Friday, April 27, 2012

41 Weeks

This was another week chock-full of firsts and changes. First up, Josie may or may not have said her first word.... and given her partiality towards other little babies, it was rather unsurprisingly "baby" - or "dadey!" if you're Josie ;) It may have just been a fluke (since she hasn't repeated it since), but she immediately said "dadey" as soon as I showed her a book with babies on it, and then she said "dadey!" each time I said "baby" to her... so the consonants are a bit off, but the vowels and intent may be there. She also said "mama" and "daddy" pretty clearly this week, but not actually in connection with me or Ryan, so I don't think those count yet.

[Not her first word, but her favorite sound of the moment]


Josie is also getting into a routine now as we leave daycare, so she'll wave to everyone there, and then pop her thumb at them... and then we all clap together since she's so cute :) She likes to clap while I'm trying to get her to sleep though too, which is still cute but a little bit less so with that timing.

[Popping her thumb]



Speaking of sleep, we ended up transitioning her back into her crib (for the most part) last week. Between all the rolling and arm flailing, my sleep began suffering more, so we reconfigured the crib/bed situation (since there's nothing we like better than taking apart that crib it seems - I think this was the third time?) to more safely sidecar the crib onto the bed than it had been previously. So now the crib mattress is right up against our mattress (with no gap like there was before), with the bed rail separating our mattresses - that way Josie can roll around without waking me up, but she's still close enough for me to comfort her easily if she wakes up, and she can also more safely stay in bed in case I fall asleep during the overnight nursing sessions. We also thought this would be a timely transition, since she is moving around more now and I was basically trying to box her in to keep her still when she was in bed - and although the first couple of nights were a bit rough, I think she likes being able to move around more now, since she seems to far prefer sleeping on her side or tummy now and is very rarely on her back anymore.

As far as mobility progress, this week Josie pulled herself to standing in her crib at daycare, which is good that it happened there, since knowing that she's capable of that ahead of actually witnessing it myself gives me time to prepare so hopefully I won't freak out the first time she does that here ;) I'm going to have a rough time once she's a toddler, since my heart still drops every time she's not exactly where I left her. She's also starting to pull herself forward more and scoot around a little bit on her bum - not in the most coordinated method (as when she pushes herself backwards but insists on keeping her hands still, so she ends up lying on her face on the floor, or when she pulls herself forward (usually by my hair), but doesn't know what to do with her legs so she ends up doing the splits), but it's still something.

Also, believe it or not, Josie just this past weekend had her first "big girl" bath. We used the infant bath her first few weeks, but ever since then have just been taking her in the shower with one of us - she likes it (since she gets to try to catch the water with her mouth and/or hands), and it's quicker and easier for us. But I felt we were remiss in denying her the opportunity to splash around in a bathtub, so I decided to remedy that situation last weekend. She seemed to be a fan, although she spent more time gnawing on her toys than splashing (which is probably for the best), and then cried when I finally took her out (once the water was almost cold and had far too much spit up in it).
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And in not-really-baby-related news, there was some excitement in the area this week with the shuttle Discovery being flown up from Florida to its final retirement home at the Udvar-Hazy museum. The shuttle program was officially concluded in Josie's lifetime (although obviously much too early for her to ever have any memory of it!), and who knows if it might be reinstated in the future, but I still wanted to mark the occasion. And I'm afraid I made a complete ridiculous mess out of it - I knew the shuttle would be flown in (on the back of a 747) to Dulles airport at some point Tuesday morning, but I was working from home that day and didn't feel like dealing with parking, etc., to drive to the museum or airport. So I basically forgot about it until I was on a call with legal counsel from work, and he said he needed to go see the shuttle and he would call me right back. I was very confused by this, seeing as how we don't work at the museum or airport. So I bring up the streaming video of the shuttle just in time to watch it land at the airport... come to find out later, it had made multiple passes around the area, so instead of watching it on the computer, I could have gone to work (where it apparently passed directly overhead)... or to the highway by the airport... or likely even just outside my house. Instead, I stayed inside, and even worse, I took a picture of my laptop to remember the occasion, since I insist on forgetting that I can just take a screenshot. Sigh.
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Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[Curlicue]
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[This is her look of concentration as she attempts to snag the camera strap - far too many of my pictures from last week looked like this]


[Random babbling/noise-making]

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

40 Weeks

40 weeks – if Josie had come on her due date, she would now be an outside baby longer than an inside baby, but as it is, we have a few more days before that happens :) But Josie is now 9 months old, and we only have 12 weeks left before three rather important milestones: Josie’s first birthday, and meeting my goals of nursing for a year and writing weekly updates through her first birthday. And truth be told, I’m looking forward more to taking a break from the weekly updates than I am weaning - I'm going to miss all the sweet moments I've had cuddled up with her (and the relatively surefire way of getting her to sleep), although I suspect I will keep updating the blog, but probably just not as frequently since it's been a bit difficult to keep up with with work, baby, etc. I am glad that I have so much of her first year documented though, since memories can fade so quickly and there are so many things from this first year with Josie that I want to remember.

We had our first visit to the pediatrician in about 9 months where Josie actually wasn’t sick and didn’t get any shots. She is now 29” tall (90th percentile), 23 lbs 4.5oz (98th percentile), and her head circumference is 18 1/2” (98th percentile). The doctor seemed a little concerned that Josie isn’t really crawling yet, although I suspect it’s mainly because she hasn’t had as much opportunity as she maybe could have to practice – our furniture isn’t exactly convenient for her to pull herself up on, and she’s not currently in a crib to practice pulling up on that either. I think Josie is definitely getting more mobile though, as she's rolling all over the place now (even at night), and even crawled forward a bit at daycare, although she still has only gone backwards for us at home. She also went from sitting to laying down on her own, which probably doesn't seem to be that big of a deal, but I was excited that she's figuring out that she's able to make some decisions about where she would like to be and how she would like to get there.
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[Rolling around in the space where the coffee table used to be - now it's been turned into the staging area for Josie's rolling and standing endeavors]
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Josie's walking has gotten a bit more steady, although she's still not too great at standing on her own (she's up to maybe half a second of standing unsupported before she topples over), and she's not too keen to walk along the furniture yet either... even with the incentive of food at the end.
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[Trying to get a hold of Ryan's grapes]


Speaking of food, based on her rather voracious appetite lately, I think Josie may have just gone through another growth spurt. She's also moved up to 18-mo clothes already, since she's outgrown most of her 12-mo wardrobe. But she’s still having about as much to eat during the day, but seems to be more hungry at night, with a few nights of her just plowing through whatever solids we put in front of her. When we went out for kabobs last weekend, she had sweet potato and grapes (what we had brought with us), and then we ran out of those, so we ended up giving her some cucumbers and beets from the restaurant (along with nearly having some of Ryan’s super-spicy food, which she is remarkably quick at grabbing). And all this without any teeth yet! It seemed like she might have had a drool rash last week, which can happen during teething, so I got my hopes up a bit... but it's a week later, and there's no rash anymore and still no teeth. She did drink out of a straw without any problems last week, which is good - she didn't really seem to take to her sippy cups, and while she's certainly enthusiastic about drinking from an open cup, her technique isn't the greatest and she would usually just end up wearing whatever it was she was attempting to drink.

Last week also marked the first time I had to tell Josie "no" - and meant it. Too bad we've been laughing and making a game out of it each time she shakes her head no (it's so cute!), so rather predictably, when I told her no, she shook her head and giggled at me. What was the awful thing she was doing that prompted me to (attempt to) deny Josie her fun? She was unvelcroing one side of her diaper as fast as I was able to velcro the other side, so after a few rounds of that, I ended up basically laying on her to block her hands... and I'm starting to rethink my preference for our diapers with velcro closures rather than snaps. But look how cute she is with her little baby hand claps, sleepy eye (and ear?), and head shaking!


Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[21st century remote control]
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[Guarding the GoogleTV remote to make sure Ryan didn't change the show we were watching (or take away her chewtoy)]
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[Josie's waiting spot while we get all her stuff ready in the mornings]
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[Looking for Ryan]

[Showing off her chubby legs and making cute little baby noises]

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

39 Weeks

This week we decked Josie out in some pastels and brought her over to Ryan's parents' house for Easter.
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[Eyeing cousin Taylor's bunny ears... little did she realize she was sporting bunny ears of her own]


She supervised the Easter egg hunt this year, and also got to take a spot at the table for a holiday meal for the first time. She made her presence known by participating in the conversation by yelling... loudly. And shaking her head repeatedly.
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[Josie decided not to wait for her sweet potatoes to get started on her meal]
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[Plotting her next move]


As it turns out, Josie actually doesn't like every food that comes her way - she turned down some cereal with prune juice this week (not that I blame her, since that wasn't one of my more inspired concoctions for her), and didn't seem all that excited about avocados(!!). She did try pineapple and mango this week, and she seems to be a fan... so far, at least.

I think Josie may be on the verge of figuring out this whole mobility thing. She has gotten pretty good at walking with assistance, and seems to be working on some of the motions of crawling (e.g., pushing with her legs, lifting her chest off the ground), but she just hasn't been able to coordinate the effort of getting both her upper half and lower half working together at the same time to go forwards (although she can go backwards a bit). And although she's been rolling for months, this week was the first time she rolled in bed. I was thinking her sleep sack was hindering her from doing this, but as soon as she did it once, it was all over - now she's rolling all over the place the second she wakes up. So as she's figuring out that she can actually move on her own volition, I think she might be more motivated to start crawling rather than waiting for us to move her or help her walk. We'll see!

This week was also the first time we brought her to the playground to give the baby swing a try. First, we went on an "epic walk", which is what we've termed it when we walk up to a nearby shopping center for some food. We went to a different restaurant this time, a little further into the shopping center, and it turns out there is a limit to what we can handle. Usual our epic walks are around three miles round-trip, but this one was four miles... and it turns out that extra mile proved to be the tipping point for both Ryan and I (and Ryan was the one schlepping a 23-lb baby on his back), as we were both pretty tired afterward.
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[Happy to be setting off on our epic walk]
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[Helpfully holding onto her hat as the wind picked up]


Anyway, so we went to the playground on the way home and stuck Josie in the baby swing. She wasn't too sure about it at first, but then decided it was awesome.
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[Her very first time in the swing - she got progressively more happy about the situation with each swing :)]


Other developmental stuff from this week are that she's able to mimic us solely off sound now rather than needing to see what our mouths are doing too. She also is learning fun little tricks like flicking light switches, knocking using the door knocker, and "helping" me as I tote her and all our bags from the day into the house by grabbing my keys for me off the roof of my car (where I leave them while I get her out of her car seat)... although she's probably not grabbing them for me, per se, but she does at least relinquish them pretty easily. Also, one time this week she very definitively let me know when she wanted me to pick her up - I was clapping in front of her, and she grabbed my thumbs, pulled my hands apart, and placed them on either side of her belly. Point taken.

Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[More Easter pictures...]
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[...and more swing pictures]
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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

38 Weeks

First off, some super exciting news (for me, at least): I finally got my hair cut! It just took the better part of a year to get myself motivated enough to take care of it. I then came home and asked Ryan to take some pictures of me with Josie as photographic evidence that my hair sometimes doesn't look like an unbrushed mess ;)
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[Josie was excited too]


Speaking of hair, Josie's continues to be amusing. As it gets longer, it's getting wavier (and more prone to questionable hairstyles).
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[It turns out it's long enough to get in her eyes now, when it's wet down]
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Josie has had a newfound appreciation of Sophie (her giraffe teether) this week, likely because she found in it a new tool for making noise (for those times that her shrieking just doesn't cut it). Now that she's figured out she doesn't need to chew on it to make it squeak, she's been markedly more abusive towards it: bending its neck, hitting things with it, and hitting things on it too.

[I also like this video since it shows her little feet working away at the beginning]
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[Another example of her goofy hair]
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[Also, I'm pretty sure at this point that her eyes are going to stay blue]


One development that Ryan and I have found very sweet is that Josie is seemingly more into contact for the fun of it now, rather than necessity. We used to hold her a lot if she were fussy, and except if she was in her carrier for a walk, she would typically push away once she was fine again. Now she seems to enjoy cuddling for the sake of cuddling, and I've found it especially heart-melting when she leans her head against my shoulder and snuggles in against me. She's started to hold her arms out now to be picked up, and is clinging to us more when we hold her:
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[I had taken this picture because of the way Josie was clinging onto Ryan's shirt, but it ended up being a cute picture in general anyway :)]


Ryan has taken it upon himself to work with Josie on her crawling ("It's time," he stated), so we've seen some improvement this week, with her lifting her chest higher off the ground and making movements like she's going to push off with her feet... just not at the same time. She can spin in a circle and move backwards a bit though, so we went ahead and started child-proofing the house anyway :) Josie has been doing far better with the perhaps less important "new tricks", as we've termed them: she has now started pulling burp cloths from our heads (instead of just her own) in games of peek-a-boo; she has started to wave; she handed something to Ryan when he asked for it (although this was possibly a fluke); she claps her feet together; and she makes a new sound that I'm having troubles describing, so I'll just include video instead:

[The new sound is at the beginning - the rest is just her impression of a theremin ;)]

[An early, not very successful (or enthusiastic) attempt at clapping her feet together]


Miscellaneous cuteness:
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[Poor thing fell asleep on the way home from daycare, and slept through me getting her out of the carseat and into the house, where she continued her nap on the living room floor]

[I suspect that someday the V-sit reach will not come as easily for her]

[Getting steady enough on her feet to be able to shake her head and bounce up and down while standing]

[Just because baby sneezes are so cute :)]