She finally did it!

After weeks of trying, Audrey finally rolled over today. And now she can't stop rolling over. She is pretty good already at going from her back to her tummy. She's still not so good at going from her tummy to her back. So this is what happens: you put her on the floor (or in her crib, where she was the first time she rolled over). She squirms and grunts a little and rolls onto her tummy. She looks around for a bit, but then gets mad and wants to go back to her back. But she isn't quite sure how to do that. After much crying/screaming, she will either roll over to her back on her own or one of us will help her roll over. But then as soon as she is on her back, she wants to roll to her tummy again. Then she gets mad again. And so it went all afternoon and evening today.

Here she is on her side, working her way over (and there's that icky bald spot I was talking about in my last post!)

And here she goes...onto her tummy!

I'm normally not a big fan of the baby onesies with the clever little sayings on them...but this one was way on sale for only $1.50! And it seemed so fitting for her, as I always have a camera in her face!

Daniel took a video of one of her rolling over successes tonight, but I'm too tired to get up and get it right now...maybe tomorrow I'll post that!

Goodbye Pretty Hair!

I know it's common for babies to lose their hair. But it still makes me sad that Audrey is losing her pretty hair. She was born with such a nice head of hair...not too much, not too thin, it was just right. Now Audrey's hair is getting thinner by the day...she has a bigger receding hair line than most middle-aged men at this point, along with bald patches all around, and an ever growing bald spot in the back. I know she won't be bald/thinning forever and soon new hair will be coming in. I was just hoping she would be one of those babies that didn't lose her hair and got to keep her pretty birth hair!

Notice her hair in this picture when she was only 6 days old.

Compare that to this picture from 2 weeks ago...look how much it has thinned out! And you can't even see the bald spot in the back.
And here's one I took today. She is wearing my new favorite outfit today. For more pictures of this outfit, go here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=210863&id=521110244&l=522f5 (today's pictures are at the end of this album)

A few new pictures

This week Audrey got her first ear infection. I think the worst of it is over, but we spent a period of time with a very unhappy little baby. Not fun for any of us! Fortunately, we were able to get into the doctor and figure out it was an ear infection pretty quickly. Knowing why she was screaming and upset makes it a lot easier to deal with.

We also got a new toy for Audrey this weekend. She's been more and more interested in sitting and standing up and looking around, so we thought she was ready to graduate to a jumper. She is still a little small for it. But with some blankets to support her and a book underneath her feet, she seems to enjoy it. I think it will get more and more fun as she starts to figure out how to bounce and how to play with all the toys.

On Sunday, Audrey was looking so super cute. She had an cute little outfit on and she was giving everyone at church lots of smiles. Well, by the time I got around to taking pictures of her, she was ready for a nap and done with the smiles. But she's still cute...even when she's tired!

My newest money earning scheme...

So I've started reading all of these stay at home mom blogs about ways to earn a little spending money while being at home. I'm always a fan of this kind of stuff. I've made about $200 through Ebates (www.ebates.com, use emilyshelton@hotmail.com as your referal if you want to try it for yourself!) in the past 1 1/2 years. It's not a ton of money, but it's fun to be able to have some extra cash to spend.

The newest thing I am trying is www.swagbucks.com You will see a link for it to the right that says "Be the Next Winner" Swagbucks is a search engine powered by Google and Ask.com. Basically you earn points for searching the internet. Once you've accumulated enough points you can trade the points in for prizes or for gift cards (my favorite!). It's so easy. All you do is use Swagbucks for your search engine (you can download a toolbar, so it's always at the top of your browser), and you randomly get points as you search for things. I am the queen of internet research, and probably perform over 25 internet searches daily...how exciting that I can now get free stuff for doing something that I already do anyway! If you want to try it out, click on the logo to the right and you can get started earning your own free stuff!

So cute!

I took these pictures of Audrey yesterday and she just looked especially cute to me. So I had to post them for everyone else to see!

New Videos

Audrey has figured out how to do a lot of things in the past week or so.


First, she's trying to roll over again. She did this a few weeks ago, then stopped. But she seems a little more determined this time. You can hear her grunting as she works hard to get over in this video. This is what she does in the middle of the night in the crib that wakes us all up.

She has been chewing on her fists (trying to eat her hands, as I call it) for a while now. This week she has also started being more verbal...which basically means she is yelling out more often. Sometimes I think these become angry yells, but mostly I think this is just the way she is talking right now. And usually when she's playing, she tries to combine all 3 of these new skills: rolling over, eating her hands and yelling, all at the same time.

The thing I am most excited about is her improved tummy time. She's never done very well at lifting her head or being happy while on her tummy. If you prop a pillow under her, she would do a little better, but normally she just plants her face in the ground and fusses. Well, if you help her to roll over and get her on her tummy, now she will hold her head up and be content for a while. (Maggie was feeling left out, so she also makes a brief appearance in this video).

15 weeks

Audrey is 15 weeks old today. It has not been a good day. I am tired and grumpy and have a terrible headache. Audrey has been fussy and off schedule. And Daniel is still sick. We found out he has strep throat...which is good because he can take an antibiotic and get better now, but also bad because he's still not better!

Taking, and then looking at, pictures of Audrey always makes me feel better. So I wanted to post a few that I took today...just to remind myself of how precious she is and what a joy she is, even on days like today when I feel like I am going crazy and she won't stop crying.

She wore these cute new jeans for the first time today. She looks like such a big girl in them!
She likes to reach out and grab things now...here she's reaching for the camera. And that's actually a happy face, though it looks like she could be crying.

I love, love, love her long eyelashes!

This picture was my photo for my daily photo blog. It is me and Audrey begging Daddy to get well soon so he can help take care of us!

Update

No pictures today, just a quick update. I haven't taken hardly any pictures of Audrey this week! That must be a first.

Daniel has been sick the past couple of days, so Audrey and I have been quarantined upstairs to stay away from his germs. It's only been a couple of days, but I have an even greater admiration for single parents who raise babies all by themselves. It's tiring to do it 24-7 with no one else to help! Fortunately, Audrey and I were able to get out to go to church last night, then over to a friends to watch Lost. And this morning we had a playdate with my friends Lindsey and Amy and their boys (Audrey's future boyfriends?) Simon, Elliot and Cael. It was nice to get out of the house and interact with others for a bit.

So, hopefully Daniel will be better soon and we can get back to tag teaming this whole parenting thing. I am definitely learning how much I take for granted all of his help with Audrey!

A Walk in the Park

This afternoon we took Audrey on her first walk. We went to Washington Park, a nice park near our house that we really should visit more often. I think everyone else in town also decided to take advantage of this 65 degree February afternoon and take their dogs/kids/etc out for a walk/run through the park. It's been a while since we've been outside for more than a minute or two at a time, so it was very exciting to get out today! Actually, the last time we went for a walk in Washington Park was in October, about a week before Audrey was born. I was trying to walk a lot, in hopes of inducing labor!

Here she is just chilling out in the stroller at the beginning of our walk.

We stopped to take a picture in front of the pond.

Audrey fell asleep about halfway through our walk.
I had my camera with me, so I was playing around, trying to get a good photo for my A Photo a Day blog. These pictures didn't make it onto my other blog, so I thought I would put them up here--just a few of the sights we saw in the park.

Even though the temperatures were in the 60s, the water in the ponds was still mostly frozen. I felt bad for these birds (ducks/geese?? I don't know what they are) who were sitting on and wading through the icy/slushy water.



This tree was really 2 trees that looked like they had started to grow together.

A gazebo with the Christmas decorations still up!!

That's about all from our outing to the park! Hopefully the weather will warm up (and stay warm) soon, so we can have more fun days like today!

Garage Sale Find

Last summer, we first found out that we were having a girl in June, right in the middle of garage sale season. So I was on the lookout for cute little girl outfits for the rest of the summer. I didn't buy a lot, as I knew we would be given many gifts at various showers. But I couldn't resist buying a few things. One of my best steals of the summer was this little sweater/hat/socks set. It was from The Children's Place, in good condition and only 50 cents for all 3 pieces. Yesterday was the first day that Audrey wore set, so naturally I had to take some pictures!!

It's crazy, because I vividly remember buying this outfit and trying to imagine what it would be like to have a little baby girl to wear it. Now she's here, wearing the outfit, and looking even more adorable than I could have imagined!

Baby Einstein

Audrey watched her first Baby Einstein movie today (Baby Beethoven). Now I want you to know that I am not going to be the kind of mom that sticks her kids in front of the TV all day (as it looks like from this picture). But I wanted to see if she would like it or not. She's always interested in the TV if it is on...and it seems better for her to watch this than all the junk we watch! Well, she loved it. She sat in her chair and quietly watched the whole 30 minutes...I was really surprised that it could keep her attention for that long!