Hangin with Eden

Eden and I always have fun together on Tuesday afternoons. We play games, sing songs, pass objects, roll around, and make each other laugh. One thing we always love to do, like any pair of good pals, is take funny pictures of ourselves! Here's one where she drooled right on my arm!!!

 Okay, for one time we decided to do a "nice," regular, smiling picture!

 But then we got silly again with our ferocious roaring faces.

My, what a GIANT FOOT YOU HAVE!

Eden vs. Sweet Potato

Solid food #2: sweet potato!  Eden's very first sweet potato was lovingly prepared and delivered by her Bubbe - Eden has a lot more of Bubbe's delicious cooking to look forward to!!

Baby's first waffle house

After a concert at Aunt Becky's school!  Note the skepticism in her eyes...

Eden talking, babbling, singing

2 days after her first consonants, listen to her wail!  Daycare says she talks up a storm!

Baby about town

This weekend Eden's 姥姥 and 爷爷came to visit!  Ok, they're not really her grandparents, they're her cousin Matthew's grandparents on his mother's side, but since she doesn't have her own 姥姥 and 爷爷, they can be her adopted grandparents too!  We went out to brunch with them at J. Alexander's.

Then on the way home our good friends the Rosenthals happened to be in the neighborhood so we stopped by to meet them at Dough Bakery, a vegan bakery 5 minutes from our house that we LOVE.  The Rosenthal kids are such wonderful, inquisitive, smart, joyful, generous children.  I want Eden to spend lots of time with them so that she benefits from their influence!

Daddy Sings at Eden's Daycare (Wed, May 14)

For her 6 month "birthday," I brought my guitar to sing to her class when I picked her up.  Word spread that I was coming back with guitar, so they asked if I would sing to a few classes while they were on the playground.

Check out Eden's face as I was singing!

 

Here's a close-up:

And here's Eden playing my guitar afterwards:

Eden's First Word - Abba!

Up until now, Eden has only grunted or "sang" in vowels - usually "uh" or "eh".  Now she found her first "B".  And "Abba" means dad in Hebrew :-)

Eden at Suzuki - May

Sitting up and gazing out over the frontier

First solid food!

Watch Eden eat her first solid food (and don't be alarmed - she chokes a little, but she's fine):

6 months!!

Just relaxing for the panda shot... nothing special to see here!

Well, except for all this moving and self-supporting and bending!

Eden eats her feet

Yum!

Pink baby bath

We have been giving Eden a bath every night as part of her bedtime routine (which is in turn designed to help her sleep better...)  Eden loves her baby bath - from what we hear, most babies do!  For travel - her bathtub cost $16 on amazon, so we decided to just order one and have it shipped to Chicago.  We ordered the pink version just for fun - we have the blue version at home.

Her first night in Chicago she was extremely tired and screamed through her baby bath.  This is extremely uncommon - usually she calms right down in the bath.  But it was a new scene and a new time zone and she stayed up several hours past her bedtime even within that time zone, so who could blame her?  

The second night, though, even though it was late, she managed to get a good enough evening nap in while in the ergo - so she was definitely in the mood for a baby bath!!  Check it out:

And our FAVORITE...

Multiple people have independently described this photo as "sassy"

Eden's baby bath was lots of fun!  It didn't help her sleep better though.  She ended up in bed with me after a few hours both nights, and we kicked Michael out into one of the other eight bedrooms. I finally managed to do this "side lying and nurse in bed for hours" thing that seems to be the la leche people's solution for everything.  It's not a bad travel solution to keep baby from waking up the whole neighborhood, but I really didn't get any meaningful sleep.  Plus there is pretty much no way I could ever do this if Michael were there too. Apparently some working moms do this every night.  What.  

Our next trip is this weekend, to Camp Ramah Darom.  Then to Birmingham two weeks after that.  We way overbooked May!

Oh, and if you're wondering what happened to the baby bath... we left it in our rental car when we dropped it off at the airport.  Eep.

Morning in Chicago

Flying with baby

Michael just posted about our trip, you can read about it generally and see some more pictures here.  It is really surreal and sad that Eden's first flight had to be because of Rachel's passing.  But of course, we wanted to be there for these events.  I am so sad Rachel did not get to meet Eden, I can totally imagine her holding Eden and grinning.  

To document the travel aspects of this voyage - I was nervous about flying with the baby - mainly nervous something horrible would happen.  The FAA's rules on lap children are pretty scary.  They let babies, the most vulnerable individuals ever, fly without any kind of restraint - and in fact (unless you buy a separate seat for the baby where you restrain the baby in a car seat), you are not even permitted to use your own restraint other than your arms during takeoff and landing.  This terrifies me - what if there is sudden turbulence?? 

But really, most people choose not to buy a seat for their baby, because the chances of anything bad happening are extremely small, and the chances of anything bad happening where the baby's being in a separate seat made a difference are even smaller.  So we didn't buy a seat either, but I agonized over this decision.

In the end, I spent $40 to buy this vest, which is basically something you can run your seatbelt through to attach it to you.  It seemed a reasonable compromise, even though you're not allowed to use it during takeoff and landing, the most dangerous times of the flight!  I thwarted this rule by nursing her under a nursing cover during takeoff/landing.  

The flights were completely uneventful, basically no turbulence even.  She was very well behaved.  On the flight to Chicago, she barely cried at all, and didn't seem to react to the change in elevation.  On the way back she was overtired and fussy, but we were still able to calm her through nursing or pacifier.

A couple more shots of Eden on a plane - 

In her vest after landing

Eden took this picture!  She pressed the button.
Proof is in how horrible I look - definitely not the moment I would have chosen to capture.

Going through security was also lots of fun.  Both times I took Eden through the TSA pre-check line by myself, while Michael and Becca went through the regular line.  The result:

There was definitely some awkwardness, and a seasoned mom traveler had to help me close my stroller! Oh well.  

All in all a successful, and meaningful, trip to celebrate my cousin's life.  

Eden's First Flight! (Our trip to Chicago)

We went to Chicago this weekend.  Unfortunately it was for a very sad occasion - Bonnie's cousin Rachel Smylie passed away in a tragic car accident while studying abroad in Cape Town, South Africa at only 21 years old.

Rachel will be missed, and the service & memorial were beautifully done.  She would have loved to have met her cousin's new baby Eden.

Here are some pics & videos from the trip...

At Chicago airport (O'Hare) waiting for a shuttle to our rental car.  We had more bags than we could carry in one trip!

First stop, Kelly's house!  Bonnie's long-time friend.

Tummy time!

Next stop - the house we stayed in.   Uh, well, this was a fun kids house in the backyard.  The actual house was amazing!  HUGE!

Two kids in the kids house :-)

Our new favorite picture of Eden!

At the funeral with Bonnie, Becca, Aunt & cousin.

Our little cutie on the return flight...

VIDEOS:

Who needs a window seat when you've HANDS to look at?

Miss Maestro on the piano

Her preferred mode of playing...

The piano sounds like a carnival!  The microphone smells like a bwurp...

("bwurp" is what we call spit-up)

Edie Edie, ride the pony...

Punching this burdie in the face

Good thing it's a sturdy burdie.