On the Move

She did it!



Note: The cough is one that we've determined to be fake since she only does it when someone is looking at her. It's pretty funny, really, provided that it doesn't turn into bronchitis... We're 99% sure that she's just fine.

A Visit with Ol' St. Nick

Mary Ellen had her first visit with the Big Man this weekend. Brian's company had a really nice family party on Friday afternoon, complete with a train for the kids to ride (not this year, Mary Ellen), snow flurries, and roving carolers. But the highlight for us was, of course, a visit with Santa Claus. Mary Ellen was a great sport about it, and after waiting in line for nearly a half hour, she still had a little bit of good humor left for St. Nick. We're not sure what she's wishing for this year, though. Odds are, her wishes have to do with feet or pacifiers - these being her top two choices of things to put in her mouth.

The debut of Mary Ellen's Christmas dress.

Waiting in line isn't so bad when it means that you get to hang out with Daddy during the day, right Mary Ellen?

She really wasn't too scared of Ol' St. Nick, though her face tells a different story here.

Mary Ellen showed off her new bottle holding skills.

Why is it...

That the second I get a chance to accomplish something, Mimi appears? God love her.

Jump Around!

As I said in the last post, Mary Ellen loves her Jumparoo. My apologies for the poor video quality - the light was not so great.

Mary Ellen is Five Months Old!!

Happy 5-month birthday, little one!

These months sure have flown by. Mary Ellen has made the days since July 15 so memorable and I wouldn't trade a second of these last 5 months.

Updates:

As of 12/6, she weighed 15 lbs, 2.5 oz., has the very beginnings of two front bottom teeth, and has a very large bald spot on the back of her head.

When laying on her belly, she can pull her head and chest up. She even enjoys being in this position now (this was definitely not the case a month ago).

She loves to stand (with support, of course) and is getting much better at sitting up in our laps or on the floor with support.

She is a huge fan of her Jumparoo and is even starting to take an interest in the toys that are attached to it.

Her favorite toy right now is the piano that we are borrowing from her pal Jake. Thanks, Wendy!

Her favorite pastime is hanging out with her dad.

She's no stranger to the camera.

And she's yet to meet a stranger. As her aunt Amy says, she is a social butterfly. Here's Mary Ellen and me with her Great Uncle Bob and Great Aunt Sue at her first "unofficial" trip to Disney. She enjoyed her requisite tickles from Uncle Bob and made fast friends with Sue.

All I Got for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth

It's official. Mary Ellen's two bottom teeth have broken through. Hooray!

And Boo. This nursing mom is just a little frightened by the new arrival.

Just for fun, here's a little shot of Mary Ellen in her fab skinny jeans and sweater. Such a little doll.

Haul Out the Holly

I've been waiting for this Christmas, our first Christmas as a family of three, for what seems like forever. I'm a little Christmas crazy anyway (I come by that naturally, right Mom?) and sharing Christmas with Mary Ellen has brought a whole new type of joy to this time of year.

I started putting out the holiday decorations the day after Thanksgiving, and by now the decorating is all but finished. Mary Ellen has been a good sport about spending some time watching me decorate, but I'm not sure what she can see/what she notices about the decor. She definitely notices the lights, though. Brian did the outdoor lights this year, and he did a bang-up job. The first night they were up, we took Mary Ellen outside to check out her Daddy's handiwork, and she just beamed. I'm sure you'll agree that they're something that's perfect about a baby's face illuminated by Christmas lights. Here's to our first holiday season with Mary Ellen!

Mary Ellen was a huge help. Watching and being happy is a huge help in my book.

She hasn't had a chance to check out our lights too often, as it's been in the 30s here at night. Brrrr!

We kicked off our holiday celebrations at the Winter Park Christmas Parade last Saturday. Mary Ellen enjoyed it (we think). She did not actually get her first glimpse of the big man himself yet, as you can see from this picture.

Picking out Mary Ellen's first Christmas tree

Now that the trimming is all done, we can just sit back and enjoy!

So much to be thankful for...

Only a week late...

Mary Ellen had a wonderful first Thanksgiving. We shared Thanksgiving dinner with friends and enjoyed a wonderful 4-day weekend as a family. We have so much to be thankful for: loving family and a bounty of friends, good jobs, health and happiness, and above all, the little one that we were blessed with this year.

Thanks, Grandma Janet, for the Thanksgiving outfit. Don't worry: I posed Mary Ellen like this. She is not mobile or strong enough to pull herself up on the armrest of our couch.


Thanks to Chris and family for hosting a great Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was delicious!!

Fun Surprise

So I've been on a little hiatus from Working Title, but I have a good excuse, I promise. Besides celebrating Mary Ellen's first Thanksgiving, we've had a little pre-Christmas cheer to spread around.

Sometimes I get a little bummed that we live so far from our families. I love my (our) life here in FL, but I miss my family dearly. This past year has been extra special, what with the arrival of Caroline and Caden and then Mary Ellen and Jenson (Happy 1st birthday, Caroline!!). Lately I had been doing a lot of daydreaming about how Mary Ellen and I would be spending our days if we lived in the same city as Amy and Jenson. So after a chat with my loving husband, a quick conversation with Amy, and a visit to Southwest.com, Amy and I arranged a trip for Mary Ellen and me to St. Louis so that our babies could spend some time together. But we didn't tell Mom and Dad.

Okay, it's not as mean as you think. Anyone who knows the Knepper clan knows that we're a little ornery. Over the years we've pulled some pretty good ones on each other, but our little surprises tend to be pretty sweet (with a little bit of teasing sprinkled in). So to add a little mischief to the trip, Amy told Mom that she and Jenson were going to come spend a few days in Barry, but she didn't tell Mom that Mary Ellen and I were coming, too.

So Amy pulled into Mom and Dad's house and carried a car seat into the house. The fun part was that we sent her in with Mary Ellen while Jenson and I waited in the car. She walked in and plunked the car seat down in the living room. As any good grandparents would do, Mom and Dad immediately went over to check out the little one. It was pretty cold that day, so they had to remove the blanket to see the bundled little one in the car seat. To add to the fun, I'd put Mary Ellen in a stocking cap, which just happened to be pulled down over her eyes and most of her nose. The rest will appear in play form (for you, Kim and Jenny).

Mom: Hi, Jenson!
Dad: His cheeks are starting to fill out like Mary Ellen's!
Amy: Look a little closer.
Mom: Oh my God. It's Mary Ellen!! What...

She immediately ran to the garage to see Jenson and me waiting for her. It was such a good surprise, and I hope that Mom and Dad will forgive us for playing the little joke on them. If Mary Ellen and Jenson have any chance of making it in our family, we've got to break them in early.


If you've been keeping up with the blog, you might be a little surprised that I decided to board a plane with Mary Ellen so soon after our last long flight, but both flights were great! I did many things differently, including getting to the airport extra early so that she could have some time to stretch those legs out before being cooped up for a 2 1/2 hours. So much for stretching out, though. Apparently, toes are delicious.

Such happy grandparents!

The babies did a lot of bonding. I'm not sure what they actually got out of it, but I do think they were starting to warm up to one another.

Christmas Cards

For years, our mailbox has been filled with photo cards around the holidays. It's so fun to see updates from everyone and to watch the little ones grow over the years. So this year, for Mary Ellen's first Christmas, I wouldn't dream of doing anything different. I used Shutterfly to do her announcements, and I was so happy with the quality and the quick turnaround (not to mention that I use Shutterfly for all of our photos anyway), so we'll definitely use them for our Christmas cards, too.

But now the tricky part. How do I make Mary Ellen's first card memorable? Shutterfly has so many cute Christmas cards. You can check them out for yourself here, but these are just a few of my favorites:

Since we've taken more than 1000 photos of Mary Ellen in her first 4 months of life, maybe I should make it easy on myself and choose one with lots of photos.


I love how this one has a spot for captions.

This one's just sweet, and I love the message.

Choices, choices! Maybe I should start with the photo and go from there, which means I get to dress Mary Ellen up and try to get the perfect photo. What a great way to spend my time. I love this time of year!!

Note: If you have a blog, Shutterfly is offering 50 free photo cards if you write a blog post about their cards. How cool is that? Click here to get more info.

Mary Ellen's first plane trips

So a friend of mine recently accused me of having too good of an attitude on this blog. She said I was too, "Oh, a poopy diaper! Wonderful!" I understand why she's read that into the blog, though, because early on I promised myself that I would not use this as a platform to complain. I have wanted to be a mom for too long to go spewing out minor complaints to the masses, and in reality, I love all of it - the good, the bad, and the ugly, too.

But to be fair - this is all really hard work. While I love figuring out the mom stuff, my life is a series of days filled with nothing but figuring it out. It's tiring, and I'm sure any parent out there can empathize with me when I say that sometimes I just wish Mary Ellen would say, "Mom, I need you to sit me up so I can burp. Then I'll stop crying." or "Mom, thanks. Even though I'm crying, a new diaper was exactly what I needed. I'll be finished with the tears before long." And I while I know that won't happen, some sort of validation would be awesome.

So here's a story that I've been meaning to tell for the past few weeks. I hinted after our St. Louis trip that we didn't have such a good flight back. Here you go, Amy. Here's my "it's not all roses" story.

The flight up to St. Louis was perfect. Brian was with me. We had Mary Ellen's infant seat on board so she could snooze in comfort. She had a few kind strangers in view that she could smile at. It was all too good to be true.

For the flight home, I thought I'd made all of the right plans. I had a great boarding number. I was super organized with my belongings so that I wouldn't be frazzled at security and have to take my mind or my eye off Mary Ellen. She did great in the Baby Bjorn for as long as I needed her to, and she settled back into her car seat until we had to check it at the gate.

Then we boarded the plane.

Mary Ellen started to cry as soon as we handed our boarding pass to the attendant. I knew she was hungry, and I'd planned to feed her as soon as the plane took off, but she had other plans. So once I'd found my "discreet" window seat, I started to feed her. I had my nursing cover, which was nice, but it also caused the other passengers to have to stare a little bit harder to figure out what I was doing before they bolted off to find any other available seat besides the one next to me. I was the single least-desirable seat mate on the plane - which would have been great had there been any empty seats on the flight. But, alas, there were none, and eventually I was joined by a 20-something Dude. He was less than thrilled to be seated next to me and (looking me up and down) asked only, "How long is this flight now?" Nice.

Back we pulled from the gate, and pffft! Mary Ellen filled her pants. The plane hadn't even turned around.

After nearly an hour, when the fasten seat belt sign still hadn't been turned off, I finally asked the flight attendant if I could go ahead and move about the cabin because I really needed to change Mary Ellen's diaper. That might be the understatement of the century, since our whole row, and likely countless other rows, at this point smelled pretty much like a latrine. She said that while she wouldn't say "yes" she also wouldn't stop me if I did. At this point, I'm lucky that our plane was forced to make an emergency landing when I replied, "Good. Cause I've got a ticking time bomb here." Note: Do not say "bomb" on an airplane. The flight attendant, no doubt noting my frustration and absentmindedness, made a little face, but didn't push it any further. She scuttled off to get away from the smell.

OK - so diaper gets changed, baby is happy, back to the seat I go. No sooner did I plant my tush in the seat, then Pfffft! My little pooper did it again. I didn't waste any time this round and took care of the problem immediately. No sweat, right?

Back to our seat I go, and by this point, we've been on the plane for an hour and a half and Mary Ellen decides that she's had enough. She started off with a little squirming. Then within the minute it was crying. Within 5 minutes, it was full-blown screaming. I rocked. I swayed. I bounced. I patted. I did everything I could within the confines of an airplane seat to find a comfortable position for both of us. I fed her. I sang (no doubt to the further furstration of my fellow passengers). I tried the pacifier countless times. I got redder and redder and more anxious and she only got louder and louder. Please stop, I thought. Please.

Then I realized that I was never going to see a single one of these people again and I relaxed. And whether Mary Ellen sensed my relaxation or not, I'll never know, but she started to relax, too. She fell into a deep, deep sleep which lasted the rest of the plane ride and throughout the car ride home. At this point, I was exhausted but so glad that she'd found peace.

Traveling will be a large part of Mary Ellen's life because too many of the people that we love live far away. And since we have many more plane trips in our future, I'm sure some will be peaceful and others not. Either way, I hope I learned from this experience to (1) relax in the beginning of the trip, (2) make as many allies as possible on the plane, and (3) pray that any trip we take in the future won't be as bad as the first one.

Polka Party

Mary Ellen took Grandma and Grandpa to the Willow Tree on Saturday night. If you've not had the pleasure, it's a German restaurant in Sanford that had awesome food and an Oom-pa band in the evenings. We've been several times, but this was only my second trip since Mary Ellen was born, which meant that I could partake in the excellent German brews. Hooray!

We were a little nervous about how she'd react to the music and crowd, but she was a champ. I think she really liked the music and bouncing along to it.

Of note: Mom knows the words to all of the polka songs, so Mary Ellen will have someone to teach them to her one of these days.

4 months old!

Our little girl has reached another milestone - she's 4 months old!

Her official stats:
24.5 inches long
14 lbs, 3.5 oz

And she's one happy girl!



Disclaimer: Please ignore the last few seconds of the clip. It was a little tricky turning off the camera while holding Mary Ellen.

Almost there...

Making the Cut

I love it! I had worn my hair this way years ago, and I can't even remember when I stopped keeping it short, but welcome back short hair! Of course Mary Ellen is a big reason for getting it cut short, since her hands were always in my hair if it wasn't pulled back in a ponytail.

I can't help but make the connection to my mom with this experience. She had long hair (really long hair, down to the middle of her back or longer) before she had me. Of course I don't remember her with long hair, but I used to love to look at pictures of her with her beautiful long hair because she looked so different than the mom I knew. I wonder if Mary Ellen will have the same experience.

My ponytail measured 8.5 inches, so I can donate it to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths project, which accepts hair longer than 8 inches to make wigs for cancer patients. (Thanks to Amanda at J Lauren Salon in Oveido for doing a fabulous job!)

Good Morning!

Mary Ellen is much more effective than a rooster for those morning wake-up calls. See for yourself!

New Moves

Mary Ellen is getting stronger by the day. She's tolerating, even enjoying, her tummy time more now. She's able to pull her head up and look around, which is giving her poor bald spot some much needed rest.




She's also started to move around, sometimes rotating as much as 180 degrees. For a while, there was some mystery to how exactly she was making her moves, but I've finally figured it out. She is getting pretty good at rolling up on her side. She pulls her legs up and looks far back over her shoulder. When she relaxes back onto her back, she usually manages to be in a different position. Much to Brian's delight, most of this movement is based on her desire to see the TV.

Visiting the Family, Part 2

Mary Ellen's first visit to St. Louis was an important milestone, but just as important to me was meeting my new nephew, Jenson. My sister Amy and I have always been close, and I've so loved sharing the experience of being a new mother with her. Jenson is adorable, and he couldn't be more different than Mary Ellen. Jenson has angular features and these long, skinny arms that seem to go on forever. There's nothing angular or skinny about Mary Ellen at all. Jenson has a very red complexion and a tone of crazy dark hair that goes everywhere. Our little girl is as fair as can be, and though she has hair, it tends to do what it's told, and the color is still TBD. Even their personalities seem to be opposites, but then Jenson is still getting used to his new life on the outside and has some learning to do about good sleep habits. You hear that, Jenson?

The cousins got along splendidly, that is until Mary Ellen got a hold of Jenson's sleeve and tried to eat it. It's okay. He won't remember.

Don't let him fool you. He's not sleeping.

It was so good to see the uncles Matt and Mike. They are pretty smitten with our new additions, and I love that they both seem more willing to handle the little ones.

The Grand apple doesn't fall far from the tree, either. Apparently, Grandpa knows what he's doing!

After a lovely visit in St. Louis, poor Brian had to return home to work, but Mary Ellen and I made our way up to Pike County for her first visit to my neck of the woods. It's no surprise that we stopped off for dinner at Cassano's Pizza. And no, we don't know if Mary Ellen likes green olives yet.
Mom and I took a walk down to bank to see Dad and to introduce her around. Making a first visit to the bank is a milestone in itself, and I hope she made a good impression on all the ladies at the bank. We stopped on the way home for photo with some of the amazing fall color that I got to see.


A big thank you to my Aunt Linda for bringing my grandma down to Barry so she could meet her newest Great Granddaughter. I know it meant a lot to all of us that we could get together. Grandma and Mary Ellen got along splendidly, and they spent a nice two-hour car ride in the backseat together. I think they made perfect traveling companions for one another.

Four Generations: Great Grandma Moulds, Grandma Janet, Lisa, Mary Ellen

Grandmas and babies - for these two ladies, it doesn't get much better than this!

She really is Grandma's girl.