A Few of My Favorite Things

As I was driving home from Salt Lake on Thursday night, Annie was crying in the backseat. She HATES to be alone, but she usually falls asleep pretty quickly in the car. I kept waiting for that magical sleeping moment to come and it kept not coming. Finally, I reached back to let her hold my hand. Almost instantaneously she calmed down, and in a few minutes she was soundly asleep. However, right before she fell asleep, she did something that is SO endearing to me: She squeezed my hand about three times in a row. I loved it! It was such a sublimely happy moment. I think I loved it so much because I have a sister who reaches out to squeeze people's hands when she is feeling a large amount of love for them. I'm certain that this is a gene and that Annie knew she was letting me know that she loves me. That short little moment got me thinking about how I need to be better at recording some of the wonderful and cute things that Annie does at this stage (8 1/2 months). So here is a list of a "few of my favorite things".

1. Hand squeezes

2. Putting her pacifier in upside down - I love that 60% of the time when she puts it in her mouth it ends up upside down. I'm pretty certain she prefers it that way. It's so cute.

3. Waving - this is her latest trick. She has three purposes for her waves. She waves to drum up attention when she feels like people are ignoring her. She waves when she knows it's time to perform. And she waves when she is excited. I might consider adding a fourth - I think she sort of knows to wave hello and goodbye.

4. Rolling to get places. She cannot crawl yet, which thrills me, but she can roll. She rolls across rooms, but I don't think she knows she has that ability yet. She will see something two feet out of her reach and know that she can get there by rolling. Adding up all her two feet segments, she moves quite far.

5. Her love of food. She gets exceptionally excited about sweet foods. I fed her Hawaiian Delight the other night and she loved it. I'd been giving her yucky oatmeal and she was doing just fine with it, but then I started in on the banana pineapple mix and she went crazy. She panted and moved her whole body up and down, begging for more. I've really only seen her react like this for one other food - peach cobbler.

There are several more, but this list is a start. Brad and I love Annie so much! She lights up our lives!

I PASSED!

I haven't updated our blog in a long time and we've had some fairly major events happen, so I thought I'd post a quick synopsis.

1. Brad's been accepted to a few more medical schools and we are thinking that we will probably be moving to Rochester, NY for med school. He also had a great interview at Duke, so if he gets accepted there, we may reconsider. However, Duke doesn't let anyone know until March and even if he gets in there, we'll have to pray about it. So for now, we are getting SUPER excited about Upstate New York.

2. Annie had her first Halloween. She was the cutest flower anyone had ever seen. Brad and I were Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. This picture doesn't show off quite how much we looked like the characters, but the in the picture that did showcase the costumes Annie is looking off in the distance.

3. I presented at my first conference. The American Public Health Association held its annual conference in Philadelphia this year, so Brad, Annie, and I trekked across the country to the city of brotherly love. It was a fantastically fun trip. Annie was a peach on the airplane (slept almost the whole time of every flight) and at the conference. We bonded with my cohort, all of whom I love so much. And we caught up with a couple of friends that we hadn't seen in a really long time. I sort of laughed after the poster presentation because I only talked to one person about our work. Presenting at conferences and publishing papers are the sorts of things that pad resumes for future applications and yet it was not really a big deal. We tend to spend a lot of time padding our resumes and it seems like those things are in no way the most important things in life. But there's no spot on the resume to put that you spent time with your family or friends.

4. I passed my defense!!! I know I'm not going to fail my classes this semester, which means I really will graduate with my masters degree in December! Brad and I are both SO excited! Annie would be too if she could understand that it meant she'll get more bonding time with me.

Life has been really good and really busy and will probably continue to be that way through the end of the semester, so forgive me if I don't post again anytime too soon.