You know, photographing someone who doesn’t have great control over their facial expressions (and the rest of their body) can be pretty difficult. They can go from being so cute to being so not cute in just a split second. This may partially explain why we probably have 10,000 pictures of Holland from the past 10 weeks.
The fifth one is my favorite.
I spend a lot of time on my iPhone these days. Not so much for the phone part, but I guess for its “i” capabilities. It’s much easier to hold a tiny computer in one hand rather than a laptop while nursing, holding holland, rocking her to sleep, etc. The other day as I was perusing facebook on my phone, I noticed that it has both the date and time that I uploaded each of my albums (of which there are very few).
So, the coincidence: I uploaded an album entitled “We got married” on June 18, 2009 at 6:18 pm.
I birthed a baby on June 18, 2010 at 6:17 pm. (The first one being much easier than the latter, I recall.)
What the what.
I think I must have offended Holland by calling her our own little whale when she was born. She’s such a girl. In reality, I never really thought she was that big. I loved that she came out just a little blubbery. You should have heard those nurses go on and on and on about the “4 kilo baby” though. Now apparently I (or those nurses…) have made her worry about her excess chub because her weight has gone from being in the 90th percentile at birth to the 21st percentile at 2 months, and all 9 lbs 10 oz of her seems to have gathered in her dimpled cheeks.
Once in Jr. High, a boy I “went out with” (who happens to be from Holland, but not Holland’s namesake) told me I had horse eyes. I think it may have been meant as a compliment, or at least not as an insult, but I didn’t see it as a sweet sentiment. I felt pretty offended to be compared to a farm animal. Now that I’m no longer a hormonal 13-year-old I couldn’t care less what Duncan thinks of my eyes, but it stuck with me.
Anyway, I’ve passed my horse eyes on to my daughter. I think she pulls them off quite well though.
We blessed Holland this past Sunday. The little lady looked — impressive alliteration if I do say so myself — very retro chic in a 1984 original. We considered letting her rock a side ponytail, but the neon pink scrunchie was just too distracting. Besides crying through the vast majority of the blessing, Holland did great, and Ashton did even better.
Holls’ favorite expression.
She wanted to fist bump before we went into Sacrament meeting.
Our family of three, completely washed out by the sun.
(Or we’re all just looking especially pure and spiritual.)
In case my lack of posting left you thinking that Holls is one grumpy baby, let me rectify that now. Look who is just starting to figure out how to put on her happy face, and flash a couple dimples.
Please look past her rashy face. We had an unwashed-blanket-prior-to-use sensitive skin accident.
Today marks three years of wedded bliss for me and my friend Ashton. We went dutch on a pretty big gift to each other this year, so we’re calling it good in terms of presents. (Get it?! Dutch. I’m going to use that one as often as I can.) Plus, she’s the gift that keeps on giving, so we’re probably set for eternity in the gift-giving department.
(Holland letting Rachel Thurston hear her voice.)
Holland got baby black listed last week. She’s been labeled a bad infant. She’s colicky. It’s like she’s got the plague or something by the way people react to the word. Now she’ll forever have a permanent record in the pediatrician’s office. The nurses will no longer be surprised that she screams in the waiting room, and through the entire appointment because they will have seen her chart. They’ll be expecting it. It’ll be just like that Seinfeld episode where Elaine sees that her chart says she’s a difficult patient. The Menlo Medical Clinic now sees it in big red block letters on her chart. She is a difficult tiny patient; she has colic. (And while this is entirely unrelated, I hope that her chart also somehow expresses the correct pronunciation of her name. No, not Grewal. That one we expect to be butchered. But Holland?! We’ve heard both “Hole-AND” and “Hall(pause)LAND(emphasis on the LAND)” from the nurses. Isn’t it a word people have heard before? At least in a geographically lesson at some point?)
Anyway, back to our labeled baby. If I were to devise some sort of colic spectrum or scale, I would put Holland pretty far down on the easy end. I’ve heard stories about babies who literally cry all the time, or are virtually inconsolable. She’s (luckily) not that kind of baby. She’s just a baby who likes to be heard. And as a fairly talkative person, I can understand that. I’ve just been blessed with the gift of speech that she has not acquired yet. Once she can form words, I’m sure we’ll be grateful that she’s such a little spitfire.
