This December was lovely, compared to November. It wasn't nearly as cold, and Lizzie's first Christmas was white. There are a lot more pictures for this page, but it will take another week or so for me to get them all up. The Christmas photos are NOT being posted on this page. For Christmas pictures, you'll need our family album (that's about ALL of us). You can get there by clicking HERE. We hope you all had a wonderful and festive holiday season. Happy New Year!

Amy Nix
January 3rd, 2004

Drooling on my Dad December 23rd, 2003		Lizzie Gave Up December 2003
I Got This Eating Thing DOWN December 8th, 2003		What Do I Have To Do For a Napkin Around Here? December 8th, 2003
Sittin' with Daddy January 1st, 2004		Laughing at the Dogs January 1st, 2004
Doing Push-Ups Like Daddy January 1st, 2004		I'm Going To Eat My Foot and You Can't Stop Me January 1st, 2004

Health:

Cutting 4 teeth at once, Elizabeth has a lot of soreness in her gums. We treat with Tylenol drops once per day before bedtime.
In the last weeks of the 5th month, Elizabeth caught a cold from her father (which I caught from him, too *grin* ) It doesn’t seem too bad for her, though. It’s mostly sneezing and mild congestion.

Eating Habits:

Nestle Good Start Supreme Formula thickened with 1T of Gerber Rice Cereal
6 ounces per feeding , 3-4 feedings per day
Lizzie started on rice cereal, carrots & peas this month. She has one meal of solid foods per day

Sleeping Habits:

Lizzie has begun staying up until 1 or 2am and then waking several times during the wee hours until she gets up for the day at around 11am or noon. We attribute the new sleep problems to her teething pain.

Development:

Rolling over is now Elizabeth’s favorite game while she’s playing on the floor. She can roll from tummy-to-back AND from back-to-tummy, now. She frequently rolls across the room and back.
Tummy time is still traumatic, but we are seeing great progress. Because of her chronic abdominal/gas pain, Lizzie really fights being on her stomach. It’s clearly uncomfortable for her a lot of days, but she’s been having more and more good tummy-times in the past month. We’re hoping it will continue to get easier for her as her digestive system matures.
Elizabeth discovered her feet in the third week of December and hasn’t stopped trying to put them in her mouth, since. She also found her tongue this month. She’s been sticking it out and wiggling it around and using her hands to play with it since the day after Christmas.
Grasping items is becoming much easier for Elizabeth in the past couple weeks. She can hold her own bottle for fairly long stretches, now, and she can pick up blocks, stuffed animals, and her teething toys with no problems. In addition to simple reach-and-grab, Lizzie has begun studying things that she is holding, putting them in her mouth, and then removing them again to study some more.
Lizzie will now cry if she drops a toy or if a toy she wasn’t finished with is removed from her. Occasionally, if she drops a toy, but it falls somewhere within her reach, she will look for it and pick it up again.
We have entered the glamorous world of teething. The two middle teeth on the bottom are surfacing and the “Goofy” or “Dracula” teeth are coming in on the top.
Elizabeth has started drooling constantly…and there is a LOT of it. She figured out how to put a teether in her mouth, place it on her gums, and then shake her head from side to side to rub the soreness out. It’s very cute and we were impressed. Until this month, she had not shown the ability to do anything even remotely that complex on her own.


Elizabeth had her first vegetable (some baby carrots from Gerber‘s “Tender Harvest“ line) on December 8th. She had rice cereal along with the carrots, and she figured out how to keep them in her mouth by the end of the first feeding. Her first fruit, which was the almighty banana, came 3 weeks later. Elizabeth didn’t care for the bananas much, and we think it’s because they’re so much sweeter than the other foods she’s been given. Lizzie’s first Christmas came on the 25th.







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