week 18 - bad blogger! bad, bad blogger!!!

i know, i know... it's been too long. well, we have been busy running around, doin' stuff. even though it has been 2 weeks since easter, i just got the "easter bonnett..." song out of my head... i so enjoy her easter pictures that frankly it's been hard to top the display of cuteness hana presented in her lil' easter fineries. i mean, the bonnett was just so fabulous and she even wore it the whole day (see easter posting...) "in her easter boneeetttt, with all the frills upon iittttt, she'll be the grandest lady at the easter paraaaaade".

darn. it's stuck in my head again.

well, in the last couple of weeks she has been doing more rolling. rolling from back to front more frequently than rolling from tummy to back. i think she likes being on her tummy so she's not that inclined to roll to her back. she is also getting closer to sitting up on her own. she can sit up for a few seconds without any support. and when she's laying flat, she prefers to be sitting up and appears to be doing crunches in order to sit up. she also likes standing now too. when i put my hands out to help her sit up, she will put all the way up to standing and be quite proud of herself once she gets there. she is grabbing and playing with things a lot more as well, expressing preference by grabbing at things she likes (such as favorite toys and other babies' bottles) and not grabbing for things she doesn't care about. it's interesting to see her personality emerge that way.

the biggest change however, was hana's graduation from the infant car seat - affectionately known as "the bucket" - to the "conversion car seat", so named because it can convert from the rear-facing infant kind to the forward-facing toddler kind. this has been a BIG adjustment for me, in particular. technically, she'd outgrown the car seat just after her 4 month birthday. but i pushed it for another couple of weeks. why, praytell, have i changed the car seat so soon? well, the manufacturers say that babies can stay in the bucket until they are 25 lbs and less than 29" long. now, hana is only about 14.5 lbs (albeit, she's no spring chicken) and about 27" long so no, she is not the largest 4 month old baby on record (although the smart money is on her in the baby wrestling matches). but car seat experts (i.e. police and pediatricians) say that regardless of length if the babies feet are touching the back seat of the car, it's time to upgrade. now i'd known that babies tend to grow out of their car seats in length long before they grow out of it in weight. and i knew that hana was a long and lean baby. but this was sad news for me. not only did i think that i was going to get to use the bucket for closer to a year (if i was a bettin' woman, i'd wager that she'll be 20 lbs before her first birthday and definately longer than 29") but now, when ever i want to go somewhere with her, you have to take her in and out of the car seat at every stop. which means if she's sleeping (which is almost every car trip), you have to wake her up. because, unlike her mama, hana is not that deep of a sleeper. it sort of makes the whole notion of a travel system (an infant car seat and stroller sold together - you can click the car seat on to the stroller) seem like yet another racket on a LONG list of baby rackets. i mean you spend a couple hundred dollars to get this combination that's is really convenient in some ways (save for the wrist and back pain caused by lugging those things around awkwardly with the baby in it), but they only use it for a couple of months if you do it right. i think most people don't think about the size of their child, in relation to the bucket. they just think they'll use it for a year, and then when it's time to turn the kid around, they'll switch out the car seat. fortunatley, i actually got out of the house and around town very early on, so i think i got the most use i could out of it. there were several moms i've met who didn't leave the house for 2 months!

on the bright side, she actually seems to like this car seat a lot better. there's been a little less screaming when being "locked and loaded". she sits higher up so she can see out of the window better which she seems to really enjoy. and, we can get a really good view of her in the little mirror we have mounted about the car seat (which, of course, is another adjustment since i am often distracted by her cuteness when i'm trying to check the mirrors for a lane change). also, now that we don't just click the bucket into the stroller, we put her directly in the stroller, which reclines almost flat. i think she finds that a lot more comfortable for napping on the go.

tomorrow we go to the pediatrician for her 4 month check up. i must say i'm a little nervous because she'll be getting shots and there are a lot of mom's i know who's babies did not have a reaction to the 2 month shots but a strong reaction to the 4 month shots. we'll see how it goes.