New skills and experiences!

We have discovered BOOKS!

The hardboard books are the best right now because Alice grabs at the pages.

Our attention span is only one to two books right now

Alice's favorite toy right now is her Dora lovie.

Dora goes with Alice everywhere....the bouncy seat, the swing, the car seat, daycare.

Alice can now grab a toy.
Here, she shakes her maracca, and she hasn't hit herself in the head yet!

Here Alice is in her awesome garage sale find - exersaucer.
Fun story - mom and Kristin go garage saleing. We see this exersaucer with a sticker price of $35 (which is pretty good), but as I am "checking out" with some clothes for Alice, I ask about the exersaucer....the ladies husband says....I think we have it stickered at $15.00 - "SOLD"! Kristin says "quick - grab it and lets get out of here before his wife founds out how much he sold it for!"

TAMU fan

In recognition of Uncle Andy getting accepted into Texas A&M in Galveston, Alice has donned her TAMU jumper (given to her by Aunt Telaya).

Alice's Dallas Debut

These are a couple of pictures from Alice's first trip to Dallas

Sleeping on Aunt Papa

Meeting Cousin Jackson

More with Aunt Papa

"Aunt" Ali

Meeting Cousin Joci

Singing with Pop

Back to Work

This week Alice spent the whole working day at daycare. The schedule goes like this....

1. Daddy gets in the shower and gets dressed while mom wakes up baby, changes and dresses her.
2. Daddy then takes the baby has breakfast and makes coffee while mom gets dressed.
3. Mom takes Alice to daycare (usually) and Dad picks up Alice (usually).

The first week already had one hick-up. On Wednesday, after a long work day, I head for my car and discover that my alarm remote battery is dead...meaning I can't get into my car without setting off the alarm, which then disables the ignition. I have a second remote at home, so I got a ride home from work with Koleman. I had to catch a ride to work on Thursday with Tavo, but he goes to work early (6:30) so....Dad had to take Alice to Daycare this day, and mom left work early to pick her up.

Larry says that he enjoys his hour alone with Alice before I make it home. I am a bit jealous of the extra hour he gets to spend with her, but I did have 3 whole months at home with her, so I really can't begrudge him this little perk.

These pictures are from the morning before I head off to work and take Alice to daycare.

First Week of Daycare

Alice attended her first week of daycare this past week. She attends the Stepping Stone daycare located near our house. Dad and I were hesitant at first to leave our one and only daughter in the care of strangers, but the teachers in Alice's class seem to be very nice people. Alice's teachers' names are Cindy, Laura and Rosa. Stepping Stone has a higher teacher to infant ratio than other daycares, which is one of the reasons we liked them so much. They also teach the babies infant sign language. This weeks word was "more". Alice is to young to get much out of the sign language lesson, but I'm glad they will be teaching it as she grows.

To ease both me and Alice into this new routine, we took her to daycare a little later then most and picked her up earlier so she was there only 1/2 days to start. She never cried when I left her, and she was always content when I picked her up. Since she is so young, hopefully this will become routine and we never have a problem with separation anxiety.

Alice's teacher Cindy was very impressed with Alice's ability to have a 'conversation'. She also says that Alice is very interested in looking around the room and watching what all is going on. She has picked Laura as her favorite teacher to feed her. She is (of course) the cutest baby in the class and one of the youngest as of now.

When we go to pick her up, we get a daily log of Alice's activities...when and how much she ate, when and how long she slept, and a list of all diaper changes.

Her nap times have increased daily so she is getting use to the typical 'noise' of the classroom and getting in good long naps. Her crib has pictures of mom and dad so she can see us even when we aren't there.

All in all, I'm happy with the experience so far. Having confidence in the care she is recieving makes going back to work at least bareable.

Crib Activities

On the advice of my cousin Cynthia, I bought the book "the no-cry sleep solution". One suggestion was to make the crib a fun place to be, so this week we started play sessions in Alices' crib.

One thing she loves in her crib is the Rainforest waterfall. It lights up, plays music and the little characters move. This can keep her entranced for up to 10 minutes. I'd like to take a moment and thank the lovely lady who gave Alice this super cool crib toy - Thanks Rami.

We are still working on getting Alice to sleep in her crib. We are starting with naps - she is actually napping in her crib as I write this (YEAH), and hopefully we can move on towards getting her to sleep in her crib through the night. I'll keep you posted!

More Visitors

The past couple of weeks have brought a few more visitors to see Alice.

Grandfather Meadows

Great-Grandparents

Aunt Pam

Aunt Sissy