our little proud mary: "rollin'... rollin'..."

as the title suggest, lil' hana has started to roll! but more on that later...

this past week has been quite the emotional rollercoaster. that fact that i am returning to work in about 5 rapidly elapsing weeks is really starting to sink in. i have had moments of "ugly cry" when i think about my baby waking from a nap and some other lady going to her, or playing on the rug of the daycare center instead of the quilt and toys we have at home. i know working is the right decision for me, i just wish it were part time. but that's not really an option right now... i must say that i haven't done much to get her on a day time nap schedule as a result of my impending return to work. the way i figure it, right now, we go about town, running errands, excercising and visiting other people with babies and i don't know at what point in my life will have this much time to do this again except when i retire. so to have to curtail all of those activities in deference to hana's nap schedule just seems like more than i can do right now. prehaps it's selfish. even with a second child i will likely not get to take as much time off. so i figure there will be time for schedule in a month when she goes to daycare. right now, we're just chillin' and having fun. although, i must say, it's not really that easy keeping a baby happy and entertained all day so the errands help a lot (both with entertaining hana and with my sanity).

lest you think that i sacrifice hana's naps because i'm galavanting around, she actually seems to be a pretty good napper. her nap schedule seems to be more on a 48 hour cycle than a 24 hour cycle. what i mean by that is that one day, she takes one good mid day power nap for about 3.5 to 4 hours (or longer) but doesn't sleep much the rest of the day. and then she'll sleep 10-12 hours at night. the next day, she take nothing but 30-40 minute cat naps several times throughout the morning and afternoon. and then a 10-12 hours at night. and then it rotates back and forth like that. so instead of looking at it like she doesn't have a nap schedule, i choose to look at it like her nap cycle spans a couple of days...

in case anyone's interested in other highs and lows for hana's mama, we had the last week of my facilitated mom's group this week. i will miss that. it is such an amazing support. we will continue to meet informally as we have all formed awesome friendships and these women are all individually amazing. what's so incredible to me is that we all come from completely different walks of life and yet we get along well, laughing and crying together like sisters and the only thing that that binds us all is that we all had babies within a month or so of each other. after knowing each other for 8 short weeks, we all want our kids to grow up together and don't want to drift apart as a group. i know this is cheesy but it gives be great hope for humanity in these troubling times when a group like us can get together and bond like that.

and prehaps the craziest thing that happened this week is that i had to chase some trespassing teenagers off of our property today. hana and i had just had a bath and i was dressing in my bedroom when i saw a teenage boy walk past my bedroom window in the back of the house. i don't think he knew i was there until i exclaimed rather loudly "aw HELL no!!!!!!" his friend was drinking water from our garden hose out front. i suspect these kids may have been the ones who broke in last summer and stole a digital camera but i don't know. i got the distinct feeling that if i'd hadn't been home they would have tried to break in because the kid around the back of the house continued walking along the side, as if he knew where he was going (the side entrance was how the burglers got in last summer). my gut told me to defend my space and shoo these boys off my property so that's what i did... i opened my front door and yelled at them. the garden hose kid sassed me back... "dang someone can't get a drink of water? it's f-cking hot out here!" i told him he could get a drink on his own property but he had to get off mine. and then i called the cops (who responded right away but essentially couldn't really do much....). god help my child if she ever grows up and brings home a punk like that... while he would have plenty to fear from me, i only hope i could protect him from jon, who pledged to employ, not one, but two bats to beat back would-be suitors.

so with a week like that for me, it's great to have hana to brighten each day. the big news is that she ROLLED OVER this week!!! she now rolls from tummy to back. she is close to rolling from back to tummy too. right now she rolls from her back to the side and then shimmy's around in a circle on the floor as if she was (fake) breakdancing or something. she is also teething. i know it's early but they say that babies can begin teething 8+ weeks before the first tooth erupts through the gum. and judging from the voluminous amounts of drool (she goes through about 3 outfits a day!), her sudden tolerance for a couple of minutes with a pacifier at bedtime (up til now, she hasn't taken one at all) and a slight increase in otherwise unexplained fussiness, that is exactly what's happening. jon thinks that he cut his teeth early and that may be yet another thing she gets from her father.

jon and i both agree that with each passing day, hana continues to look more and more like jon. jon apparantly was not as social as hana was as a baby or child so i wonder where she gets that? (duh.) she is verbalizing and vocalizing a lot more and had developed a pretty good belly laugh. jon took a video, which i'll try to get him to post separately (to techie for me), of hana laughing at mommy while mommy was doing crunches . apparently, mommy's anguish is hilarious.

she also continues to grow like a weed. she continues to wear more and more 6 -12 months clothing and she is over 26 inches long. 3-6 months clothes seem like a tight squeeze lengthwise. although she is not a chubby baby, she seems to be getting more thigh chub and double chins... funny how this is the only time in your life when that's kinda cute... my thigh chub: not so cute.

3 months

so now we're at the age when we stop counting in weeks and start moving to months. i suppose it has to stop somewhere because soon, i'll be saying "oh, she's 47 weeks..." when people ask how old she is instead of saying she's almost a year or 11 months and that's just down right tedious. so we switch to months, which of course, we moms use longer than most can do the math for as well... "oh, she's 32 months..."

today was the 2nd to last session of my mom's group and therefore it was picture day. i really love those gals and their babies. it's been good times. actually the mom's group will continue meeting informally from now on. the picture taking was interesting. there was 13 babies involved in this particular photo shoot. our facilitator, virginia, warned us that there would be one baby who slept though everything and one baby who cried the whole time. as luck would have it, hana cried the whole time. not only that, she got other babies crying too. i tell you, she's a leader. or a rebel. or a rebel leader. either way, i'm in trouble when she's older i think. but the pictures are cute.

part of what made the shoot so challenging was that the babies kept sliding on the leather couch. hana is reasonably well propped up in this picture but in others, she's completely slouched. incidentally, that's why she's missing a shoe. once we got pictures of the babies all lined up on the couch, we did a "starburst" picture on the floor. hana cried through that as well and once again, brought some other kids down with her. sorry for the small pictures but if you look super close, you can see hana, at about 3:00, making a big pouty face... so dramatic.

other intresting milestones: hana has started the squealing. she squeals for both happiness and frustration/fussiness. sometimes within the same 1-2 minute span of time. she "talks" a lot too. sometimes in the morning when she awakens, or at night after we put her down, we can hear her cooing to herself... SO cute. she's even gotten a little more mellow about the car seat - only crying about 1/2 the time we put her in it. she's beggining to have more fun on the changing table as well, only getting mad about having her diaper change when you do so in lieu of feeding her as she requests. while she isn't really grabbing at toys yet, she does such on her hands a LOT, sometimes singling out her index and middle finger, sometimes shoving her whole fist in her mouth. when i lay her in the gym thingies she's often in the mood to kick the ball and do so for a long time when that happens. i also suspect that she will roll over in the next few weeks. she's been arching her back and getting to her side on her own lately. and when i help her roll over, she has a big smile on her face and squeals with excitement. that's fun to see but that means a whole new level of supervision...

i know i should live in the moment, but there's a part of me that can't wait until she can sit up on her own. i know when she's thirteen years old, i'll wish she was as easy as she was when she was 13 weeks old. but while i do enjoy the moment, i can't help looking ahead too...

12 weeks - bringing sassy back

so jon went back to work last week on tuesday but my mom was here for a couple of those days so i really only had two days alone with her last week. this week is the first full week without jon. it's been an adjustment for us all. depending on the day, i either freak out about the notion of leaving hana in day care while we work full time. or i look forward to heading back to work to break up the monotony of talking to a baby all day.

today, while the baby was fussy, and i was feeling punchy, i rewrote the words to justin timberlake's "sexy back" song. it goes:

you're bringing sassy back
those other babies don't know how to act
i'll try to make up for the things you lack
you are the cutest baby, that's a fact

(take it to the bridge)

dirty babe
your poopy diaper simply must be changed
'try not to hit you if you misbehave
cuz no other baby makes me feel this way

(take it to chorus)

c'mon baby go on with it...

and then it repeats a bunch of times. but i'm actually still working on the chorus (specifically, the timberlan parts).

hana seems to like it. especially when we sing it on the changing table in the throws of a poopy diaper clean up.

11 weeks - nana's marathon

hana had her 2nd road trip when we drove down to l.a. for the marathon this year. the l.a. marathon has become something of a family tradition. it started in 2003 when i decided that i was going to train for a marathon. while i had tons of family support to accomplish my goal, most thought the whole notion of doing a marathon was utterly insane. that is, except for the 6 other people i know who did it (nadia, suz, jen (party of 5!), nancy, leah & glenda- forming team "we rock")- and the 25,000 other strangers who did it that year as well. it was sooo much fun that the next year, my brother (uncle poo), my mom (nana) and jon (daddy) did it along with me. then in 2006, my aunt (great aunt dee dee) , and my step sister yolinda (auntie yo) joined in. unbeknownst to me, baby hana was along for the 2006 marathon. had i known, i would have officially registered her so that she could have gotten some sort of award for her age group. i'm sure she was a top 3 finisher in the zygote category.

this year, we didn't run the marathon which left jon, jenny and i a little blue. jon, hana, aunt dee dee and i did do the 5 k run. that was REALLY fun. jon carried her in the baby bjorn the WHOLE time (!) and we all crossed the finish line as a family. it was really sweet. the rest of the day, we were on kid patrol... a marathon in and of itself. the three of us watched our babies (hana, jack and charlotte), plus cole (nadia's 2.5 year old) while everyone else did the marathon. there was only about 45 minutes in that day when all 4 kids were happy/mellow and otherwise needed no special attention from us. we tried to play a round of syzygy (fantastic, highly addictive word game - a cross between scrabble and a crossword puzzle) but sort of fell asleep before it ended and then a baby started crying. it was still fun to be down there hangin' with the kids, even though in the end we all wished we were actually running the marathon. especially because this year, the course was brand new. oh well, next year...

anyway, as it turned out, my mom was the only one from our side of the family, who actually did the marathon this year. (nadia and glenda did it as well). mom got a giant, very impressive blood blister for her trouble. mom whined about it but we all celebrated her induction in the freakish marathon ailment club. the only blood blister i have seen comparable in size was the one nadia got after running 100 miles! after the marathon, we had our traditional food-a-pa-looza from cpk ,which also included the requisite round of baby holding. it's not uncommon to hear "who wants to hold a baby?" and there be many takers.... a line even! it's quite nice and usually amounts to one of the few meals where i acutally get to chew my food before slamming it down.

after the marathon, mom was able to spend a couple of days with us at home in oakland before heading off to portland for a conference. it was nice for her to be able to spend some quality time with hana where she didn't have to compete so much with other family members. it's funny because almost every picture of hana in l.a. shows her looking totally exhausted because my relatives don't live in the area so they never get to see her. for some, it was the first time they'd seen her. so this made for quite a bit of overstimulation. which translated to cranky baby and no sleep for the walker pettigrew family on the eve of our run... but i digress.

she continues to be into "Rainbow Rob". this picture also captures her biting her lower lip. he just started doing that within a day of two of this picture being taken. it's awfully cute. makes her look like a little "cabbage patch doll".


after dropping nana off at the airport, we went to jenny's house for a little party of 5 playdate. it presented an opportunity for hana to have some tummy time- which i frequently forget to do with her - using jack and charlotte's toys. hana is really becoming quite social and really enjoys being around other babies and kids. she had about 20 minutes of tummy time here staring in the mirror, smiling, laughing and cooing, and looking at jack... i think she was showing off for the other kids. but also, she discovered the mirror for the first time. when we did some tummy time that morning, she could care less about the mirror (well... in fairness, it was much smaller) but in the afternoon, with jack and charlotte looking on, suddenly it was the coolest toy ever. so naturally, jon and went out and bought that mirror. in the tummy time we had today, she was again very interested in it. jenny's dad bob was concerned that we were teaching her the wrong message. i don't know that you can fault her for being so vain when she's so darn cute... but of course, i do hope this phase passes when the time is right.

other things to note from this week... she seems to gearing up for another growth spurt - feeding more, sleeping less. also she has starting cooing a lot more and we have been able to carry on lots of "conversations".

"Rainbow Rob"

now that she has been sleeping in her crib at night for the past few weeks (for 7-12 hour stretches!!!), we've been trying to zero in on her night time routine. jon has been reading books to hana and she really seems to like it.

she is particularly interested in this book "rainbow rob" about a penguin who is dissatified with being black and white and wants to be a color. it's a pretty cool book. jon's reading it here just to keep her entertained for a minute but she really seems to follow along!



she also likes when i sing "the rainbow connection" to her. that's the song kermit the frog sings at the beginning of "the muppet movie". that's now part of the night time ritual too when i put her down...

not all smiles...

lest you think that all our baby does all day is bust out the cute smiles, this should serve as proof that she does other cute faces too... even when fussing.

the shirt came from friends who recently went to hawaii and visited the town of hana (for which she is named) and the "hotel hana maui" where jon and i stayed for 5 days on our honeymoon. i was trying to take a picture with the shirt but she wasn't having it.

10 weeks - grandpa al and grandma peggy

ok ok OK!!!! i apologize for being such a slacker on the blog posts. it's been a busy couple of weeks. i'll try to catch up in the next series of posts. the baby's been asleep for a couple of hours so i'm not sure how long i'll have but here are some pics from when jon's father and stepmom came to visit.

it was a very relaxing visit and we really had a great time. hana really seemed to enjoy meeting them. she becomes more and more alert and social each week. it's pretty great.

this week, we also took hana to jon's office for the first time. that visit went pretty well too. she was very alert and social for about an hour or so and then she got tired and went to sleep (after a little clandestine nursing in jon's office). we were there for about 3 hours. there was really no consensus on who she looks like. i think that's because she's a mixture of the both of us. i contend that she has my eyes and nose but she has jon's mouth and expressions. so she looks like me when she's asleep and like jon when she's awake. she's also long and skinny like jon. but she changes a lot. even the lady at our favorite sushi place said she looked like me when she first met hana (at around 2 weeks or so - sleeping) but now she looks more like jon (at around 11 weeks - awake but calm throughout dinner). i wonder if that means she's going to have jon's personality... can you imagine if she had jon's expressions by my personality?! that's trouble!