Closing of the Year

Before we leave the old year for the new year, I thought I'd share some professional pictures we had taken before Christmas.  We take a gazillion photos of Leah, but since our family is all back east, there's no one to take photos of the whole family.  Leah decided that the day we paid someone to take photos would be the day she would not crack a smile.  Oh well.  Here are some of our best shots.

Go Seminoles!

As I look toward 2012, I am nothing but excited.  There are so many changes ahead for the Aaron Family.  I am bitter-sweet about leaving California.  There are so many wonderful friends I've made here that I just hate to leave.  I wish I could take them all with me.  And there are so many amazing things to do in L.A. that I will miss.  But I am looking forward to a simpler life closer to family back in Georgia.  And when I think about that, I just can't wait to get there.

And just before the closing of the year, Leah squeezed in one more milestone for 2011.  Tonight as we were preparing for bed, she laughed for the first time (video footage to come).  This was beyond a giggle - it was a full belly laugh complete with belly jiggles.  It was the most adorable little cackle I've ever heard and it was the perfect way to end the year. 

We wish everyone a healthy and happy new year!

Aaron Family - Malibu, CA - 2011

BA's Corner: Things I've Never Seen, Until LA

A forrest fire burning straight up the side of a mountain for weeks
Cops arresting someone
8 cops holding 2 people at gunpoint
1 cop car stopping 8 lanes of traffic on the interstate (successfully)
Multiple celebrity sightings
Multiple taco trucks
A 3-hour commute, 1 way
A thick, brown layer of smog covering a city of X million people

Not to mention numerous crazy outfits or the number of tattoos!

Sitting Up, Most of the Time

*I realize that I sound ridiculous, but I don't care :)

Beyond Christmas

Most years I'm just a little depressed after Christmas ends.  The excitement of the season is over, there's nothing to look forward to.  But not this year.  This year I'm looking forward to what comes after Christmas.  Partly because there are so many exciting events coming up in just the next few months.  In just 7 months I will have graduated from law school, moved from California to Georgia, studied and taken the Bar exam.  We are going on vacation to Hawaii with BA's parents in March, Leah turns one in July, and there's a good chance BA and I will trade my old '99 Toyota for a "new" used car.

The other reason why I'm anxious to get back to our regularly scheduled programing is that Leah has been kind of exhausting recently.  I am constantly trying to keep her either entertained or asleep, and failing miserably at both.  She so desperately wants to sit up and can't quite do it yet.  So gone are the days where she will play happily on her back or tummy for any extended period of time.  Leah has also been extremely fussy in the early evening; we are speculating that it is due to teething, but it's also probably due to the fact that she doesn't take long naps during the day and by 5 p.m. she is over-tired and very grumpy.  We usually put her to sleep at 7 p.m. so we are stuck in no-man's land from 5:00-6:30 p.m. where it's too early to feed her and put her to bed, but she desperately needs to take a nap.  The only thing that remotely keeps her happy at that time of night is if someone is holding her and walking around.  Not sitting - Mussolini won't let you sit, you must be moving around and holding her upright, otherwise she wails.  It's exhausting.  So I'm feeling pretty defeated.  And I need a break.  I am used to spending Christmas break relaxing, reading for fun, visiting family, going out with friends, etc.  There has been very little of that this year.  There has been no laying around reading books or watching TV.  I know this is an adjustment that comes with being a first-time parent.  I just didn't expect it to feel like so much work.

Catalina Island

The day after Christmas we took Peanut on her first overseas voyage.  We made a day trip to Santa Catalina Island just 22 miles off the coast of Los Angeles with my mom and sister who are in town for the holidays.  As we were sailing away on the ferry, you could see Catalina ahead of us, and L.A., covered in a brown layer of smog, behind us.  It was appalling to see how thick and brown the air surrounding L.A. was and to realize that we are breathing in that junk everyday.  But in front of us lay Catalina, with clear, crisp air.

The best word I can come up with to describe Catalina is "mysterious."  It's a mysterious place to me because it's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, very sparsely populated with only a few thousand residents, most of whom live in the tiny town of Avalon, and beyond Avalon is just wilderness. Sometimes on a very clear day I can see Catalina from Malibu and I've always wanted to take a trip there because it looks so wild and undeveloped. 

Most everyone gets around the town by golf cart.  Super cool and would have been fun to do, but Peanut wasn't allowed to ride in the golf cart without her car seat, which we did not bring.  There were actually very few activities that we could do with a baby.  That was kind of a bummer.  I had been looking forward to this trip because of the hiking, the kayaking, the tour of the wilderness, there's a zip line - all of that was not baby-friendly so we mostly spent the day shopping, walking up and down the coastline, and eating.

Family photo time - Peanut looks ready to explore.

Diaper change on a park bench :(

Matching hats!

Peanut was a real trouper.  She took everything in and spent most of the day fascinated by all the new sights and sounds.  She was good the entire trip up to the last 10 minutes of the ferry ride back to Long Beach.  By that point she was so over-tired that she screamed her pretty little head off at full volume for the entire ferry to hear.  There was nothing I could do but hold my screaming baby until the boat docked and we could run off as fast as we could.

What I learned.  Traveling with a baby is tough.  Most places are not baby friendly.  All-terrain strollers do not fit easily between tables in a restaurant and most people will not move their chairs to let you by.  Do not expect people to hold doors for you, and people are not exactly thrilled when you try and bring your baby and stroller into a bar (it was one of those bar/restaurants and we just wanted a place to eat appetizers at 4 p.m. before our ferry left, and actually that one turned out okay because the young waiter was very nice and we found a table in the corner of the room where we sat for an hour killing time and sipping local beer).  And there is never anywhere to change your baby.  As gross as those baby changing tables at fast-food restaurats are, at least they are big enough to fit a child.  I changed Leah on a sink vanity that was only about 20 inches wide.  And speaking of diaper changes, if any part of your vacation involves transportation where it is impossible to change a baby for an extended period of time (i.e. a one hour ferry ride), you can count on your baby to have a very dirty diaper during that time period.

Christmas Time is Here

A very Merry Christmas to you. 

On Christmas eve we recruited Aunt Haley (who flew in from Washington, D.C. for the holidays) to take some family photos of us at the Beverly Hills sign.  We snapped a few of Aunt Haley too while we were there because the lighting was so good.

Lighting check - Beautiful 70 degree weather in L.A. on Christmas eve

Finally, a family photo by the sign (Leah's birthplace)

Leah is absolutely obsessed with her Aunt Haley.  She spends most of the day just staring at her and ignoring BA and me.  It's possible that she is trying to figure out why this person looks so much like her Mommy, or it's possible that she somehow recognizes that she met Haley before.  In any case, she loves Haley and can't get enough of her.

After our photo session we went home and got ready for church.  Leah wore her fancy Christmas dress and she looked adorable.

Later, BA told me that going to church was the highlight of the season for him.  He had been looking forward to walking into church as a family.  And Leah was a perfect little angel; she just sat contentedly on our laps and stared at the other people around us.  They all smiled and laughed back at her throughout the entire service.  She made it 45 minutes with only two tiny squeaks and then BA took her out to the baby room to feed her.

Lest you thought our celebrity sightings were over for 2011, we have another one for you.  We saw Pink.  At Church!  That's right, Pink the pop star was at our suburban Methodist church in Westlake Village with her baby.  She and her husband/boyfriend (not sure) just walked in like everyone else and sat in the pew with family members.  BA spotted her walking in and between the three adults we quickly confirmed that yes, Pink did have a baby recently, and yes, Pink did have a tattoo on the back of her neck, so obviously this was Pink in person.  She even got up to take her baby to the cry room right as BA was getting up to take Leah to the cry room to feed her.  And just to confirm our sighting, we walked out of church behind her and noticed that the soles of her black high heels were, in fact, pink.

After church we returned home to get Leah ready for bed.  We even put out cookies and milk for Santa. 

Once Leah was in bed we prepared our traditional Christmas feast of crab legs.  My family started eating crab legs (either snow or king) on Christmas when I was in high school.  It's become our tradition and it's one that I want to carry on with my kids.  The food was delicious, but the company was even better!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

The Aaron Family - Christmas 2011

Updates in General

Well, life is moving along nicely.  There hasn't been a whole lot of excitement in our lives the past week, which is a good thing really, but it means I don't have a lot to blog about.  But I do have some mundane updates in general that I thought I would share.

We are working on sleeping.  Always.  Two weeks ago we got to the point where we'd put her down and she would fuss/cry for at least an hour while we took turns running back into the room to give her the pacifier.  I finally said "enough!" and we started letting her cry it out.  So far we've spent one week fighting it and now it seems to be working. We haven't taken her off her sleeping wedge yet because she still has reflux (and BA and I only have the energy to fight one battle at a time) but we are probably going to start transitioning to a flat crib in a couple weeks.

About a month ago she got a cold.  She learned how to cough with this cold and after she got better she would not stop coughing - I think it was due to reflux - she had found a new way to clear her throat.  But the coughing was constant, even through the middle of the night.  Cough, cough, cough, gasp for breath, then sleep for 10 minutes, then cough again.  Aside from the fact that no one was getting any sleep with her coughing, she would start coughing so forcefully that it would cause her to throw up half of her bottle.  She would literally soak her sleeper, and blanket, and sometimes the crib sheet and sleeping wedge.  This was terrible.  So we put her back on Zantac.  And so far it seems to be working!  Halleluja.  There's still some coughing after meals but she hasn't throw-up anything since.  Since we did that she's stopped throwing up her milk and she's sleeping in longer stretches. 

Other cute stories ...

She's started smiling in a new way - with a full grin but with a closed mouth.  And she makes these humming noises when she smiles.  It's really cute.
When she falls asleep with her pacifier in her mouth, she continues to make little sucking movements with her mouth as if the pacifier is still there.  

She is rolling over consistently, and is really trying to sit up on her own. Still doesn't have the strength for it yet, but we're getting there.

And she loves her exersauser!  She kicks her legs frantically like she just can't handle the excitement as I'm carrying her over to it.

I am enjoying my Christmas break, baking cookies for the daycare teachers, catching up with friends, running errands that got put on hold during final exams.  And BA recently discovered that he is allergic to dust.  He went to an allergist and got tested and everything.  So it looks like there will be a lot more cleaning in my future; and perhaps a maid.

She loves her exersaucer!

It's a good thing too because it took BA 2 hours to put this thing together

"Look at me growing."

Working on sitting up

Here's her new closed-mouth grin

First Day of Christmas Break

Well I finished my finals. And now the Christmas season can officially begin for me.  Since this is my last Christmas with an official break where I don't have any work responsibilities to worry about, I've decided to make the most of it.  So, I spent my first day of vacation at the jail, and riding in an elevator with a convicted felon.  Gasp.  Okay, I'll stop being so dramatic.  The jail was to get fingerprinted for the Bar Exam, and the felon wasn't even at the jail - he was at the doctor's office - and I only know he's a felon because he's also a celebrity.

I woke up on Friday expecting to clean the entire house.  Did not happen.  Instead I played with Peanut, picked up lunch for BA and me (yummy BLT's with avocado), and wrapped presents.  I did normal Christmas stuff that I'd been dying to do all during finals and could finally enjoy now that finals are over.  Then in the afternoon we went to a doctor's appointment for BA.

As we were walking into the medical building, there was a black Cadillac Escalade idling at the entrance.  I hate when people just park their cars in the middle of the road, as if they are too important to be bothered to use the parking lot.  I'm a lady with a stroller, let's move it, folks!  The passengers had just gotten out of the car and the driver wasn't moving out of the way fast enough for me.  So I glared into the drivers window to make my irritation known and looking back at me was this young guy with a huge handlebar mustache.  That struck me as odd, what kind of chauffer has a handlebar mustache, but I was so focused on making it to the appointment on time that I didn't bother to see who got out of the car.

We followed the passengers into the lobby and waited for the elevator.  At this point BA was already thinking that the man might be someone famous.  I guess I'm desensitized to L.A. celebrities because all I remember seeing was a guy with baggy grey jeans, boots, a huge silver chain and cross around his neck, and tattoos on his arms.  No big deal - millions of regular people look like that out here.  Well, as it turns out, he was the rapper and actor DMX.  The elevator came and since it was such a small elevator and there were 4 people in front of us, including DMX, I was planning on waiting on the next elevator.  DMX turned around, looked at us, and said, "come on in, there's plenty of room."  BA said at that point, when he heard DMX's voice, he had pretty much figured out who he was (never mind the fact that my husband is able to recognize rap stars from the late '90's).  I didn't think anything of it, except that it was nice for that man to insist that we get on the first elevator and that it was indeed a small elevator.  I actually didn't know it was him and it wasn't until we arrived in the doctor's office lobby that BA said to me, "was that DMX?"  I said, "who?"  BA said, "he's a rapper and he sings, 'ya'll gon' make me lose my mind, up in here, up in here..."  I said, "oh yes, of course I know that song.  That was him?"  A quick Google search on our phone confirmed that it was.

Anyway, what I can say is that DMX was very nice and polite, and he looked exactly like he does in pictures online.  Turns out DMX has several convictions for various felonies and is probably on probation right now.  Whoo-hoo!  Needless to say his music or his past are not exactly family friendly, but Leah made friends regardless.  She always does :)

After our little celebrity run-in, we went to the jail.  Where you would expect to see convicted criminals.  But didn't.  And that's it for my jail story. 

So that is how I spent my first day of vacation.  Today we did our final Christmas shopping of the season and mailed a bunch of packages.  Leah had a teething episode this afternoon which quickly turned into being over-tired and she's spent a good deal of the past hour screaming her pretty little head off.  Poor baby.  But I'm not in school, not taking finals, Christmas is a week away, and there is a bottle of wine with my name on it, and an automated baby swing with Leah's tushy in it, so we'll make it through.  

Leah's response upon hearing that she met DMX, "DM who???"

BA's Corner: Happy Helper

While AA was studying for exams, I tried to get Leah out of the house as much as possible so AA could focus. Leah is pretty great at running errands with me. She's so good-natured about everything. Typically she sleeps a lot. But when she's awake, she just sits back and takes it all in - the sounds, the sights, the people, etc. It's great.

I took Leah to the grocery store with me, and she proved to be an excellent helper. She didn't throw her toy on the floor, and she made excellent conversation (with anyone who passed by). But mostly she was in charge of the grocery list. (Yes, I have no shame...I will stop and take pictures of my daughter in the grocery store if she's doing something funny).

 Leah: Ooooh...shopping. This is going to be fun! I'll hold the list for you, Dad.



Leah: You didn't forget the milk, did you Dad?



Things were rolling along fine, until my helper decided to eat the grocery list.




 I've always heard that you're not supposed to go to the grocery store hungry....

BA's Corner: Hold my Hand, Part 2

As AA finishes up her last few finals of the semester, here's the continuation of "Hold my Hand."

On Leah's first day of daycare, AA couldn't handle it. She cried too much and I had to take Leah that morning. Leah seemed okay, but she also seemed like she knew something was different. After all, she'd been at home pretty much the whole time since she'd been born, except for some doctor visits. So she knew when we were getting out of her "routine." I walked her out, loaded her in the car, and headed off. She was pretty quiet, and I couldn't see her. So I reached my hand back into her car seat to see if I could feel her moving around or something. She immediately grabbed my finger. I smiled.

There are other times too....strapping Leah into the Express and heading out for a walk, middle of the night feedings, etc. And the first night we officially put Leah in her crib for the night, I had to keep running in to soothe her. She held onto my thumb until she was finally snoring away.

Secretly, when I'm soothing her back to sleep in the middle of the night, I like to hold her hand. I think it makes a difference. I know she won't want to do this forever, and I just love how small and soft they are. Plus, one of the first things I discovered about her (and that I still love) is that she has AA's hands. When I picked her up from daycare that first week and all the babies looked somewhat the same to me, I could be sure I had my Leah by looking at her hands.

5 Months

Leah turned 5 months old on Sunday! We didn't go to the doctor this month so we don't know her "stats" but we do know that she is healthy and growing, and super super happy.

Our sweet 5 month old baby. When did she get to be so big!

The sneaky smile of a rascal in the making.

"Oh great, another birthday cake that I can't eat. Ho hum. This sucks."

"Happy 5 months to me!"

BA's Corner: Hold My Hand, Part 1

Since AA is feverishly studying for exams, I figured I needed to step up to the plate with a new post for the weekend.

Moms have a connection...it's just built in. It's part of the reward they get (if not the only unique reward) for all the suffering they go through to bear a child.

So it's nice for dads to have something too. The night Leah was born, I was so thrilled when Leah finally came out, because I knew that AA's pain was almost over. And I wanted AA to hold her first. She'd been the one to shoulder most of the load, and certainly she'd been the one "taking" Leah to the doctor multiples times a week. She'd been the one doubled over the toilet in the middle of the night, not me. And when it was my turn to hold Leah, I mostly focused on not screwing up...not dropping her, not letting her head fall, not waking her up, and not making her cry.

But when we moved to the recovery room and the nurses came to take Leah for her first bath, I jumped at the chance to tag along, while AA stayed in the recovery room. This was one of my first tasks as a Dad without AA there. Granted, all I had to do was watch the nurses and pay attention.

The nurse finished bathing Leah, and she finished crying (for the time being). The nurse walked away for a few minutes, and there were a couple of other babies in the room getting cleaned up. There was one in particular, about 5-6 feet away from us, who was really crying. His dad was standing there with his arms crossed, just watching him. Must have been a second child! I was a deer in headlights staring at Leah, with a trigger finger on the camera. And I was slightly afraid to touch her for fear that I would do something wrong!

I imagine what Leah must have been going through during those first few hours of life. How strange it must have been for her, and how scared and confused she probably was. And while I was excited, I was also pretty terrified. It was probably 2 a.m. after a long, life-altering day. We were in a strange place, and, to some extent, we were strangers to each other.

I knew she was scared. As I had imagined for months, I reached out my hand and she grabbed onto my finger as tightly as she could. I like to think it was the first time she realized that the voice she had been hearing all these months was her Daddy, and that no matter how strange, confusing, and scary this new world was, she knew she was going to be okay because Daddy was right beside her.

And I like to think that, in that same moment, Leah was thinking the same thing about me...that I must be scared at the unfamiliar burden ahead of me, but that she was right there with me, hanging on. And together, we'd be okay.

And that's why this is one of my favorite pictures. It was our first moment together, alone.

July 12, 2011 taken at approximately 2:00 a.m.

Passed!

I got my MPRE results back yesterday.  And I passed!  I needed a 75 to pass in Georgia, and I got a 122!  Yippie.  I can cross that off my list forever.  One more step in the direction of the Bar exam.  Now if I can manage to pass 3 exams this semester, 2 next semester, and then that "little" test (haha) in July, I'll be golden.  But for now I'll just enjoy the minor victory of passing the MPRE. 

Leah and BA were super excited for me.  And just because I love this picture so gosh darn much, here it is again!

My new favorite picture of the Peanut. She really is this happy most of the time.

Peanut's Post: My Great Aunt Joanne

Peanut here.  I have a great aunt, named Aunt Joanne.  I say she's great for 2 reasons. #1: she's actually my mommy's aunt, and #2: she really is great!  My Aunt Joanne came to visit me last weekend and I just had to share some pictures. 

I was so excited when Aunt Joanne arrived

We did all sorts of fun activities.  We read books ...

We picked out a Christmas tree ...

I selected the tree - isn't it GREAT!

This was the moment when I expressed my dismay that such a
beautiful tree had to ride home atop a car with only 3 hubcaps.

We opened presents ...

This was an ornament from my Granny D. that Aunt Joanne brought with her.

Oh and one last exciting thing happened during Aunt Joanne's visit ... this is REALLY cool, so listen up.  I discovered my TOES!

Thanks for the visit Aunt Joanne!



Love, Peanut.