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!