Favorite Sleeping Position

Mine is on my back. Well, atleast I start out that way and then I find myself on my side by morning. Falling asleep on my side was never very easy for me when I was pregnant. Rodney sleeps a lot on his stomach (he'd really have a hard time being pregnant! hee hee). Ever since we did sleep training with Will, he rolls over on his right side as we put him down in his crib and eventually makes his way onto his tummy in the night. The past two nights I've gone in to check on him before I go to bed and have caught him in this position:



It's kinda hard to see, but his butt is sticking straight up in the air. The best angle for this picture would have been from the side, but the crib slats prevented that so we have two aerial views. It's pretty cute.

Sleep has definately turned into something I can now expect to get. Just four months ago I would dream of such luxury! Now we do our routine, lay him in the crib at 8:30 and can pretty much expect not to hear from him until anywhere between 6-7 am. Wow.

On to to other things. One of the most interesting developmental milestones thus far for Will has been his newfound ability to crawl. Here's a video:


With this new freedom, he has taken to explore our home. At first, whenever we put him down, he would shimmy over to the wall and play with the baseboards (which he still does and you saw him do a little bit in the video above). But more recently I've found him playing with the doorstop behind the door in his room and then eventually in the corner behind the door. A few times he's yelped for help from this spot because he can't back his way out! He's also taken to crawling to any cord he sees so he can put it in his mouth. Scary. He also likes to crawl over to the fireplace grate and scratch it with his little fingers. I used to just put a fortress of couch pillows around it, but now he just climbs right over them to play with it. My sister used to have this huge connectable plastic gate thing in her living room where Mia would play without fear of getting into things. I used to think it was a little "control freaky" of my sister. Now, I completely understand why she did this and just might copy her clever idea. What child wouldn't love a giant play pen anyway?

As usual I will close with some photos. Some of Will, Che, and some of our new office/music room. I'm not sure why we didn't do this before as we weren't really using the sunroom for anything purposeful.

Happy Holidays

Once again, our holiday vacation produced within me a strong desire to do absolutely NOTHING. Including blogging. I of course had tons of time and chose to either sleep, read, do a puzzle (with the rest of the Malone family), play with Will and Yuri and do a tiny bit of exercise. It was a wonderfully restful trip. Will and Yuri were both feeling under the weather and by New Years Day we decided to take Will in to the emergency room. The ER doctor told us it was bronchiolitis, but that his oxygen levels were very good (the main cause of concern). He told us that there isn't really any medication and that we just had to wait it out. So, we've been wiping snotty noses and listening to deep-chested coughs for a couple of weeks now. We were concerned about his discomfort with sleeping, so we did all the no-nos and he was up every 3-4 hours for the duration of our trip. He started showing signs of improving by the time we returned from Kansas and it took one night of "following the rules" and he was back on schedule. Also, VERY much more content during the day. Apparently, continuous sleep through the night is good for not only us, but Will too!

Here are some updates: Will's basically crawling, although not very deliberately. He's getting one tiny tooth on the top right and it looks like maybe his top two front teeth are trying to push through. Crazy! He babbles a lot too, mostly sticking with "da da da da." I'm sad to say that perhaps Rodney will be the first to be verbally acknowledged by our child. Sniff, sniff. It's so cute though, I don't really care what he's says first. We also graduated from the newborn/infant tub (on top of the kitchen sink) to the bathtub. One of us gets in there with him and we splash and play after we've scrubbed. It's so much fun. Both lunch and dinner are served up in his high chair with breast feeding sessions mixed in between. It's both liberating and frightening to observe the gradual moving away from his sole dependence upon me for food (atleast when a bottle is not offered).

Here are some photos from Christmas:

A blurry living room

Baby's First Christmas

Can you guess what this is?

Happy Crawler
Christmas Sleeper

"Does this color match my eyes?"

Uncle B

Opening Zoo Train (thanks Gma & Gpa Malone!)

Cousins

My new favorite toys

6 months, That Wonderful Piney Smell, Romeo et Juliette, and Bach

This post will be as motley as its title.

Will turned 6 months on the 27th of November, and with that turning of age we have been harkened into a new world. A full-blown infant/here-comes-a-little-boy world.

Gone are: little baby animal-esque cries (I used to think it sounded a little like a yowling cat), a million poopy diapers a day, that distant newborn stare, the "can't you see I'm so friggen pissed off and can't you just know exactly what this cry means?" crying, and blob-like states (not to mention no sleeping).

Here are: almost crawling, 2 teeth, smiles when he see's me, sleeps for a reaaaally long time, food mostly on his bib/face/lap (I'll have to capture this for you, although I'm sure you're all too familiar with the scene), happy kicker and bouncy arm days.

Let me just say, I LOVE this age.


Here are his percentiles: weight 50th, length 75th, head 75th. He's catching up with himself.

On to "That Wonderful Piney Smell." This year Rodney told me that he wanted to get a fake tree so that we could start saving money at Christmas time. I told him that if we weren't going to get a real tree, I didn't want one. Not that I was really upset, mind you. I just find the idea of having a tree in your house a weird idea to begin with, not to mention a fake one (sorry to those who get fake ones- I recognize that it is a personal choice, as well as a lot easier). Anyway, I convinced him that cutting down our own tree would be a wonderful tradition to have with our kids, and I even found a great deal at Eckerts: $36 for any tree you cut down. So we got all bundled up, made the drive to Bellville and cut ourselves a beautiful tree (nicest one we've ever gotten). Now my house smells like pine. Another great reason to get a real one. Mmmmm.



So, ever since Carol decided that she thinks my voice is well suited for opera, she's been going on and on about these live broadcasts of the MET operas at various movie theaters around the St. Louis area (actually it's a nationwide campaign to get opera "out to the people"). Anyway, I've been totally interested in going, but the tickets are like 20 dollars. Well, during one of my lessons she tells me out of the blue that one of her students (who wishes to remain anonymous) is quite wealthy and wants to pay for me to go to these broadcasts. Wow. I'm not really sure what this means, but I am humbled by the gesture. So, yesterday was the first. Romeo et Juliette (French for Romeo, yadda yadda) by Gounod. After three hours of glorious singing and amazing theatrics, I left the Art Museum theater in a heightened state. It was otherworldy. I can't wait for the next one in Januaary, Hanzel and Gretel. I'm told it's even better.

Tonight we had a brutal Bach rehearsal for tomorrow night's 1st of two Candlelight performances. These are always bittersweet for me because I absolutely love singing at Powell Hall, but the rehearsals leading up to the concerts are always pretty difficult to endure. The orchestra sounded spectacular though, and tomorrow night should be amazing. 'Tis the season for hard work if you're a musician (or a snow shoveller).

A Video Post: "Hey, Look at Me!"

Almost Crawling



Talking and Laughing

Inviting You

Here is the advertisement for a concert I am singing in tomorrow under the direction of notable local countertenor, Thomas Dinan. These soundclips are of two pieces we're performing: "Sicut Cervus" and "Hodie Christus Natus Est"(under "view or listen to samples")

EMANUEL

Music and Poetry to Celebrate God with Us

December 8th at 7:30 p.m. at the Church of St. Anselm

This evening will include music ranging from the 15th century to today. Victoria ’s rarely heard eight-part Ave Maria, as well as works by Gabrieli, Byrd, Sweelinck, Palestrina, and the world premiere of This Trackless Solitude by the Indian-born composer Rashid Khan will be performed by the St. Louis Abbey Schola.

Poems by William Butler Yeats, Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, Jessica Powers, Robert Southwell, Jalal al-Din Rumi, T. S. Eliot and others will be featured in this Advent meditation.


I also sing with The Bach Society of St. Louis and invite you to attend our annual Candlelight Christmas Concert
at Powell Symphony Hall, Monday December 17 and Wednesday December 19, at 7:30 pm. For any of you in the mood for beautiful choral and symphonic music to celebrate the magical season we're in, this is a dazzling cocert and a truly beautiful venue if you've never been. You can get tickets from the Bach Society website (linked above). If anyone knows how to put links to soundclips from your own cd library, let me know and I'll post some from the two CDs we've made as a choir.

7 Facts About Me

I've been tagged by Kasey (like a million years ago...sorry it's taken me so long to respond)

Here's how it works:
The theme: 7 random facts about me
The rules: Link to your tagger and post these rules.
Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.


1. Let's start with a rather embarrassing random fact: I sucked my fingers until I was 13.

2. The biggest crowd I've ever sang in front of was about 10,000 people. When I was a junior in high school I sang the National Anthem at the boys state basketball finals (class B). They also broadcasted it on a Michigan sports channel, so technically it was for over 10,000 people.

3. I can talk with my mouth closed. A talent I developed in junior high (when all weird talents are developed).

4. I can also wiggle my eyeballs (jr. high...).

5. In high school I was an avid cross-stitcher. Isn't this an old person's hobby? Not even cool like knitting. I think it did the same thing that algabra did for me: a relatively easy formula to do somewhat mindlessly. I suppose crossword puzzles have replaced my "mindless" cross-stitching habit.

6. The most books I ever read in one year (for pleasure) was 20+. When we lived in Paraguay we didn't have television and we spent a lot of time on looooonng bus rides.

7. To this day my mother calls me "Boo Boo Bear", short for "Buggie Wuggie Boo Boo Bear", which is derived from "Gina Bug" (a nickname I acquired as a kid that even aunts and uncles called me). My brother-in-law, Marc has called me "Bug" ever since we met (about 13 years now) and friends throughout my school years did the same. It's endearing from Marc, but somehow from my mom I feel like an almost-thirty-year-old trying to be kept a perpetual 5 year old (and it's quite embarrassing to hear a loud "Boo Boo!" ringing out across the aisles in the supermarket when the recipient is a grown woman).

I tag: Marisa, Elizabeth, Lindsay, and EJ (hope there are no duplicates)

Can you see them now?

Hey all, sorry about the picture glitch. Apparently something went wrong with yesterday's post and the pictures did not appear. Here is the fixed post with also some editing done. Why didn't someone tell me I used the phrase "extended family" about 50 times? It's funny how sometimes I'll go back and re-read what I wrote and change it. I guess it doesn't mean much when I do that because chances are those who read my blog on a regular basis have already read it and won't re-read it (like I do). Am I alone in this quirky behavior?