Some New Fun Stuff Today

I started writing this post Saturday night:

First new thing, I think Fiona has another tooth. I can’t get a good look or a good feel, but I’m pretty sure that one of her bottom teeth broke through. That leaves three more that are on the way any day now. I hope it happens soon. Her naps have been terrible lately and she swings between giddy and tearful in the blink of an eye. Her nighttime sleep has been great though. She’s slept from 7:15 until 4ish for the last two nights. Before that is was 3:30. :)

Second, every morning after I feed her, John reads books to her. He puts them on the bed and reads them one by one. This morning, before he started, Fiona reached for a book, took it, and handed it to John, then looked at him expectantly. She did it twice. What a way to start the morning.

Third, she had her first swim lesson today at the local pool. It wasn’t very warm but it wasn’t cold either. We floated around, twirled, and splashed. She seemed to enjoy it sometimes and other times not. Mostly I think she was hungry and tired (short morning nap). Note to self: remember to feed the baby before going to the pool. It is very difficult to breastfeed in the water. An added bonus, one of Fiona’s NICU nurses was there with her daughter. She remembered Fiona. In fact, she recognized us first and approached us. It was really cool to see her. She kept remarking about how big Fiona is now. It felt nice to have some recognize how far she’s come. Otherwise, everyone always says how small she is.

Fourth, she pulled up to a stand in the bath. Yup. She’s trying it on dry land as well, and getting frustrated when she can’t do it. But in the bath, she was successful. So proud of her. All that crouching she’s been doing is paying off.

All in all, it’s been an exciting day. I spent hours making food for Fiona for the next two weeks and I think she will like the offerings: vegetables in cheese sauce, sweet potato with spinach and pees (an old favorite), lentils with vegetables (a new lentil recipe), and a creation of my own, chicken with vegetables and cheese. All purees and divided into little two to three ounce freezer containers. Then we went for a nice long walk in the neighborhood with Fiona in the stroller because she doesn’t really need the Ergo anymore. Fiona tasted mango today and did not protest.

The other day she looked up at John and said “dada.” Did she mean it? I' would like to think so, but only time will tell. She might be starting to wave, but I need some witnesses to prove I’m not imagining it. And she is outgrowing her sleepers. They all feel too short for her. Her feet are now between sizes for the Target shoes we have. The 0-6 size is a little tight, the 6-12 size a little long. I guess she is going to look like Ichabod Crane for a while. At least if the weather is warm she won’t need shoes. I only use them to keep her socks on anyway. The old shoes are now in her toy bin because she likes to chew on them.

Other than that, nothing exciting has happened. Tomorrow is my first Mother’s Day as a mother. I generally don’t like Hallmark holidays, but if it buys me a little sleep, I’ll take it.

UPDATE: She slept through the night! 7:15pm-5am! Then went back to sleep. I don’t know when she woke up next because John did not bring her in until almost 8am! I actually felt rested today and not dog tired! Yay! And she pulled up again in the bath.

Here are photos from my phone. Fiona sleeping in her stroller. Note the leg position.

Sleeping again after a walk. My little Recliner, she is.

Here is a close-up:

 

Fiona right before her first swimming “lesson”:

I didn’t get any other photos because I was in the water.

Our Little Entropy Unit

That is what John calls Fiona because now that she is mobile, she leaves a big mess everywhere she goes:

And these messes are tame compared to some of the ones she makes.

Here is Fiona peaking at me from the other side of the couch. We were playing Peek-a-Boo and she was doing the hiding instead of me:

Fiona did something interesting today. She was playing with a placemat, pulling it off the table. Every time it landed on the floor I picked it up and put it back. She wasn’t just watching it fall though, she was trying to make it slide off on its own. She pulled it to the edge of the table until gravity took over. I realized what she was doing when the placemat did not fall on its own and she very carefully touched it, moving it little by little until it finally fell. She did it more than once, and John saw it too. Then she discovered the towel in the bathroom and did the same thing, moved it a little bit at a time until it fell. I’m really proud of her. After, she made her first real attempt at pulling to a stand. It was not successful, but a good try none the less!

On another note, we sold the CRV! A man and his son stopped by the house and offered us money. We were in the garage, playing on the climbing wall, and they drove up and asked if we owned it and if it was for sale. They really wanted to buy it and John did not really want to sell it. It was his first new car. He’s had it for over 10 years. There are a lot of wonderful memories in that car, many, many climbing trips. We drove home from our wedding in it and we brought Fiona home from the hospital in it. I can’t counbt how many times we slept in it before a climbing trip. The CRV was John: cute, in need of a bath, a little smelly, a little clunky in it’s old age, but also very comfortable and reliable. We were both sad to see it go, but it was time. We don’t need three cars. We were going to sell it months ago but didn’t because selling a car is kind of a hassle. I’m not going to say how much we sold it for, but lets just say that it was more than what the guy at Toyota offered us as a trade in value.

Good buy green CRV. No longer will I see another car like you and think that John is driving it. We will miss you green car!

She Likes Bowls

Even when they are as big as she is!

 

She plays under her bouncer and walks on her hands:

   

I am trying introduce finger foods. It’s very messy, so I let her eat on the floor (another thing I said I wouldn’t do before I was a mother, but hey, I eat things that drop on the floor, so why not?):

She was eating bits of chicken and rice. Here are her pants after:

Much worse than when she eats puffs.

And my floor:

Here she is just looking cute in her crib:

The fuzzy white “frame” is really just the slats in her crib. I am using a 50mm lens with the aperture wide open (narrow depth of field) so everything looks fuzzy except Fiona.

Fiona still crawls funny. She uses one knee and pushes off with the opposite foot. She frequently gets up on her feet with her hands down (like Downward Facing Dog in yoga). It’s almost like she is trying to stand up in the middle of the floor. Of course she has not pulled herself up to stand yet so middle of the floor is not likely to happen. Fiona has to try everything the hard way first, I think.

Here she is, grinding her new teeth against her old teeth:

Here are the videos from the experiment I conducted. In one of them, Fiona is crawling to her toys and playing with them. In the other, she is turning over an empty red box, wondering where the toys went. They are not very exciting, I know.

 

This last video was taken a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would post it anyway. It has a good example of the funny way she crawls and of her babbling. She is chewing on my watch, something she loves to do.

Two More Teeth!

I’m procrastinating right now. I don’t want to do my homework. Thankfully I’m taking the class Pass/Not Pass so I don’t have to do a stellar job, but I’d still like to do quality work. Just not right now.

Yesterday, sometime after lunch, Fiona’s top teeth broke through. She was pretty miserable all week, sleeping badly, napping badly, just wanted to be held all day. I am so glad she finally gets a little respite. Of course, in true Fiona style, she’s right back to chewing on everything and drooling, which means more teeth causing pain for who knows how long. This makes me a little sad. He gummy smile will be gone forever. Eventually the teeth will get long enough to see (not just feel) and then no more gums, just teeth.

Sniff. My little girl is growing up.

Speaking of that, as soon as the teeth broke through she started babbling again. She sort of stopped for a while, but she is back to being a chatterbox again.

So what have we been up to this week?

I used Fiona in an experiment for class. I hit some toys and moved stuff around and then filmed her reactions. My presentation went well, of course, as would anything that involved pictures and video of Fi.

She are her first pancakes today. The recipe (by Annabel Karmel) is similar to the one in The Joy of Cooking, except without sugar, butter, or baking powder. She ate about a fourth of a pancake all by herself! My dad came over for lunch (my mom is in Phoenix this weekend) and we also ate pancakes (with fruit and whipped cream, and potatoes). It was a lot of fun and my dad got to feed Fiona her lunch solid. She smiled at him a couple of times and talked up a storm. When Fiona is a little older I want to start a tradition of having a big family breakfast one day a week.

  

Later, we went to the beach and Fiona got her first taste of sand, literally. She fell asleep in the car and we drove all the way up to Ojai and back through Santa Paula. She slept for about an hour. The scenery was beautiful and I was reminded again why I love living here. John and I reminisced about the time that we rode our bikes in the opposite direction, on the same drive (when we were both in better shape and biking a lot). We also speculated about the location of the home of a Hollywood actress who owns a ranch in Ojai and just got married there.

The sand was gritty, but the shovel was tasty!

 

Fiona is really into book now. She turns pages and wants to be read to (Hop on Pop is her favorite). She is exploring a lot and discovered the shelf with the really heavy reading. She pulled out both the Oxford Companion to Philosophy and the Bible. I think both are a little above her head at this point.

 

 

She sat on a seat all by herself, but then fell backward. John rescued her. She was back up in no time!

 

A girl after my own heart, she likes shoes! Ok, these are all sweaty running shoes, but it’s a start!

  

 

 

 

And I think she is outgrowing her little baby bathtub. She positioned herself so that her legs were hanging out of the tub. She has been moving around a lot in the little tub and I think she is ready for the big bathtub.

More sniffles. My baby is growing up!