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