the portrait project that never ends

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29 August 2014
First Gulf Coast experience. Not as fun as big Atlantic/Pacific waves but she was okay with it.

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8 September 2014 (technically not week 36 by one day but oh well)
The cheesiest.

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14 September 2014 

Umm... I can't. She's suddenly looking so big.

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18 September 2014 

Playing her new favorite game—trying to pull everything out of her crib through the bars (and it suddenly just occurred to me, why don't I put ALL of her toys in the crib and then she'll be entertained for hours?)

Well, one picture with the "real" camera is good enough for this month, I guess. 

go shorty

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15 August 2014 

Hair long enough for a clip to hang onto for dear life.

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20 August 2014 

Partying like it's my birthday. Because it was.

We've had a pretty exciting couple of weeks. Well, it was if you count turning 29 exciting (it's not the most glamorous age, I'll admit) and if you get a thrill out of building furniture and setting up house (WHICH I DO). We are really settling into our new digs and life's pretty good. Rhoda is really getting good at entertaining herself which allows me lots of freedom to unpack the last of our boxes and figure out where I want to put stuff. Rhoda has also started semi-crawling this week (I might have teared up a little when I saw her going for it on Saturday). I say "semi-crawling" because she totally knows how to do it and I've SEEN her do it (as opposed to the other times when I'd just put her on her hands and knees and she would just scream) but she gets so bored and annoyed with it. So I'm in a slightly awkward position of enjoying her lack of mobility while also being frustrated that SHE gets frustrated that she's not super good at getting around yet. It's a tough life.

The other exciting thing that happened this week was that Rhoda finally dropped her 10 pm feeding with little fanfare (other than 15 minutes of screaming) and we've been enjoying putting her down at 7 and not seeing her again till 7 the next morning. I know that sleep is a discussion fraught with judgment and theories and what have you but I've been fairly happy with the way we approached sleep this time around. Yeah, I know lots of people like to get their kids to truly sleep through the night by four weeks, but my mom adrenaline kept me going for that 3 am feeding that stuck around till Rhoda hit eight months old. I also didn't mind the 10 pm feeding so much but I could tell that Rhoda really didn't need it and I think that she was generally unsettled from 7-10 pm because she was expecting to nurse, and now she sleeps like a champ.

Long stretches of sleep plus more hair plus crawling plus teeth equals WHERE DID MY BABY GO??

mannerisms

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1 August 2014
Rhoda's signature smirk—what Eliza calls her polite smile, but I think it's more like the V smile, which I'm now convinced is an inherited trait.

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9 August 2014 

Blueberries for dessert with a side of raspberries.

Rhoda makes the best faces. I can't keep up with them. She's starting to mimic other people, which is how she learned to blow raspberries. The polite smile has been going strong for months and I kind of hope it never goes away, even if she is fiercely dedicated to keeping her lips pursed shut when I need to get something out of her mouth (like the bits of sticks she kept shoving in her mouth at the playground today). Another little mannerism that I'd love to catch on camera is her face right after a nap and right before I feed her. She sits on my lap with a big smile on her face and clenches her fists and raises them high in the air and shakes them, right before she buries her face in my shoulder. And then my heart explodes.

This kid! I know they say babies get cuter and cuter each month but I just can't fathom it.

reunited and it feels so good

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 27 July 2014 

Enjoying having the pool all to ourselves on an overcast afternoon.

Well, this isn't a portrait of just Rhoda but it doesn't matter because this was the weekend we reunited with Robbie! So all of my pictures are mostly of the two of them. We spent a super relaxing and lazy weekend at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, where Robbie had a work-sponsored retreat. I was a little skeptical about having our reunion at a work event but we mostly ditched the scheduled activities and spent lots of QT poolside and hanging out in our nice hotel room while Rhoda napped in the closet (which sounds worse than it really was). It was a great weekend and nice to have a little time to ourselves before we spent the next several days on planes and in our car, getting back to the east coast and settling back into our apartment in Philly before Robbie started school last week. My parents were also here for a bit and they're gone now too—I guess summer vacation is really over, huh?

road warrior

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 20 July 2014 

The car seat—Rhoda's second home since we've been in California.

After almost nine months on this earth I'm pretty sure we've established that Rhoda is what you might call a Good Baby. We would be blessed to have her even if she wasn't a Good Baby but I'm not gonna lie—I'm happy I got a Good Baby for my first. My mom, Rhoda and I took a quick weekend trip up north to visit my friend Melanie in Oakland who just had a baby last week (on Robbie's birthday!), and lots of our short time there was spent in the car driving back and forth between Oakland and my cousin's place in Palo Alto (where we were sleeping at night) and sweet Rhodie was a champ in the car with only one ten minute meltdown out of 15+ hours of driving. Most of the time she was grunting and laughing at herself or just staring off into the distance. Good Babies are great company in the car, even though I feel bad leaving her by herself in the backseat while she's in such a good mood.

the terrill tilt

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3 July 2014 

A little mid-breakfast conversation.

If you haven't been around Rhoda for a while you might not have seen her cute little head tilt. It's too much. I think she might have picked up the habit after watching people (um, me and Robbie) look at their iPads and iPhones and not paying attention to her. But she also does it when people are talking to her as though she's trying to communicate that she's concentrating on what you're saying and taking it deeply into consideration. It also happens to be a little mannerism that comes out when my sisters and I pose for pictures together so maybe it's just genetic.

beach blanket bingo

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 3 July 2014

 Another trip to Will Rogers for some beach time. Rhoda's reactions to the squishy sand and the waves rolling in are pretty much priceless.

Summer is really flying by, and I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. We have really been having a great time in California and even though there are lots of days jam-packed with activities, there are still quite a few where we just hang out at home with nothing on the agenda. I have a few things on my California bucket list left to do before we leave in a couple weeks (stock up on See's! grab a sodie at Fair Oaks Pharmacy! eat some donuts! go swimming! finally visit the Getty!) and it seems like there's a lot I still want to do with very little time to do it in, and yet the weeks aren't going by fast enough till we get to see Robbie again and I spend a lot of time just looking at the calendar wishing it was July 25th. There I go again, not enjoying the moment. But in the meantime, at least I'm going to the beach as much as possible before it's no longer an easy option.

some firsts

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25 May 2014 

First time in a swing—just as awesome as one would imagine it would be.

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7 June 2014 

First time in the tub at the house I grew up in

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12 June 2014 

First time visiting Grandma Mary's house!

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20 June 2014 

First time swimming at the neighbors' pool that we all swam in as kids

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22 June 2014 

First time eating zucchini and seriously loving every second of it—watching Rhoda eat has become everyone's favorite pastime around here. Still trying to decide if you need to be related to her to truly enjoy it...

As it turns out I'm not really that great at committing to any kind of structured project when it comes to blogging, especially if I suddenly go out of town for two months. I've been great at keeping up with taking pictures of Rhoda each week, but not especially good ones, and definitely not with our SLR. But I've kept it up all things considered, thanks to my mom being the grandma-razzi (she took a few of the pictures in this set). Halfway through the year already, which is kind of hard to believe!

20/52 & 21/52

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12 May 2014 

A little helper for laundry time. Still lots of binky rash.

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24 May 2014 

Bath time has gotten so much fun since she learned to sit up on her own (and after I bought a no-slip mat for the tub). I know that Rhoda seems to rarely smile for the camera but she's all laughs in the tubby.

19/52

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11 May 2014 

A Mother's Day portrait.

17/52 & 18/52

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25 April 2014 

Rhoda's eating solids! Skeptical about steamed carrot, but devours bananas and sweet potatoes with gusto.

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3 May 2014 

An accurate summary of Rhoda's relationship with our baby-loving neighbor Graham.

I've missed posting my portraits the past couple of weeks, which of course bothers me and my OCD tendencies. But you can't blame a girl during an intense week of moving and packing. More on that later...

16/52

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20 April 2014 

So much sitting these days. Also, I'm thinking I should start calling this series "Photos I Remember To Take On Sunday," as long as we're keeping it real here.

15/52

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13 April 2014 

Some semi-naked time after her bath. (She lost full naked privileges after she peed on me when I was toweling her off.)

14/52

 

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6 April 2014 

This was just after I caught her with three of Sophie's legs shoved in her mouth.

13/52

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30 March 2014

Trying to recreate an old photograph and having none of it.

12/52

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21 March 2014

Just getting a little up close and personal.

11/52

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15 March 2014

Outside with no socks or jacket and a little bit of binkie rash. Pretty sure she's as excited about spring as we are!

10/52

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5 March 2014

Getting pretty good at grabbing and holding onto her toys on purpose.

9/52

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25 February 2014

With the addition of Henry's old jumperoo, our living room has officially been overtaken by baby paraphernalia. 

8/52

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19 February 2014

This is a bit of a cheater post as I already put it on Instagram, but it's been a long week and I didn't get out the real camera. But it doesn't really matter because, well, cute baby.