Breanna is currently nursing down (well, at least I hope so) and she’s helping the sleep process by thwacking herself, with her fist, in her forehead. Repeatedly.

It’s a little distracting.

What is it that makes a three-year-old figure the best time to have a lengthy conversation with me is when I’m sitting on the damn toilet? Seriously. Every time. If I’m just peeing then she rarely disturbs me. If I’m, er, NOT peeing though, that’s when she wants to discuss things like where the pipes from the tub go, what the walls are made of, and how the washing machine works.

Is it the captive audience factor? Yeesh.

One thing in particular struck me today after I changed Breanna’s first diaper of the day – how big she’s getting. I remember this picture where she looked so small in the bassinet, partly because she WAS still small (though at 8 lbs 5 oz, she was never small), and partly because at only five days old, ,she still spent most of her time curled up like a little ball. I remember what a shock it was to see her practically floating in this bed because the pack & play’s bassinet is double the size of the ones at the hospital.

And in comparison, at five months, this is how she looked in it this morning. Also, you’ll notice that now that she realizes she can roll on purpose, she prefers not staying flat for longer than necessary.

She won’t be spending many more nights in there. At four months, she weighed 14 lbs and the safety limit is 15. I figure she’s pretty close so this weekend we’ll try her out in the crib. Eep. We’re going to move the crib to the bedroom; I’m too nervous about having the girls sleep in the same room because I’m afraid Hayley will wake up early and decide to climb in there with her. She wouldn’t mean any harm, but.. just no. I would never get any sleep from the stress.

Other things going on at five months:

She can now sit for brief spurts. She wobbles but hangs in there!

She still sleeps best swaddled even though she’s rapidly outgrowing her blanket.

She thinks Hayley is the funniest and greatest person ever; unless she’s already upset, she almost always smiles and laughs at her big sister.

Although we haven’t formally introduced her to television yet, it’s on at various times throughout the day. She has shown some interest in Barney and Rolie Polie Frickin’ Olie. Two of my least favorite kids’ shows. GREAT.

She still loves standing (and occasionally looking like she’s dancing when she starts wiggling) most of all. I try to just pull her up to sitting but she always pulls my hands until she hauls herself straight up.

We have a game and I love it; she does it on occasion to George or Hayley, but mostly me. It starts with me loudly kissing her cheeks, jaw, and neck (“mwah mwah mwah!”) and then she’ll swiftly whip her head around, mouth wide open, and she clamps down on my jaw or chin, and starts chewing wildly. I then start shrieking in mock terror, and it ends with both of us laughing. Lather, rinse, repeat until one of us gets tired (hint: it’s never me).

I think she’ll be happy next month to try solids (and it’s very hard to resist the urge to start now) because she’s so excited by food. I remember Hayley looked like she was watching ping pong because she’d watch the fork go from plate to mouth to plate; it was similar to a pet hoping something might fall into her mouth. Breanna looks like a bird. She stretches her neck as far as she can, bulges her eyes, stiffens her whole body and starts flapping her arms up and down while saying, “mmm, mmmmm!” Poor baby. I don’t ever want to eat another popsicle in front of her again after she nearly gave herself an aneurism watching me eat one yesterday.

She has chunky turkey legs and when she falls asleep and I see one sticking out, it takes every ounce of willpower to keep from chewing on it.

Every night I read to Hayley at bedtime and Breanna loves it. She lies there with us, smiling at the pictures and patting the books. One more bookworm in the family?

When she’s tired she lays over my shoulder moaning and groaning and saying “ahhhhhhhhhh” like that last drunk at the bar telling sob stories to the bartender.

Her favorite toys are a soft bunny George got for her, most dolls but especially a little baby in pink that she holds with both hands while chewing on the head, and mostly that damn spatula. Good thing I own several because it may be awhile before I get it back. I should have gotten George to take a picture after supper – Hayley was using a spatula to mix brownie batter, I was using a smaller one to spread margarine in the baking pan, and Breanna was in her car seat slapping herself in the head with hers.

(See the spatula love? We visited George’s parents on Easter Sunday and I couldn’t even get a picture without the spatula being involved.)

Tonight she celebrated being five months old by staying awake until 10:30 pm, after a loud car in need of a muffler woke her up at 8:30 (one more positive thing about moving her out of this living room). I didn’t mind since she was in fine spirits, watched The O.C. with me, and then laughed for about 20 minutes straight just because I was playing the startle game with her (like a slightly more hardcore version of peek-a-boo, which causes her to jerk her whole body in surprise, and then she laughs like a loon).

She also celebrated her five month birthday with Hayley this morning. Hayley asked me if we would have a cake and when I said no, she borrowed a mixing bowl, got all the play food from her kitchen, and made Breanna a “cake”. So we all ate some. My piece had cabbage and eggplant, my favorite kind of cake!

I celebrated her five month birthday by crying a little, marvelling in how much she’s grown and changed, and fondly remembering that five months ago I had orderlies bring me food every few hours.

Happy five months, little Puffin! Let’s not rush too much, okay?

Breanna is 5 months old today. She’s not even born yet. This time five months ago I was in tremendous pain, mangling my mother’s hand at each contraction, and pushing just a little to relievethe pressure even though I was still only9 centimeters. I was half an hour away from pushing for real and less than an hour from holding an 8 lb 5 oz. baby in my arms.

I can’t believe how quickly time can fly.

A longer post and pictures to come later.

You should have heard the cursing coming out of my mouth yesterday. The CURSING. I don’t know what possessed me to try to move my weblog when I was not having the best day ever anyway. I’ve wanted to move it to this main directory for quite some time, since it’s now the main focus of my site and I don’t think I really need a splash index any longer. I’ve read and re-read the instructions from WordPress on how to do it and I’m sure they make sense but I’m still having trouble concentrating on words that aren’t accompanied by pictures like all of Hayley’s books because of minor sleep deprivation so I kept putting it off.

Then yesterday was kind of a crappy day from hell. I had gotten less than three hours of broken sleep because Hayley was freaking out most of the night and when she wasn’t, then Breanna was up (George got about as much sleep as I did). Hayley woke up angry and proceeded to have the Epitome Of Age Three temper tantrums throughout most of the day, getting supremely pissed off whenever I said no (NO, you can’t have chocolate for breakfast and if you keep this up the fucking Easter bunny is bringing BANANAS next year). Breanna woke up earlier than normal and had trouble sleeping for any of her naps so she was cranky and wailing from being overtired. Our stove had stopped working on Monday and we weren’t sure if it was a fuse problem since all the fuses looked good (luckily it was indeed a bad fuse, so we don’t need a new stove, yay) so I was worried about that and also trying to think of something interesting to make for supper in the electric skillet or microwave if we couldn’t fix it.

And so whatever got into me to try the move yesterday is beyond me. All I know is Breanna finally fell asleep for a nap and Hayley was having some quiet time with a movie, and I decided that a sleep deprived and frustrated person who was wondering if noon was too early to start drinking was in the right frame of mind to do some site changes. Yay me.

Once I calmed down, I opened a support ticket because Verve rocks and I was hoping they could help me out by using a backup. They tried but it didn’t work so last night I figured I had nothing to lose by trying a few things. Despite the fact that my knowledge of MySQL could fit on a flea’s head, I exported everything but the options table from my original weblog. I then installed WordPress from scratch in my main directory, went into the database and dropped everything except the options table and imported everything else from my weblog. All that remained was to tweak the layout again. And here we are!

Whew. I was thinking about maybe getting a new domain when this one expires in July but I think I’ll renewe it after all. Trying to transfer everything to a new domain might trigger a nervous breakdown.

Every day I peek at my stats, mostly to see if there are any funny referrals coming in (such as the one I saw last night where someone found me by Googling “massive pregnant belly exploded”; yes, sometimes it really does feel like that, I’m afraid. My sympathies to you.).

I’ve noticed for a couple of weeks that once or twice a day, someone using Telus out in Alberta comes to my website after Googling Sherry Osborne. This person then looks around 5 or 6 pages and leaves, often by heading to my sister’s site.

If you’re that person in Alberta who comes to my site daily by looking for me by name, please, I beg of you, e-mail me. I have a feeling I know who you are, and if I’m right, I would really, REALLY love to hear from you.

Apologies to everyone who is not this Albertan Telus user and thus does not care about this post. 🙂

Happy chocolate day!

Uh, I mean Happy Easter, from two giggly nuts.

I went through this with Hayley too so I knew it was coming, but I’m still unimpressed: I am drowning in postpartum hair. No matter where you look, you can find my hair. It’s all over my clothes. My brush looks like a wooly mammoth. It’s in the bathtub drain, tangled in Breanna’s hands, on my pillowcase. It falls down inside my shirt and tickles my back. I’ve found it in my pants. My vacuum cleaner has more hair than crumbs, fluff, and pet fur combined; there may even be more hair than glitter in there, and in this household that’s saying a lot. Poor Hayley is forever saying, “I found some of your hair Mommy!” when she takes a bath. My hair ties are freakish hybrids of elastic and hair. If I didn’t wear my hair pulled back at all times, all the food I cook would be inedible and gross. If I run my hands just over the top layer, I guarantee I’ll come away with at least ten loose hairs.

Oh the joy. It’s that time again, where you realize the payback for having fantastic hair throughout pregnancy is that eventually all that extra volume has to go.

This really makes me want to go get my hair cut above my shoulders again. It wouldn’t stop the hair loss, mind you, but at least it would be shorter.

It’s a shame that the process drags on. Although it would be a little shocking, it would be so much nicer if it all happened in one fell swoop. As long as it didn’t happen, say, while you’re in line at the bank, it would be so convenient. You could just be walking into the bathroom when there would be a wee breeze, followed by a thwapping sound, and there at your feet would be a pile of old hair. Then you could just sweep it all up and be done with it.

Instead, I feel like I’m trying to rival the damn cat, the two of us in a challenge to see who can shed the highest volume of hair per day. I think I’m winning. By a hair.

I think that this is the reigning champion for the funniest picture I have ever taken of the two of them together. I usually Photoshop Hayley’s eyes since she’s prone to red-eye but in this particular shot, I think the red just adds to the hilarity. It looks like she’s a sociopath about to pop Breanna’s head right off, while Breanna looks like she’s just resigned to whatever fate has in store for her.

I can’t stop laughing every time I look at it. Breanna had just fallen asleep when I saw it for the first time last night and I nearly burst an artery trying to keep my laughter inside so as to avoid waking her up. When I actually took the picture last night I didn’t realize how crazy it looked and my LCD screen didn’t really give me any idea either.

I have the weirdest children in the world, I think.