Everyone has tons of good advice. Being me...I tend to open my big mouth and ask for advice, even knowing, if I don't LIKE the advice, I'm certainly not going to follow it and will move heaven and earth to find someone who agrees with me. ANd even if I don't find an agreer, I tend to ignore well-meant advice anyway and do what I want. That's me.

Flickr is cool. Why? Because I can go back to my October Set of Georgia and see, really see how much she has grown. It blows me away, and because of that, I decided to do a real comparison shot and share with you all. Georgie's almost-first bath at 11 days old and her 16 week bath (she is exactly 16 weeks today, she's not 4 months, but she's 16 weeks..whatever). Crazy:

And to answer some rhetorical questions from my comments:

1. Is it possible for her to ever become 'too cute'? Yes, she definetly can (and does) get cuter every single day (says the proud mommy). No, it is definetly not possible for her to become too cute!!

2. Is Georgia's diaper snug enough? Yes, really can't get tighter without hurting her! Her little belly bulges over the edges as it is!! Sven bought some Aldi diapers today. We'll see if they help with the blow-outs. She didn't have one today (of course not, I was totally prepared for one).

3. Is she 4 months yet? Already answered this one more or less: she'll be 4 months on Feb. 1st, but she's already 16 weeks. So. However, on thinking it through, I am going to try and hold out on solids until she's 6 months. The nighttime feedings don't bother me, it's just a matter of rolling over...

We successfully played peek-a-boo today. It took some practice, as when her daddy first started by gently flinging (yes flinging) the burp cloth over her face she would gasp as if she needed to hold her breath and dive or something (funny, but a little weird). We tried it again later and she stopped gasping and instead grinned up a storm and kicked her feet like crazy, especially when I said, "I see YOU!" and got down in her face. You feel like such a silly ass when you play these games, but man does she love it!

In other Amber news...(please don't hate me for this, you know who you are...) I was in the shower washing my hair for the first time in 4 days (count them, FOUR, because it takes forever to wash hair of that length and I don't have forever during the week when G will only sleep for 20 mins...) when I decided: 1. I hate the way I look right now, I'm overweight, my skin is dry and scaly, I never have time to do my hair when it IS washed and I'm tired of having it cold and wet in cold and wet weather. 2. I never go out, I never see anyone, no one ever sees me so it doesn't matter WHAT I look like. And, on an impulsive spur of the moment, I decided to donate my hair to locks of love. I got out of the shower, brushed it, pulled it into a pony-tail and tried to cut it off. It was too thick though, so Sven did the final honors:

Yup, over 30cm's of hair off my head. It will be interesting to see what it weighed...Anyway. After cutting off the inital bit for locks of love, I went in with the scissors and just started trimming like crazy. I tried to remember how much shorter it gets when it dries...but you just never realize it until it happens. Sven loves it. Some of you (again, you know who you are) will hate it. To you I can only say: by the time we see each other again, it will be grown out quite a bit and for now, it looks suspiciously similar to Kylene's and will take much less time to fix and maybe I'll stop feeling so freaking ugly everytime I see myself in a mirror (something I try to avoid doing at all costs...).

It's time to update and rant and vent a little at the inefficiency of bab diapers. How many commercials have you seen about Pampers or Luvs or Huggies or whatever other brand of diaper where they sing the praises of their diaper and show you how it is impossible that the baby will ever get wind of what is going on down there? Too many to count, right? And most of you don't even have kids. So please explain to me why my baby gets changed 2 to 3 times a day due to a diaper blow-out. Never fails. The new schedule goes like this:

• at some point between 3am and 8am she blows, and leaks. around 8 she gets changed.
• between 10:30 and 11:30 she blows again. She gets changed completely immediately after
• if I am REALLY lucky, around 4pm or 5pm she blows again and gets changed for the 3rd time.

Yes, that was my day today. She's never going to make it to month 4 with clean, non-stained clothing at this rate!!! And for that matter, why, why, why does the poop go up anyway? It doesn't matter if she happens to be propped up when it happens, lying down when it happens or upside down when it happens (no, I've never held my baby upside down, I promise), it still shoots up her back. And if we are very lucky, it races into her hair as well.

So whatever on all those false promises the diaper commericals are talking about. I haven't seen them work yet.

In other, non-poop-related news: Georgie likes to fly. That is, I put her tummy-down on my shins and then roll onto my back with my legs bent in the air, and she flies. She hasn't cried during this exercise once. She even grins HUGELY when I dip her down toward my face. She has also decided she likes her glo-worm. She hasn't figured out how to make the worm sing yet, but when it does, and the face lights up, she gets very excited and happy.

She hates to be on her stomach unless she is in a very good mood, and this past week that has been few and far between. She has spent the week sucking, drinking and sleeping. She doesn't want to be awake, and if she is awake because I make her, then she prefers to be sitting up, looking out. No more looking at Mommy, no thank-you, give her the room to look at (as if she hasn't seen it a million times before!). She has also taken a slight interest in books. Or at least one book. She has a color book that I've been showing her every day. Just holding it up for her to look at the pictures. She tends to show the most animation with Yellow and Orange and sometimes Red.

She has started using her hands to take objects in front of her and puts them in her mouth (or tries to) immediately. She is not interested in looking at the object or exploring it, no she just wants it in her mouth as fast as possible. Due to the fact that most of the objects are not really meant for mouths, she tends to fail in her attempts. When she does manage to get her pooh blanket or stuffed kitty up to her mouth and actually tastes it, she makes a hugely disgusted face and immediately spits it out again. The rest of her attention and time is spent stuffing her fist in her mouth, or if she happens to be holding onto your fingers, then she tries stuffing them in her mouth.

She has no interest in rolling over and although she enjoys being in an upright position, she isn't actually active until she is on her back. At which point she starts jumping all over the place and wiggles and worms her way into entirely different positions than she started. Her favorite thing to do is to stomp both feet on the changing table and lift herself up in a big hop-jump-thump. She does this in her bath too and we tend to have minor flooding by the time she's done bathing.

Sleeping patterns are challenging. She wants to go to bed around 7pm. Yes, wants. How do we know this? Because she cries non-stop starting around 7pm (sometimes earlier) and doesn't stop until she starts her bath and gets to bed. Once her bath is done, she gets swaddled (not as tightly as she used to because the blanket is no longer big enough!) and then I lie down next to her and she drinks herself to sleep within 15 minutes. Around 8:30pm she wakes up and wants to suckle and she makes a huge fuss if she doesn't get to suckle. If she is having a really bad night, she'll keep up with the waking and wanting to suckle until 9:30 or later. Usually by 9:30 though, she has finally gone to sleep completly and I get up and have a few hours to myself. When I go to bed between 10 and 12, I wake her enough to make sure she drinks again and then we sleep until around 3am when she wants another drink and then we sleep again until 6 or 7ish, at which time the first blow-out usually occurs and it all starts over again.

And now for the picture link:

as always, click on the photo to see a number of new photos from the past week.

TAGGED...again. Thanks so much Amy....I'll humor you because you have the most adorable children, ha ha!

The rules for this particular tagging are as follows: Remove the blog name in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add yourself to the bottom slot.

1. Andrea
2. Courtney
3. Leah
4. Amy
5. Amber

Then you get to select five people to pass the love on to.
I'll choose try and find 5 different gals from last time...

1. Jamie Waters (that's for tagging me last time!)
2. Erin Michele (because you won't email me back and obviously have NO time for such frivolous fun anyway!)
3. Linda Barber (because Luke is so dang cute)
4. Jamie Wood (because you had so much fun getting tagged last time and it's fun having two Jamie W's on my list...)
5. Amber Lee (because I feel bad at slacking on mentoring you for HOF)

Here are the questions:
What were you doing 10 years ago? 10 years ago (in January) I had just turned 19 years old and was spending the month in the Computing Center of Oberlin College creating my first real webpage for Winter Term. (It was a reference page for German Students). I was also hanging out with Jessica at some professor's house gaining way too much weight eating marshmallows while she did aerobics...

What were you doing 1 year ago? Biting my nails in the hopes that I was really and truly pregnant and freaking out about it.

Five snacks you enjoy (in no particular order, as all snacks are created equal):

1. peanut m&m's
2. baby carrots
3. chocolate of all kinds

Five songs to which you KNOW all the lyrics: um, ALL the lyrics (only if I'm singing along, without the music I'd be lost)?

1. Son of a Preacher Man
2. Leader of the Pack
3. These Boots
4. well, that's about it off the top of my head. I used to know the lyrics to the complete phantom of the opera and cats...but I doubt I do anymore!

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire: (not necessarily in this order)

1. open my own business
2. pay off my student loans
3. move to america
4. get myself insured
5. buy a house

Five bad habits: I am:

1. a procrastinator
2. a slob
3. lazy
4. too critical
5. impatient

Five things you like doing:

1. reading
2. playing in photoshop
3. creating/taking pictures
4. sleeping
5. eating good food

Five things you would never wear, buy, or get again: I will never again:

1. buy nor wear capris again.
2. wear anything white (makes me look dead)
3. buy (or drink!) lipton's cranberry iced tea - yuck
4. wear tapered leg jeans
5. drawing a blank here...

Five favorite toys:

1. camera
2. iPod
3. computer
4. Photoshop CS2
5. Code-free DVD Player

We made it. Back from the ped and Georgie is asleep. She was an almost-angel, didn't cry until the ped squeezed some fattier parts on her (although she looked very skeptically at him and wouldn't smile) and then let him finish the exam without too much complaining. He did a lot of stuff, rolling her over half-way and making her finish the roll, checking out her head movment, reflexes, mouth, nose, eyes etc. Her head control is good, she's still somewhat cross-eyed, but that is supposedly normal still for her age. Then came the shots. We had to listen to all the horrible things that could happen and then let him vaccinate her. She was amazing. She didn't start to cry until he was pushing the liquid in and then she didn't cry any more than she had earlier when he squeezed her. She stopped crying as soon as he was done and is now asleep. Very good baby!

And now her stats? are you just dying to know? Sven and I were speculating before-hand. I guessed her at 62cm long and he guessed 63cm. As for weight, I was guessing about 12lbs. Man were we OFF!!! Our baby weighs 6400g (14lbs!!) and is 66cm (26 inches!) long!! At the beg. of December (one month ago) she was 11lbs and 23 inches long. I am almost positive most of the weight came in the past two weeks. Crazy, man!

Grumpy baby today. Makes me very excited for tomorrow's doctor's appointment and her first set of vaccinations...that said, I think the grumpiness is a possible combination of continued growth spurting and preteething. Yup, lots and lots of drool and her fist always in her mouth. Actually, she'll put anything she can get in there, in her mouth but doesn't like the way it tastes or feels and usually makes a disgusted face and quickly removes object from mouth...her fist however, always finds its way back in.

Anyway, a quick photo...we have made amazing progress in just one week. check out those back muscles!!

Okay, check this out: two posts in one day. That's because: 1., Georgia is in bed asleep and 2., my darling and much-missed bud Jamie actually tagged me with one of those taggy blog things...and since Georgia is asleep, I thought I'd play.

Four jobs you have had in your life:

1. Wendy's
2. Dishwasher
3. College Student Computer Consultant
4. System (Network) Administrator

Four movies you would watch over and over:

1. The Princess Bride
2. When Harry Met Sally
3. Simply Irresistable
4. Miracle on 34th Street (the original black and white film)

Four places you have lived:

1. Phoenix, AZ
2. Woodinville, WA
3. Oberlin, OH
4. Munich Germany

Four TV shows you love to watch:

1. ER
2. LOST
3. Desperate Housewives
4. Cold Case

Four places you have been on vacation:

1. Rome
2. Edinburgh
3. Crete
4. Strassbourg

Four websites I visit daily:

1. Yahoo
2. twopeasinabucket
3. various blogs that have been updated
4. gmail.com

Four of my favorite foods:

1. burritos
2. fajitas
3. green chili enchiladas
4. american pizza
   (notice a trend here: these things are not available in Germany...)

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. America
2. somewhere warm
3. asleep and oblivious
4. chillin' with Kylene at her house

Four bloggers I am tagging:

1. jamie
2. ines
3. susan
4. alice

Okay, here we go. Gorgeous weather today and I was playing with Georgia in on the bed (she's really grumpy today for some reason) and the light was so gorgeous that when she started to stare at her fist (before stuffing it in her mouth) the bell rung and I realized I needed to get pictures. Of course, by the time I had the camera ready, she refused to look at her hands anymore. Hmph. So I took some random shots instead until the battery died. Urg. Thought I had enough, it was good, I'd leave it, then I got a new angle on her and the catchlights in her eyes were sooooooooo beautiful that I ran into the computer room just to get a new battery and by the time I got back, she had turned her head and refused to look back in the direction that gave her those gorgeous catchlights. Teach me not to have everything on hand and ready to go from the beginning.

However, I did manage to get a few fun shots, including a tootsie shot! And yes, my girl DOES look like a boy today, she's wearing one of her older brother's intended outfits...(negative strip is by Katie Pertiet from DesignerDigital.com). So here are 3 choice shots (click on the pic to get a BIGGGGGER view at flickr):