Late Nights

Hannah is our first child. DW and I have not been subjected to the utter exhaustion that comes with years of sleep deprivation. I can remember some of what happens at night.
Hannah is like most children I suppose, she has so much fun with mommy and daddy that is just too exciting to go to sleep at night. At any moment during the night that she finds herself alone, she must seek out and find mommy and sometimes daddy. As parents, we construct obstacle courses to keep our children where we want them. We say we want to keep them safe or to keep them from getting into something that may hurt them, but what we really want is some time to regain our sanity. Our children love us so much that they don't understand why we would EVER want to be away from them, so they traverse every obstacle ever at their own peril to be with us, lovable, no?
Not too long ago, Hannah was sick and she stopped sleeping through the night and mommy would visit her with comfort. Since then, Hannah has not wanted to sleep in her own bed. And she has seen fit to conquer everything we throw at her to keep her in her bed. First, she learned to crawl over the wall of her bed and lower herself down to the ground (excellent muscle strength and control.) Next it was the door, no problem here, she can easily reach up and turn the knob. So we added a baby gate, "Ha," says Hannah, "I can crawl over that with more ease than my bed." So we turned the baby gate around and raised it off the floor. If you think that will stop a child, you are mistaken, she pushed it over. Next in total darkness, came the pit of alligators and the maze that is the distance between our room and hers. Another baby gate pulled, not pushed down, a simple door and the climb onto our bed and she was home free. Another night of sleep lost...
We got a baby gate that we could cinch to the wall. Now this was truly an impossible task. Like usual, she climbed her bed wall, opened the door and found an impenetrable path. So she began calling for us, and using every vocabulary word she could think of. At first it started with "Mommy!" "Daddy!" "Baby!" Then she became more sophisticated expressing things couldn't do from her room, "pooh pooh" "peepee" "take bath" "wash hands" "juice" Thinking her friends might help her, she called for "Stanley" "Addy" "Ella" She then reverted to tugging at our heartstrings "love you" "hold me" It was more than a parent can bear as I stood outside her door hoping she would fall back asleep. Every time she would get up, I would take her and put her back in bed. Thus I stood outside her door waiting for her to get up and come to the door. This technique took probably 30 minutes the first night we tried it, 10 minutes the second night and maybe five minutes the third night before she would fall gently back to sleep. This worked until we threw our world in tail spin by going on vacation...We'll start again when we are home, but for now, Happy Thanksgiving!

Oh...look another post! Halloween Hannah!

Hannah is so interactive and talkative and sing-ative... lol - if that's a word!
Today she's been opening doors around the house. I didn't know she could! She's been reaching for the knobs for awhile...and today she can open and close the doors. Our little smarty pants.

So life is still very busy. Hannah finally got her 18-month check up last week! Her head circumference is in the 75th percentile...while her length and weight are around 50%. She's our petite cutie.

C&Scame over last Monday on Columbus day and we had some fun dressing up the babies in Halloween costumes & taking photos!

Hannah refused to wear her duck costume (which is too big anyways b/c we got it last year at the after-H sale). S on the other hand, happily wore the dog costume that his grandma sent him.



Then Hannah came along...


and had to wear the dog costume...


AND she wanted her nose painted too...



Then she was very very content to just sit there on the chair...




Then I asked her to do the dog sign...


Back to the stare...where she looks like a sad little puppy.


Here S put on Hannah's duck costume and they happily wore the other's costume.





check out these pudgy cheeks!

the tail was just tooo cute!


So I don't know what we're REALLY going to dress Hannah up as for Halloween...
we'll just have to see...


Mommy has had a lot going on. With each passing weekend in the month of October, her stress levels decrease a bit. 2 weekends ago, she finally finished processing the beach wedding AND her symphony audition was over with - a HUGE amount of stress-relief. So now it's one more wedding (almost done), an engagement session, and a family session to finish processing. The verdict is still out on if mommy's going to do more weddings - they're fun and stressful at the same time. She loves taking photos, but hates post-processing.

This past weekend, mommy gave a talk in Stake Conference, topic: temples...and so now that pressure is off. It actually went rather well and she was glad to have the opportunity. Another bit of stress gone.

Also after this weekend (from emails), there were a few cancellations of scheduled things on her calendar for the rest of the weeks of Oct...so yay...a few less items to deal with.

Today mommy has rehearsals for the Brahms Requiem, performance tomorrow night with the Corpus Christi Chorale. Later this week, she's going to San Antonio to help out at Deseret Book's Time Out for Women and Time Out Life Seminar. She totally needs it! Mommy Needs a TIME OUT for her! Take a step back and take life all in.

She wants to just enjoy Hannah, enjoy her life, and not be stressed due to spreading herself thin.

She likes taking photos...so here's some more...all un-post-processed. just straight out of camera... taken on October 8th - the day before she was 20-months-old.!! (I was busy and didn't get around to taking photos on the actual 20th-month-day).




Caught in the act... Hannah likes to get into mommy's stuff...




Hanging out with her hippo.


The same morning...she wanted to change clothes...she likes choosing her own clothes and changing clothes now. She is a little princess...

And she always likes to lay on the backdrops in the studio


Another one of her favorite things to do now...is hide behind curtains.


her little hands & toes...


This weekend A-Yi Cristy started staying with us b/c they had scheduling issues with her house that she was living at for her rotations here. Hannah loves auntie Cristy... we have lots of photos from this weekend with Aunt Cristy...but for another post. Saturday was a bday party amongst a ton of other things...
and Sunday after Stake Conference, we went to Cole Park and played on the playground. lots of fun!

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I returned from the Brahms rehearsal...and I feel great! I'm happy, not stressed. I love Brahms. The rehearsal went well...the chorale sounds beautiful. I love playing pieces like this.

Happy 20-months!

yay Hannah!

...i didn't post...but happy 20-months Hannah!

She loves playing with her keys & plastic spoons.


these were taken on the 9th of October 2008

Another moment from the life of Hannah...

I wanted to try to post more regularly...yay...so here goes...

Today Hannah got a pair of shoes today...from a neighbor whose child is 3 months YOUNGER than Hannah, but her feet are one size larger... :) She had shoes that we bought her, but somehow we lost one of the pair...must be lost with my keys also... we basically couldn't find either after our Houston trip awhile back.

She's not napping well...

She loves singing & she hums... attempts to sing ABC and says 123, and repeats other songs & tunes that she hears. Does all the signs for "Popcorn Popping" and "head shoulders knees & toes"

She says lots of words/phrases:
"shoe" (one of her favorite words)

"animal" is "an-ml" (sorta sounds like el-mo)
"hippo"
"bug"
"doggie"
"mao" for cat (chinese for cat)
"moo" for cow
"wu gui" for turtle (chinese for turtle)
and some more animals...which i cannot remember... one of her favorite books right now is this animal book full of cute drawings of animals

of course she says "book" a lot

body parts include:
"elbow" is "el-pol" (sounds like elbow and apple)
"ankle"
"knee"
"nose"
"eyes"

"thank you" = "day dew" or something to that extent
"please" = "pease = "peas" = "pee" (these all sound really similar)

"on"
"off"
"box"

people include: daddy, mommy, a-ma, a-yi, and her friends' names (stanley, anya, addy, ella)

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and of course here are some photos.

The story behind these is that we were trying to get photos of daddy. But Hannah insisted on lining up and being right beside daddy doing what he was doing. over and over. it was quite funny. she'd just stand there and not budge, next to him. they'd look at each other...then she'd move...and end up right next to him again.





these are not the same photo...it's what she was doing...and i wasn't using continuous shutter either. these are of her over a period of a few minutes just standing there next to daddy. we finally got some without her...but then she was back again.

...and Yes, that is a toilet paper roll holder from the bathroom...she likes to take things apart.

and here's a shot of daddy when he was staring at our backyard... (we have a really sad looking back yard - in a nutshell)...so he's probably contemplating, should we...? or not? (spend more money on it...or fill in the blank of whatever he's really thinking)?

Family Fun...

Auntie Cristy has also been with us since last Sunday. She's here doing a rotation. Hannah LOVES Ah-yi/A-yi. She says "ah-yi, ah-yi" over and over again. at first she also said "ah-ma" wondering where ah-ma was...

General Conference was good this weekend. It's nice watching it on our new screen. There's always tons to hear and it's a spiritual uplift. I want to start going over and re-watching some everyday.

This weekend, Isaac & I shot our 2nd wedding together - this time without Hannah :) Last week's with Hannah was just a 1st AND a LAST time. We really enjoyed working together this weekend... it was a huge par-tay. We just were sad we couldn't stay longer to play, but we had to go home to Hannah.

So here's us...taking photos of each other... :) (these are unedited of course...the white balance is off) Isaac has the 24-70mm f2.8 and I have the 50mm f1.4. FUN!




And last week... well... I was a lot more stressed out last week...and Isaac was too...he was sore afterwards b/c I loaded him up with stuff like a packmule... (Hannah, equipment etc) but he was such a good sport about it. He's VERY supportive & I really appreciate him!

(we were in the edges of each other's photos on these...so I thought i'd crop...)