These are a few of my favorite things...

Her smell...

Of course, who doesn't love the smell of a clean baby, but I even love her little milky breath and some of the weird/normally bad smells, such as a pee-pee diaper or a little spit up on the burp cloth (well, not if its been there awhile and soured).  I love to put my nose on her head and hair and just inhale.  She doesn't really like it though when I my nose is a little bit cold :)

The looks she gives us...

Probably like most new parents, we try to verbalize what we think she's trying to say with the looks she gives us... some of our comments for her have included... 

big smiles w/ a little laugh: "Hey, this is fun, just laying here on my changing table looking at you goofy adults trying to amuse me!" 

furrowed brow: "Mom, I worried there might not be enough milk for me this time!!!"  

raised eyebrows alternating with furrowed brow: "Dad, what are you doing?!? Blehhhh" (while Andy was gently "tossing" her up in the air...just as she puked on Daddy's cashmere sweater!)  

wide eyes: "Hey guys why are you so tired? Its only 3 o'clock in the morning?"  

But the best one is the frowny face.  It is the most precious pathetic little expression you've ever seen.  I'll work on getting a picture of it to post.

More of my favorite things to come...

Blessed Christmas

Annaliese did great on her first road trip to San Jose to spend Christmas Eve, Day & day after with Andy's parents, brothers and friends in the bay area.  We had a sweet time at the Christmas Eve service and a low key time at the house with family.  So low key that we somehow didn't get a pic with the whole family, oh well!  Good food and fellowship was a treasured blessing from the Lord.

Hanging out with Uncle Joshie...

At this point, she was over wearing the little Christmas dress that barely fit and taking Christmas pics in front of Christmas trees :)

Love the Mary Jane socks that look like shoes!

We are loving getting to see more of her little personality each day!  She is smiling and laughing (or at least what we count as laughing :) and can even play a little bit after she eats and before she goes down for her naps.  As you can see from the pic above, she is also continuing to work on gaining multiple chins and chubby cheeks and legs - love it!

Btw, I am learning which breastmilk "flavors" my daughter does not appreciate.  So far I've found that apparently, onion, garlic, chocolate, unpasterized cheese and any spicy (including Mexican and spicy tuna sushi) "flavored" milk is a no-no.  Major bummer- since I love all these foods, but at least it has helped with her occasional inconsolable crying episodes that we've experienced many nights.  Sometime when we plan to have a babysitter for a date night, we'll have to go to a place that serves spicy salsa, spicy tuna sushi, garlic bread and decadent chocolate desserts and pump and throw that milk away.  Know of any good places? ;-)

Her current record is going 7 hours between feedings at night, allowing me to sleep for over 5 hours straight!!! Hallelujah!  She is still having a harder time learning to go to sleep without being held or rocked to sleep each time, but she's making progress.

kewpie baby

Our little sweetie is starting to lose some hair, while maintaining her little "alfalfa" as we like to call it.  So, I think she looks like a kewpie doll.  (Andy says he has no idea since they didn't play with dolls.) 

Baby DOLL - ahite

Annaliese probably felt like a little doll when I dressed her up in her little Christmas outfit, but she was adorable!  The Christmas brunch was fun to celebrate with the women as the men served us at the church.

Model baby

After realizing how expensive professional infant portraits are, I spent the better part of the morning trying for the next best thing: pictures by mommy.  Of course, I do have an adorable subject, but I have to say, I did pretty good for my first infant photo shoot.  

P.S. I deleted more than half of them when she would hiccough, spit-up, fuss or just move erratically and blur the picture.

Christmas Time at 897 Pacific Circle Dr.

Andy did a great job hanging the icicle lights at our house last weekend - it truly feels Christmas-y now and the weather is cold and foggy!

Our cute little fake Christmas tree (bet you couldn't have guessed from this picture anyway, but maybe in the one below)!  To some it is sacrilegious, but hey, we're cheap - it was free from Steph's mom a while ago and we love it.

Honestly, can she be any cuter?

So, when you have a baby, one of the first questions that people often ask is, "Does she sleep well?" or "Does she sleep through the night?" or something similar. (This is similar to the question that is so often asked when you are pregnant, "How are you feeling?" or "Have you been feeling sick?")  

Of course, naturally the answer to the sleep question is usually, "Not yet," when the little one is only 3 weeks old or so.  But actually, since she was about a week old, she's been going about 5 hours (sometimes even 6 hours) between feedings at night.  (I wake her up to feed her every 2 1/2 to 3 hours during the day.)  Even though I knew it could change any time, I've gotten spoiled already.  So when she woke herself up every 2 1/2 to 3 hours at night for the past 2 nights, I have been exhausted to wake up several times to feed her and then get her back to sleep.  We'll hope for us all to enjoy a nice long stretch of sleep tonight!

Girly girl

With pink, pink, everywhere... hopefully she'll be a girly-girl and like lots of pinky pink!

2 1/2 weeks... 9 lbs and growing...

Beauty rest for a beautiful girl.
Reading with Grandma Mimi (Steph's mom).
Daddy's girl!

Splish Splash!!

Daddy & Annaliese at bath time!  She loves it!

A Day of Thanks

Annaliese came dressed to cheer for the Dallas Cowboys for their Thanksgiving Day game.  Andy says she was their good luck charm (they won)!  She watched the game with her dad, uncles and Grandpa Dollahite.  I made her little outfit since she's gotta learn early that football is going to be a part of her life!

We had the blessing of Andy's family visiting from San Jose and San Luis Obispo for Thanksgiving - there's no better way to celebrate all of God's blessings than with both our families! The new grandparents and aunties & uncles loved getting to spend time with Annaliese.

Happy BIRTH-day!

(Posted by Stephanie)  Annaliese Joy Dollahite was brought into the world on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008.  The whole experience was entirely too much to describe - so much anxiety/pain/prayers/joy... but I'll try to sum it up.

After painful contractions woke me up through the night beginning Saturday, we stayed at home from church thinking "This is it!"  But alas, the contractions decreased in frequency.  Andy went to work on Monday, but was "on call."  More contractions on Monday, but not enough go to the hospital.  By that evening I was tired of watching the clock in pain (as well as exhausted from being woken up by the contractions for 2 consecutive nights), so we went to pick up the baby's crib which had just been received at the store in Clovis due to being backordered.  Andy set up the crib and the nursery was complete.  Finally, after another sleepless night (or rather 3-10 minutes of sleep at a time), we went to the birthing center at Sierra Kings Hospital in Reedley and arrived at 7:00 am with strong contractions 2-3 minutes apart.

We were glad to hear that I was at 6cm when we checked in and began to make calls to family thinking that the baby would be here in a few hours. Andy continued coaching me through the contractions, helping me to relax and reminding me to rest in between.  I wanted to drink something other than water and tried some cranberry/Sprite concoction, which promptly came back up.  My mom came to support us in the labor room and brought Andy lunch.  The pain was bearable whenever I remembered to relax and let my body do the work.  I had decided beforehand that I wanted to try it without pain medication.  I was disappointed to find that after the midwife broke my water I was still only at 8 cm at 2:00pm (more than 6 hours to dilate 2 cm!).  

Since apparently my contractions were not strong enough to continue the dilation/effacement fast enough (could have fooled me!!!), the midwife explained that I should be put on Pitocin to avoid causing the baby too much stress.  In less that 10 minutes after the Pitocin drip started the strength of the contractions tripled according to the monitor and my body began to push without really meaning to... the nurse said "Wait, wait! Let me check you!"  Then she said, "Okay, do what your body tells you to do."  At first, we were confused about what that meant, but then Andy clarified - we were finally at the pushing stage.  

I pushed for an hour and a half.  I couldn't believe how difficult it was.  I didn't think I could do it; I was SO EXHAUSTED!  The pain in my hips was about as unbearable as the pain of the contractions, although the pain in my hips did not let up between contractions.  Andy was such an encouragement to me throughout the whole time, but especially during the pushing phase. I ended up pushing and finally giving birth on my side due to the pain in my hips.  As the baby was crowning the nurse told me to wait so the midwife, Julie, could get her gloves on (because they had just called her a few seconds prior).  My thoughts at that point were, "Someone will catch the baby... because she's coming NOW!"

With that final push, our baby entered the world and Julie placed her on my stomach.  I was breathing so hard from the pushing but the pain melted away as I felt the weight of our child lying on the outside of my body for the first time.  I remember thinking a few things in those initial moments... that I couldn't believe it was over and she was really here and alive and crying!... that she was huge!! (the doctors thought that she'd be smaller, less than 7 lb, but she was 7 lb 12 oz.)... that I didn't recognize who she had gotten her nose from!  Her little nose had been pressed down in the birth canal and in a few minutes came into recognizable shape as my nose.  (One of Andy's first thoughts was "Oh good, it IS a girl!" since we had been told 3 times that it was probably a girl, but we had painted the room pink anyway!)

As they sewed me up from the second degree tear from her coming out with her hand by her face, and because I had not "slowed down" my pushing at the very end to "ease" her out slowly, Andy and I got to talk to and cuddle with our daughter in the first moments of life outside the womb.  We were enamored.  We named her Annaliese Joy, and truly she is and will be a joy in our lives - a gift from the Lord.