Saturday, August 11, 2012

At first I was afraid, I was petrified...

Too much of the duck song as she is starting to look like a duck...

Oh, no, not I -- I will survive!  So we are sitting in the middle of our second weekend without E.  He had a conference that he left for on last Saturday (the 4th) and came back at midnight on Wednesday, only to leave again for a wedding on Friday morning at 4am.  I would be lying if I said that seeing him go on Saturday was easy.  My mom left on Thursday night and it was really hard to say good-bye to her.  So we basically went from a full house to a completely empty one in the span of 48 hours.


We are going well though.  Doing a lot of cleaning as I have realized that a clean home is also a key to my sanity.  I don't like living in a dirty home and so whenever I feel down, it always helps if I'm sitting in a fresh clean kitchen.  In fact, last Sunday was my birthday and we spent the day deep cleaning the kitchen.  Let me tell you -- there is no better feeling than walking into a clean kitchen after a long day at work (besides seeing the little lady).  So we have been spending our alone time, deep cleaning.  The last time it was done was when I was nesting in preparation for her.  So that's about 7 months of living in our house with five pets.  During that time we had been cleaning of course -- just not what I classify as deep cleaning (i.e. scrubbing base boards, window sills, dusting places that you don't normally see, steaming the floors, etc...).  It feels really good to see my house coming back together.




She is a character, as always.  She is absolutely enamored with the dogs & cats.  When she is in her jumper, she loves that she is at eye level with them.  They come up to her and sniff her and you would think that it's Christmas morning based on her reaction to them.  She starts to bounce higher and higher and squeal.

She also loves to "pet" them.  I'm trying to teach her gentle -- she'll get it.  And we are very fortunate to have pets that will allow for the pulling of the fur.  Even the cats will let her "pet" them for a minute or two before they decide they've had enough and walk away.  She loves when she is sitting on my lap and Munk comes up to us.  He sniffs her face and she laughs.  But she likes it when I take her hands and pet his muzzle.  She giggles and giggles.


This is what it looks like in our house all the time.  I know that it's going to get worse when she actually starts crawling.  But the girl is in constant motion.  Her legs & arms are never in one place, always kicking or flailing.  And that's what Bishop always looks like during her squeals and screeches and flailing and pounding on the floor -- she couldn't give a hoot.


Lady has learned to cough now for attention.  When no one is paying attention to her, she will do a couple of coughs.  Everyone will turn and look at her and she will start to smile and talk to you.  It didn't take her long to realize that when she coughed, whoever was present would quickly turn and look at her, thinking she was choking.  She's just a faker.



She has also learned to scream, much to E's chagrin.  She is just learning all about the power her little vocal chords can give her.  That night I shot the video above, she wouldn't stop squawking like that.  I thought it was pretty funny.  She wasn't upset about anything.  She just wanted to see how loud she could yell.


We also went out and bought a high chair for her -- as you could see in the video above.  She loves sitting in her high chair.  It gives her a view that she never had before.  She can see what's going on on the kitchen counters.  She also knows that good things (like food) come from sitting in the high chair.


She is learning how to chew.  And it is pretty funny!  She looks like an old man, gumming her food.  I also have been reading a lot about baby led weaning.  BLW is a method of giving them larger chunks of food and letting them explore the food and feed themselves.  My only fear is of her choking on her food.  The studies that have been done actually say there is less choking with baby led weaning than with pureed food because the baby is moving the food to the back of his mouth once he has learned to chew as opposed to someone shoving a spoon of liquid in his mouth.  I'm not sure yet.  The examples that I have read include large sweet potato fries (as she has already tried sweet potatoes and slices of peaches (we just started peaches this week).  I gave her a larger slice of peach when I was pureeing her other peaches and she wasn't ready yet.  She has to have her pincer grasp (which is when she puts her thumb and fore finger together).  So she couldn't even really pick up the peach -- she was trying to clumsily pick up the peach slice with her whole hand as it slid all over her tray.  We are definitely going to give the baby led weaning a try.  I'll post more about BLW in the next week or two.

I'll leave you with an absolutely adorable photo from my phone of my little lady.


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