A special treat...

Here's a little something to help you get over the hump today.

Eily spent some time in the jumperoo at Casey and Ava's house last week and was eager to share her new talent with us here at home. We took this video a couple of nights ago as she bounced in her doorway jumper. (Pardon the clutter....the house is very much under construction right now!)



In addition, here's a look at some of the work going on in the kitchen at the moment. Oh, and remember that second layer of linoleum I showed you last week? Well guess what? Jesse found a THIRD layer (featured in this video). These people were seriously linoleum happy freaks.



Here's a look at what was hiding beneath all that disgusting flooring:




Believe it or not, the wood is in decent condition and totally worth refinishing. This is great for two reasons. 1) I was hoping for hardwood throughout the house. 2) It will be sooooooo much cheaper than tiling!

It's back to work for me now. There's lots to do before Auntie Kiki and Uncle Brendan visit this weekend! Eily is very excited about this, as you can see:

It's Friday, I'm in Love!!

Sorry...just a little Cure playing on my internal stereo. Ahem...down to business.

This week marked my triumphant return to the classroom. Despite the long commute (1+ hour each way), I've found West Chester University to be a good fit for me. The professors I've encountered so far are, for lack of a better term, crazy. In case you don't know me that well, I like crazy. I love walking into a classroom and not knowing what to expect. Take my sociology professor, for example. Dr. Wadley (second in the list...yes, the one that could easily pass for a GQ model) entered our class the first day and never once handed out a syllabus. Instead, we had an intriguing, in-depth discussion on why we all assumed he was our professor when none of us had seen him before. For all we knew, he could have been some crazy guy from the street who just happened to walk into our class and start talking. Within minutes, he took us out of the classroom to the student union and asked us to write down 25 assumptions we made about whatever we saw around us. Then we were free to go. Ummmm, right. So this told me zilch about the course or what I should expect from it. I loved that first class. It left me with so many questions.

Anyway, this is but one example of the eccentricity I have already experienced. Another professor, Dr. Passwaters (fifth one down....the third on the list, Dr. Nicastro is my Theology & Science professor), sounds and even looks a bit like Andy Rooney. He has a very dry sense of humor...but I guess you would need to when you're teaching a physics course on the structure of the universe. Then there's my linguistics professor, Dr. Aronow (I can't seem to find a pic of her anywhere). Our first two classes have been far more interesting than the first time I took linguistics at UCONN many years ago. Instead of jumping in with the very convoluted rules of language acquisition, she showed us one of my favorite NOVA specials about the little girl, Genie, who never learned to talk due to extreme social isolation and abuse. I had seen the special years ago, but it was much harder to watch being on the opposite side of parenthood now. Aside from the heartbreaking aspect of the documentary, however, our viewing instilled in me an intense desire to really take the whole study of language acquisition (and therefore, this course) seriously.

Okay, so enough of the dry, scholarly nerd speak. Let's move on to the stuff you've all been waiting for: Eily updates!

Eily spent her first two full days away from me while I was at school this week. My friend Casey, whom I met online while I was pregnant, graciously agreed to watch her for me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The exciting part about this, aside from avoiding day care germs, is that Eily has a playmate - Ava. Although Ava was born ten weeks premature, her adjusted age is close to Eily's, which means they are hitting the same milestones at roughly the same time. If you're interested in seeing some pics of the two of them together, check out Casey's most recent blog entry.

As a follow-up to my last post, I will mention that we did switch Eily to formula full time, and the change has been quite noticeable. I think in the past three weeks she's gained over a pound! Pretty amazing when you consider she gained barely half of that over two months before. I won't have an official weight until Feb 5th, but I'm sure the pediatrician will be happy with what he sees.

Next on the list (sorry, it's another long one this week): KITCHEN DEMOLITION HAS BEGUN!!!! To be honest, that sentence doesn't do justice to the state of our kitchen at the moment. In fact, according to housing codes, our house doesn't have a kitchen anymore. The sink and stove have been removed, therefore demoting the kitchen to just another room. Let's take a look at some before and after pics, shall we?

Here we have the sink/cabinets...



And here we have the empty shell they left behind...



The disgustingly stained/scratched linoleum floor (complete with Fionn chasing the paper I was using to pack up the dishes)...



And half of it removed. (I did this in a fit of anger a few weeks ago. Thankfully it needed to be done anyway.)



Notice the layer of linoleum that was beneath the cabinets and subfloor...yes, we have two layers of linoleum and subflooring to rip up. Lucky us.



In case you can't tell, that is genuine faux stone linoleum...which is a fancy way of saying really ugly.

The stove is gone...



And the ugly ceiling tiles are gone as well...



Jesse's been a very busy boy. The next step? Get some professionals in here to look at the electrical, plumbing, and gas lines before we redo the floor. In case you're curious, here's a look at what the kitchen should look like when we're done (minus the crazy green walls):



Until then, I'm stuck cooking dinner on a hot plate and doing dishes in the bath tub. Good times.

Right, I've probably missed something major here, but I think I've taken up all the attention span I can with this one post. Tune in next time for...I can't even begin to imagine what. I'm sure it will be interesting though!

Mini me

Eily turned 6 months old on December 30 (where the heck has the time gone?!), so I couldn't wait to go to her well-baby visit at the pediatrician to get her updated stats. I know she's tiny - still very comfortably fitting into 3-6 month clothing with room to grow - and I wasn't expecting a huge increase in her weight, but even I was surprised at how little she actually gained in the two months since her last appointment. Here is a comparison of her stats from the two checkups:

4 month checkup - Oct 27, 2009
Height - 24.5 inches
Weight - 12lbs 8.5oz
Head circumference - 15.75 inches

6 month checkup - Jan 5, 2010
Height - 25.25 inches (.75 inch growth)
Weight - 13lbs 3.5 oz (11oz growth)
Head circumference - 16.5 inches (.75 inch growth)

In short, she is a teeny little peanut, in the 50th percentile for height and only the 5th percentile for weight. Head circumference is right on target. Despite the doc's concern about her low weight, I'm pretty certain she's healthy and has very fortunately inherited my fast metabolism. I was once told my metabolism is "like a hummingbird on speed." That should give you a pretty good idea of what I mean by fast.

Just for a visual example of her size, here's a pic of Eily sitting next to our cat, Smokey. At 6 months old, she's still the smaller of the two!




I told the pedi how much this pint-size powerhouse can pack away in one sitting, but he has encouraged me to feed her even more to see if she will gain more weight. So now we're letting her eat until she visibly shows me she is full. I kid you not when I say this child can eat the same amount of food as me in one sitting...and she does it three times a day (in addition to nursing 5-6 times)! Where on earth does she fit it all? It's obvious she eats more food than the size of her stomach at this point. I'm convinced one of her legs is hollow, and she packs all the extra food away in there.

I say I'm not overly concerned about her large appetite/slow growth for a few reasons. First, I have compared her weight gain at each visit with my own as recorded by my mom in my baby book. Eily and I have almost identical weights so far. At a year old, I was perfectly healthy but weighed only 16lbs. This leads me to believe that her size is simply part of her genetic makeup. Second, as I said, she is hitting all of her milestones right on cue. This would be a great time for me to update you on those! So, in no particular order, here are some of Eily's newest parlor tricks:

- Sitting up unsupported for long periods of time (1+ hours)
- Feeding herself cheerios, puffies, and small chunks of banana
- Rolling over very easily now...though she still prefers to be on her back if she's laying down
- A lot more screechy yelling, especially if one of the cats happens to be in sight...not quite babbling with consonants just yet
- Easily transitioning items from one hand to the other, reaching, grabbing, visibly cluing me in to whatever it is she wants (i.e. toys, food, etc)
- Laughing at things that are actually funny (i.e. the Baby Einstein puppets when she watches them on TV)
- Hugs and kisses - these are the best! She is such a little snuggler, and nothing is better than the feeling of her wrapping her arms around my neck as soon as I pick her up or sucking on my cheek to imitate me after I give her kisses.

See? No need to worry. She's a strong, developmentally on target little thing, even if she is small.

While looking at my own baby stats recently, I made an interesting discovery. I stumbled across some pictures of myself at around 3-6 months old, and guess what? I can finally say that Eily resembles me when I was a baby! She still has a lot of Jesse's qualities, but I think you're starting to see a lot more of me in there as well. Here's a side-by-side comparison. Judge for yourselves.





Thoughts? Opinions?

On another (possibly TMI) note, I've made the difficult decision that it may be time to wean Eily and switch to formula. While I'm sure she's healthy, I do have some doubts about my milk supply. Couple that with the fact that I start school again in two weeks and will have no time to pump between classes, and I think my supply is going to get even lower. In the best interest of helping her gain some weight, I think it's time to make the switch. It's sooner than I would have liked - I was hoping to make it to a year - but I feel like we made a pretty good run of it. I'm a little sad about the idea, but I'm trying not to let myself feel like a failure - six(+) months is still a good length of time to nurse, and I was surprised I even made it this long!

Well, that's the update for now. The posts may start to come less frequently when school starts. I'm enrolled full-time to keep my scholarship, and I'll still be working part-time from home. That leaves just enough time to interact with Eily, pushing this blog to the back burner, at least for the spring. I'll try to update as much as I can, but please be forgiving if the wait is a bit longer than normal!

And what shall I leave you with today? How about a video we took of Eily laughing up a storm a couple of nights ago. Her laugh is the best! Enjoy!