Mazel and Hary

What's better than a squishy, squirmy, soapy baby in a bathtub?

2 squishy, squirmy, soapy babies!

One of these little girls had a diaper accident on Saturday while I was babysitting so we stripped down and had a bubble bath.

I thought Hazel was hard to keep up with in the tub but Mary was just as energetic.

Both of them thought standing sounded like a fun idea.

Then Ben was in charge of getting Hazel dressed and combed after tubby time.

I thought her hair turned out especially cute.

After the tub we had snack.

Hazel is big into sharing these days

(or at least pretending like she's going to share)

All in all we had a fun time Saturday.

I hope these girlies stay best friends.

Standing

Not sure this little girl should be allowed to pull herself up yet.

I found her like this last week when I went to get her up from nap.

She's been doing it ever since.

Big girl

Rocky Point

When we were in Mexico we tried to expose Hazel to the key elements of Rocky Point.

We played at the beach and splashed in the waves.

We age out at restaurants and got sung to by nice men that liked to touch her curls.

We went on walks, bought souvenirs, and were coaxed into shops by being called "big spender" and "movie star" 

We also stayed at a hotel that had a nice pool so we did that a few times as well.

And we did it all between naps.

Aside from the rocky start (see previous post)

we had a nice time.

Because of my door being smashed in I had to either crawl over the driver seat or just sit in the back and look like one of "those moms" that still sits in the back seat with their child.

I took my car to the body shop yesterday and I'm still waiting to hear back from them about what its going to cost to repair the damage from that silly deer. I keep having a feeling that my car is totalled. I really hope not because I really don't want to look for a new car right now.

Hazel's favorite souvenir from the trip

Our Most Expensive Vacation EVER

We went on vacation this week to get away before Ben starts his new job.

It ended up being our most expensive vacation to date.

We didn't stay at a luxurious resort

We didn't eat at any fancy restaurants.

We didn't even fly there.

We went to Rocky Point, Mexico.

Normally an inexpensive way to get to the closest beach we have.

We were planning to leave Monday at about noon when Hazel usually goes down for her second nap of the day. I was doing a bunch of last minute errands and borrowing travel supplies from family. I stopped at Danny and Lindsi's for a beach umbrella and then my car wouldn't start. 

I dropped Hazel off at Abbie's for a nap (which is when we should have been leaving) and got my car to a mechanic. He told us it was the starter that was giving us trouble.

So 5 hours and $400 later we were off.

That's not even the expensive part.

A few hours into the trip I hopped in back to feed Hazel some jar food and snacks.

It was 8pm and pitch black out.

We were just a few miles away from the border.

From the back seat I look up out the front window and scream

OH MY GOSH!!!!

and

BAM!!!

We hit a deer!

Ben said he barely saw it out of the corner of his eye.

I'm almost positive the deer and I made eye contact a split second before impact.

The car was running fine and we decided it was too dangerous to pull over.

Remember its dark outside and we probably just made a very large animal very mad.

We didn't hit it head on, just from the passenger side of the car.

The next few minutes were followed my these questions and comments.

"We just hit a deer!"

"Where did that deer even come from?"

"What the heck is a DEER doing in the desert?"

"What should we do?"

And many other things of that nature.

We could see the lights from the gas stations at the border so we waited until then to asses the damage.

The next few minutes were in silence.

And then, what's the most natural human response to a traumatic event?

Hysterical laughter.

Yep, that was me.

I started laughing really hard and I couldn't help it.

Ben turns to me super confused and asks me why I was laughing.

The only thing I could get out was,

"I don't know"

I think I just replayed the whole thing in my head and then asked myself,

"Did that really just happen?"

I think it lightened the mood a bit cause then we just laughed for a long time.

The following picture shows exhibits A through E on the damage to my car.

Exhibit A is where I'm guessing the shoulder of the deer hit.

Exhibit B is showing the fact that I don't have a side mirror.

Exhibit C must have been the back end crushing the door to the point where it no longer opens.

Exhibit D If you look closely it looks like the outline of a deer head

Exhibit E needs a closer look.

Yep, that's fur coming out of my tail light.

I don't know what happened to that deer, or to my mirror 

(we looked for both on the way back)

We still went on our trip and despite the rocky start we had a lovely time.

More on that to come.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to call my insurance company.

It Was a Carrot Hurricane

Hazel has been eating rice cereal for a few weeks now

and has liked it a lot.

Today I decided to give her some carrots for the first time.

I was all pumped and ready and felt like super-mom cause I've been reading up on making my own baby food. I steamed the carrots, mashed them up, and added some water and cereal.

We got the camera all ready to document this milestone.

It started out super positive.

 Then her hands got involved and she was wiping carrots all over the place.

It looked like a little orange hurricane blew through our living room.

Luckily she was only in a diaper

This last picture was taken seconds before it all came right back up.

Then we had a sink bath.

More like a sink shower.

I held her up and Ben sprayed her off making sure to find all the baby creases.

I realized now where we went wrong.

I'm just learning how to be a mom ok?

We went at it a little too abrupt for Hazel.

My mixture was mostly carrots with a little rice cereal,

In hindsight I realize that it should have been the other way around

introducing the flavor a little at a time.

Duh.

I'm not sure why I didn't think of that before.

Seriously, duh.

Happy Half_Birthday

Yesterday was Hazel's half-birthday

 Its so weird to think that she's already 6 months old

As of yesterday 

(the exact day she turned 6 months old)

Hazel decided to change the way we do things around here.

She no longer wants to be put to sleep.

I used to have to bounce her and sing her a few songs

until she was totally asleep in my arms before placing her in her crib.

Yesterday she wanted none of that.

I now just lay her in her crib (swaddle-free too)

give her a binkie and and blankie

and walk out.

It's kind of amazing.

This last month she also learned to sit up on her own 

and started eating rice cereal

This little lady thinks that life is just so fun.

She spends most of her day kicking her legs or flapping her arms up and down.

Flapping her arms makes her a really good piano player too.

Hazel also really love kids for some reason. 

I can't blame her though, she has a lot of really entertaining cousins that think its so fun to scare her.

Hazel was born with an exaggerated startle reflex which was pretty sad when she was smaller but is super entertaining now. 

Cousins (and me and Ben) can hide over and over, jump out, and say "boo" 

and Hazel will jump

Every Single Time

and she loves it.

Happy half-birthday little girl.

I'm excited to see what the next 6 months brings us

Big Girl

Hazel sat up in the shopping cart yesterday.

It was kind of a big deal.

And so much fun.

A Girl and her Dad

I'd like to think that Hazel and I have fun during the day.

But it's not till Ben gets home when the real fun starts.

This girl loves her daddy

 

I seriously can't even nurse her if Ben is in the room.

She gets so distracted by whatever he is doing or saying.

I love watching these two together.

Its a Party Day

Today this little lady turned 5 months.

I'm pretty sure she gets cuter every day.

 This last month she got 2 teeth

and can roll from front to back.

(she's been rolling the other direction since January)

She's getting really good at grabbing what she wants

and loves to touch faces whether its welcomed or not.

Hazel also started making some cute faces

Also happy birthday to this handsome guy.

He turns 27 today.

He is pretty handsome.

thumb-ifier

Hazel has never taken a pacifier

nor has she taken much to sucking her thumb

but put those two together

and you have a winning combination

I gave her the binkie the other week just to play with and chew on and she managed to get her thumb in it and decided it was awesome. She's done it a few times since.

Why have just a thumb or just a pacifier when you can have the best of both worlds?

Parenting Tips from TV

Ever watched Up All Night?

Its one of our favorite shows around here.

The clip on this episode below aired right before we had Hazel and we still quote it.

Well apparently Mr. PHD in peek-a-boo knew what he was talking about.

See for yourself

Anything we do to get Hazel to laugh can only be done one time.
Then it's old news and we have to get creative again.

3 Months

Hazel is 3 months old now and much prefers to do things like a big girl now.

If she's being held like a baby its because she's asleep or being put to sleep

other than that she needs to sit up and face outward to see the world.

She hates her car seat most of the time.

I have a theory though that if she was allowed to sit face forward, 

she would love it.

She's very noisy and good at talking and growling.

She only squeals at Ben.

Is starting to get a little shy in big crowds and around people she doesn't know.

She's an expert at smiling and we even got a laugh out of her the other night.

She hasn't laughed since.

LOVES getting her diaper changed on the diaper table.

Hazel could be sad, tired, hungry, or crying but put her on the changing table and something comes over her. She starts kicking her legs and going crazy.

(that's where we got her to laugh)

Hazel also started rolling over from her back to her front.

Did I mention that she doesn't really like being on her stomach very much?

She's doing better now that she gets there on her own but sometimes as soon as she turns over she just gets mad... its pretty funny