Happy Birthday, Anna!

Anna is 4 months old today! Here's the birthday girl on her day:


And some other photos from the week:

Matt thinks this one looks just like Uncle Pete's baby pictures

a visit from Corinne :)

Do I dare write this...

Okay so maybe I am superstitious because I am totally worried that by writing this down I will jinx it, but I feel an obligation to update our readers on some exciting news...

We've ditched the swattle & let Anna sleep on her tummy the past 2 nights. On Saturday night she slept from 9:30 to 4:30, got up to eat, then slept from 5 to 8! Last night she slept from 9:15 to 5:30!! Now that's what I call "sleeping through the night." The swattles, by the way, both pink and yellow, are neatly packed in a tupperware tub in our closet - yes!

Okay, we just can't let Anna see this post :)

I don't like that schedule, Mom

So Anna read my blog post last night and decided that she wasn't ready for a schedule and she was going to do things a little different. So last night after going through our bedtime routine around 9:00 - 2 books, 1 song, and a feeding - Anna fell asleep. However, she woke up with a wide-eyed look as I tried to move her to the swattle. (This has been happening a lot lately. Hence the reason I would like to try to get rid of the swattle.) So we read more books & sung more songs & ultimately Anna fell asleep at 10 - a little later than usual, but not that bad. Now because she was fighting the swattle again, I just left both arms out - hoping we could accelerate through mom's "get rid of the swattle plan."

Unfortunately, Anna then got up for the first time at midnight. I then fell asleep feeding her. I hate when this happens - you'll see why in a second. I woke up at 2:30, not knowing I had even fallen asleep, moved her back to bed (this time one arm swattled - acceleration plan was obviously not working) and went back to my room. I can't remember if I fell back to sleep or not, but Anna then got up at 3:00 (hence why I hate it when I fall alseep feeding her - it ultimately never leads to more sleep for me). She ate at 3:00 and when I moved her to the swattle, woke up again - wide-eyed. Ugh! I always tell myself that if she wakes up wide-eyed when I'm trying to put her down for a nap or trying to put her to bed for the night, she's not ready to go to sleep. But what the heck am I supposed to think at 3:00 am? At that point if she's not ready for bed, I'm never really sure what to do. I rocked her for a while. Then I just decided to put her in her crib and go rest in my own bed until she was really upset. I went back to my room - she let out 3 little fusses and all of a sudden - quite...and quite...and quiet. She fell back to sleep! Perfect, except that I put her down on her tummy. Now, while Matt & I have been letting her nap on her tummy recently (I know this is very frowned upon for safety reasons), we've never let her sleep on her tummy at night. So after listening to her breath on the monitor for a while and checking on her a few times, I fell sleep myself until...7:30 am!! What??? She ended up sleeping until 8:15, which is probably the longest single stretch she has slept in a while.

So my little story ends well. Except that Matt & I are now in a conumdrum about whether we should just move to the super accelerated swattle plan - in other words, no more swattle and just let her sleep on her tummy from now on. Oh, the choices.

I love my morning nap!

Except for the afternoon, it does seem that Anna has fallen into a little bit of a sleeping schedule. Of course, I'm sure as soon as I make note of it and record it here, it will change. But I'm not superstitious (I don't really believe that Anna sleeps better in her yellow swattle compared to her pink swattle. These two swattles are exactly the same except for color, but I swear that she tends to get up once a night if she is wearing the yellow swattle and twice a night if she is wearing the pink swattle. I only recently came up with this theory when I noticed that she has spells of sleeping well - a series of yellow swattle days and spells of sleeping not so well - a series of pink swattle days. We'll see. I just switched to the yellow swattle permanently* so this ridiculous theory can be proven wrong.) So since I'm not superstitious, I'll give it a go at documenting Anna's sleeping schedule here:

In the past week, Anna has gotten up at about 6:15 am everyday. The best explanation for this may be that Matt gets up at 5:50 am. Given that she may be sleeping pretty lightly at this point, these 25 minutes may just be the result of the time it takes for her to hear him, her to wake up, and her to wake me up. Or maybe she just has a personal internal clock that is now set for 6:15?!?!

At 6:15 she usually eats and only stays up until 8-8:30ish. At this point she begins her superstar morning nap until 11:30. I'm not sure if this is really a nap or just a continuation of her night sleep. I'm guessing at some point she will sleep a little later and this nap will get a little shorter, but maybe not! (Of course at some point this nap won't even exist. I hoping that by the time this nap does not exist she is sleeping through the night such that I'm not needing this time to go back to bed!)

From 11:30 am until bedtime (somewhere between 8:30 and 9:45 pm), I can't really say there is any kind of schedule, except for the fact that Anna will probably nap for about 2 - 3 more hours. This could be one long nap (probably 1:30-4:30 pm), two naps, or even three short naps! The 3 short naps day probably is going to be the most fussy & probably is mom's least favorite - especially when the end of the first short nap leaves mom wondering if there will be no more naps and she is up until 8:30!! (which has happened)

During the night Anna either gets up once or twice. Either way she is usually not up that long - just to eat & go back to sleep.

The one deviation from this schedule this week was Wed. night. Anna was acting particularly tired in the evening so we put her to bed at 8:00. Ah-ha - we knew that her bed time would keep getting earlier and earlier. But...I guess she thought that was a nap because she got up at 9:15 and stayed up until 11:30 - silly goose!

* I say permanently, but actually we just decided to try to ditch the swattle all together. The plan is to move to one are out of the swattle this week, two arms out next week, and poof - it will be gone in two weeks! We'll see :)

Check out these skills

Anna has really gotten much better with her hands in the past few weeks:

Hanging out back at home...

Holding a meeting with her friends:

Okay guys, I know some of you got to go on the trip and some of you didn't, but I assure you that anyone who didn't get to go on this trip will get to go on the next trip. We need to stop all this in house fighting and just get along. Understood?

Last night was a busy night. Anna had a bath:

I still love my tubby!

Anna, Mom, and Dad had a 45 minute walk with Anna facing out in the bjorn. She's getting so much better with her head control and she seemed to really love the walk!

Then it was time for the Giants preseason game! Now Anna LOVES the television. No matter how fussy she is, we can pretty much turn the TV on and she will stop fussing and just stare at it mezmarized. Our gut feeling is she probably should not be watching too much television, but she did get to watch a little of the Giants:

You've got no chance, Cleveland!

As Anna's head control has gotten better, she's able to really sit in her Bebepod chair by herself:

Hello, my name is Strawberry Jr., but you can call me Straws. I've been waiting to meet you. I prefer soft chews so I'll be heading back to the shelf for a while when you get your teeth.

Also new in Anna's life is enough drool that mom decided starting today a bib was now going to be a part of the regular outfit:

Last pics from North Carolina

I just moved the pictures from the end of our trip onto the computer. Here are a few I had to share:

We went out to dinner at Fishy Fishy the night before Uncle Pete and Dad left. Uncle Pete had scallops and Mom, Dad, Grandma, and Grandpa had steak. Anna had...Dad's wrist...yummy.

Checking out sunset at the Southport harbor

Uncle Pete sent Anna a cute little dress when she was born. After we got the dress he called to say, "It appears that there are some kind of underpants that I forgot to pack with the dress." Anna picked them up on the trip. The outfit is a little to big for her right now, but the underpants make a nice hat. By the way the blue object in this picture is a teething ring. Not that Anna is actually teething yet, but she does love to chew on it.

Story time with Grandma

The next Micheal Phelps


For most of our time in North Carolina Anna's swim suit was hanging on the back of our bathroom door. I just couldn't resist taking a picture. Every time I saw it hanging there it made me smile :)

Welcome Liam David O'Shea!!

Liam David O'Shea
arrived at 10:15 pm on August 14th
6 pounds, 14 ounces
19 1/2 inches long

Mom and baby are doing well!!

Uncle Matt actually got to be at the hospital when Liam was born. Matt says he's soooo cute!! Anna & I can't wait to meet you in person, Liam!!

We can't wait to hear the news...

On Monday we found out that Aunt Becky is going to be induced tomorrow! We're all sitting on the edge of our seats and waiting to welcome our new family member into the world!!

And then there were 4...

Last Wednesday Anna said good-bye to her Uncle Danny, Aunt Bridget, and Nancy who headed back to New York City. On Thursday Anna said good-by to her Grandma Jane and Aunt Diane who headed back to Binghamton. On Sunday Anna had to say good-by to her Daddy who headed back to Virginia to go to work for the week and Anna & I decided to stay the week and hang out with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa's house, which was 11 people full a week ago, seems very quiet now, but Anna's been having a great time getting extra time with Grandma and Grandpa. On Monday Anna went for an evening swim. On Tuesday we went out for ice cream and yesterday was Grandpa's 60th Birthday! Today it's pouring so we're planning on hitting the indoor pool, which Grandma and I can't believe we didn't think of before, given that Anna's not a big fan of the sun anyway. She's probably thrilled that it's finally raining so she can do what she wants!

So last night we celebrated Grandpa's birthday with a little party with his friends from the neighborhood. Anna seemed to experience something new: a little fear of strangers. About 5 minutes after the guests arrived and we were all hanging out in the family room, Anna let out a huge scream - not really a hungry scream or a tired scream, but just a loud scream like she might have been scared. After she didn't calm down I took her outside. We walked around and she calmed down. About 10 minutes after we came back inside we started getting some sweet lip-outs followed by more what seemed like "scared" crying. So I took her upstairs, fed her a little to calm her down (although she really didn't seem hungry). Then I just played with her a little while upstairs and she really seemed to be quite happy - relaxed and smiley. So we went back downstairs and she did seem to be better. After we were sitting around for a little while one of the neighbors held her and almost immediately after she left my arms she started with the little lip outs which went into crying. This is the same neighbor who just held Anna two days ago and Anna gave her lots of sweet smiles- crazy!

Maybe her crying could just have something to do with the evening in general, which tends to be Anna's most fussy time, but this crying just seemed different. I was also thinking maybe she was nervous about the house being loud, but she just spent 5 days with the house full of 11 people. According to a babycenter article separation anxiety is not supposed to start until 6 to 7 months at the earliest. But this didn't really seem like she was upset that she wasn't with me, but more scared at something new. It was just odd given that Anna will often give strangers she meets in the grocery story a big gummy smile. Who knows, but I will be curious to see if this starts to happen more regularly.

Back to the beach

Yesterday we headed back to the beach with Anna. Our plan was to stick around for a while instead of fitting the trip between naps (by the time we drive there and drive home that really only leaves us 1 1/2 hours on the beach), which doesn't leave us much time to hang out. We also decided to try to hang out with Anna on the actual beach instead of hanging out on the covered deck a little ways from the ocean. We had a great beach umbrella to keep her out of the sun, but the hardest part of this plan was keeping the sand out of her hands. Once the sand is in her hands it is inevitably going...you guessed it, in her mouth! So while she was awake we had a continual battle with this. Ultimately, I think she only ate a few sand grains. How bad can that be, right?

Anna had a great time hanging out under the beach umbrella with Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Pete, Dad, & Mom. She took a another stroll down to the waves (or "whooshes" as Matt called them on his first beach trip (age 16 months). She was definitely interested, but maybe a little scared. We thought we might have to head out early when the beach nap was initially not working out, but she did ultimately fall asleep under the umbrella in her car seat for about 2 hours.

hanging under the umbrella with Grandpa

checking out the "whooshes"

Some other cute pictures from the past few days:

getting growls whispered in her ear from Grandma

got milk?

Anna loves getting attention!

For the past week we've been in Southport, North Carolina at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Also here visiting Grandma & Grandpa are Great Grandma Jane, Aunt Diane, Uncle Pete, Uncle Dan, Aunt Bridget, and Aunt Bridget's sister, Nancy. Anna has been loving all the attention she's been getting. In fact we actually believe she's started to fuss for a new reason: when she's not getting attention! A couple nights ago she was in the living room with Grandpa looking at her toys. She started to get a little fussy & we couldn't figure out why. It didn't seem like she was hungry or ready for a nap. Grandpa brought her into the kitchen where everyone else was congregated playing scrabble and all of a sudden she was better - giving sweet smiles to everyone. She didn't want to miss out on all the action! The first day back at home with just mom could be rough!

Anna has had lots of adventures. She's been to the beach, out to lunch in downtown Southport by the harbor, and out to dinner at the Player's Club. She's also been busy "riding the animals" with Grandpa, "going on tour" with Uncle Pete (moving around the room to visit each person), getting little growls whispered in her ear from Grandma (this makes her giggle almost every time), and lots of sweet holds from everyone.

Anna has had so many smiles & giggles this week that they are easy to catch on camera. In fact, she smiles so easily that we can almost get her to smile for a picture:

Grandpa is funny!


Oh, Grandma Jane, you're silly!

Aunt Diane makes me smile!

Uncle Pete makes me smile too!

Of course, there are lots of cute non-smiling pictures too:

Story time with Grandma Jane

Out to lunch at the harbor

The whole family

Uncle Pete's Birthday - Anna says, "I love birthday cake! When do you think I can get some of that, Mom, around 2 am? If I get up at midnight will it be ready yet?"