• On the Move – She’s moving around, rolling from front to back and back to front, sometimes in a steamroller fashion.  She pushes off with her sticky feet and makes a little forward progress.  Basically, she is not safe on any elevated surface and won’t be for the next couple months until she learns to get down.  Sigh.
• From Hand to Mouth – With everything.  Fun.
• Eating – Hazel still only drinks milk (as Miles so aften reminds her when something tasty is on offer for the rest of us).  It hasn’t hindered her growth at all, but she is getting ready for solid foods.  She lunges for our plates/spoons/cups with a fascinated urgency.  Soon, my love.
• Sleeping – No, she is not sleeping through the night.  But she is so much better than Miles was at this point, I can hardly complain.  She’s down by 6:30, up once or twice, and sleeps until at least 6:30 and as late as 8.  Two to three naps a day, and starting to consolidate so that at least one of them is more along the lines of 2 hours instead of 30 minutes.  Seriously, nothing to complain about.  Whew.
• Fun & Smiles – This is a great time, I had forgotten.  She can sit up and play with toys, but her favorite, favorite diversion is her big brother Miles.  She loves that boy.  And he loves her too.  Still a bit of tough love, but she’s getting bigger and can handle most of it now.  She has lots of smiles for us, and they light up her little face.
• So much better!  In the car, what an improvement!  And she went an entire month without being sick at all.  What a difference that makes.

Share your toys!  Elmo, Bert & Ernie drown in a pool of drool:

Hazel learning to sit!  Look at that concentration…

Their favorite thing to play with is each other.  Miles gives Hazel a kiss that blows her “out the door” (so he says), she takes a bite, and eventually pins him.  Something tells me she will really be able to knock him over soon enough.

Maybe one day we’ll play with dolls.  For now a lego digger and train track will do:

• Length: 26″ (66cm, 90th %ile)
• Weight: 17lbs-3oz (7.8kg, 99th)
• Head circ: 15.8″ (40cm, 25th)

Front to back:

• Bumbleride Flite – The queen bee of umbrella strollers.  A traveling work horse.  Does well for up and down the elevator, picking up Miles and down to the pool.
• Quinny Zapp with Maxi Cosi carseat – For in and out of the car, and it folds up really cool (clever Germans)
• Phil & Ted’s Explorer Double-decker – One on top, one underneath.  Another clever design, and space saving double
• B.O.B. Revolution – The jogging momma (or daddy’s) best friend.

And then next to the door, we have the Ergo rack.  Hazel rocks red, while Miles chills in Camel.  Picture Tim and I each with a sleeping baby on the front running through LAX airport about a month ago to our tight Hong Kong connection.  Pushing a Phil & Ted’s stroller loaded down with our carry ons.  This is how we roll; it’s the new jetset.

Two types going on here:

• The Original - Miles calls this his sleepy train. Choo-choo.
• Ergo Sport - we got this one for Hazel.  It’s got less fabric than the original, I like it.

Hazel

When my mom heard Hazel, she was not surprised: “You and your sisters have been talking about Hazel since high school!”  You see, my sisters and I all share something in our names. I’m unsure if my parents intended it or not (they left no blog post on the subject), but LaurEL, AngEL and MariEL have a similar ending.  Growing up, we thought it a kind of legacy we should pass on and so created lists of the appropriate boy and girl names.  None of the boy ones made the cut, but Hazel did stick with me.  Pair it with Stelzer…a double Z, I love it.  And then being born in Malaysia, where it seems 60% of the local Malay population also have a -z- name and it becomes super appropriate.  I googled and facebooked Hazel Stelzer and unearthed only one famous hit: Hazel Stelzer Gregg, a playwright from the turn of last century.  So the identity was clean to be claimed again, and we gave it to our baby girl.  Hazel is an old school name, maybe one of those crotchety ones that is coming back into fashion?  I’ve had several people tell me they had grandmothers and great aunts with the name.

Louise

Louise is an honor name.  Grandma Ruth was christened without a middle name but took Louise as her confirmation name where it has since filled the middle spot.  My mom’s mom was a consistent and important presence in my youth, feeding me, changing me, teaching me from 3 months to 14 years.  Her unconditional love, support and continuous pride in my accomplishments is the most valuable gift anyone could give, and I wanted to honor the love and respect I have for her with this tiny gesture. Pic of Great Grandma Ruth:

Each member of our family has a Chinese name bestowed from the same poetic (engineer PhD) colleague of Tim’s.  We enlisted her again for Hazel.  And thus, her Chinese name is:

石晓榛

shí xiǎo zhēn

Shi (pronounced “sure”) means stone and is our surname.  Xiao (shee-ow) means dawn, referring to her time of birth.  And zhen (jun) literally means hazel, as in hazel nut.  She’s our early morning Hazel.

She’s got only one nickname to date, Bazel, given by her brother Miles, not sure if it’s sticking.  Hazy Lou is another one that is not sticking, but is a possibility for later.

Something else I have noticed… There are 5 letters in her first name, 6 in the middle, and 7 in the last.  Miles Dexter shares the same pattern.  Also, Miles is single syllable (first child) and Hazel has 2 (#2).  Unintended, but perhaps future generations might look back and wonder.  I also now have one of my favorite clothing stores, H&M, right here at home.

Now if only I could get them to sit still.

Hazel, at 11 weeks:

To this…They are growing up so quickly!

Theo (Oct 17), Beatrice (Nov 17), Hazel (Dec 28)