Holland: 11 Months Old

Boy oh boy - Holland is 11 months old today.  Reed and I have been singing happy birthday to her and I've been feeling a bit emotional? reflective? wistful? thinking about this sweet little girl and how dearly I love her.  When she woke up from her morning nap I took a few hundred pictures of her with Reed as my assistant.  She is just such a sweet girl.

• Holland first crawled at almost exactly ten months (just like Reed).  She's logged a lot of practice over the month and is officially on the move!  She fell down the four steps to the landing once and has since been really good about not going near them (we also practice having her go backwards down them every couple days).
• On February 3 (10.5 months) she said her first word!  We were at the doctor's office and needed to pass the time so we Facetimed TJ and as soon as his face came on the screen she said "Dada!"  
• Holland has an extra special love for TJ.  She says "Dada" now with some frequency (still no Mama but she does say Nana!) and she follows him with her eyes almost anytime she's near him.  She loves her daddy.
• Holland is BUSY.  In reality, she's probably not the busiest little baby out there, but after reflective, contemplative Reed she seems like it!  We borrowed a number of toys from the Petersons and we've got them all - along with ours - in a big bin in the toy closet.  When I get that out she no longer even crawls to it: there are dozens of toys in that bin and she is done with all of them!  She has started "exploring," crawling all over the house, eating things off the floor, opening drawers, grabbing anything in reach.  (This "exploring" makes Reed quite protective, both of his things and of her.  If he sees her grabbing something he shouldn't he screams "NO, HAHN!" and yanks either the thing from her or her from the thing.  Many tears are shed over these daily tiffs).
• As we sat at dinner last night, all four of us eating the same thing, I pointed out to TJ how long we hoped for just this!  We've had these long time aspirations of being a family who loves eating and delicious food and eating our red coconut curry with shrimp last night I felt like maybe we've arrived.  :)  Holland is the best eater of us all and will eat anything and everything we give her.  We have, to date, found two things she doesn't like: the first is formula and the second is milk.  But ice cream?  Give her all the ice cream.  And all the other food, though we have learned that variety is important to her - she gets mad if we feed her the same thing meal after meal or if she doesn't have more than one thing to eat at any given meal.  
• Her favorite food has got to be blueberries, which she eats dozens of every day, carefully picking them up with her little pointer finger and thumb.  She also adores shrimp, which got Reed to love shrimp, and now we eat a lot of shrimp!
• A couple weeks ago, in the middle of nursing, Holland started screaming and refused to drink any more.  That was that.  I tried dozens of times in the following days to get her to breastfeed, but to no avail.  She quit - quite on her own! - cold turkey.  She and I both had a rough transition (which for her included a lot of applesauce pouches in the middle of the night) but she is completely fine now and seems no worse for wear.
• After several months with just her two bottom teeth Holland's two top teeth came in - just two days ago!  They are just barely poking through - and we haven't yet managed a picture - but they are definitely there.  I can't wait to see her little smile with four teeth.
• Though she isn't yet great at sitting through books, Holland does have a particular love for eating paper.  Any paper.  She will crawl across a room to pick up and eat a book.  She grabs the papers hanging on the fridge anytime I carry her within arms' length.  She pulls bookmarks out and pops them right into her mouth.  She knows where the gift bags are in her closet (I store the wrapping paper there) and I find her in her room, arms looped through the straps of one gift bag, chewing on another.  
• Cute Holland loved the beach and ate handful after handful of dirt.  I mean it - the girl loves to eat anything she can get her hands on!  
• Nana and Papa taught Holland the nursery rhyme "Patty cake" and she claps her hands for it and raises her hands in the air.
• Holland has gotten pretty darn good at waving!  It is darling and melts my heart every time.  We have to ask her a few times before she actually does it but I always love seeing which one she chooses: she sometimes waves one arm or both arms and other times she holds her arms straight out and slowly opens and closes her fist.  
• One of my favorite things about Holland is that she loves being held tight.  She doesn't care for being rocked but holds completely still for a tight, long hug.  She loves it, and I do too.
• Holland is such a light sleeper.  It sort of kills us.  Reed sleeps through everything - including being picked up and moved, or tucked in, or having his clothes put away in his room, or even through Holland screaming - but Holland almost always wakes up just to the door in her room opening.  It's inconvenient, certainly, but the worst part is missing out on sneaking in late at night and rocking her while she sleeps, which I definitely miss.
• Holland is also pretty particular about where she sleeps.  We have two options: her bed or her car seat.  Anything else is unacceptable and she'll cry and fuss until she gets to one of those locations.  Last week she fell asleep in TJ's arms (in California) and it was pretty amazing - it's been months since she's done that.  
• This girl loves her tongue!  She makes so many fun noises by moving her tongue around and is especially pleased when you do it back to her.
• Holland has gotten pretty clever about interacting without words.  She has "conversations" by shaking her head back and forth with someone (ie she shakes her head at me and I do it back and she does it again) or clapping her hands back and forth or "talking" by making "blah blah blah" noises back and forth.  
• She tells you she's excited by waving her arms or kicking her feet.  Man, she sure kicks her feet a lot!  I've told TJ that the soundtrack to our life is Holland kicking her feet - ha!  In her high chair she kicks all the time (with Reed requesting to see and putting his head under the table to watch her) and she kicks faster the more excited she is for what bite you're about to give her.  :)  She kicks on the floor - sitting up with her legs straight in front of her - when she's excited to see someone or have something.  She just loves kicking.
• Holland is also strong!  When she was tiny she would do those "hollow holds," which she's stopped doing, but now when I'm changing her diaper and have her feet in the air she lifts her whole middle off the ground so she's just on her shoulders.  It is pretty amazing (and pretty tough to put a diaper on when she won't keep her bottom on her diaper!)  If I lay her on her floor with her head under her crib she will reach up and grab her crib and lift her whole upper body off the ground - if I hold her feet up she does pull ups with her body parallel to the ground.
• She loves phones and is so quick to grab them and suck on them.
• She also loves seeing people on FaceTime.  One day when we were driving home from Provo Holland was inconsolable, screaming and screaming for the drive.  In desperation I got Nana on Facetime and passed the phone to Holland.  Silence.  As long as Holland held the phone and looked at Nana she was absolutely happy, but the second I would take it from her (to give Reed a turn) she absolutely wailed.  (Conversely, as soon as I returned it to Holland Reed would scream - not enough Nana to go around!)  When Reed Facetimes someone whose voice she knows while we're on the road Holland will crane her neck forward to try to see them.
• Holland is learning to give kisses, but they (so far) feel a little more like attacks.  She will grab your face and just come right at you with open mouth.  She will kiss whatever she reaches - your mouth, your cheek, your neck.  It's all fair game.
• One of her less endearing traits right now is her love for my hair.  She sticks her hands into the middle, twists to wrap the hair around her fingers, and pulls.  It is ROUGH.  (She also pulls TJ's chest hair in the shower the whole time he holds her - OUCH!)
• She also has a painful habit of grabbing the back of my upper arm when I'm holding her and squeezing the skin, pinching it pretty painfully.  
• If Holland sees something she wants in her mouth she spits out her binky immediately.  This applies with food, a drink, a piece of paper, medicine...any and all.

When Reed wakes up one of the first things he says is "I wanna see Hahn" and that pretty much sums up how we feel about her - we can't get enough of this darling, fun, blue-eyed, loving girl.  We sure love you, Sis!

Holland: 8 Months Old

I feel like I have a million and one things on my to do list, but I'm trying to prioritize pausing and journaling about this sweet girl because I know I'll be more grateful for this than for completed Christmas shopping lists or a clean kitchen.  So let's hop to.

This little lady is now eight months old:

And, goodness, we have sure lucked out to have her.  She is such a SWEET baby (which I must tell her often because several times every day Reed is in her face, his little voice an octave higher than usual as he says "Hi, sweet go-whoa (girl).")  She is nearly always content and so quick to smile: sometimes I get her out of bed at 10 or 11 PM to feed her and even as she blinks away sleep and squints from the light she smiles.

Speaking of light, Holland sneezes anytime the sun is in her eyes: whether in her car seat or outside, it's always consistent.

She has not yet met a food she doesn't like.  I remember Reed at this age making the most humorous faces with new foods but we don't get that with Holland at all: instead we get screams and sobs when we stop putting food in her mouth.  :)  Smoothies, applesauce, yogurt, eggs, potatoes, carrots, bananas, cheese, apples, blueberries - anything goes.  She is simply delighted with whatever she eats.  In fact, Reed is trying more things now because he sees her so happily eating them, which is a win for us all!  I am still nursing Holland but the frequency and duration have dropped quite a bit.

In fact, nursing Holland deserves its own point.  Ha!  She is such a funny girl when she nurses: she's easily distracted, which means I have to feed her somewhere quiet or she simply can't focus enough to eat (eating on the go, in the van, at someone's house, etc. simply don't work).  While nursing she does some pretty funny things with her arms: sometimes she flails them wildly, sometimes she pinches and scratches my arm, often she just reaches for and holds whatever she finds, etc.  I most frequently feed her in the glider in her room and after she's done she always leans her head back until it gets stuck between my leg and the edge of the chair, at which point she rolls over so her belly is on my leg while her head is still stuck. It's such an odd, but consistent, routine and I worry one of these days she's going to roll right off my lap.

Holland's first tooth poked through on October 12 and the second came through on October 23, so she now has her two little bottom teeth.  Nothing else has come through yet!

If I had to choose one word to describe Holland right now it would probably be curious.  She wants to grab, hold, and eat everything she can get her hands on.  It's hard to read to her because she cries if she can't grab and hold the book.  She tips over while sitting because she's reaching for something that's caught her eye.  She looks up for noises, reaches for whatever she sees, and is not really content to just sit - she has to be doing something.

Probably driven by her curiosity, she is getting pretty close to crawling.  She hasn't yet gotten up on all fours, but she will lay on her belly and wriggle her body forward until she can reach what she's going for.  She makes her way across a room pretty efficiently now (by rolling) and I'm sometimes surprised to leave a room and come back after just a minute to find her 8 feet away.  She fell off the couch last night for the first time (our fault for leaving her there.... we felt awful) but hasn't yet fallen down the stairs.

Her routine of going to sleep is so funny.  We have largely abandoned swaddling her arms.  Instead, I typically swaddle her from her chest down with a swaddle blanket.  Then I hand her her saranoni blanket (a gift from my sister), which she grabs with both hands, and pulls up to the top of her head.  She then puts her feet straight up in the air, rolls onto her side, and puts her feet between the slats in her crib.  She does that exact thing probably 95% of the time when she goes to sleep.

This girl still loves her big brother.  More than once I have been telling him to give her some space when I hear her giggling at whatever he's doing.  He pushes her over, lifts her head to sit her back up, rolls her like a log, lays on her, sits in her lap, kicks with her (which often results in actually kicking her), takes her toys, gives her toys, kisses her, licks her, and just overwhelmingly loves her.  Some of our tenderest moments are listening to him talk with her: "What's happened, Han?"  "Han, look - covered dump truck right here."  "Mommy, Han dropped it.  Get it."  "Deep bref, Han (when she's crying)."  Every morning when she wakes up and starts talking Reed shouts, "Han awake!!" and zooms to her room, where he climbs up to talk with her in her crib.  I also just melt when he, in his baby voice, says "Hi, sweet sistow" or "Hi, sweet go-whoa."  Be still my heart.

Reed still typically calls her Han (rhymes with "on") or Hanuh, but he can clearly say Holland and sometimes calls her by her actual name too.  Actually, we taught him that her full name is Holland Eileen Morris and he calls her that with some frequency.  :)  TJ and I most often call her Han, Holland, or Sister.  I also call her Sweet Girl, Sweet Sister, Lady Lover (no clue why), Little Lady, and Munch.

A few other things that come to mind.

Holland:

• Loves kicking her feet on her mattress.  Well, she loves kicking her feet anywhere/anytime.  I often hear pounding in the house, caused by her feet hitting whichever surface she's laying on.
• Kicks like crazy when someone walks into her room while she's in her bed.
• Has the cutest blonde hair that - after several haircuts - has really filled in and is now starting to grow out.
• Talks like a grandpa all the time.  
• Sucks on her teeth and sticks her cute tongue out in such a darling way.
• Pulls her headbands down to suck on the bow (sometimes until she gags herself and then spits up on them).
• Changes outfits 3-4 times a day due to making a mess while eating or spitting up.
• Is pretty darn ticklish and especially laughs when I bite her sides.
• Is a mediocre sleeper.  She usually does a 6-ish hour stretch, but I am almost waking up at some point when I'd rather be sleeping to feed her (usually around 4 AM).  We tried waiting her out but after two nights of her just talking and talking and talking for more than an hour I decided it's faster to feed her for ten minutes and go back to sleep.  Ha!
• Is a little trooper as we are almost always on-the-go during her morning nap.  She isn't one to fall asleep just anywhere (unless she is completely exhausted) so usually gets a very abbreviated morning nap in her car seat during an uninterrupted stretch driving.
• Has some stinkin' adorable, chubby cheeks.  Oh, I love them.  I kiss them so much.
• Still really adores her daddy.  She lights up when she sees him or is with him.
• Loves bathing!  When I put her in the bath she kicks until I am covered with water.  :)  On vacation last week we had a huge jetted tub and I put her in with Reed (he LOVES when she joins him) and she laid right down in the water, no hesitation at all.  She seems to love being in the water.
• Sure likes her binky.  It is most often clipped to her when she'll need it (at night, during naps, in her car seat), and she knows just how to grab it and plop it into her mouth.
• Isn't much of a cuddler.  In fact, after I nurse her when I go to bubble her she pushes herself away from me by putting her hands on my shoulders and just pushing back.  Given this tendency, I try to just hold her whenever she'll let me - if she falls asleep right after or while nursing I sit and just rock her and hold her close.
• Does love hugs and - I've recently discovered - tight hugs, where I have both my arms around her and pull her tight.  
• Wears size 3 diapers (for several months now), 12 month pajamas, 18 month dresses, and needs to bump up on pants from 12 months to 18 months (I've had some 12 month pants that will no longer fit over her cute, chubby thighs.  :)  
• Was a darling little ladybug for Halloween.

She can't actually stand yet - we propped her against the wall with her knees locked while I stood just barely outside the frame to catch her if she fell.  :)

Gosh, we just love and adore this sweet girl.  I often look at her and wonder how we got so lucky to get her in our family.  She is such a happy baby, busy but content, and fills all our lives and hearts with so much joy.  Reed, TJ, and I are all over the moon that she's ours.

Holland: 6 Months Old

Sweet little Holland is six months old now.

TJ and I just look at each other and ask, "How in the world did this happen?"  Time seems to just slip through our fingers.

This little girl is just the sweetest baby.  She wakes up with the biggest smiles and is such a delight to greet.  The last five days or so she's remembered how to sleep through the night (hooray!) but before that she would wake once or twice in the night, sometimes just talking and talking from her crib - like for an hour at a time!  Ha!  What a funny girl.

Holland rolled from her back to her belly once before she was five months old and didn't repeat it until a week ago, when something clicked and she rolled over about eight times in one day.  She now seems to have mastered the back to belly roll, even when she's swaddled, but hasn't yet cracked how to get from belly to back.

"Mommy, Hanuh right here."  Reed was thrilled about this arrangement.

This girl loves food!  We have this little netted holder that we can put food in for her to suck on.  She adores it.  We put fruit in it (peaches, watermelon, pear, apples) and she sucks until there's virtually nothing left.  She also sobs when it falls down, in case we had any question about whether she loves it.  :)

Holland is such a champ with Reed, who loves and adores her but likes to see just how she works ("What happens if I squeeze her hand?  Or lay on her?  Or push her belly?").  Even still, she almost always grins (and blinks - ha!) when he comes near.  Whether for her safety or for her entertainment her eyes follow him around the room whenever he is near.

She hates her car seat.  For long drives we almost always have one of us sit by her to try to mitigate the screaming.  The best drives are the ones she sleeps through.  :)

The other thing about her car seat -  about 90% of her stinky diapers come while she's in her car seat.  It is completely bizarre.  Reed is incredibly good about telling me, "Hanuh stinky!" so I know to change her, but it almost always means that when we arrive at our first destination I have to change her diaper.  When I plan ahead I put her in her car seat at home 20 minutes before we're leaving, let her fill her diaper, then change her before we go.  Ha!

Holland clearly communicates she's tired by burrowing into your shoulder.  When I put her to sleep I stand holding her, rocking her from side to side, and she falls asleep with her head on my shoulder and my cheek on her head.

She's had about four haircuts so far.  I am not a big fan of the mullet look or raggedy hair, so we just keep evening it out as it fills in more.  I think we're about to the point we'll let it grow for a while - it seems to be much more even now.

Holland loves being outside!  Whether it's going for a ride in the stroller (where she now can sit in the actual stroller seat, not just her car seat), laying on a blanket in the grass, or sitting on my lap, she is calmer and pretty immediately happier outside.

Holland gets really fussy when she's tired: she also rubs her eyes, holds her hands right above them, and gets red eyebrows (well, the skin under her eyebrows goes red).  Two nights ago I asked TJ if Holland was ready to sleep and he responded, "Not yet.  Her eyebrows aren't red enough."  :)

She has fantastic legs.  Oh, I love them so much.  She found her toes a couple weeks ago.  I don't often see her play with them but she now knows she has them!

She continues doing "hollow holds," holding both her head and legs up.  She's ready to sit up and see the world!

Holland has realized that she has a built-in toy with her headband.  I often find it soaking wet as she pulls it down from her head and sticks it in her mouth to suck on.  She has snapped it right onto her face a few times, darn it, but most often just gets the pleasure out of playing with it.  I have found her with it across her eyes (whoops) and even as a mustache before.  Ha!

Holland really, really loves TJ.  I can't describe it but you can see in her eyes when she looks at him - she just oozes love for him.  She loves watching him, playing with him, talking with him, being held by him, having his attention.  This girl absolutely loves her daddy.

Nana brought to my attention that Holland has a thing for tags and now I notice it all the time!  Reed loved tags too (and still does - the tags on his three beloved blankets are very well worn).

She used to stop nursing to suck on a finger - now she stops nursing to just talk (which just sounds like long yells).  It cracks me up.

This little lady is just the best.  We love, love, love her and are so glad she's here.  She makes us smile and laugh and lets us kiss her cheeks hundreds of times.  Happy half birthday, cute girl.  We sure love you.

Holland: 5 Months Old

This grinning little girl is now five months old.  Five months!  We are so incredibly grateful to have her in our family. 

 Holland is SUCH A GOOD BABY.  She is patient and happy and rarely squawks or screams.  So much of our time goes to Reed – who is just at a busy toddler age! – and Holland is almost always content to sit by and watch, taking it all in.

She inherited gorgeous blue eyes from her dad.  They are deep blue – less gray than Reed’s – and so hard to capture.  I love looking into those gorgeous pools of blue.  Her hair is still blonde as can be, even after the three or four haircuts she's had.

Over the past month or so she’s started doing the funniest thing when she’s eating: she’ll be nursing and I’ll feel her lose her latch.  When I look down I find that she's slid one of her little fingers into her mouth.  Ha!  It happens almost every feeding, often several times, and it makes me laugh.  She just really needs to suck on her finger right then!

A few weeks ago she rolled over for the first time – we were even all there!  I had TJ keep the camera on for about an hour trying to catch it again.  Good thing we gave that up, as she hasn’t rolled over since.  

She really loves to be UP - she does "hollow holds" a dozen or more times a day, where she lifts both her head and her feet while lying on the ground and just holds that position.  She also loves to stand and is strong enough now that we can just hold her hands and she can stay up. 

Reed pointing to a worker wearing orange; Holland trying to figure out how to suck on the book.

When I put Holland to sleep I often swaddle her, then hold her up on my shoulder (she FAR prefers being up than being cradled), and sway back and forth while I stand in her room.  When she falls asleep on her own it is almost always with her hands right in front of her face, usually holding something (her binky clip if that’s all she has) until she falls asleep.

She loves having her eyes covered when she sleeps.  I would never have figured this out, but both TJ and his mom figured it out independently (how?).  She also pulls her arms out of her swaddle as quick as she can.

She is quite a good little kicker and I can’t help but laugh when I praise her for kicking (“Oh, Holland, that’s great kicking!”) and Reed lays next to her and says “Reed kicker.”

We’ve let her lick/suck on a few foods and she just plain loves them: grapes, strawberries, and peaches (pictured here) so far.

She’s not the world’s biggest spitter, for sure, but Holland does spit up enough that we go through all our burp cloths every few days.  I didn’t realize until I was just digging through pictures that I even caught her actually spitting in this one.  Because of spitting up she usually changes 3-4 times a day (and I usually change a couple times too, after she nails me). 

Reed noticing the spit up before I do...

Holland is so patient with Reed.  Over the weekend we went up the canyon for dinner with TJ’s family.  I thought it would be cute to get some pictures with Reed holding Holland.  You can see from the shot below that Reed had had enough after about 30 shots and he just threw her on the ground.  Oh my.  [Note: I would say we were being responsible and had TJ right there to catch her, but he didn’t even move as she went down so that disclaimer isn’t valid.]  Holland landed in the dirt but didn’t even cry.

This is how Reed asks to hold "Hanuh."

Holland loves to be outside.  When she is so fussy I can’t calm her (not often-she’s just such a great baby) it almost always works to take her outside and just enjoy the fresh air.

With TJ's mom, Holland's middle namesake (Eileen)

Holland is a fantastic sleeper.  I keep thinking maybe one day it’s going to end but at this point I HOPE NOT.  At about six weeks she was sleeping 7 hours at night (I have no idea how this happened).  At this point she usually gets up around 4 or 5 AM to eat and then goes back to sleep until about 8.  It’s pretty dreamy and magical and all the best adjectives.  We are so grateful for the sleep.

Right near her five month mark she moved into her own room, across the hallway.  After a couple pretty sleepless nights for me we seem to be in the groove now.

She isn’t really a fan of the green chair that we sit her in (her bouncer seat, though the bouncer doesn’t work) while we’re in the kitchen.  She also doesn’t love the swing.  She does like sitting in the corner of the couch (where there’s enough space for her to tip without falling off) and she really loves kicking in her crib (I think the mattress “echoing” is fun for her – Reed loved it too).

Reed unknowingly gave Holland her nickname - "Hanuh" (not sure how better to spell it) which sometimes gets shortened to "Hahn".  When we first brought her home and he learned her name that was how he pronounced it.  Well, just about two weeks ago he said to me, clear as day, "Holland sleep," which did make me sad because I loved how he said "Hanuh!"  That said, we still - including Reed - call her Hanuh most the time.

We love, love, love our Holland girl.  We can't believe how quickly she's growing.  We're so glad she's ours.

Newborn

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Five Months