It's that time of the month again...

...NO, not THAT time of the month, silly!  It's time for "Mia's another month old" photos!!!

What?!?!?  Who meeeeeeeeee?!?!?!?!?

I can't believe my little Mia is already five months old!!!

At five months old, Mia:

• has had her first major cleft surgery and is recovering well
• still a happy little soul who continues to smile through it all
• is no longer sleeping through the night - not sure if it's from adjusting after the surgery or not, and we're hoping she picks that back up again SOON
• giggles more often
• LOVES to have papa sing her songs and bounce her around - it makes her giggle like crazy
• has started eating rice cereal (sort of)  :)
• loves to "stand" when you hold her
• totally knows who mom and dad are and always has plenty of smiles when we catch her eye - it's the cutest thing!
• smiles at family that spend time with her and coo and/or talk to her
• is not so sure about smiling at strangers unless they are holding her and talking in a high voice
• when strangers try to get her to smile at them, she will often just give them "deadpan" face
• LOVES her thumb
• prefers her right thumb and chews/nams/sucks at it a LOT
• can't seem to be able to drink her bottle without her right thumb or left index finger in her mouth along with the nipple (or when she's feeling adventurous, both those fingers at once)  sheish!
• can sit assisted and LOVES being strapped in the shopping cart so she can look around and take everything in
• still does not like tummy time and eventually just lays her head down and chills, silly girl
• can roll from her tummy to her back
• rolled over for the first time today from her back to her tummy - Yay Mia!
• has two bottom middle teeth that came in the week after her 4 month pictures and are super sharp
• drools like CRAZY, but no new teeth as of yet
• wakes up happy in the morning and will play with and coo at her feet for a bit - which is way nice for mama when she's been up a few times already during the night
• loves shoes with shoelaces, though when she has them on the laces are constantly being pulled on
• loves to try and pull off socks and shoes, and/or put them in her mouth
• still tries to (and succeeds at) trying to get her feet in her mouth 
• is still such a joy and we love her like crazy!!!

Sitting up in the high chair at the restaurant - my baby's growing up!

I'm 5 months old, and this is my turkey bib.

Look how big she's getting! (Sorry about the skewed angle of the second one, but you can still see how much she's grown.)

  

This is how she looks at strangers when they try to get her to smile.  Seriously?!?

So, Mia's done really well with keeping bows on her head and even little knitted caps.  Well, with her lip surgery, we'll need to take precautions that she doesn't sunburn her scar.  Lately when I've taken her out in the stroller, I've wished I had a little baseball cap for her to keep the sun off her face.  I've been looking for baby hats and finally found a few, so I wand to make sure she's use to it so she doesn't pull it off when we're out and about.  I put one on her today and she looked like such a cute little imp that I just had to take some photos.  Here are some of my favorites.  :)

This hat is for ME?!?!?

Awe shucks.  My great big five month old just looks so tiny in her big hat!

Okay, so it's a little big on her but she'll grow into it - and way to fast I'm afraid.

Solids Schmolids

So, this evening we tried solids again - aka rice cereal.  I mixed it a little thicker and... Mia wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with it.  We had an all out rice cereal revolt on our hands!  She clamped her little lips together and tried to push out any remaining cereal that had gotten in her mouth with her little tongue. 

Looks like we're back to trying "rice soup" tomorrow, mixed with plenty of formula.  Methinks she liked the "novelty" of drinking her bottle via spoon with a slight ricey flavor better than the actual eating of rice cereal.  Oh well, I can work with that!  No semi-thick rice cereal for my baby girl.  She has, however, decided she likes drinking cold water from a cup.  Go figure...

We have achieved solids!

We have achieved solids... well, semi-solids... okay, to be more accurate, mostly liquid with a teensy bit of powdered solid mixed in.  :)  Tonight we finally attempted feeding Mia solids for the first time - and by solids, I mean the infamous rice cereal.  It has you mix one tablespoon of rice cereal with three tablespoons of formula for the first feeding, so it was pretty liquidy. 

We sat Mia in our new space saver high chair (thanks again to craigslist!) and I gave her the spoon while I mixed the cereal and papa watched her.  Don't freak out that it's on the table, Zeus was right there so it was totally safe, and we are going to strap it to the chair.

Mia was fascinated by the spoon.

I had to put the tray on to keep her feet down so they wouldn't interfere with the feeding!

First spoon!

Yum!  Apparently fingers make cereal taste better and/or help it go down.  :)

My smart little cookie!  She totally gets the whole, "The spoon takes the food to the mouth, and you open the mouth to get the food down" bit.  Brilliant!

She actually did a ton better than I thought she would, even though most of it probably ended up on her bib rather than in her mouth.  She seemed to be trying to work it back in her mouth and would open her mouth when I brought the spoon up.  ...That is, until about 4 or 5 bites in when she decided that was enough for her first meal and then she just kept her lips together.  Silly goose!

All finished and cleaned up and ready for story time and snuggles.

So I would deem her first feeding a success.  It will be interesting to see how she does when it's a little thicker and see if that helps or not.  At least with it liquidy, it didn't seem to clump up in her open sinuses.  Here are a few more of my favorite pictures from our little adventure through rice cereal and first feeding.

Spoon?  What spoon?  You didn't give me a spoon, did you???

Ohhhhhhh..... you mean THIS spoon? 

My bad.  I thought it was called a "dinglehopper".  It certainly looks like a dinglehopper to me.  Ah ah ah...  Ah ah ah!  (<--Little mermaid singing.)

Okay, you can have the spoon now mom.

SYKE!!!!

First full day without steristrip

Here are some pictures from earlier this morning.  I can't believe we are to this point already.  It will be interesting to see if/how it changes as the healing process continues. 

My happy little soul.

My styling little princess.

Up close picture of her lip repair.  Man I love this little sweetie!

Exersaucer time - thank you Rankin's!

Mia loves it!  In fact, I just had to raise it up a notch for my long little string bean.

Same deep, soulful little almond eyes...

...new little smile.

And for a reference point - here's my little cutie pre-surgery:

My super serious little one.  I just want to go wake her up and snuggle her now!

Steristripless

On Thanksgiving, the steristrip was peeling up around the edges again, so I trimmed it back a little more.  When I trimmed it along the bottom, we could finally see all the way across the bottom part of her upper lip.  I was seriously amazed at how smooth and seamless it looked!  When Zeus got home and I showed him, he was amazed too and kept saying, "Wow, did you see her LIP?" 

Well, yesterday the last of Mia's steristrip came off!  Okay, so it was helped along by my little turkey who rubbed at it and about gave mommy and daddy heart failure.  It was hanging by one little stitch and we decided that instead of waiting for her to grab hold of it and rip it away, possibly doing more damage, that we would try and gently remove it.  Luckily we were able to detach it from the stitch without having the  actual stitch come out.  Whew!

As you can imagine, we've snapped a FEW pictures.  :)

Who me?  Pull of the steristrip???  No, not me... pure innocence.  :)

It's still red and irritated, especially around the stitches.  The dark spots are stitches, and the larger spot on the right is the stitch the steristrip was hanging by.

They did a vertical incision underneath each nostril and then down towards her lip.

I looked over at Mia as she was playing this morning on her play mat.  This is the view I had, and had the strange thought, "My baby has a lip now."  Strange.  It's not like she never had a lip before, but it just struck me this morning that her upper lip is continuous now.  Wow.

Loving the play gym and STILL trying to pull everything into her mouth.

When all else fails, there's always the thumb - though she still has a death grip on the hanging butterfly mirror with her other hand.  Silly girl! 

...and as always, my super happy girl is rarely without a smile!

Mia's waking up from her nap, so gotta run.  She's dressed for the day now, so I'll have to try and get more pictures.  :)



Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving all! 

Today I'd like to take a moment to list a few things that I'm thankful for:

• I'm thankful for my wonderful husband - for his understanding and caring, for what a good husband and father he is, for helping me be a better communicator, for knowing me better than almost anyone and for loving me in spite of it.
• I'm thankful for my beautiful, happy little girl Mia - she is such a mild, easy-going and joyful little soul and she brings so much happiness to our lives. 
• I'm thankful for my amazing family, extended family, and for all of my amazing friends.
• I'm thankful for my home and for the opportunity I have to be a stay-at-home-mom.
• I'm thankful for modern medicine - for our wonderful doctors who have treated and taken care of Mia and I during pregnancy and beyond.
• I'm thankful that we've made it through two weeks post surgery.
• I'm extremely thankful that today we could finally take off Mia's arm restraints!
• I'm thankful to have been able to spend Thanksgiving with some of my family, even though many of them are far away.
• I'm thankful for modern technology that make it possible to keep in touch with family that is scattered all over the globe.
• I'm thankful for my life and all that I've learned thus far.
• I'm thankful to live in this free country.
• I'm thankful for Shriner's hospital and for the great care they've taken of Mia and at no cost to us.
• I'm thankful that Mia's lip surgery
• I'm thankful for my comfy bed.
• I'm thankful for my contacts and glasses that help me be able to see the beautiful world that I live in.
• I'm thankful for so many other things that I can't even begin to mention them.
• I'm thankful.

I love my little family!

Look - no arm restraints on today!!!

Earlier this week:

Even WITH the arm restraints my silly little goose somehow finds a way to push her face against, get her mouth on and/or lick SOMETHING!

 And when we move something out of her way, she'll find something ELSE to gnaw on.

...or she finds ANOTHER way to get at it.  :)

Cousin Freddy teaching Mia how to text.

Thanksgiving Day:

Tia Bertha working on the stuffing.

Comadre Lupe helping keep the dishes under control.

Getting caught up on folding loads and loads of laundry while Freddy tries to wake up from his comfy night on the Love Sac and works on selling Zeus's tickets to the UT vs A&M football game.

While we were hard at work, Zeus's brother Tuco - pronounced Too-ko - (who'd gotten into town around 2 am) was sleeping peacefully in the guest bedroom.  His step-daughter Chayo who's 7 years old decided to sneak in the room and take a picture of him with her stuffed puppy while he was asleep.  This is the photo she took on her Nintendo DS.  Just so you know, Tuco is an ex-Marine.  :)

I smell blackmail!

Mia and I with Chayo and her infamous stuffed puppy.

My sweet baby girl and I.  I love her to pieces!!!

My drooly little girl - I think she may be teething... again!

She drools all the time now and we go through at LEAST 4 bibs a day.  Plus, she loves rubbing the underside of her tongue over her two bottom teeth so her tongue is flashing in and out of her mouth CONSTANTLY!  Oh, and she's in her cute 1st Thanksgiving bib that Zeus got for her before she was born.  :)

Zeus's sister Bertha and her son Freddy.

Zeus's big brother Tuco and his wife Lupe.

The Moreno Clan (minus Danny and his kids and Tuco's daughter Jessica).  Grandpa Tin (Teen), Freddy, Bertha, Zeus, Mia, and Tuco.

A good chunk of the extended Moreno clan, and our group forThanksgiving, minus our family friend Vaughn who was taking the photographs.  (Thanks Vaughn for telling me that I had funky hair sprouts on each side of my head.  Jeeze Louise!)

I am so very thankful for all of my many blessings!

Modesty Schmodesty

So Mia had on the most adorable outfit today - a little dress outfit that I think we got from my friend Amy.  So I decided I just had to get some photos of her before it doesn't fit her anymore, which will probably be like...tomorrow!  It was actually around 80 degrees today so she could actually wear something out that wasn't long sleeves and pants, which is great because we have a TON of cute shower gifts and hand-me-downs that are 3-6 month size but more fitted for warmer weather. 


Here's some photos of my silly goose which were the motivation for the title of this blog today.  :)

Hey you!  For crying out loud, put down that dress and get your hands out of your mouth little goose!!!  :)

MIA... what, are we playing peek-a-boo or hide my face so my mom won't see that I'm trying to get my hands into my mouth?!?

And my all time favorite silly picture from the day:

Wooooooo whooooo!  lol  Such a silly little girl.

Oh, and Mia's apparently learned a new trick.  She's such a smart little cookie:

Feet together? Check!  Hands together? Check!

So, two more days until we are done with arm restraints!!!  Whoooooo RAH!