The Bailey Chronicles

I am pleased to say that Bailey is well over and done with her colic phase, it was short lived but definitely challenging! She still challenges me when it's time to nurse, but I have hope that it's only a phase since baby center sent me some newsletter about nursing strikes describing similar things that I am going through with her. She sure does take the magic out of it at times. I have learned that she has incredible core strength. She will pull herself up by grabbing on to my fingers keeping her back and neck completely straight using just her abs and back muscles. It is more impressive when you see it I am sure, but I am pretty confident that she is stronger than me LOL. She actually started doing sit ups on the bed the other day using just her abs, no arm assistance. She did it six times in a row, sitting straight up from a lay down position, before getting tired. She laughs all the time, and I LOVE it! I am very amused by the things that she finds funny. Bailey has always had a little giggle, but never anything I could call a laugh until this fourth month started. She has become VERY vocal. She has been trying to talk to us since she was almost two months old, but now she is starting to test how loud she can get. Some days I feel like all she did was yell at me all day long, but she's not just doing it when she's mad she just does it the entire day because she can. What I love the best about her noises are the faces she makes while trying to get the sounds out. Definitely seems like she is trying to tell me about something important. She has really mastered standing on her feet, and her stance also cracks me up. She locks those pudgy little legs, sticks that diaper bottom out, and arches her back.... so cute, like a little who from Whoville. And of course anything and everything is going into her mouth. She has developed her hand-eye coordination pretty well now and can actually grab the things she wants and bring them to her mouth, even her toes. Still working on the rice cereal, she's not a big fan of it yet. I am only giving it to her every few days for now. I am not to worried about making her have it all the time until month 6. She is starting to respond to her name, new development this week, so she hasn't mastered it entirely yet. And the last thing I have noticed is her exploring things with her hands. She wants to touch my face when I talk to her, or my hands, or her hair and ears, but it's not the grab that she used as a newborn. It's just a soft open handed touch to feel and explore what it's like. We should be purchasing a stroller for her FINALLY, this weekend, so we will have a lot more exploring to do next month :)

Best Buy finally made their long awaited restructure announcements last week. John's GM announced that they are merging the CEM position (John's current role) and the Services Manager position into a new job title called CSM or Customer Solutions Manager. His store will have two of these positions available, but since they previously had two CEM's and one Services Manager that means one of the three of them will be without placement. Originally we had thought the GM decides who stays and who goes, but we have recently learned that a third party will be making the cuts. The GM was allowed to right an assessment on each of them and send off their last two reviews for the final decision. Who ever is not placed will have until June 2nd to find a job in the company or else they will be relieved with a six month severance package. John will find out if he is placed on April 26th, the day after our one year anniversary. This is all we know for now, I will keep everyone posted. We are staying positive about this, John has wonderful reviews and his GM seems to value him quite a bit so nobody is in panic mode yet, however he has put in applications to other companies as a back up plan.

Easter Sunday was spent at my Mom and Stepdad's house aka Nanny and Poppy's with the three of us and the Carminati's. Bella and Bailey were dressed to match in their pink pettiskirts and pink tops, but Bailey didn't last long in her sweet outfit. The house was warm due to all the people and the oven going, and the combination of drool and spit ups caused me to strip her down to her diaper. We ate a yummy meal of prime rib and twice baked potatoes and all sorts of yummy stuff and watched the kids hunt for eggs. The previous night it had rained so Nanny's yard had puddles everywhere and in those puddles where crawdads from the lake. Bella and I hunted crawdads for a little while spotting a few babies here and there, but when Kobi and Skylar joined in they ended up finding a pretty big one. The sight of Bella in her sweet pink Easter outfit holding up a giant ugly crawdad was SO Bella :) I didn't photograph anything that day though because my blood pressure felt out of whack (hasn't felt the same since pregnancy) and I was having a hard time getting Bailey to sleep. We had our pack and play but the mattress was at home since Mr. Kitty felt the need to urinate on it. UGH bad kitty!! Does anyone know how I would get that out? I am thinking dry cleaning.

Which leads us to today. I picked up a box of rice cereal last night at the store for Bailey to sample. I really don't need to go into an explanation on this one, I think the pics tell the story here.