Fiona Walking In My Shoes

Here is a video:

It’s a combination of two different videos I got of her, which is why she is wearing different clothes and using a different shoe in the first half than she is in the second half.

On the development front, we have her Developmental Follow-up with the NICU team in less than two weeks. I’m nervous and excited. She is stacking blocks and putting legos together, and she says 9 words! I started a list on the right side of the blog. You already know she says mama, dada, and dog (“dog-dog”), but she now also says bye-bye (“bah-bah”), hi (“haaai”), crow (“craw-craw”), baby (“bey-bey”), more (“moe”), and of course NO (“no-no-no-no-no-no”) usually while shaking her head vigorously from side to side. I am pretty sure she is saying some other words, but I can’t quite figure out what they are. John thinks she is also saying “yes” and “up” but I am not ready to add them to the list until they are heard more regularly. The other words she says on command. She follows directions really well and helps clean-up sometimes. When she tries to climb into her drawer and I tell her no, she will shake her head, tell me no, and then back away. I tried shushing her today and she put her finger to her mouth and shushed me back! Truly monkey see, monkey do.

On the work and school note, work is going well and I love the classes I’m taking at school. I’m pretty sure I know what I want to research and am in process of designing an independent research project. John and I will be running in a race in a week. It’s just a 5k and we are taking Fiona in the BOB, so I am sure our times won’t be stellar, but I don’t really care. I am just enjoying running again. I wish I had time to swim because I really miss it and the weather here has been phenomenal lately. That’s all for now! Not watching the Super Bowl, so tomorrow should be a nice relaxing day.

Happy Week!

The Week in Review

What’s new? Lately Fiona’s favorite new game is to take one of my shoes or one of John’s shoes and wear it around the house. She thinks it is hilarious. Her favorite shoes are either my flip flops or a pair of slippers. She also started doing little summer salts in her crib.

A few days ago I took Fiona to the Gull Wings Children’s Museum. We had a blast! It’s really neat, with various aquariums (sometimes you can touch the sea life) and all sorts of different rooms. They have a shuttle simulation with a “moon” room, a car you can sit in, an ambulance and fire fighter simulation room, a room with microscopes that you can use to look at stuff or your own hand if you want, a desert room with a tent, a doctor’s office room, and our favorite, a room where you can dig for fossils.

We started in the boat. I am sorry the photos are so fuzzy. The camera is broken and my phone takes terrible pictures.

We were joined by Lyla and her mom Jenny.

Thinking about going to the moon:

The soil room:

My mom bought Fi a chair for the back patio:

She loves climbing in and out of chairs.

I put her hair in a ponytail, but you cannot tell from the photos. Here she is, right after coloring with some crayons:

She learned how to get into one of her drawers that was previously inaccessible (and today I discovered that she likes to climb into the drawer). Of course she must empty the drawer entirely. She decided to roll around in the towels and cloths that were in it and play peek-a-boo:

You can see the slippers she likes. She has become obsessed with shoes lately, pulling them all out of their cubbies and moving them around.

Then, she decided to climb into one of the toy cubes:

Playing with rocks on a recent walk, and stopping to smell the flowers:

Sweeping in the backyard after the rain last Monday:

 

We spent the weekend in Anaheim. We stayed at the family friendly Best Western across the street from Disneyland. We were not there to visit Mickey Mouse, but so that I could participate in the inaugural Tinkerbell Half Marathon, a race geared toward women. 11,000 women signed up as well as 1000 men. I didn’t really train for this race because of time, weather, and sheer exhaustion, but I was happy with my time. My goal was to finish in 2 1/2 hours and I did just that. My time was 2:31:01. Perfect. I ran the whole thing and didn’t start feeling my non-training until mile 10.

Fiona did great in the hotel room. She had a little trouble going to sleep, but after some nursing and some cuddling, she went to sleep and so did we. I realized that one good thing about being so tired all the time is that I have no problems going to sleep early, so I felt pretty well rested when my alarm went off at 4:15am. She handled being in a hotel room, walking around Downtown Disney, and going to a restaurant for both lunch and dinner. I started the race with my friend Cindy but I finished a little ahead of her.

All in all it was a great experience.

Here we are at lunch (holy cow are things expensive and lines long!) and after the race:

I have no idea who the person in the tutu is.

I got a shiny medal and these lovely blisters for my trouble:

 

That’s our week in review. I hope this week is a good one for everyone!

Twirling, Twirling, Twirling

Witness Exhibit A:

Please excuse the mess she is making of my mother’s kitchen.

In other news, here she is climbing into the stroller:

   

She also figured out how to climb into and out of the planter:

Looking at airplanes:

And she is starting to talk now. She says “mama” and “dada” when referring to me or John. If you ask her where mama is, she’ll either find me, or if I am in the room, she will point at me. She says “do-do” for dog, “ba-ba” for ball, bird, and bye-bye (she waves and says bye-bye at the same time), and “caw-caw” for the crows in one of her books. In some ways, I am excited for her to talk, in other ways, I love her funny babbling and will miss it when she stops. She also started stacking blocks and in a move opposite most of her baby friends, tries to climb into her bed. She can go up stairs without crawling but by standing up and holding onto a railing, can get onto a tricycle and in and out of small chairs. She is still a hug monster, chasing down babies and hugging them. She is using her fork more and more. She points out all the birds in “Down by the Bay” and the dogs in “Wheels on the Bus”.

Here she is at the supermarket, pushing a little cart (photos are from my phone and so therefore fuzzy):

John had to steer. Otherwise, Fiona runs into things and people.

On someone else’s “quad”-cycle?

It had four wheels, so not a bicycle or a tricycle.

She climbed on this at a park recently:

 

This mommy is starting to stress a little when we go to the park. Fiona is getting faster and bolder. I’m trying not to hover. She’s pretty tough anyway, but it doesn’t make it any easier to watch her climb things.

Speaking of which, here she is climbing into or out of her friend Caz’s bed:

It’s a lot easier and closer to the ground than her bed.

Making a mess of things and also “cooking” at my parents’ house:

She is so fun right now! I love playing with her. We run around and make noise. She’s growing up so fast! Our NICU follow up is in a few weeks and I can’t wait for them to see how far she’s come since she was a tiny and tubey baby in an isolette.

Happy Birthday Matan!

My mom started a facebook event for Matan’s birthday. Some of his friends have commented, as have some of my friends and some of my mom’s friends. For some reason, I cannot bring myself to post on it. I’m not sure why. I think it is because I feel like he’s my special person. He’s my brother and I don’t want to share him with anyone else, especially not on facebook. I don’t want to air to everyone how much I miss him, how I think about him every day, how whenever Fiona does something new or funny, I want to call him. How sad I am that she will never know him and he will never get to hold her or see how funny and silly she is becoming.

Today he would have been 29. If I could call him, I would tease him about it, how he is in the last year of his 20’s and about to cross over in real adulthood, also known as your 30’s. I wonder where he would be right now and what he would be doing. Would we go out to dinner at a nice restaurant like old times, or would he choose to do something else with someone other than his parents and sister? Would he be married and/or have kids of his own? So many “I wonders” and not enough time.

I still have his number programmed into my phone. Sometimes I toy with calling it to see who would pick it up, and to tell them that their phone number used to belong to someone I love and lost.

I saw a movie recently (Fast Five, go ahead, mock me) and I was so disappointed in it. I’ve seen every movie in the Fast and Furious franchise. Sometimes they make me feel closer to him because he worked on those same types of cars, enabling them to do what the cars in the movies do. I wonder what he thought of/would think of the movies. Would he like them? Which would be his favorite? Would he yell at the screen about any inaccuracies or that some car can’t really do that, or some other car is actually better?

Well, if you can read this, Happy Birthday Bro! I miss you! This is the last year of your 20’s. Next year, you will be a real adult, and people in their early 20’s will think that you are old. But this year, you get to enjoy being young still. I hope you are having fun where ever you are, and that you are driving a tricked out, manual transmission, blue Toyota Supra.

Peace out!