No Smiles

Last night was a great night. Nadia slept 7 1/2 hours straight and then after nursing for 30 minutes she slept another 2 1/2 hours. She is very consistent in that the total number of hours slept is usually ten, and since I went to bed within an hour of when Nadia went down, I got a decent amount of sleep even though she got up for the day at 6:15am. True to form her morning nap was almost exactly 45 minutes long (7:55-8:40). I left her for 10+ minutes and she just cooed during that time and then started crying so I really don't think she was going to go back to sleep. I fed her and got her dressed in her pretty purple Winnie the Pooh dress that her Grandma gave her awhile back. Well it's almost too short already although the sleeves are still a bit too long. My girl has short arms and legs! Yesterday she was wearing a dress size 3-6 month that was a hand me down, and it was already too short (except the sleeves of course)! She is wearing size 3-6 month sleepers exclusively now, but many 0-3 month size pants are still too big. Go figure!

Anyhow after she was fed and dressed we departed for Walmart, and I picked up a few things before our 10:30 appt (such as a padlock for our shed as there isn't a lock on it now). I also got a pack of size 2 diapers as I am finding the size 1 ones that I bought on Monday are a bit on the small size even though they're supposed to be for up to 14 lbs and she's definitely not there yet. I had her in the infant carrier in the shopping cart and she was smiling and cooing away at Mommy so I thought everything would go well for her photos. Nope. She didn't smile one single time no matter all Mommy did that usually works like eating her belly. She didn't cry (at least not for 15 minutes) but she would NOT smile. In reflecting back the times I am most certain to get Nadia to smile are when she hasn't seen me for awhile (and "awhile" can be say 10 minutes). So when I first got her out of the car she was happy to see me and all smiles. So the next time we get photos I will not do anything in between getting her out of the car and arriving at the photo session as I really, really want her next photos to be ones of her SMILING as she has such a beautiful smile. She didn't like being posed on her belly (although we did get one photo of her in the process of rolling over, LOL), but she was fine on her back and sitting up. It was easy to pick which pose to buy as not many were taken, and in most of them she had her tongue sticking out. Hopefully she'll smile for the Christmas photos! I am thinking we'll try the Sears up here for those. At least the salesperson didn't really try to convince me to buy more than I did as she knew I really wanted a smiling pose.

Aside from caring for Nadia my accomplishments for the day were to clean the 3 bathrooms and kitchen (minus the floors which I didn't get to yet), finish putting away the stuff that was on the floor of the spare bedroom (still unpacking!), go grocery shopping, write an annual performance evaluation for a probationary faculty member, etc. I'd be able to get more done if Nadia would sleep more than 45 minutes a day in her crib, but of course I also enjoy her napping on the boppy on my lap. I usually enjoy seeing her learn new skills, but there is one new skill I am not too fond of - pulling Mommy's hair. Ouch! And it's not like you can tell a 3 month old "no" and expect her to understand what that means. :-) Over the next 3 days the two projects I would like to accomplish around the house would be to put up the wallpaper border in Nadia's room (that I received as a shower gift in April) and mow the lawn. If Paul wants to start putting away the books in his office (all still in boxes), I would be happy to help him with that also. As for school projects, I'd like to select which textbooks I will use for each class in the spring semester (as those are due to the bookstore soon) and edit the 26 book reviews my graduate students wrote ten days ago before I send them on the editor of the column in Childhood Education where hopefully many will be published in the coming months.