leaves in front of her. She would crawl to the leaves, pick them up, and try to eat them!


She wasn't at all afraid of the foam noodles as they swung into her head. At first she tried to use them to stand up, but gave up since they aren't attached at the base and she couldn't grab onto them very well.


This was a triangular canvas hallway with a curved floor. Adelaida crawled through it without any problem, but couldn't quite figure out how to stand up in it -- she would grasp the side, try to stand, and hit her head on the side as it sloped inward. (Think about how small this enclosure is and remember that I was crawling through it all with Adelaida -- so much fun!)


This was taken on a cooler day, with Adelaida all bundled up. She was having so much fun crawling around!


Dale took Adelaida down one of the slides. I'm sure she had no idea what was happening, but Dale sure enjoyed it!


Dale coached Adelaida through an area with large noodles attached to both the floor and ceiling. She really wanted to stand up on those!


I plan to visit the zoo as much as I can with Adelaida, and it doesn't really matter to me if we see the new baby elephant or the snow leopards or get to feed the lorikeets, but we'll definitely be visiting the play structure every time we are at the zoo!

Cruising

After crawling, but before independent walking, comes a quirky stage in baby-mobility called "cruising" -- basically walking around furniture while holding on to the furniture for balance. Adelaida has been cruising for about a month, first slowly inching around the coffee table or across the sofa (with almost imperceptible movements), then transferring from one piece of furniture to another (from the coffee table to the sofa, for instance, when they were only about a foot apart).

She became adept at cruising in her crib, moving from one position along the rails to another over the course of a minute or two, as in these photos:


Soon, she was able to walk all the way around her music table (shown here with her friend Shreya) and to transfer from one piece of furniture to another with ease.


Then, one day, I was sitting in the living room with Adelaida and she pulled herself up to standing against the door (using the glass pane borders for support). She often pulled up to a standing position at these doors because I often closed the doors to separate the dogs (in the sunroom) and the baby (in the living room). She liked to look through the glass at Maggie and Murphy, and they liked to look through the glass at her.


She inched her way over to the door jamb, then just continued, pressing her hands to the wall for support.


Amazingly, she did all of this with a toy in her hand!


She was even able to round the (interior) corner walking!


I was so impressed with her new mobility that I didn't realize immediately that her goal was the electrical outlet on that section of wall -- she tried to insert her toy into the outlet sockets and to hang the ring on the outlet.

The next day, we put electrical outlet covers on all the Adelaida-accessible electrical outlets.

This all happened about three weeks ago, and today Adelaida would rather cruise than crawl. She cruises down the hallway, around the living room, from chair to chair (and knee to knee) under the kitchen table, and along the cabinets in the kitchen. She hasn't yet taken any independent steps, but can make her way across just about any room by cruising!

Eleven months old

I know I've been tardy in posting to the blog this month, and to all my loyal readers, I apologize! We've all been well and are continuing to take lots of pictures, but have been more busy than normal and I haven't made time to let you all know what is happening at the Parkes Ranch.

I have several stories (with pictures, of course!) I'm hoping to post in the next week or so, but first wanted to update you all on Adelaida's growth. Just a week ago, she turned 11 months old, which is so close to a year old that I've started telling people she's "almost one" when they ask. Soon, I'll drop the "almost" and just say she's one!

As has become the custom, here are pictures of Adelaida over the past eleven months.


Four days old:


One month old:


Three months old:


Five months old:


Seven months old:


Nine months old:


Eleven months old:


And an eleven-month-old bonus picture of Adelaida with Pink Panther. Adelaida is chewing on one puzzle piece and has another in her left hand. This picture shows her with two of her favorite activities: eating her puzzle pieces and standing at her bookcase.

A case of I-miss-my-momma-itis

I received a phone call from Adelaida's school today letting me know that she had been crying for almost an hour and nothing they could do would make her happy. They had tried feeding her, giving her a bottle, rocking her, letting her crawl, reading her a book, but still she just cried and cried. Most of you have heard me say that Adelaida is such a happy baby who rarely cries (and when she does cry, it doesn't last very long), so this was definitely unusual and probably meant that she was in some pain.


I of course left work immediately and drove to her school as fast as I could, wondering as I drove what could possibly be wrong with her (an ear infection? teething? hungry?). When I walked in, I saw Adelaida in one of her teachers' arms, crying. I walked up to her and said, "Adelaida, what's wrong?" She noticed me, broke into a huge smile, and waved to me.

She didn't shed another tear all day.

In a way, it made me feel good that all it took to make her happy was seeing me. And of course I was quite relieved that she wasn't in pain or injured or ill. She just missed her momma.

First Snow

We woke up Wednesday morning to find the world covered in a blanket of fluffy white stuff -- yes, snow! The first real snow of the season came early this year, and it stuck around for several days.

My once-flourishing garden is now covered by snow and dormant for the winter.


You can actually see the large snowflakes falling in this picture, against the cement step risers.

Our little flower

We took these two pictures of Adelaida and I couldn't resist posting them. In the first she is in her Halloween costume; in the second she is wrapped up in her towel after her bath.