Alli feeding herself

She's catching on. She fed herself with only occasional help from
daddy! I'm so proud. -Kim

Alli's Email

Since the "hot keys" post, one comment was asking when Alli would get her own email address. Daddy signed her up for a gmail account when she was two weeks old.

If you want to send email to Alli, her gmail account is in the format firstname.lastname@gmail.com, where firstname is Allison and lastname is Guerrette. (Sorry, trying to protect the account from lots of spam.)

Alli, Master of the Hot Keys

Today Alli decided to help me with some of my emails. She just loves the computer - can't wait to start banging on it whenever we sit down in front of it. So I let her type an email to her daddy.

Daddy decided she should be typing in a blank text document instead since she actually found the hot-keys to send the email! So, we opened up a text document and let her go. Well, let me tell you - she is a MASTER at the hot keys!!! I kept having to pull her away from the keyboard and escape out of whatever windows popped up.

When we left the computer, I told Daddy that the computer was "talking". I figured she had started one of his video clips that he was watching, so I just wanted to warn him. He sat down to figure it out, but it wasn't a video. Master of the Hot Keys had turned on the blind-assist, so it was "saying" all the keystrokes that were happening. Hilarious!!! Way to go Alli!

Green Eggs and Ham

Ok, not really green eggs and ham, but we made Alli's rice cereal green today by adding peas. And, because mom was too lazy to go to the grocery store, she got the good stuff. I steamed some frozen peas and then mashed them with a fork, added them to the tablespoon of rice cereal and voila! We had lunch. I think she got a kick out of eating with me. I made sure both our meals were ready at the same time, so we literally ate together.

Alli is really funny because she sucks her fingers in between spoonfuls of food. Yes, we had green stuff everywhere!!! I was also impressed by the way she handled some of the pea skins that didn't mash well. The bigger pieces I was able to separate, but the little ones just went down her throat - no problems.

She's really growing and changing. She's sitting more often, and has found that being on her tummy is actually interesting now. That's making her roll more. So if we leave her on her back and walk away, half the time we come back and find her on her stomach reaching for a toy.

That's our big girl!

Happy Halloween!

We took Alli to the Fountain Hills Autumn Festival (aka - keep the kids from going trick-or-treating because we have no streetlights), where we met up with the Searle, Searle, and Rosing clans. We had a lot of fun dancing to music and seeing all the costumes. Unfortunately the only kids that participated in activities were Jarrod and Josh as nobody else could even walk!

So here are some Halloween pictures for you to enjoy.


Alli - Pea in the Pod (Sweet Pea!)
Jarrod - Superman
Katie - Pink Oogley
Josh - Dragon
Ryan - Teddy Bear

Rice Cereal is Yummy!

Happy Halloween!!! We decided instead of candy, we would give Alli a different treat - her first attempt at solid foods. Ok, "solid" might be a stretch as the rice cereal was pretty more like liquid, but we did feed it to her with a spoon, so hey! At 5-1/2 months, we figured it was time...

Alli took to it really well. She even started to open her mouth and crane her head to get to the spoon. And as usual, we were very proud of her achievement. She was also very clear when she was done with the cereal - she spit the food out with a grimace.

Alli's First Happy Hour

It's funny how things are either very slow or just happen all at once. This is going to be one of those "all at once" weeks, so I'll be posting frequently!

Last night we met some friends from my job at a happy hour at Four Peaks Brewery. Everyone was excited because they had Pumpkin Porter (yummy!) And of course, Alli just couldn't resist taking part like the rest of us.

This is Alli with Dan Bossler and some Pumpkin Porter. I think we're gonna have a beer drinker!

Sittin' Pretty

Last night I was reading "What to Expect First Year" to put a plan together of how to introduce solids. I haven't read the book in a few months. So I got to "5 months" and the beginning section said (not a direct quote) "some babies can sit up on their own with their hands on the floor for balance". I realized that I had always been trying to catch Alli if she leaned too far forward because I was afraid she may hurt her back. (Guess that's only for us "old" folks!) So tonight when I picked her up at Krista's, we put her on the floor and I put her hands in front of her and let her go. Not bad! She did a pretty good job sitting. I was pretty impressed, so decided she was just going to *have* to show daddy this new trick.

Well, much to my surprise, when daddy and I put her down, sitting with a toy between her legs, she went to grab the toy and just stayed sitting. After 30 seconds or so, she wound up tilting to the side and falling over. We did this quite a few times - even got the video recorder out to show such a momentous feat!

So all excited about the video, we wound up leaving her on her back on the blanket while downloading to the PS3 so we could watch it. She was still pretty playful, so she started rolling from side to side. (Yes, she does this - rolls to her side, but not all the way over.) Apparently this night she decided she wanted to play with the blanket some more or something, so she eventually rolled all the way over on her stomach. After much grunting and struggling, she finally got her arm out from under herself and was able to push up with her arms to get her head nice and high, and then continue playing with the blanket. WOW! I was soooo proud of her! Quite a night we've had!

An Infant's Love

The thing a new mom just can't wait for is the expression of love back from the infant. The past week or so I've seen the expressions back from Alli, and it's not just in her wonderful smile.

Last weekend I spent a lot of time with Alli, and it showed when I went to pick her up at Krista's on Monday. I walked in, said my hello's to everyone, and then went to lift her up for a hug. All of the sudden there were screeches of joy as she started grabbing hold of my shirt and pulling it closer to her mouth. This went on for a few minutes and I just thought "this is what every mother loves!". I was so proud, and happy. It was a very exciting feeling knowing that she was expressing her love back to me.

I'm also seeing it in her naps on Fridays. I work from home on Fridays, and while that sounds like a great idea, it's my most stressful day of the week. Alli *loves* to spend time with me, especially on Fridays since she hasn't been with me much for 4 days. But I'm supposed to work. So I feel like I do a half-arsed job at both mothering AND working. That's very stressful for a perfectionist!! Lately she's gone so far as to skip afternoon naps to be with me. I'll let her cry, but we have a time limit. 10 minutes of straight crying and I'm going to get her. I've found that if I go in earlier, she stops and smiles at me. She *totally* just wants to be with me. But she will continue to cry for as long as I let her, or until I get her. And she doesn't fall asleep on me, she stays awake so she can spend all this time with me. It's cute, yet somewhat frustrating (especially when work emails come flying in!)

Yesterday she didn't nap at all in the afternoon, but fell asleep finally during her 6pm feeding. I let her sleep - she needed it. But after a while I decided I needed to put her down to help prepare dinner. She woke up and was crying. So, I thought maybe she should finish her meal. Well, not quite. Fell asleep again. This time I decided just to put her in her cradle - no sleep sack, just as is. I figured that would mean an early morning for me, but what can you do. The little one surprised us - she slept from 7pm til 6:30am!!! My goodness, what she does to be with Mom during the day. :)

But There Are No Teeth!

Over the last week or so, we've noticed that Alli likes chewing on things, including her fingers. Teething? No, couldn't be. Can't see any signs of teeth. Well, I'm starting to wonder a little more about that. This weekend I watched my daughter change. One day, normal Alli. The next day, couldn't go down for naps although she tried all her normal techniques for putting herself to sleep, fell asleep while nursing (mostly because she didn't nap), drool galore, and snot all over the place. Yuck!!! I still don't see any white little spots on her gums, but boy if this doesn't seem like teething. In general, she's still happy. But with the lack of sleep she's a bit more needy at times during the day. She doesn't chew *all* the time, but she definitely has her times where everything goes into the mouth. And today besides a lot of runny nose, we got lots of poopy diapers. It seemed like every time I went to change her there was some more poop. So, stay tuned. I doubt we're going to see any pearly whites, but something is growing inside those gums!