Worth a thousand words

Happy Holidays!

We are enjoying the last few days of our Kansas trip and have plenty of new photos and videos to share with everyone as soon as we get home. Hazel experienced her first Christmas, met her cousin Peter and saw snow for the first time. Her sleep schedule has been really thrown off, but she has been a great little traveler! Look for a major update after Monday.

What these posts are made of

We are about to embark on Hazel’s very first long-distance trip. Tomorrow morning at 5 am we are headed to the airport to fly to Kansas. We will be spending the holidays with Grammy, Grampy, Aunt Joanna and Uncle Matt. Our bags are packed, Hazel (finally) fell asleep, and Jered and I are relaxing a bit before heading to bed to rest up for our big trip. We managed to pack all of our gear into just one checked bag, one carry-on suitcase, a backpack and a diaper bag- and that includes the cloth diapers!
Hazel had her 6 month pediatrician’s appointment yesterday and she is growing very well. She is in the 60th percentile for length, measuring just a bit over 26 and a half inches. Her thighs are still chunky as she is in the 75th percentile for weight at 17 pounds and 3 ounces. And her head is growing faster still, in the 80th percentile at just under 18 inches. She did great with the four shots she got- she is much more aware of everything going on around her, but luckily she was easily perked up once the shots were over. Our pediatrician was impressed with Hazel’s ability to sit up unassisted, and said that she was growing well. Our next visit will be when Hazel is 9 months old which is just mind-boggling. I can’t believe she is going to be a 9 month old baby. Heck, I still haven’t really grasped that she’s already half a year old!

We are so excited about our big trip for the holidays this year. We haven’t been back to Kansas in over a year so it’s definitely time. I’m not sure if we will be posting regularly while we are away, but I do know that we will be gathering plenty of pictures and videos to share with you once we return. If we don’t post between now and Christmas, we wish you all happy holidays!

Camera Nom from esther benoit on Vimeo.

An apple a day…

Here at the Benoit house we are busy getting ready for our first big trip with Hazel. We have started packing early so that we can figure out how to best pack for the three of us. For the first time in a long time we will be checking a bag- too bad the airlines are now charging $15 per checked bag (and that’s just for the first one, after 1 bag they charge $25 for the next!).

In other news, Hazel has been eating her apple a day- well, not an entire apple, of course- but we did cook down some golden delicious apples for Hazel over the weekend. We had some fuji and braeburn apples at home already, but we thought those might be a little tart and sweet for her first taste of apples so she got her very own bag of golden delicious apples (we now have a stash of frozen applesauce). She is eating solids more regularly now, sometimes twice a day, but mostly just in the mornings after her first nap. Hazel still loves avocados and bananas best of all, but she seemed to really enjoy the apples. Here’s a little clip- don’t mind that she’s eating while in her exersaucer, she usually eats in her high chair, but that day she was happiest standing up!

Eating Apples from esther benoit on Vimeo.

Getting Excited for the Holidays

Until this evening I have been having a hard time getting in the mood for Christmas. Anyone who knows me well knows that this is unusual. I love Christmas and after Thanksgiving I am usually all revved up for the holidays. This year I have just felt sort of ambivalent about the holidays- I don’t know if it’s the weather (it’s been near 70’s here the past few days) or the business that comes with a dissertation and a 6 month old baby (tomorrow Hazel is 6 months!!), but I have not felt the usual excitement about the holidays. That is, until tonight. We’ve started to plan our packing list for our big trip to Kansas. We leave next Thursday and we are starting to get very excited about our trip. As we will now be traveling as a family of three the packing process will be a bit more involved. I decided to head over to weather.com and check out what the weather in Kansas is forecast to be like next week and to my delight the forecast is calling for snow, snow, snow, snow and some more snow- if the weather channel is right then there should be snow on the ground when we arrive. I don’t know what it is about snow, but just the thought of seeing a decent amount of snow managed to put my holiday-o-meter into superdrive.

Hazel and I met up with our friends Nora and Michelle at the mall today- we had a nice lunch and walked around the shops and Hazel managed to sit in her stroller the entire time without getting too fussy. Usually after an hour or so she gets restless and wants to be carried, but today she was content to sit in her stroller. I am hoping our luck will hold for our traveling next week- we won’t be taking our stroller, but if she can be as mellow as she was today, we shouldn’t have much trouble getting her from here to Kansas!
I leave you with another one of the videos from this week- Hazel getting her toy basket out from underneath the coffee table.

The secret toy stash from esther benoit on Vimeo.

Chief Safety Officer Briefing

Before Hazel was born, Esther and I knew that life was going to change. We knew we would have baby-proof the house, but until this weekend we never knew how that would work.

As Chief Security Officer, it was my duty to take a look at the first two rooms that need to be baby-proofed: The living room and Hazel’s room. The results of my quick survey were horrifying! We live in a death-trap! Well, if you are a baby, just learning to crawl, scoot or in some other way locomote.

The first point of danger in our living room is the fireplace. Our fireplace is not a traditional style, built into the wall with a step in front, but is open on two-sides, essentially part of an island. With it being winter and our house having some but not enough insulation, we have been running our fireplace to keep away the creeping cold.

Hazel + Fire ≠ Good.

We bought the equivalent of the Baby Super Max Prison, not that we are “those” parents, but local “R Us” store did not have a large selection of gates, enclosures or other barriers.

Now our fireplace Hazel is protected by metal bars that can be formed into a small playpen (or large playpen, an option, I am now referring to as “The Yard”).

The item that really motivated this flurry of safety related acquisitions was the lowering of Hazel’s crib. She isn’t sitting up yet, but she has managed to put herself into an uncomfortable faceplant that will eventually lead to her sitting up by herself. The upper setting on the crib was great when she wasn’t as active (it was also a back saver), but now with her ability to wiggle/faceplant/sit, lowering the crib was necessary.

Lowering the crib exposed on small problem: The power unit for the baby monitor/spy camera. Our little girl is on her way to being a pickpocket a la Oliver Twist, so her attention was immediately drawn to the power supply. Luckily, manufacturers have kept up with the rise in child pickpockets and we installed a secure cover over the power supply, meaning that Hazel will have to become far more dexterous to complete her master plan without our supervision.

Esther and I are very “wired” people. That means not only do use a lot of technology, we also have a lot of power cables. This has become Hazel’s current obsession (besides the cats), as evidence below.

More scootin’ from esther benoit on Vimeo.

Her love of power cords means that we have to employ some power strip locks and other “hardened” technologies to keep her away, as well as be more vigilant about what we leave lying around. Really, we all know, the latter part is going to be near impossible.

The last thing that was critical to buy was table bumpers. Our coffee table, while nice looking and very functional, is the equivalent of razor blades and broken glass for a baby learning to walk.

While walking is a while a way, it was is the same way for a baby crawling, so we have not enrobed our coffee table with spongy goodness.

This concludes the Cheif Safety Officer’s first briefing. We will keep you up to date with all of the security systems implemented at Alcatraz the Benoit house.

Hazel and “her” cat Magnus

It seems our little girl is fond of pets in general, but particularly our cat Magnus. On this Monday morning I thought I’d share this video of Hazel interacting with “her” cat. She made a noise toward the end of the video that she’s never made before- she must have been completely delighted that he stayed close enough where she could reach out and grab him if she wanted.

Hazel and her favorite cat from esther benoit on Vimeo.

In other news, Hazel is so close to crawling and we had to do a bit of baby proofing over the weekend. Jered will be posting about his adventures in safety at some point this week. Hazel and I are off to Omi’s house (and me to work)- but look for more posts this week with new pictures and video!

Nap Time!

Hazel is a great nighttime sleeper. Beginning when she was around 3 months old she started to really sleep through the night. The “technical” definition of sleeping throug the night is 5-6 hours, but Hazel started sleeping through the night much more literally- going to bed around 8-9 pm and sleeping until 5 or 6 in the morning. Every now and then she will have a few nights of waking up once or twice, but those nights are few and far between. We realized about a month and a half ago that she was getting sleepy earlier, and rather than fight it we decided to try putting her to bed a bit earlier. This pushed bed time to the 7 o’clock hour. At first we were worried that this would mean waking up at 3 or 4 am, but we quickly learned that this earlier bedtime actually meant a 10-12 hour stretch of sleep for Hazel- so it stuck.

Our nighttime routine has been the same for a few months now and every night at 7 Hazel is ready to go to sleep. We take her upstairs, give her a bath, feed her and read a story and then she goes to bed. With such a great nighttime routine one would assume that we have this whole sleep thing down pat. Well, you know what they say about assumptions… The nighttime sleep routine was a routine that Hazel seemed to easily fall into, napping on the other hand has been a completely different ball game. Our typical napping schedule goes something like this: Hazel gets sleepy wants to go to sleep, we try putting her in her crib, she screams, we pick her up and rock her, she falls asleep on us, we dare not move for fear of waking her and are stuck in a chair for half an hour when she usually wakes up startled and fussy. A few hours later, still tired, she’s ready for a nap and we repeat the whole thing, usually ending with another nap on either me or Jered, or occasionally on the floor on a blanket. This does not bode well for getting anything done during the day. It also makes for an extremely over-tired little girl. Until recently I think Hazel was getting about 1-2 hours of sleep total from 6 am until 7 pm. According to all of the books I’ve read she should be getting at least 3 hours during the day and 11-12 at night, so it goes without saying she wasn’t getting enough sleep.

Yesterday Hazel’s friend Nora came over for another play date and Nora’s mom was talking to me about a few things she was trying to help Nora sleep in her crib at night. I decided to take a few of those tips and try them out on Hazel today. The results have been amazing. Hazel took three naps today- a thirty minute nap this morning, an hour and a half (a miracle!) this afternoon, and another 30 minute nap later in the afternoon. Even more amazing- all three naps were in her crib and she went to bed at her usual 7:00 bedtime. Here are the things I did differently: I stayed in her room until she stopped fussing, laid her down with a snuggly blanket and turned on the little white noise machine so that our annoying neighbor’s glass pack wouldn’t startle her awake.

Did that make all the difference? Maybe, but more important than all of those things combined, in my opinion, was my attitude. I truly believe that this not napping in her crib problem has really been my problem. Clearly she is able to sleep in her crib and clearly she can do it during the day, I think I have just been afraid that she wouldn’t. The moment I’d lay her down and she’d start to get worked up I would feel terrible, pick her up, rock her, shush her and eventually just hold my breath until she had slept for what I decided was a decent amount of time. Now, I’m not advocating crying it out- I know it has worked for many parents, but it doesn’t feel right for me and I’m not comfortable doing it, but today I did have to take a few deep breaths to hold myself back from rushing in to pick Hazel up when she started to fuss in her crib. I started by making sure all her needs were met; fed, changed, comfortable clothes/temperature. I knew she was tired, and I knew she didn’t want to be left in her crib alone. Knowing all that I laid her down and went to sit in the glider where I usually nurse her to sleep. She fussed for a bit, but then realized that I wasn’t getting up to get her and started blowing bubbles and cooing to try to get my attention. I continued to sit in the glider and read a magazine, smiling at her but not interacting with her any more than that. Within 15 minutes she was asleep all three times. I am hoping that this will work again tomorrow- it was so nice to have two hours to get things done during the day today! Wish us luck tomorrow as we give it another whirl.

Here’s a picture of our girl all bundled up for a walk outside. It’s gotten cold here and Hazel’s winter coat is still just a bit on the big side- she doesn’t seem to mind, though!

A much-needed photo update

We haven’t uploaded photos in a while and it’s about time for us to post some new pictures. Hazel continues to grow and change at an almost alarming rate. Some highlights from the past two weeks; she now can sit up all on her own- she likes to play with toys as she sits, but better than that, she is now enjoying pulling up to a standing position. Here’s a bit of evidence.


Here she is standing up with a little help from both mom and dad. This was taken Thanksgiving day.


When she’s not practicing standing up, she still enjoys hanging out on daddy. These next few are of Hazel in her new handknit sweater- both photos also taken on Thanksgiving day.

Hazel is constantly on the move now- she scoots around all over the place, mostly backwards. It’s fun to watch her rock and roll.

Learning to Crawl from esther benoit on Vimeo.

This next video is one of my new favorites: it showcases one of Hazel’s favorite things- the bulb syringe- strange but true!

Hazel loves the nose suction thingy from esther benoit on Vimeo.

There are a few other new videos up on Vimeo if you want to check them out- I plan to post them here this week as well.
Our girl still doesn’t sleep well during the day, but all that playing and hanging out with daddy…

can really make a girl tired…

Life is good.