Mireya turned 5 months old on August 5th, 2010. She is getting so big! She now weighs in at 13 1/2 lbs and she is 24 inches tall. We can’t believe how fast she seems to be learning to do everything. She runs around in her walker all the time. The other day we had her in a pair of pants with feet and she ran around so much that she wore holes in both big toes! She has been cruising in her walker for several weeks now, but she has just figured out that it’s a useful tool to get into trouble. She pulls off dish towels from the handles of the appliances and she tries to open cupboards. I guess it’s time to baby proof! She has also caught both of our cats of guard and run them over. I think the only solution to that one is to get smarter cats…

She has also learned to sit up pretty well. She still falls over occasionally, but she is getting better every day. We put her in her highchair tonight for dinner. She loves it! Now she can eat with us at the table. Speaking of eating, she loves to eat. She eats bananas, prunes, apples, pears, peaches, peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and anything else we give her. We have yet to find a food that she refuses to eat. Her favorite foods so far are prunes and sweet potatoes. The entire time she’s eating them she says, “Mmmm. Mmmmm.”

Mireya’s hair has gotten so long in the front that we have to put a bow in her hair every day, so that it doesn’t hang in her eyes. The bows make her look so feminine and cute. It’s hard to get her to hold still long enough to get them in, but once they are she doesn’t bother them, which is great. I personally can’t wait until I get to style her hair.

I love how much Mireya laughs. She has the sweetest laugh and Jason and I both spend hours doing anything we can think of to get her to giggle. Jason has figured out that if he brushes her cheek with his whiskers, it tickles her. I just make a complete fool of myself until I find something that strikes her as funny. Sometimes she even makes herself laugh. She kept blowing raspberries at me with mouthfuls of peas the other day and she thought that was hilarious. Me and my clothes? Not so much…

COMING SOON! 10 NEW VIDEOS!

Jason and I didn’t plan anything for this 4th of July, because we thought Mireya would be too little to participate and appreciate anything we did. We were wrong! On Monday night, Cedar City had their fireworks show at the airport, which is a little over a mile from our house. We were so close, all we had to do was step out into our driveway. We watched for a couple of minutes while Mireya was sleeping. She woke up, so we bundled her in a blanket and took her outside to see them. She was fascinated! I was afraid the loud noise would scare her and she did jump a little bit with the first really loud firework she heard. I covered her ears after that and she thoroughly enjoyed them. I can’t wait to see what she thinks of them next year!

Mireya got to try bananas the other day. She loves them! She was fairly so so about rice cereal, but she definitely likes bananas. She is to the point with food where she sometimes has little hissy fits when she wants to eat ours and we won’t let her. Instead, we give her bananas. It will be fun to try out other kinds of baby food and see what she likes. I had no idea watching someone eat could be so entertaining!

Mireya is also starting to really enjoy reading. We read to her every night before bed and sometimes during the day. She loves to help turn the pages and most of all to eat the books. She’s at the age where she eats everything, but some things just seem to have an allure to them.

Side note: Has anyone else had a problem with their baby gagging themselves? Mireya sticks her little fingers in her mouth and quite often makes herself spit up. If you take her hands out of her mouth, she puts them right back in. I can hear her doing it when we are driving around in the car. We have always had difficulty controlling her spit up, but this new development makes the problem so much worse. Hopefully it’s just a phase…

Mireya is 4 months old today. She had her wellness visit with her pediatrician and he said she is doing very well. She is continuing to grow just as she should. These are her statistics:

Weight: 12 lbs 3 oz, 28 percentile
Height: 24.5 in, 72 percentile
Head Circumference: 15.5 in, 17 percentile

She is also hitting all of her developmental goals, of course. This time we were prepared for her immunizations and we gave her Tylenol before the appointment. I will never be able to prepare for how bad I feel when I see her reaction to the shots, though. I just hate to see her cry! They really need to figure out a way to give all immunizations orally.

I’m so excited that Mireya is now old enough to start solids! We have already given her rice cereal and she loves it. She hasn’t yet figured out the whole spoon thing, but she seems to enjoy trying. Sometime in the next few days we are going to try real foods. You can watch a video of her trying rice cereal for the first time on her gallery.

After trying almost every single type of formula out there over the last 2 months, trying to figure out a balance between spitting up and constipation, we are going back to the first formula she ever had. Hopefully mixing it with rice cereal will be what finally works. Unless there are major problems, we will just stick with it. I hate having to switch formulas all the time. It must be hard on her little system, plus now we can use solid foods to help control her issues.

Check out all the latest photos and videos on Mireya’s gallery.

As I was choking on my trail mix this morning I realized that poor Mireya is doomed. I choke on my food, trip across flat floors, run into things, and just do stupid, clumsy things in general on a daily basis. Jason is just as bad as I am. Then I started thinking about my family. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my mom, my sister, and even my two brothers biff it. I don’t know how clumsy the people in Jason’s family are, but I think it’s safe to say that Mireya is doomed to be a goof.

I’m so sorry baby girl. I hope that you have more grace than I have ever had.

Mireya hit the 3 month mark on Friday, May 28th. She is growing up so fast! Jason and I can’t believe how big she’s getting! Everyone tells us she’s so small, but we can see how much she’s grown. Her personality is growing and changing too. She is very determined, sweet, playful, smart, and funny. She definitely knows what she wants, and if we try to make her do something she doesn’t want to do, like sitting instead of standing, she lets us know! She has quite a little temper at times.

She is always trying to do things a little 3 month old baby shouldn’t be doing. She loves to stand, play in her activity center, which is for older babies,  and she tries really hard to walk. She can’t figure out why her little legs won’t cooperate. She gets very frustrated sometimes when she can’t make her body do what she wants it to.

She is also very aware of who her parents are now. She never used to show any signs of preferring to be held by us, but now she definitely does. Just last night, my mom tried to hold her and she got mad until I held her again, then she was all smiles. She still loves other people and she tells everyone stories. She is simply much more aware of who she’s talking to and who’s holding her.

Mireya is learning to explore the world through her mouth now. She puts anything she grabs a hold of into her mouth. Good thing she can’t crawl yet. I’m not quite ready for the stage where she looks for things to put in her mouth. She eats bibs, shirts, blankets, kleenexes you use to wipe her face, etc. I’ve tried giving her a binky instead of letting her eat her shirt for example and she spits the binky out and puts the shirt back in. She can be such a little stinker!

Last Wednesday, she laughed for the first time. I was changing her and she actually laughed! I thought I hadn’t really heard it, but I called Jason in just in case she did it again and to have a witness. She just smiled and talked until he left. As soon as he was out the door, she laughed again! Jason didn’t get to hear her until yesterday during another diaper change. It’s the cutest little laugh you’ve ever heard! It will be so fun when she’s laughing all the time and we can act silly just to get her to laugh.

In the next few months, Mireya is going to do all kinds of new and amazing things. The 3-6 month period sounds like a big one for development from what I’ve read. We are doing our best to encourage her development in all the right areas, but I’m not sure that such a smart baby like Mireya really needs a whole lot of help. It probably won’t seem like very long before I’m teaching her to read and write. It’s so much fun to be a mom and I can’t wait to see what she’s going to do next!

I came across an interesting website: www.repairpal.com recently. You can find advice on many different things, including: cars, car repairs, car repair shops and mechanics, and they even have an encyclopedia section. You can look up different types of cars on their Car Info page and they will provide ratings and reviews, questions and answers, common problems, recalls, and tsb’s.

You can go to Repairpal’s encyclopedia section and look up a repair that you need to have done on your car and read all about it, so you’re well informed when you actually go to the repair shop. You look up whatever you’re interested in and it will tell you all about the repair, give you recommendations, and explain why that problem happens. After reading about it, you can even find a repair shop in your area and see what the repair will cost.

There are lots of great features on www.repairpal.com, so next time you need car advice, check it out.
Here are some examples of pages on their website:
Chicago Auto Repair, Toyota Camry, Check Engine Light

My mom and brother, Jaime, finally moved into their new house, here in Cedar City, over the weekend. My Aunt Nola, Uncle Bill, cousins Trent and Mathew, and friends Ryan and Ian all came down to help unload the truck. Everyone except my mom and Ian were meeting Mireya for the first time. I have to say, I think they all thoroughly enjoyed her. Who wouldn’t?

I was worried that she was going to get overwhelmed and overstimulated, but she didn’t. She was a fantastic baby all day long. She actually slept until we got the truck unloaded and woke up at the perfect time to meet everyone. She got passed around from person to person and she loved it! I was ready to step in if she showed any signs of being upset, because she was being passed around like a hot potato. I never had to, because she seemed to really enjoy it. She smiled and talked to each and every person. She is obviously going to be very social!

I decided to show everyone how she loves to stand in my lap. They couldn’t believe that she was standing with little assistance at 10 weeks. I had to explain that for whatever reason she loves it. She’s actually to the point where I can tell she’s getting frustrated that she can’t do more than that. When she figures out how to crawl, she is going to be difficult to keep up with.

She seems to be particularly captivated by Jaime. She gets so excited when he talks to her! I think she is really going to enjoy having him and Nana so close by. They’ll probably become our number one babysitters very quickly. I was actually thrilled the other day when I had to go to a dentist appointment and all I had to do was drop her off at Nana’s.

Mireya, you’re such a little superstar!

Great Uncle Bill and Mireya

Trent and Mireya

Great Aunt Nola and Mireya

Ryan and Mireya

Nana and Mireya

Jaime, Nana, and Mireya

I had my very first Mother’s Day yesterday. It was great! I have been a mother to many furry animals over the years, but to be celebrated as a mom to a beautiful baby is so wonderful. It actually caught me off guard to be told, “Happy Mother’s Day” by so many different people.

Jason was so sweet. He and Mireya got me the cutest card. They also got me some beautiful earrings and a silver necklace. What mom doesn’t love new jewelry? Jason even said something else is still on it’s way. I feel so spoiled! Thank you little Mireya and Jason for a fabulous day. I love you both very much!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there and I hope your day was special too.

Mireya had her 2 month wellness check yesterday. She wasn’t technically 2 months, she is actually 9 weeks today. Regardless, it went well. She is moving right up the growth charts. These are her statistics:

Weight: 9 lbs 12 oz, 22nd percentile
Height: 22.5 in, 56th percentile
Head Circumference: 14.5 in, 8th percentile.

Her weight and head circumference are so much better than her 2 week wellness check. Then she was in the 2nd percentile for head circumference and the 6th percentile for weight. Her height hasn’t changed much. It was in the 59th percentile before.

She has had several bad days in a row with her feedings. She has been spitting up a lot, crying in the middle of the feed, and refusing to finish her bottles. Her pediatrician diagnosed her with reflux. Poor thing! I know all about that and it’s miserable. She now has to take Zantac twice a day to control it. It is supposed to taste gross, but she doesn’t seem to mind it much. She is better about taking it than her gas drops, which have a good flavor. Go figure.

She also had to have her immunizations. She loved the rotavirus immunization. It was an orange-vanilla flavored liquid and she actually smiled while she ate it. The other immunizations weren’t as much fun. She had to have two shots in one thigh and one in the other. I’ll never forget the look on her face as they gave her the first shot. She looked at me like, “Why are you doing this to me mommy?” I felt so bad. She still isn’t feeling very well, but she is improving. I hope she feels better soon!