HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Matt and I decided, in order to ring in the new year while still not missing out on valuable sleep, to celebrate at midnight, GMT - that is, at 7:00, our time.

(I confess: it was Matt's joke, and I stole it.)

Penny was an absolute doll for Mom all day Wednesday - she fussed a little before taking her morning nap, but otherwise was cute and happy. And sleepy. Apparently she slept all afternoon, except for a short break to eat.

Which was understandable, since she just got over the flu. But it meant that Wednesday evening she was perky and happy and generally in a great mood - and not even remotely tired. At 9:00, I finally just put her in the crib wide awake. She didn't fuss, so I went back downstairs for a little bit. At 10:00 (whoo, staying up late!) I went up to go to bed myself and peeked in - and she was still waving her arms around. I turned off the light and went to bed.

But she only woke up once - and though she wasn't remotely tired after she'd finished her bottle, Matt put her back in the crib and turned off the light, and she happily babbled to her toys for ten minutes or so before falling silent.

It happened again last night, too. She fell asleep in my arms, but woke up as I was putting her in the crib, but she didn't fuss. She talked for a little bit, then fell asleep a bit later. She slept nearly eight hours (alas, it is not as convenient for her to sleep from 8 to 4 as it would be for her to sleep from 10 to 6, but it had been a struggle to keep her awake until 8) and then woke up for a bottle. When she finished it, Matt put her down and came back to bed, and we listened to her talking for ten or fifteen minutes until she (we assume) went to sleep.

That's really nice, let me tell you. A huge improvement over her turning into the Saddest Baby Ever whenever we put her down.

She continues to get closer and closer to turning into a real person, too. Last night she managed to mostly turn over - she wound up sort of lying on her arm, so she wasn't flat on her belly, but it was a big leap forward.

And we've started her on solids, much more successfully this time. She got her first trial feeding Wednesday evening - a tablespoon of formula mixed with a teaspoon of rice cereal, of which she took about half. More went into her than onto her bib, at least, and toward the end of the process, she was even opening her mouth for the spoon, which I thought was great. Last night we did about the same mix, and she ate all of it.

Which is not to say she likes it, yet. She seems very impatient with the whole process. Taking her food from a bottle is much easier and faster, after all. She's sort of grouchy about this whole "spoon" thing. And she likes to flail her arms around while I'm feeding her, which tends to knock the spoon out of my hand (or at least knock the food out of the spoon) so Matt and I have to hold her arms down, which doesn't make her one jot happier.

But hopefully, as she gets used to it - and as she realizes that this isn't something that's going to go away - it'll get easier. We'll be slowly increasing the size of her portion of cereal over the next couple of weeks. And then, when she's more or less used to that, we'll get to have even more fun: vegetables!

To celebrate New Year's Day, we met my mom and grandmother for lunch - Dad has an upper respiratory infection, so we didn't want to expose Penny to it - so Grandmom could see Penny once more before she had to head back to Texas. Penny didn't want to stay in her chair, but once we'd taken her out to sit on our laps, she was pretty well-behaved.

After lunch, we went over to visit with K.T. and Kevin for a while. Jessica's smiling now, and it's pretty cute. We got Penny to demonstrate her little giggle for them, so they know what they have to look forward to in Jess, and we generally had a nice chat for a couple of hours.

My friend Jen was supposed to be coming over for dinner - I had a crockpot full of slow-cooked chili - but she e-mailed at the last minute to say she was having car trouble and wouldn't make it, so Matt and I had our chili by ourselves. (It turned out to be a good thing, probably. Penny'd had such a busy day, she was very tired and kind of fussy. Not Supercrank, just whiny. And Mean Ol' Mom and Dad wouldn't let her go to sleep when she wanted to, at 6:30!)

(Concern: Jen's e-mail said she'd tried to call. We were home. The phone didn't ring. I'm going to be quite irritable if we're having phone problems again.)

But all in all it was a nice day. Fairly relaxed. Penny is mostly over being sick and was pretty much back to being her usual happy self.

A nice way to start off the new year. Here's hoping it'll set the tone for the rest of the year, too.

--Liz