Squirt!

Lolli was too distracted to eat this morning, so Lauren pumped some milk into a bottle. She gave the bottle to Zach and asked him to feed Lolli. Little did she know Zach would turn the bottle into a SuperSoaker and invent a new method of feeding babies...

He was holding the bottle in front of Lolli's mouth and pressing on the bottle nipple. It sent a jetstream of milk into the back of Lolli's throat. And she was actually swallowing it. Of course, every time Lolli moved, the stream of milk would hit her in the face, ear, or chest. Now her shirt is soaked... but at least she ate!

POOP!!!

Lolli is a pooping machine! She pooped 4 or 5 times on Wednesday, 5 more times on Thursday, 5 or 6 times on Friday, and today she's on pace for 5 times!

Her poop was green on Thursday and Friday, but now it's back to yellow. Weird. Whatever caused her fever and misery must have been in her colon...

Lolli's first SICK doctor's visit :(

Lolli started acting weird Wednesday night. She didn't sleep well at all. She took a ridiculous amount of naps on Thursday, which Lauren hoped was just due to her sleeplessness the night before. Then Lolli started to whine and cry and developed a fever. Again she and Lauren spent a sleepless night in bed.

This morning Lolli had a fever of 100.7 and was still very whiny and glassy-eyed. Lauren called the doctor and made an appointment for 11.

Lauren and Lolli picked Zach up from the airport (hooray!) and then they all went to the doctor's office. Lolli seemed to enjoy watching the colorful fish swim around the aquarium but it was still obvious she felt miserable.

The doctor examined Lolli's ears and throat. He listened to her lungs and felt her gums. He found nothing wrong with her. He advised Lauren and Zach to keep Lolli "doped up" on Tylenol and Motrin this weekend and to call back on Monday if her fever hasn't broken.

Poor Lolli :(

Lunch date with *little* babies

Lauren and Lolli went to Paradise bakery in Caslteton to meet up with some IndyMoms friends and their babies. Will is 10 weeks old and Hailey is 9 weeks old. Lolli was the 'big girl' at this playdate! She sat in a high chair for the first time AND ate some sweet potatoes in the restaurant. The little babies slept almost the entire time, but Lauren had fun chatting with their moms, Katie and Darcey. Lolli, Will & Hailey are going to be great friends!

Splish Splash

Lolli LOVES taking a Big Girl bath! Since she can sit up now, she gets to take baths in the real bath tub with Lauren. Lolli loves it because she can splash with her hands and grab for all of her floating bath toys. She also likes it when Lauren holds her on her tummy in the water and she can 'swim.'

Bathing Lolli this way is much easier on Lauren's back, so she loves it, too!

Happy Half Birthday, Lolli!

Lolli is 6 months old today! She gets to share her half birthday with Easter, which is cool, since Lolli shared her birthday with the first day of Autumn!

Here's an update of Lolli's life as a 6-month old!

She can eat food now! So far she has tried cereal, banana, avacado, sweet potato, carrot, and squash. She seems to like carrots the best. Breastmilk is still her primary source of nutrition and will remain that way until after her first birthday. Oh, she has also had part of a sucker (see the '6-month photo shoot' post...).

Lolli STILL sleeps swaddled at home. During the day she naps swaddled in the swing or unswaddled in the carseat during car rides. At night she sleeps swaddled in Zach & Lauren's bed. She sleeps in the boppy, usually on her side. Sometimes she gets an arm out of the swaddle and sleeps through it but occasionally she has to be reswaddled during the night. Lolli still takes between 3 and 5 naps a day. 4 or 5 is the magic number. If she only takes 3, she has a very hard time getting to sleep for the night.

Lolli can roll over but doesn't do it much. She can sit up all by herself now! She gets very frustrated with tummy time because she wants to be crawling but just can't figure it out. Everything Lolli can grab goes right into her mouth. She's very fast, too. And has a death grip when she doesn't want to let go of something!

Lolli has a totally different disposition than she did 3 months ago! She is now generally a very happy baby. She is very active and very observant. She has a hard time breastfeeding if anything is going on around her because she has to unlatch and look around.

Lolli's eyes are still a gorgeous blue! They are very dark blue around the outside with a lighter blue in the middle. Her hair is now white-blonde, no more dark hair! The once-bald spot on the back of her head is now covered with peach fuzz. The hair on the crown of her head is growing in much thicker now. The hair on the front of her head is getting longer every day! Zach likes to mess up her hair now.

Lolli is learning new things each day. Lauren and Zach are so lucky to have her! Lolli gets attention from strangers everywhere she goes, usually about her big blue eyes. Lolli's favorite game is peek-a-boo and she also loves "I'm gonna get you!" She loves to pull on the pets' fur. She also loves to eat her toes (yum!). She has a baby doll that says, "I LOVE YOU" and it makes Lolli smile every time!

It's been an amazing 6 months...

Lolli's first Easter

Lolli had a great first Easter! She got up and put on her Easter dress and played with her Easter basket on the living room floor. Then she put on jeans and her fuzzy pink sweater to wear for the day. She, Lauren & Zach went to lunch at Carmen's. Lolli had fun sitting on the floor and playing with Jessi and Joey. Lolli sat in her booster chair at the table with all the grownups for lunch. Lauren and Zach fed her sweet potatos - yum! She also had chewed up pieces of banana and carrot from Lauren's plate. After lunch Lolli went hunting Easter eggs and managed to pick one up all by herself and put it in her basket!

Next stop was Gma Bowen's. Lolli snoozed on the way there was apparently the trip wasn't quite long enough. She was pretty grumpy, especially when Lauren made her change into her bunny outfit.

Finally Zach, Lauren & Lolli headed home to get Zach all packed up for his trip to Los Angeles. Lolli sat in the suitcase to protests Zach's departure, but he had to go anyway. Overall, Lolli had a wonderful first Easter!

6 month photo shoot!!!

Wow! Lolli is almost 6 months old! Lauren really wanted to get Lolli's 6 month pictures taken in a baby-sized bath tub, but JC Penney was the only place that offers that. And you have to wait a week or two to get your pictures from there. Lauren is NOT that patient. So she and Zach headed to Hobby Lobby and Michaels in search of inspiration for cute props. While walking around the store, Zach had a brilliant idea. Lollipops!

So the trio headed to the mall where they bought several lollipops from the Sweet Factory. They popped in at the Picture People to see if they had an opening - they did! So Lauren fed Lolli and dressed her in one of Paige's dresses that Kim had given for Lolli to wear this summer. The photo shoot began!

Lolli sat up all by herself in her brightly colored dress!!! She was in no mood to smile, but she did do a very good job of not falling over. Zach stood close by just in case she started to wobble. After she got tired of sitting she got on her tummy for a a couple shots. Then it was outfit change time.

For the next round of photos, Lolli wore just her diaper. She sat in the boppy with 3 boas around her: light pink, regular pink, and hot pink. She kept trying to eat the boas , as is only normal for Lolli! Next Lauren spread several multicolored lollipops are her and gave her one to hold in her hand. Into her mouth it went... oops, Lolli was eating a lolli pop!

There was definitely no getting Lolli to smile now - she was too busy licking and sucking and slobbering on that lollipop! Eventually Lauren decided enough was enough and took away Lolli's sucker (what a mean mom). Then Lolli laid on her back with lollipops spread around her head. Lauren gave her a big pink Lolipop to munch on. Of course Lolli tried to stick the whole thing in her mouth (it didn't fit). Finally Lauren took the lollipop away and Zach waved a blanket over Lolli's face to get her to grin. Finally - a smile!

The pictures turned out very cute!!! A great capture of the 6-month old Lolli!

Carrot-eating update...

Lolli's poop is orange :)

Little bunny Lolli

Lolli likes carrots! Per the ped's recommendation, Lauren decided to start Lolli on solids in the order of a stop light (veggies only): Red (orange), Yellow, Green. And since Lolli will be 6 months on Sunday, she can pretty much start solids officially now. So Lauren bought her the orange veggies: carrots, sweet potatoes, and squash. They started with the carrots because they were the closest to red. Lolli really seems to like them! Next week she'll get to try a new veggie, and so on and so on until she's tried them all! Then it'll be time for fruit! Yum yum!

Water, water everywhere

Lauren & Lolli went to Greenfield to meet Zach for lunch at Applebees today. Zach arrived first and ordered drinks and an appetizer. Then Lauren & Lolli got there. Lauren put Lolli's carseat in the booth and got Lolli out. Lolli was standing on lauren's lap while Lauren reached into the carseat to grab the pacifiers. And then suddenly...

SPLASH! In the 1/2 that Lauren had her head turned, Lolli smacked Lauren's full cup of ice water over and it spilled all over Lauren's lap! Lolli was pretty amused by the incident but Lauren was... NOT! Thankfully the waiter was very nice about it. And Lauren learned that she cannot lok away from Lolli for even 1/2 a second when there is things within her little arms' reach!

***SITTING UP***

Lolli can sit!!! All by herself!!! She's been working on it for a couple days and could stay up for a few seconds. Today she finally mastered it and can say up as long as she wants! Of course, being that Lolli is quite a hyper baby, she easily gets bored with sitting and reaches for something - boink! She falls down.

Lauren & Zach are sooooooo proud! Especially since Lolli's 6-month birthday is coming up - what a fun trick to show off to the family!

Lolli's in the newpaper

Lauren submitted Lolli's photo into the Beautiful Baby contest in the Eastside Herald. Lolli is baby # 17. The picture Laure sent in is the one they showed on Regis - Lolli snoozing in the Boppy. There are a LOT of cute babies in there, and there's no online voting. Lauren & Zach don't expect her to win since they aren't campaigning for votes, but they know she's the cutest baby in the WORLD, anyway!

Kiss Me I'm Cute

Today was Lolli's first St. Patrick's day! She celebrated by wearing a green t-shirt that says, "Kiss Me I'm Cute" and drinking green beer (haha).

Children's Museum again

Zach, Lauren & Lolli headed to the Children's Museum again today. Since there was a line for PlayScape last time, they went there first. There's a special area inside called BabyScape that is just for babies like Lolli! She rode on a rocking horse, balanced on a bar like a ballerina, played with lots of fun toys and sat in a bull-dozer! She had lots of fun and loved learning new things!

Lolli went down the Yule slide, which is making a special appearance for Spring Break. It's a big slide that goes from level 2 down to level 1. Zach and Lolli went down it together while Lauren stood at the bottom to take a picture. Except she was too slow and didnt get one :( Lolli liked the slide pretty well.

Lolli also rode the carousel! Lauren took her on it while Zach took pictures. Lauren chose a giraffe for Lolli to ride. Lolli got pretty impatient waiting for the carousel to start going, but then she enjoyed looking up at the stars on the ceiling going round and round. Until she leaned forward too fast and bumped her head on the pole. OUCH! From then on Lolli just cried until the ride was over :(

Swaddling update

Lolli slept pretty much unswaddled again on Tuesday & Wednesday nights. She gave it a try on Thursday but there was too much face-smacking going on for anyone to get any sleep, so Lauren swaddled her back up. Maybe Lolli was just too excited since Zach got home from being out of town.

Smack that!

Lolli has turned into quite the smacker! It started with her smacking Lauren's chest while she was eating, and expanded into Lolli smacking everything all the time. It's kind of cute because when someone is holding her, she smacks their back as if to say, "Good job!"

Lolli also found her ears in the past week! She likes to rub the top of her head and then let her hand fall down to her ear. She tuggs at it and rubs it for a while before smacking it :)

She slept with 1 arm out!

Woohoo! Lolli got an arm out of her swaddle this morning at 6:10am. She cried a little bit and woke Lauren up, but Lauren just held her exposed hand and Lolli went back into a restless sleep. She woke Lauren up again at 6:40 so Lauren fed her (she hadn't eastin since 2 so it was about that time anyway). Lolli zonked out after eating, like normal. So Lauren crossed her fingers and put Lolli back on her boppy. Lolli slept until 8am! She kind of woke up crying, like she wasn't sure if she wanted to wake up or not, but the arm was a-waving. She seemed kind of scared, but she got through it. It doesn't seem as though Lolli got good sleep while her arm was exposed, because she was grumpy and extra-sleepy for her morning nap. But it's a start!!!

Lolli goes to a birthday party!

Estella Ann Mae Evitt turns 1 year old on Monday! Today was her birthday party. Lolli wore her pink fuzzy shirt with her jeans and looked oh-so-cute. She watched everyone eating cake with such a look of envy in her big blue eyes! Ella is over 6 months older than Lolli, but they are almost the same height. Ella can cruise though, and of course Lolli isn't that accomplished yet! Ella wore a pink birthday tutu that inspired Lauren to come up with a similar outfit for Lolli when September rolls around!

Lolli meets the Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunnies finally came out today! Zach, Lauren & Lolli headed off to the mall bright and early to be first in line for the big rabbit. They arrived around 10:15 and there was NO line. Woohoo! So Lolli hopped up on Bunny's lap and refused to smile, ha. She seemed a teeny big scared of the bunny at first, but she never fully freaked out. The picture is still adorable, though, because Lolli wore her St. Patrick's Day t-shirt that says, "Kiss Me I'm Cute!"

Lolli's Lunch Date with Lauren

Lauren & Lolli were going nuts from Zach being out of town all week and Violet having been over for 3 days. So today they ventured out of the house and headed to lunch. They dined at Johnny Carino's. Lolli was pretty happy throughout the meal. Lauren was happy to be out and about, and enjoying some good food. YUM! Lolli started to get bored while waiting for the waiter to bring the check, so Lauren took Lolli's shoes and socks off and blew on her toes which made Lolli giggle. It was a wonderful mommy-daughter lunch date!

The Children's Museum!

Zach, Lauren & Lolli went to the Children's Museum for the first time today. They took a stroller but Lolli mostly rode in Lauren's pouch sling or was carried by Zach. She got mad in the stroller because she couldn't see everything.

Lolli explored a train, looked at fishies swimming in an aquarium, played with the water in a mini-river, sat in a chair just her size in a miniature house, had a tea party with Zach with tiny cups, and posed with a polar bear, a mastedon, a race car, and more! Lolli wanted to ride the carousel but the line was too long. Maybe next time! Which might be soon, because Zach & Lauren bought a membership. Now Lauren & Lolli can go all the time! Zach is very excited about the haunted house they do every fall :)