Staceytown: 46 Weeks

This week was another busy one for Miss Josie. She has gotten pretty quick at walking while holding onto someone with both hands now, and branched out this week to walking while only holding one hand. She's still pretty tentative, but her balance is getting better, and we suspect that it may be more of a confidence issue than an ability issue for why she hasn't ventured off on her own so far. (Not that we're complaining - I'm enjoying knowing that she'll stay more or less where we leave her for another few weeks, at least.)

Josie has also gotten more into her books this week - she used to merely tolerate them, unless there was a baby somewhere on or in it (then she would find it considerably more exciting). This week I pulled out some of her "peekaboo" books (i.e., the ones with stuff under flaps), and she not only was more interested in them when we read them to her, but she was also grabbing them and flipping through them/lifting the flaps herself when left on her own. The bibliophile in me was very pleased by this development :)

For Memorial Day, we took Josie to the pool for the first time. Since she hasn't had too many opportunities to splash around in water (she's still taken no more than a handful of "big girl" baths since we usually stick her in the shower instead), I wasn't too sure how she'd react to a lot more water, and it not being very warm to boot. I shouldn't have given it a second thought, though, since negative reactions are not usually her default :) So yes, she loved it.

[First steps into the pool]

Josie has been a bit funny with food the last week or so - while she had started to get mildly more picky about her food, she had still been pretty enthusiastic about feeding herself. However, lately she's fussed about her food, and sometimes would only start eating if we placed it in her mouth or ate a bit of it and then offered it to her. Last week, after she was fussing about her dinner and yelling at me instead, I offered her some of the pear I was eating. She went from fussy to thrilled with life after about one bite.... and I said good-bye to my pear, as she pretty much finished it off herself. So she seems to like to eat food closer to the source sometimes.

All this to say, after she had fun splashing and walking around in the water for a while, I sat her on my lap in the shade and offered a slice of watermelon to her to see how she'd take to it. She took one bite, and then proceeded to annihilate it - getting watermelon all over her, me, the chair, etc. She was a very happy camper, although I was a bit grossed out (little did I realize things could in fact get grosser, as she then demonstrated that swim diapers don't hold in pee at all).

And if you thought - as we hoped - that Josie would be tired out after her afternoon at the pool, you would be sorely mistaken. Instead, she proceeded to chatter - non-stop and with very little encouragement from us - for probably a half hour straight. And then when she finally wound down and went to sleep later that night, she cried out (sometimes in her sleep) about every hour and a half the entire night - yet again proving that 8 hours of sleep can still leave me feeling like I got run over by a truck the next day if it's continually interrupted.

[A 60-second snippet of Josie's monologue]

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[This is the compromise I've worked out with Josie - she gets to play with/hit things with her brush while I get to brush her hair with her comb without her trying to steal it from me]