7 Months!

Athena is 7 months old, and cuter than ever.  Here are some new tricks...

She likes to wave her arms a lot -- here she is shake shake shaking a rattle:


And here she is waving both arms together and clap clap clapping!  The fun thing is that she seems to be doing this "on demand," one of the first signs that some language development is right around the corner.


These new sounds she's making will also come in handy eventually.


Athena also got to start swimming lessons recently.  Like her big sister, she LOVES the water, happily floating (she's quite buoyant), kicking, and splashing her way through class.


She even does "happy baby" in the water!




Caleb got to take her to her first class -- usually, he's busy with soccer on Saturdays so I'll take both girls on my own.  Mazie has her lesson right after Athena's, so she gets to sit on the side during Athena's class and watch us.  She's also been practicing her photography/videography skills... here's one she took last week:


Meanwhile, her dancing skills are strong as ever!

A gift that will keep on giving...

In addition to just generally being great people, Uncle Tyler and Aunt Sara are exceptionally generous, creative, and talented gift-givers.  Between Sara's art (the animal quilts, the Restaurant's ABCs book) and Ty's cooking, we're pretty spoiled. Last year for Christmas we got a cute card that said, "Christmas is Served!" along with a promise to come down and cook us a 5 course meal (with wine pairings) in our own home.  When the event actually happened, it turned into a 7+ course meal and was one of the most amazing culinary experiences I've ever had... even being pregnant and not able to fully partake of the wine pairings!  This year, much to our delight, we got a "Christmas is Served... again!" card.  Upping the ante from last year, this year the card promised a several-course dinner with BEER pairings, courtesy of the Dickinhans Brewing Co. -- an as-yet-unformed joint venture between Caleb Dickinson and Tyler Hansen.  Back before we got married -- maybe before we were even engaged -- my dad had suggested "Dickinhans" as a possible hybrid last name for us.  We passed, but Ty and Sara resurrected the name.  Caleb even got a fancy beer mug with the Dickinhans Brewing Co. logo as another Christmas present!

A few weeks ago, Tyler came down from Vail for DBC's inaugural brewing (a molasses porter that has not yet been named... suggestions?).  The beer went through its primary and secondary fermentations, and then this Sunday it was ready to be bottled.  Ty couldn't be here since he had to work. (Although he had just come down to give us another generous cooking gift... donating his time and skill to help prepare 7 or so different dishes for the 150 or so people who attended Mazie's preschool's annual fundraiser on Saturday night.  Such a great brother.)  So Caleb took on the bottling himself.  Well, not totally by himself -- Mazie volunteered to help.  She was apparently a great helper, and when they were done she came racing upstairs to tell me that Caleb had let her taste the beer, "and I liked it!!"  She was very excited, adding, "When I'm like 4 or 5 I can have a whole cup!"  I suggested that 4 or 5 might still be a little young, and that she might need to wait a little longer.  "Like when I'm in college?"  I told her that yes, when she's in college she can have a whole cup of beer.

The next morning, I was getting breakfast ready and Mazie asked if she could watch TV.  This isn't something we let her do a lot... a Dora here, part of the "Cats" musical there... but the request is becoming more and more common, making me think we need to cut back even more.  So I told her, "Honey, watching TV isn't something we do all the time, just every now and then."  To which she replied, "Just like drinking beer for me."

Later, she announced that she was "going to go check on my beer," and marched into the laundry room where the bottles are being stored.

So thanks a lot, Ty and Sara.  The Dickinhans Brewing Company... brewing tomorrow's beer and beer connoisseurs since 2012.

She's a brick house

Athena is a very calm child. She makes our lives very easy. Sometimes, in the car, she cries a bit. All we have to do is find a station that is really rockin it and we're fine. If we find easy going music, she's unhappy. But, if we can find something with a beat and some action, she's quiet as a mouse.

Tonight, she was crying in her crib (which is in the South wing of the Old Louisville Hospital on the second floor) and I went to her. Nothing was working. I tried to pat her belly, give her a pacifier, sshhh her and telepathically convince her that she wanted to fall asleep.

Screaming.

I decided to sing to her...which never really works for me...and, like usual, it didn't work. Then, an idea hit me.

"She's a brick----house. She's the one, the only one, who's built like an amazon" I was snapping and moving and singing it like it should be sung. She immediately stopped crying and fell asleep within a couple of minutes.

Unreal.

Maine

At the beginning of February we took a family trip to Maine for the Super Bowl.  This tradition has its roots way back in 2004 -- that year, our new friends Andrew Lupien and Elizabeth Dyer hosted a Super Bowl / Elizabeth's birthday party at their apartment in Durham, NC, where Caleb and I had just moved in the fall of 2003.  Caleb taught math with Andrew and Elizabeth, and with Eric Collins and Allison Bartley, who were also in attendance at the 2004 party.  Later that year, all 6 of us (along with a few others) had our first Maine party together at the occasion of Andrew and Elizabeth's wedding on July 3.  Two weeks later, Andrew and Elizabeth joined us for our own wedding in Colorado.  A month later, back in Durham, the newlywed Lupiens took in the newlywed Dickinsons when our brand new house burned down a week after we moved in.  We stayed with them for a week or so before moving into another apartment in the same complex, where we stayed for a few months while our house was fixed.  Over the next few years, we all spent tons of time together in Durham... the Lupiens hosted a Super Bowl party each year, we rotated hosting poker nights, and we even got to take another trip to New England together in July of 2006, when Eric and Allison got married in Boston.

In the fall of 2006, Andrew and Elizabeth moved to Portland, Maine, Andrew's home town.  We all missed them a lot, and when the 2007 Super Bowl rolled around we figured we should keep the streak alive and watch the game at their house.  So we put together an elaborate surprise... Caleb told Elizabeth that he was coming to surprise Andrew for the Super Bowl, and Allison and Eric told Andrew they were coming to surprise Elizabeth for her Feb 6 birthday... and then I decided I'd come along, too.  So began the tradition of traveling to Maine each February, which we repeated in 2008 (when I was pregnant with Mazie), 2009 (when Mazie was 9 mos old, we had moved from Durham to Madison, and the Collinses had moved to Boston), and 2010 (when Mazie was 22 months old).  Each year was an adventure... in 2007 we missed our connection to Portland on Friday night and ended up spending the night at Allison's mother's house in Boston and then driving up on Saturday -- surprise!  In 2008, we drove all the way to the airport early on Saturday morning and then I realized I had forgotten my wallet -- I had to race home and call Andrew Ekblad, who dragged himself out of bed, put on a button-up shirt, and drove me back to the airport in time to catch my flight.  In 2009, Caleb was in bed most of the trip with a stomachache.  In 2010, I was upstairs putting Mazie to bed and came down to find Andrew Ekblad and Noella hanging out and playing games with the rest of the crew -- surprise again!!

Last year, with our move back to Colorado and other complications, we didn't make the trip, so when we decided to take the trip this year we knew it would be an exciting one.  Sure enough, on Wed the 1st, 2 days before we were supposed to leave, Athena woke us up vomiting all over us in bed from about 4-6 am... then slept a bunch and was fine. Mazie went to school in the morning and was fine until about 2 pm, when she and Caleb went to the library. As they got there, she started complaining that her belly hurt, so Caleb turned around and walked home as quickly as he could with MJ on his shoulders. She made it all the way to our front porch, then promptly threw up onto the porch from her perch up there... Caleb mostly managed to dodge it as it came down. We put her in bed with a bowl and she proceeded to get sick every 10-20 minutes from about 3 pm to midnight... Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Caleb and I were grappling with the fact that we were supposed to fly to Maine on Friday morning, and on Wed morning, there was a winter storm watch for Thursday night through Saturday in Denver.  So I spent a bunch of time on Wed on the phone with the airlines trying to see if we could move our flights up to Thursday to try and get out ahead of the storm... also hoping that the kids would have recovered from their stomach bug by then.  By late Wed night we hadn't been able to switch our flights, but had gotten someone to tell us we would most likely be able to on Thurs morning... so Caleb and I stayed up late packing and getting ready. At 7 am on Thurs, we got up and called the airlines again and managed to get on a 12 pm flight. The kids slept well all night and got up feeling well... but then Caleb started feeling lousy. We got packed up, took the bus to the airport, and caught our flights (Den to Dulles, Dulles to Portland). The kids did great, and Caleb made it through uneventfully -- he felt terrible the whole way, but no "spewing." We made it to Andrew and Elizabeth's at about 9 pm and went to bed fairly early, and then we all had a great day together on Friday -- everyone was healthy!  Mazie had fun playing with Sarah Beth, who was born a few months after our last Super Bowl trip in 2010 -- this was our first time meeting her!

Friday evening, Eric, Allison, and Brady Collins (also a May 2010 baby) drove up from Boston and we all hung out and had pizza together, and then went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got sick, and then I spent most of the day on Saturday in bed recovering. Everyone else did fine on Saturday and all day Sunday... but then right around Super Bowl time, Sarah Beth and Brady got sick... and then during the night on Sunday all 5 of the remaining adults (everyone but me) took turns visiting the Lupiens 2 bathrooms (fortunately, they moved into a new house since our last visit -- things would have been REALLY bad if they had still been in their very sweet, cozy 1 bathroom house!).  Even Caleb, who we thought had already gotten it, got a second round!  Monday was Elizabeth's birthday.  I got up and went to the grocery store to stock up on ginger ale, yogurt, and pedialyte -- as well as some "Happy Birthday" and "Get Well Soon" balloons for Elizabeth -- and then came back to the house, packed up, and went to the airport to catch our flights home! 

Here are some pictures from this year's trip... see, we did manage to have some fun between bouts of sickness!!

The girls on Athena's first plane ride:


The boys playing football at the beach park:


An 8-mos pregnant Elizabeth scooping up a wet Sarah Beth, who decided a 30 degree February day was perfect for a little wading in the ocean:


Sarah Beth, Mazie, and Brady in the tub:


Mazie and Allison have matching PJs!


All the kids geared up for the big game:

Athena's 6 Month Stats

Weight: 16 lbs 15 oz (68th percentile -- up from 63rd at 4 mos)
Length: 26.75 in (82nd percentile -- down from 90th at 4 mos)
Head circumference: 16.7 in (50th percentile -- up from 11th at 4 mos!!)

One Half Year with the Goddess

Athena Lee turned six months old this week. Can half a year really have passed since she was born? Can she really have been with us for ONLY half a year? How is it that I feel like she just got here and has always been here?

Behold her in her full glory:



One thing is sure: our little goddess is universally worshipped in this household. As hard as it was to believe before she was born, the words of the multiple-time parents that I heard while I was pregnant have proved true: it really is possible to adore another human with the same wonder and intensity as I love my firstborn. Perhaps more amazing is the way Mazie has embraced her little sister without any hesitation or reservations. For our little performer and the star of our show for the past three years to share the spotlight so eagerly has been quite impressive... "Big Sister" seems to be the role she was born to play.

Meanwhile, Athena's repertoire continues to expand... she sits up very steadily, seems to have good hand-eye coordination for grabbing toys and playing with them, and can move around a bit on her belly. She's also trying out lots of new foods... see footage below for one unusual recent addition to her diet.


In many ways, Athena is very similar to Mazie at this age... we've lucked out with another incredibly sweet and good-natured, smiley, calm, and social baby. Sleeping, which was never her sister's strong suit, is a bit of a mixed bag for Thenes, too. We've been trying to get her on a more consistent napping schedule but her sleep still varies a lot from day to day, and she's nowhere close to sleeping through the night, still getting up every 2-3 hours at night. Despite all this, I'd actually say that she's a (comparatively) good sleeper, and that we're all getting pretty good sleep! For one thing, she GOES to sleep well... whereas Mazie always need to be nursed down by me, or worn down in the Ergo, or driven down in the car, Athena actually lets me or Caleb or Courtney or my mom PUT her down in her crib. When she's at the right stage of sleepiness, she'll suck on a pacifier and put herself to sleep. So at night she and Mazie both go to bed in the room they're sharing, and Athena sleeps for a few hours there, which gives Caleb and I some time to relax together. If she wakes up before we've gone to bed, it's usually pretty easy to put her back to sleep in her crib. If she wakes up after we've gone to bed, we bring her into bed with us and she spends the rest of the night there with us, waking up to nurse and going right back to sleep. As a second time Mom, I hardly wake up when I have to feed her, and she eats quickly without fussing, so I end up feeling like we're all well rested. Mazie still comes into our bed most nights, too, so we wake up in a happy family bed. So it's working okay for us for now!

Big Girl Haircut

Mazie's had her bangs trimmed a bunch, and has had 2 trims off the back of her hair. Recently, she started saying that she wanted her hair "short like Mom's," so we finally went for it.

Before:



During:



After: