East Coast Holidays (Part 1)

On the East Coast for the holidays.

It's been an incredible year to say the least! Leigh and I hope to post an "End of Year" summary before the New Year arrives, but if nothing else you can just review all the posts here and galleries over on Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/aylajadesangster).

We came East for the holidays. The family left Portland last Wednesday, the 16th. A day after I finished up my University of Portland semester (hard to believe I'll be graduating in May!) and with a 50 mph tailwind made it in record time to Atlanta (just a little more than 4 hours). Ayla was a real chill champ and only in the last 30 minutes did she really start to get restless.

Staying only the night in Atlanta, we rented a car and drove up to North Carolina to spend the last couple nights of Hanukkah with Leigh's folks and her Great Aunt Sallie. It was really nice to start involving Ayla in her family's Jewish traditions. Leigh and I started the candle lighting in Portland and we were able to conclude the Festival of Lights with Lois leading the blessings.



In NC, Ayla was able to spend some great time with her 84 year old Great Great Aunt Sallie. This was such a special treat for the both of them, the meeting of the different generations. It was immediately apparent that they would be two peas in a pod. Ayla was comfortable and drawn to Sallie very early. They spent a lot of time together, with Sallie reading to her and talking to her a lot. To see such a generational melding (there's 3 generations difference between them), was a rare and special treat.



In NC, Ayla was finally old enough to be introduced to her Grandpa's (Pop-Pop) enourmous train passion. He has taken the basement of their house in Wintson-Salem and created quite the hobby train collection, with three running trains on the tracks. She was shown how to drive the trains, blow the horns and generally enjoyed watching them go round and round the tracks. I honestly think it was more a thrill for Grandpa than it was for Ayla though!



It snowed 6 inches while we were there in Winston too! Luckily it snowed the day after we arrived and melted soon enough to allow us to leave back to Atlanta on schedule. I'm not sure what my mom would have done if she got denied Ayla time two years in a row b/c of snow! Remember last year, the freak snow storm that Portland got before Christmas? Those 2 feet of snow that Portland got trapped us there until after Christmas and basically cut the East Coast visit last year in half. Not sure what it is about Ayla, snow and the East Coast. She brings the weather I guess.

We also got her first sledding in. It was super fun. Leigh's folks live on a street with about a dozen kids under 7 and sleds were out and readily available for use. I had forgotten how much fun sledding can be!



We are back in Atlanta now and we'll be here for a couple weeks. We'll celebrate X-mas with my folks and family. She is already quite frustratingly attracted to the tree with all its lights and shiny balls. Now that Ayla knows how to open presents, should be a lot of fun to watch her go to work. Apparently, she's getting all the loot this year!

It's really nice to know we won't have to pack or move again for awhile. No snow here, but lots of sun. Being used to Portland's cooler, wetter winter climate, I'm walking around with bare feet and short sleeves here in the balmy South! Aaaaah...Georgia winters.

We'll leave y'all with this little laugher...Ayla's 1st Dancing:



Merry Solstice, Happy X-mas, Blessed Hanakkah and Joyous New Year to all!

Walking (and more)!!!

I really wish we had more time to add commentary to the blog right now...but for now just the pure visual experience will have to tide you over.

The rumors are true...SHE'S WALKING!




She loves to play chase. This has become a wonderful afternoon ritual with Papa and her. At first, she was crawling around alot like this video. But now, she's full on trying to run away or towards me! Awesome.




Leigh was home with her the other day and caught her playing peek-a-boo behind the curtain. Precious!




And this is just random funny weirdness...

Happy First Birthday Ayla!

The moment arrived and it was most perfect!




And she continues to be awesome...

Almost 1 Year Old!

Almost 1 and a few weeks away from walking...




...continues to charm us with her giggle and very clear communication...




...and yet, she is a unique individual that does things only she knows why!

Several New Videos....Lots Happenin'!

So much happening these days with the little one!

She is getting much more confident in her body...and making new synaptic connections everyday. Such as learning how to climb up & down stairs:




She is becoming quite the little gardener! (Though she's not good at letting things ripen...too impatient):




We have no idea what's she doing here, but at least she does!





We went apple picking today and almost immediately after this video was taken she said "apa"! She's brilliant!




And finally, it's only a matter of weeks now...we're so doomed.

It's been entirely too long!

Our deepest apologies for the entirely too long delay in getting more stuff posted on this blog! I guess our excuse is that our video camera had a little run in with an overly excited 9 month old girl and a kitchen tile floor. We had to send it off to be repaired and it's finally back. Wooohooo!

It seemed perfectly cruel and ironic that we lost our means to record motion just when Ayla started getting most mobile. Since July (which seems eons ago), she gotten proficient at crawling, started to pull herself up to standing, cruising along furniture and if we hold her hands she'll walk across the room!

She's also starting to cut her two top teeth, eat much more solid food and more often and talk talk talk!



Oh and she's gotten even cuter and more adorable!



Of course there's much more going on these days than these two short videos can capture. But for now it's what we got. Obviously, life continues to be extremely busy for us. I'm back in school (only got 7 months to go!) and Leigh is focusing on getting Ayla into some sort of part-time child care so she can concentrate on finishing her dissertation sometime this decade! Hopefully, they'll be more to come...somebody's got their 1st birthday coming up soon...

Sleep....the final frontier

Oh the sleep subject. The center of our universe for the last 2 months....it is IMPROVING but slowly. We are currently on night 8 of letting her "cry it out" with regular check ins. We have gone from crying virtually all night long on night 1 (I think we got maybe 2 hours of sleep) to last night's almost personal best of 11 hours straight! There is still at least 20-40 minutes of crying (tonight was 28 mins - not bad) when we first put her down in her crib (yes, we broke down and got one, but it has made a huge difference) and she is still waking up around 4 or 5am and refuses to go back to sleep at that point (so we bring her into bed, nurse her and sometimes she falls back asleep, sometimes not). We are trying to push her whole cycle back an hour so that it's more like 7 to 7 instead of 6 to 6 like it is now, but that's really hard to do. She has been sleeping really, really well (like 10+ hours a night) for several nights now. But she still fights it. Most of the time she falls asleep like she just fell face first from sitting. This is an awkward yoga-like pose where she looks like she's sitting on her butt and touching her toes. Doesn't seem comfortable but she sleeps like that for hours. The naps are still VERY difficult to nail down and that's where we are starting to focus our attention. She just fights naps tooth and nail. Might miss something. Doesn't want to be alone. Whatever the reason, she is a terrible nap taker right now. Oftentimes we have to resort to drives in the car or long walks in the backpack to put her down. Naps and nights are strongly linked and if you improve one you're supposed to improve the other. Right now, her naps are getting worse...but we're working on it. So, all in all, definitely improving...just slowly and with difficulty. She's done SUCH a great job adjusting to this and we are really, really proud of her (and ourselves sometimes).

Her dramatic and continuous changes are astounding. She is more like a toddler EVERYDAY! Pulling herself up on couches, nightstands, parents. Hanging on with one hand while the other explores. Letting go sometimes to teeter for a split second of standing bliss before crashing on her juicy booty to the ground....only to immediatley grab something to pull herself up again to practice more. She knows the signs for milk, food, up, water, drink, bird, mama, papa. She's learning dog, cat, more, finshed, bath and sleep. She has made the sign for milk and up and we think she's really close to waving bye and hi. We are trying to feed her solids three times a day. Recently she just has not been that into them. Today for some reason, she ate two cherries, some watermelon and a quarter of a banana. Hard to predict. We ordered a high chair and it should be in soon. When it arrives, we'll have much more of a station for feedings. Right now we just kind of chase her around the house as she's crawling trying to convince her she really wants this spoonful of food more than that dust bunny, random piece of dropped paper or fire grate. She has been REALLY into papa recently and loves to play with me for long periods of time (i'm the 'fun' one). We wrestle, play horse and airplane, go outside and play in the flowers, read books, play with toys, play with food, water the garden, make faces, laugh, zerberts, ticklings...She is becoming more intensely interested in books and looks at our face/mouths when we read words off the page. We swear she's tried to say dog and ball already! She claps, giggles, laughs out loud, squeals, babbles, sings, crawls, protests, expresses desires, cuddles, hugs, sticks out her tongue, makes raspberries...

Finally, our camera has crapped out and that's why there hasn't been any new photos or videos in quite some time. We apologize. It's been sent off and should be repaired soon! We miss it too.

Simple Toys & Giggles

Six and a half months old now and things are flying by!

She's taking some sort of food everyday now. We've fed her sweet potato, hard boiled egg yolk, pear, apple,peas, liver (leigh's idea, not mine) and of course rice cereal. So far it seems her favorites are sweet potato, apple and rice cereal. Our next big purchase will be a high chair so she can eat at the table with us.

She is mere days away from crawling. She can go from her belly to sitting back to hands and knees. She can periodically put one hand in front of her and then move her other hand with a sort of hopping/scooting in between. She gets the concept I think, it's a matter of practice, balance and confidence now. Just yesterday, she was able to "crawl" about three feet to me!

Her babbling has increased dramatically. And our understanding of her has increased too. We can definitely tell her "pick me up" from her "I'm hungry" fusses. Her content and happy coos and sighs are just heart warming. Her giggle/laugh is precious and she has this really cute, almost meditative "tired song" she sings as she falls asleep in our arms or the car seat. This week she has started doing the wet razz.

She's somewhere around 20 pounds and 26-27 inches long now. She's upgraded to the next level of car seats (thanks mom!). We also had to go through her drawers and do some major rotating of 6-9 month old clothing, while outing the 3-6 month old stuff (just doesn't fit her gorgeous little chub anymore!).

The last few weeks have been dedicated (or obsessed) with her sleeping schedule. We are trying to get her to sleep through the night (which technically only means 5-6 hours at a time). Previous to now, she's been bed sharing with us. She would wake every 3-4 hours to nurse, but was basically pretty restless and kept both of us up. Recently, we have tried to move her to the co-sleeper next to the bed with sporadic and minimal success. I think there was once where she slept 5 hours. And most of the time it was pretty dreadful - waking every 10 minutes sometimes!

Basically, Ayla doesn't yet know how to fall asleep by herself, or without some parental intervention (rocking, nursing, bouncing, singing). And she doesn't know how to go back to sleep when she does wake in the night. So we are pretty sleep deprived and frustrated (me more so than Leigh). We are trying to work with Ayla and find something that is not too traumatic or abrupt, something other than "crying it out". It's a struggle right now, but we're working on it.

Outside of Ayla, Leigh and I are doing alright. School is good for me. I've got Public Health this summer and I'll be working with a Head Start program with Hispanic children. I can't believe that a year from now, I'll have graduated! We also came up with a daily/weekly schedule so that Leigh can get more time for her work as well.

Summer has finally hit here. It's been in the upper 70's, low 80's for the last several days with blue skies and bright sun. The nights are still chilly (in the low 50's), but makes for great sleeping. Our garden is booming. Potatoes, peas, squash, watermelon, raspberries, strawberries, broccoli, kale, collards, spinach, carrots, onions, peppers, tomatoes, herbs and lots of lettuce! I've been enjoying a lettuce smoothie (has lots of fruit too - it's yum!) everyday for the last two weeks.

I'm also off of coffee! After realizing that 32 oz a day and crashing a couple times a day was getting out of hand. So after spring semester, during the break, I stopped drinking it...and for 4-5 days I felt like crap. But it's done, I haven't had any coffee/espresso in over 2 weeks now. I have a cup of Earl Gray tea, but just one. I went from 300 mg of caffeine a day to now maybe 15mg. I feel much better too!

Enjoy the movie of Ayla playing with one of her favorite toys - paper. The laugh at the end is worth the wait!

Much love to all,
Jason (and Leigh & Ayla)

6 Months Old!

Ayla has started to eat some solid food. She had her first solids about 2 weeks ago. Bananas and breast milk...yum yum! She's since had rice cereal (twice) and this is her first sweet potatoes. She loves food!



She has also become quite the active little monkey. She loves to spend her time these days crawling/climbing all over mama and papa. Buy to see such delight in her face as you swing her through the air...pure magic.



How can you not just giggle in glee with her? So precious!



We're teaching her the very important things...like blowing raspberries.

The Latest Videos (Mar/Apr)

- She just may skip over crawling altogether!




- This balloon was just meant to be played with by Ayla. I had just stopped at a red light when this flower balloon cruised across a very busy intersection at ground level heading straight for my car. I opened the driver side door and it literally "jumped" into the car...




- In reality, her thumb is caught in the strap, but it's still super funny!