We're trying something new... 30 days of me- each day has a new prompt/topic.  Some will be long, some will be short, some are totally open-ended.  I won't do all 30 in a row because I (and you) might get bored.  And I will try to let my photos do the talking (except for today). 

Day 1 - Introduce yourself, recent picture, 15 interesting facts.

My name is Melissa, but most people call me Mimi.  Since moving to New Zealand, I've been trying to introduce myself as Melissa rather than Mimi, so new people I meet in NZ call me Melissa.  But then people like to shorten Melissa to "Mel" and I HATE being called Mel.  Should've just stuck with Mimi.

Hmm.  Interesting facts.  Hopefully I can come up with 15...  they might not all be interesting, but here goes.

1.  I got married twice.  To the same man.  One was a Catholic wedding, one was not.  We did this so my non-US citizen husband wouldn't get booted out of the country before our BIG big day.  And actually, our little wedding was awesome, it was by the beach, we wrote our own vows, it was just us and immediate family.  Totally chill and intimate, and we loved it.  And of course our big wedding was fabulous.

2.  I can read really fast. Like, really fast.  If I wanted to (and had tons of free time...ha) I could read multiple books per day.  But I don't, except maybe sleep training books.

3. I'm an all-or-nothing kind of girl.  I'm either super healthy and work out all the time, or I sit on the couch and eat ice cream.  I either clean the whole house, or do nothing at all.  I don't like to do things halfway.  So lately my house has been pretty messy, and I've been eating a few too many cookies.  Oops.

4. If I had to choose: chocolate or gummy candy, I choose gummy candy.  I like chocolate of course, but it's definitely something I could live without.  I love jolly rancher jelly beans and swedish fish the most, but they don't have 'em in NZ.

5.  The things I miss most from the US aside from family and friends are: Noah's bagels, CPK (California Pizza Kitchen), and burritos.  New Zealand is not exactly known for its Mexican cuisine.  Oh and Target.  I LOVE shopping at Target, but there's no Target here, or target equivalent.

6.  I don't drink alcohol.  I'm not morally opposed or anything like that, I just (1) don't like the taste (2) am poor and can't afford it (3) have been pregnant and/or breastfeeding for the past 15 months so alcohol is a no go anyway.

7.  I long to be fashionable and all coordinated and up with the latest styles, but I'm not.  Not even close.  I mostly (like 99% of the time) lounge around in yoga pants, sweats, or running shorts and t-shirts.  If we're going out somewhere, I slip into a pair of jeans, but on top I'll probably be wearing a hoodie.  It's been like that since I was like 12 years old.  I do actually own a ton of super sweet clothes, but I never wear them.  Go figure.

8. I drink WAY too much diet coke.  Such a bad habit, but I just love it so so much.  I blame my parents, they are addicted too.  I tried to drink sprite zero instead (less caffeine?), but that didn't last very long.  My college roomies and I used to power through diet cokes like there was no tomorrow while we stayed up late studying.  It was just one of the many things we had in common.

9.  I get more bug bites that anyone you've ever met.  And I'm allergic, so they get all red and hugely swollen.   Therefore, I HATE bugs.  All bugs.  Flies, spiders, bees, mosquitoes, all of them. 

10.  I wear my hair in a ponytail or bun every. single. day.  You'd never know I have really really long hair.  I always tell myself I'm going to start wearing it down or cut it, but so far I haven't done either.  And a further confession... I haven't got my hair cut by a professional in about 15 months.  I know, I know.  I got desperate about 9 months ago, and cut it myself because it was getting so long.  I keep meaning to go get it cut, but I just haven't.  It's on my to do list BEFORE Christmas.  I'm kind of embarrassed I just admitted that, that's a ridiculously long time.

11.  I have a tattoo that says "faith" in chinese on my ankle/lower leg.  No, I'm not chinese.  I got it when I was 17, and no I don't regret it, although it is a little bigger than I originally planned.  People also think that because I have a tattoo that says faith, that I must be religious.  Not so.  There's a big difference between faith and religion.  Do I believe in God?  Yes.  Am I religious?  No.  I won't go into it further, because that could take a while.

12.  Soccer used to be one of the most important things in my life, and I could not imagine my life without it.  Now I barely even think about it, and only play socially a couple months a year.  No biggie.  I played since I was 4, and so many of the things I did revolved around soccer.  But priorities change!

13.  I would rather order pizza and snuggle on the couch with my husband than go out.  I mean, I'm all for "date night," but I'm really more of a movie and take-out kind of person. 

14.  I LOVE holidays.  If I had unlimited funds (which I totally do not), I would be that crazy over-the-top person with the outrageously decorated house and I would throw huge holiday parties and make gingerbread mansions and carve outrageous pumpkins and hold neighborhood-wide Easter egg hunts.  For real.  We're totally taking Riley to sit on Santa's lap every year at the mall until she's like, oh, 18.

15.  I rule at Mario kart, and I love Super Mario, the old school version.  Although the wii version is pretty sweet too.  Sometimes when Mark comes homes from work, we plop our butts on the couch and play video games like little kids.  So. fun.

Hope you're not totally bored!  Sometimes I think Riley thinks I'm boring, and she gives me this face...

Okay I'm not gonna lie, I totally forgot about the scavenger hunt until yesterday, so I was scrambling a bit to get the photos I needed!  So some of them are a bit of a stretch.  Oh well!  I swear next week I'm going to be on top of it.  Really.

(1) Black and white

We took the baby to the beach for a few minutes, but she was so tired (read: cranky) and soooo serious so we had to leave, but I just love this photo of her and her daddy.
 
(2) I ate this. 

Now by "I," I mean "Riley."  She has discovered her toes, so they are ALWAYS in her hands, and she now discovered she can suck on her toes as well.  So she constantly sucks on her big toe.  She sucks on her toes when she's playing, when I try and change her diaper, when she wakes up, when I'm trying to feed her (which clearly is not going to work very well).  All the time, she looks like this.  So maybe it's a stretch, but here she is, "eating" her toes.

(3) Historic

I don't really know a whole lot about what's historic in New Zealand, so I had to ask my husband for some suggestions.  Turns out, the place we went to take pictures this past weekend is a historic site (Battle Hill, site of a famous 1846 battle).  But it would figure that I didn't actually take any pictures while we were there (I was too busy sneezing and getting a million bug bites).  So I had to use a picture from my archives.  This was taken a while ago after I graduated from Stanford.  This is the memorial church on the Stanford campus, and this is where we got married!!!

(4) Off center.

Now I know this was meant to be about composition, BUT, as I was looking through the photos I took this week, this one made me think of "off-center."  Riley is trying so hard to sit up on her own, but just does not quite have the balance thing down yet.  So saying she's a bit "off center" is an understatement! (Just after this photo she toppled over...)  And don't you love the huge string of drool? :)

(5) The end.

OK so this is a bit of a stretch... The end of the rainy day produced a rainbow?  The end of the weekend? Looking for the end of the rainbow?  The end of this blog post?  :)

Riley's new thing is screaming.  Not like crying-screaming, just screeching all. day. long.  Like so...

This was actually a few weeks ago but I just got around to uploading it.  Let's hope she doesn't do that on our 12 hour plane ride in a few weeks.

I love weekends.  I love having my husband home.  I love being able to pretty much do whatever we want.  No real plans, no commitments, just free time.  And now that the weather is getting SO good, it just makes the weekends that much better.

Today, we had some family photos taken (in hopes of getting some great Christmas-card worthy ones), and I can't wait to see them.  I can take photos of Riley, and Mark, but not the three of us together, so we had our lovely photographer (that took my maternity and Riley's newborn photos) take some family photos today.  Riley did SO much better than I expected, usually she is very serious with new people and in new places, but she was super smiley!  She really seemed to like Rachael, so I can't wait to see the results! 

We stopped by the beach on the way home so I could snap a picture or two with my camera, although Riley had totally had enough and was in serious need of some food and a sleep, so we stayed about 30 seconds.  And, AND, my poor little baby bug got her very first bug bite!  And I saw it happen too, and I tried to swat the bug away but I was too slow and it got her.  :(

Poor grumpy baby...

At least she's still cute when she's grumpy.

My baby is 5 months old today!

New things she's doing since last month:

• sticking her tongue out all the time
• sleeping better, but still waking up 1-2 times per night.  She's been going to sleep between 7 and 8, and waking up between 5:30 and 7, but most of the time she wakes at 6:30am.  She slept through the night once, just as a tease, apparently.
  
• takes 3 naps a day, 2 of them are usually 1.5-2 hours, and the last one is anywhere between 40 minutes and 2 hours (usually closer to 40 minutes).  BUT I am trying to now limit her daytime sleeps in hopes of her sleeping better at night.  Seems to be helping just a little bit...
  
• She eats every 2-3 hours still, and sometimes refuses a bottle.  Actually that's not true, she refuses to be fed by someone other than me, so she might refuse a bottle from Mark, but she'll take it from me, which sort of defeats the purpose of giving her a bottle in the first place.
• is obsessed with grabbing her toes.  If her hands aren't in her mouth, they are holding onto her toes.  When I nurse her she holds her toes the entire time.
  
• Getting reeaaaalllly close to sitting unassisted (she does it for about 10 seconds but topples really easily)
  
• wears 3-6 month or 6 month size clothes
  
• talking/screeching all the time
• loves to stand up
• laughs, but she makes us work for it!
• still afraid of strangers, so she cries when anyone but mom or dad tries to hold her and sometimes when people get too close and try to talk to her.
  
• puts everything in her mouth
• will tolerate being in the stroller for up to a hour now! (But only in the snap'n go, not her fancy shmancy jogging stroller)
• my guess is she weighs 15 pounds now?  We'll find out on Monday.
  

I tried so hard to get her to smile for me, but this photo shoot was definitely the most challenging one so far.  She kept trying to sit up on her own, which meant she was leaning so far forward I couldn't see her face.  And then she'd fall over.

And she ended up like this.  Figures.

And this is the best "up-close" shot I got.  Also figures.  But while she may not be smiling, at least these pictures truly do reflect her personality at 5 months old!

We celebrated her 5 monthday by getting her 3rd round of immunisations (weird, I just instinctively spelled that like a kiwi)!  Luckily these are her last shots until she's 15 months old (the vaccination schedule is a little different here).  And thank goodness because I HATE taking her to get shots!  Poor baby bug, it is so so sad to see her cry like that.  But this time was actually way easier than the last two times, she screamed for the first shot, then ony whimpered for the second, and stopped as soon as I picked her up.  Then she was all smiles! 

Because obviously Thanksgiving isn't a holiday in New Zealand (if you aren't sure why, umm, go ask your mom. or your 3rd grade history teacher), we weren't going to celebrate it.  But I'm American, and I'm pretty sure home-country holidays follow you to whatever country you currently live in (right?), so at the last minute I decided we were going to celebrate.  It wasn't exactly the picture-perfect Thanksgiving, by any means....  Here's our turkey... which is actually a chicken.  Bought pre-cooked, and threw it in the microwave to heat it.  Turkeys are sort of impossible to find (you can't even buy turkey deli meat for sandwiches, bummer, I know).

We added some frozen veggies and frozen potatoes and instant gravy to the mix, and voila.  Oh yeah and our chicken-turkey came with stuffing.  I couldn't find cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie either.  But overall it was Thanksgiving-ish, and not bad for being thrown together very last minute.  

The kicker... this dinner was at 9:30 pm.  Why is that baby there, you'd like to know?? ME TOO friends, me too.  She slept from 7:15 to 8:30ish, and woke up literally RIGHT as I was making dinner (we had to eat late because Mark didn't get home until then).  So Mark was on get-the-baby-back-to-sleep duty, and I "cooked" (boiled frozen veggies, baked frozen potatoes, and microwaved a pre-cooked chicken).  And Riley decided she was not about to let us have her first Thanksgiving without her.  Our options were to let her cry in her crib while we shoveled food in our mouths, or to bring her out with us so we could eat in peace.  Clearly we chose the latter.  She was like a little deer in headlights, so stunned to be brought out of her room, and then she could not stop smiling.  And of course this turned out to be a huge mistake, as she did not go back to sleep until 11.  Did she sleep in??   Ohhhhh no.  5:45am up an at 'em (with one wake-up before then).  SIIGGGHHHH.

We were too busy trying to get her to sleep last night to eat our delicious (frozen) apple pie I bought, so we ate it this morning for breakfast.  Or at least I did.  Happy Thanksgiving to all you wonderful people celebrating it for real (not with chicken and frozen food) in the US!

MY INTERNET IS WORKING AGAIN!  WAHOO!  A few photo challenges first...

(1) Challenge over at the Paper Mama: Eyes.

(2) Paper Heart Camera challenge: The view from above.  I don't know why, but something about that face she's making cracks me up.  It's as if she is trying SO hard not to smile as I was making ridiculous faces and noises at her. :)

(3) Shutter Love Tuesday's theme is Fall.  Now, um, it's not fall in NZ.  So we'll fake it.  There's also no Thanksgiving in NZ (duh), but we can at least pretend!  This is also my photo for A Sorta Fairytale's theme of Thanksgiving- what are you thankful for?  Obviously thankful for my husband and this little turkey below (and she lets me take as many pictures as I want of her).  Simplicity's theme is thankful as well.

(4) You Capture- What Inspires You.  Now yes, this is a picture of my daughter, but it's not my daughter per se that inspires me.  It's more her youthfulness, her fleeting babyhood, and my desire to capture all the little things so I can remember them forever.  It's about capturing moments.  Moments like this one.  Is it the best picture?  No.  But when I look at it, I can remember how her daddy yelled for me to come into the bathroom, and when I got there he said proudly, "Look, she has hair!"  And Riley was totally oblivious to her soapy toupee.  It was cute, and funny, and a moment I want to remember.

Sooo the way our internet works is we get a certain amount of upload/downloads per month at super fast speeds, but once we reach our max, we get booted down to dial-up speeds.  As in, slower than slow.  As in, when I look at any web pages, all I can see is plain text because the pictures take too long to load.  As in, when I tried to upload a pic on my own blog, it was going to take HOURS to work.  So we upgraded and should be back up to speed soon, I hope.  But since I can't do a post without a picture, here's the lowest resolution smallest pic, just for you.

SHE SITS.

More on that to come, just as soon as we're out of the internet stone ages...

Now let me warn you in advance.  This has been a LONG week.   Basically, all pictures were left until the last minute.  Oops. Alright here we go.

This week's words: (1) The View Above (2) Something Hot (3) Something Cold (4) Electronic (5) Sparkle.  These were all a little bit different, which required a bit of outside-the-box thinking.  Here's what I came up with.

(1) The View Above

(2) Something Hot.  This little one is like a little furnace.  We often take naps together (ya know, since she still doesn't sleep through the night which means I am STILL so tired all the time), but since it's summer here, and getting warmer, napping with her in my arms is HOT.  As in, she gets sweaty, I get sweaty, so I end up slipping my arm out from under her and leaving her to sleep like this...

(3) Something Cold.  I may or may not be addicted to Diet Coke.  When I was pregnant I basically kicked the coke habit (ha), but I've had a relapse, and I'm now re-obsessed with diet coke.  There's nothing better than a nice, cold glass (or can, or liter) of diet coke.

(4) Electronic- After fighting with the baby for two hours at bedtime, she finally fell asleep.  So I plopped my butt on the couch, and not 2 seconds later I heard noises coming from the monitor.  So I clicked that little button on the top, and was ecstatic to still see THIS. Sleeping.  Thank. Goodness.  Love this monitor (and that baby too).

(5) Sparkle.  I love the look of water sparkling in the sun.  And my handsome husband, of course. 

Here's the thing.  As I've sat down to blog over the past couple days, I find myself with nothing good to say.  Or with a strong desire to just complain.  And so I write nothing.  But the thing is, when I was pregnant and reading baby blogs, I sometimes found myself wondering if that was what life was REALLY like with a baby.  You know, all smiles and cute baby-ness and happy mom and happy dad and achieving milestones and totally in love with every single second.  That kind of thing.  And I swore that when I had a baby, I'd be real.  But then there's a fine line between being "real" and just complaining.  Ya know?  Because I have definitely read blogs where the mom just complaaaaaaaaaains and to be honest, I stopped reading after a while.  It gets old.  So I didn't want to be that person.  But I also didn't want to be the everything is all puppy dogs and rainbows all the time kind of blogger either, feel me?

Anyway.  So, being real... I'm tired.  We seem to be going through a bit of a sleep regression.  And by we, I mean the little bald one.  Last night she fell asleep easy peasy at 7.  Sweet!  Until she woke up at 7:30...and 9...and 10... and 1... and 3... and 4:45.  And then she was up for the morning.  Oh and did I mention from 10:00 onwards we slept like this??.... (thank you computer camera)

When she wakes up once or twice in the night, I can deal.  But 4-5 times (sometimes more)?  Holy exhaustion.  Now there seems to be hugely different opinions on how to "solve" this. (1) Sleep training. (2) She'll grow out of it.   I've read like 6 sleep training books, and umm, it's going to involve a lot of crying.  And Riley is able to go from a whimper to completely hysterical/hyperventilating crying in under 3 minutes.  Impressive, I know.  And I'm not really into the whole cry-it-out thing, not yet at least.  But when I have these sleepless nights and tough days, I start to second guess myself.  Is this my fault?  Do I hold her too much?  Is it because we part-time co-sleep?  When will she sleep through the night?  Am I keeping her from doing it? Should I let her cry? And on and on.

But here's the thing.  She can and does sleep well on her own (remember that one time she slept through the night?  Yup that was in her crib).   So this whole sleeping thing is only sometimes a problem.  I guess this has just been a tough week. And when you're tired, everything else just seems so much harder.   

So... to get myself out of this funk... top ten moments of the week (in no particular order)

1. Riley was laying on our bed, and when her daddy came into the room, she went nuts flapping her arms and kicking her legs and smiling.
2. She started to cry at the start of a 20 minute drive, so I sang wheels on the bus to her... the whole. way. home.  Haha I had to come up with new verses too (the santa on the bus says ho ho ho...).  She was silent the whole way!
3. She gave me a whole bunch of laughs all week!
4. Listening to her daddy sing her songs trying to get her to sleep.  And then coming into her room to see the pile of 10 books he read to her, also trying to get her to sleep.
5. Seeing Riley somehow manage to pee through her diaper, all over her dad, but not get her own clothes wet... his reaction was priceless!
   
6. Listening to her discover her very loud voice.  AND.  She says mom.  She obviously does not know what it means, but she makes the sound quite clearly!
7. Stanford SMOKED Cal in football.
8. I won a bet with my husband and earned myself a foot massage.
9. I got to talk to one of my BFFs on the phone all the way back in the US of A.
10. Riley now really likes outings so we've been able to go out shopping without me being totally stressed with a crying baby!

Aaaahhh.  Ok.  Yup.  Life is good.