Staceytown

This week was my first Mother’s Day where there was no confusion about whether I “counted” as a mom or should mark the occasion, since with previous years, I was either pregnant, trying to get pregnant or dealing with losses…. or, going further back, trying to figure out if I even wanted kids – and how things have changed! Now, nearly every day I look at Josie and think some variation of “Josie is the best thing ever.” I’m so happy to be able to add “mom” to my list of appellations, and Josie has been a great introduction to motherhood :)

So, onto the Mother’s Day festivities… Josie celebrated Mother’s Day by wearing shoes for the first time, although she wasn’t too sure about them at first:

We went out to brunch with Ryan’s family, and enjoyed some good food (although I’m still kicking myself for missing out on the banana butter that was supposed to go on the already-delicious Bananas Foster french toast). Josie showed just the slightest hint of fussiness while we were eating, and Ryan’s family was on top of the situation – she had a choice of being held and/or entertained by six different people in addition to her usual two, and I think she was quite happy with her options :)

She also had watermelon, raspberries, and blackberries for the first time… and then promptly rubbed them into her hair, so I’m not sure if that’s a win or not.

That last picture shows one of her new moves from this week. As she’s eating, she’s starting to fling her head back – the better to laugh with? I’m not sure, but when she first did that this week, it was right after I tried to give her a Brussels sprout leaf. She threw her head back and laughed at it, and then I laughed at the absurdity of it (a baby throwing her head back to do a proper belly laugh? Are Brussels sprouts really that funny?), which prompted another round of laughing between the two of us :) Also funny to her this week: umbrellas, poking her in the belly with my foot, her baby doll “kissing” her on her tummy, sneezes (just her own), and me blowing my nose, stretching, or yawning. I also sing her a song that is almost guaranteed to get her to laugh… I recorded it to post here, but while I’m getting used to my speaking voice on the various videos, it turns out I’m not there yet with my singing voice ;) So instead I will describe it: the lyrics consist entirely of her name, repeated, over and over, with the last “Joooo-SEE” ending on a high-pitched note. Each time, she does a tiny little giggle (really, just enough to keep me going), and then I do it again on repeat just to get that little giggle out of her.

So we’re trying to teach Josie how to give kisses and high-fives now, and she’s making some progress for both. She will occasionally hit our hands, but without a whole lot of power behind it so far. And for kisses, she’s starting to kiss her baby doll, but hasn’t quite worked out what to do with herself when receiving kisses…. so she usually opts for open-mouthed laughing (which is her default, I’m realizing, as she does this while walking/falling too). She also has found a whole new level of loudness, and has really improved upon her pterodactyl impression, with lots of screeching peppered with the occasional scream.

[Josie wasn't exactly cooperating here]

[A little bit of screeching]

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Josie woke up too early, so she got to hang out with me in the bathroom while I got ready for work - she seemed fine with this arrangement :)]

[Pirate baby - and yes, Ryan has a mohawk again :)]


[Checking the wall for sturdiness]

The big news for this week is that Josie is finally cutting some teeth! A bottom tooth starting coming through last week, and I just noticed a second one a couple of days ago. It just took 6 months since the pediatrician first noted that she was teething at her 4-month appointment ;) I tried to get a picture of them, but since they’re still just barely through her gums, you can’t really see them quite yet. So here is probably one of the last pictures of Josie without readily visible teeth ;)

She’s done pretty well with cutting these teeth, though, and that’s on top of the congestion/cold she’s had for a few days now too – she’s generally still as happy as can be, although she’s had a bit of trouble at night, waking up a few extra times with sad crying :( So she’s been spending more of the night than normal in our bed, since she tends to sleep better and wake up sad crying less there – which is fine as long as she doesn’t flail around and hit me, which she’s been doing better with lately. However, she has developed a rather unfortunate way to soothe herself to sleep: pinching my throat or scratching my teeth (which I normally don’t let her do – turns out I do have limits). So as long as she has her thumb to suck and my throat to pinch, I’ve been able to get her back to sleep lately (if she’s not hungry) with just snuggling with her in bed, if patting her back while she’s still in her crib didn’t work. Although I did reach my tolerance limit the other night with the throat poking and prodding, so I finally blocked her from getting at my throat and she fell asleep grasping onto my cheek instead. Good enough :)

It’s hard for me to believe that 10 months have already flown by, and nursing her is already winding down. I would happily keep nursing until Josie self-weans, if not for the pumping (I hate it, and my “break times” are only officially protected by company policy for 12 months) and the fact that I’ll likely need to go through IVF again if we hope to have another kid anytime soon, and I can’t nurse while taking the medications needed for that. I just realized this morning that, although I’ve been fussing about how I’m going to go about weaning Josie after she turns one for a while now, the process has likely already begun. Josie has gone from drinking 24oz each day at daycare to 18oz maybe a month or two ago, and lately has only been having maybe 9-10oz a day as she’s increasing the amount of solids she’s eating. We had been sending some multi-grain cereal with her to daycare and giving her some solids at night for a while now, but we just gave daycare permission this week to start giving her the same breakfast the other kids get (a soup made out of potato, dal, and squash), and this morning we sent along some mango, cantaloupe, sweet potato, and grapes for her to get at lunch-time too. I had been worried about what we’d switch her to after I weaned (e.g., cow’s milk, goat’s milk, etc.), but I’m slightly less concerned about that now that I’m realizing she’s doing pretty well with her solids intake, and my stash of frozen milk (currently just under 400oz) should keep her going for a little while after I wean too.

Speaking of solids, we just introduced Josie to her new favorite food item of the week: yogurt. When she first starting eating solids, she didn’t seem to distinguish much between the different foods we gave her (they all ended up in her mouth eventually, and she seemed about equally excited about them), but she’s definitely starting to show some preferences now: favorites include mango, pear, and cantaloupe, but yogurt has now superseded at least cantaloupe, since as soon as she had her first bite, she dropped the cantaloupe she was double-fisting and excitedly flailed around until she got more.

[Josie and her soon-to-be new best friend, yogurt]

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Proof that Josie is not always smiling - I think she was yelling at me because I took away the comb she was chewing on]

[That's more like it ;)]

[Swing time!]

[Playing with her new toys]

[Talking to her baby doll]

Last week, Ryan took his long-delayed trip to Dublin for work, so my mom stayed over for the week to help me out / get her Josie fix / enjoy a shorter commute.  It worked out well, and now I’m much less apprehensive about Ryan having to be away :)  Although Josie had decided to forgo most of her morning nap on Sunday when Ryan came  back, so she didn’t provide a very enthusiastic welcome home for him in the afternoon:

[What is her little fist doing? I have no idea]

Before Ryan came back, though, Josie and I met up with one of the ladies from our childbirth classes and her little girl for lunch.  It was so fun to see the babies interacting and squealing at each other, and I’m afraid to say I squealed along with them because they were just too cute.

[Stealing Josie's sock]

There are definite differences in how Josie eats different foods now.  She chews (in a very exaggerated fashion) on cantaloupe, and does what we’ve dubbed “fists of rage” to eat her sweet potatoes… which consists of squishing them in her fist (bonus points for when she is shaking from the exertion), and then she attempts to eat the (squished) sweet potato from in between her fingers, usually by trying to shove her entire fist in her mouth.

Josie is definitely an odd little duck though – one day last week she was being very quiet on the way home, so I checked in the mirror to see if she was falling asleep… only to catch her licking her car seat.  She then sneezed, smiled a little Mona Lisa smile to herself, and finished up by pointing at her foot and yelling at it :)

Last week also marked the first time she did something based solely off a verbal cue – in this case, clapping.  One morning, before Josie had started doing her cute little baby claps for the day, I said “clap clap clap!” to her, and lo and behold, she actually did it.  Cue high-pitched squealing from me, which I’m pretty sure scared her, but she did it a few more times throughout the week so it doesn’t appear to have been a fluke.  That does seem like a pretty big step that she’s able to do something based purely off an unrelated verbal cue (as in, she’s not flicking her tongue or babbling in response to us doing the same).

Josie is still not crawling, although Ryan usually devotes part of the time while I’m eating dinner to working with her on walking, so her standing and walking skills are continuing to get better.

[Not crawling, but maybe getting a bit closer?]




[Recovering from her efforts with some thumb-sucking, which always follows the "eat Daddy's shoulder" part of the routine (note the wet spots on his shoulder)]

And finally, Josie slept through the night (technically) for the first time last week – at least, in the sense that she did not wake up between when she fell asleep and when she woke up for the day (although she did go down a bit late and then woke almost an hour early, so she may very well have actually slept for a longer stretch on a different night).  And this was coming on the heels of a pretty rough night of sleep, and our renewed dedication to not push her into sleeping through the night.  We have been trying to follow her lead when it makes sense (re: sleeping, eating, holding, etc.), as she’s more tuned in to her biological needs since she hasn’t yet learned to ignore or second-guess her instincts the way adults tend to do.  So we have been trying to just let the sleep situation work out naturally, since she has gone to fewer wake-ups and being able to get herself back to sleep better (now with mostly very little help on our part, except for some back patting and shushing) with just some support and patience on our end, so this was a pretty exciting development.  I know it will still be a while before this is a consistent occurrence, but it’s still good to see she’s capable of it (and this without crying or sleeping training (at least not yet), and with her back in her crib for most of the night), and I’ll look forward to her doing this more in the future ;)

Miscellaneous cuteness:

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.

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.

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).

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.

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Curlicue]

[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]

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.

[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]

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.

[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:

[21st century remote control]

[Guarding the GoogleTV remote to make sure Ryan didn't change the show we were watching (or take away her chewtoy)]


[Josie's waiting spot while we get all her stuff ready in the mornings]

[Looking for Ryan]

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

This week we decked Josie out in some pastels and brought her over to Ryan’s parents’ house for Easter.

[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.

[Josie decided not to wait for her sweet potatoes to get started on her meal]

[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.

[Happy to be setting off on our epic walk]

[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.

[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:

[More Easter pictures...]


[...and more swing pictures]

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 ;)

[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).

[It turns out it's long enough to get in her eyes now, when it's wet down]

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]

[Another example of her goofy hair]

[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:

[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:

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[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 :)]

We did all sorts of fun stuff with Josie this week – and now that it seems Josie is getting it more that she can mimic – and even initiate – the sounds we make and games we play with her, I expect that this trend will continue :) So this week she started to get the whole “peek-a-boo” concept better, laughing more when we magically reappear rather than just giving her “I’m not amused” look like she used to… and then she started covering her head with burpcloths/blankets and pulling them off herself :)

Josie is also playing the “let’s throw things on the floor” game, so it’s funny to see the wheels turn in her head as she picks something up, considers it, and then tosses it away to see how quickly it will magically be returned to her. We played this game with her ball too… I would roll it to her, she would pick it up and chuck it over the other side of her leg, and then watch with rapt attention while I collected it and rolled it back to her.

The problem with all of these rapid changes is that I can’t handle them. I was just recovering from the cuteness that is Josie shaking her head “no” when she started in with clapping…. who knew how adorable the sound of little baby hand claps is? This is a part of parenthood that I just wasn’t prepared for – I knew enough about babies conceptually to be relatively prepared (e.g., that babies didn’t sleep too much, needed to be fed and changed, and would eventually crawl and walk, etc.), but for some reason I never contemplated what it really meant to witness someone seeing, learning, or doing something new for the very first time. The amount of enjoyment I get out of seeing Josie’s delight with new sounds and games is both unexpected and completely awesome…except when I tear up from not being able to handle the cuteness ;)

This week also marked the first (sanctioned) time Josie got solids at daycare. Poor thing has been having some pretty bad constipation, so we’ve been giving her some flax oil in her cereal to hopefully help things along, so she got to have some cereal, milk, and flax oil a couple of times last week (along with copious amounts of prune juice). We’re still giving her solids for dinner during the week and for most of our meals on the weekends, and the plan currently is to have daycare start giving her more solids once she’s 9 months old, since we have been trying to give her a chance to increase her skills in feeding herself and so we can be more careful in introducing foods slowly, given the food sensitivities she had before.

Another first I’m slightly less excited about is that she undid her diaper for the first time. No disaster ensued, but it makes me realize that that’s an added benefit for our diapers that have snaps for the closures rather than velcro.

Josie also is able to walk more with assistance. Ryan had been “walking” with her for a while, but it would usually consist of her giggling with her feet dragging as he transported her from one room to another. Lo and behold, last week she started stepping as he did this, which is, of course, adorable.

I was taking pictures of Josie’s hair last weekend so I could document a phenomenon I like to call “armpit hair” (which is the bouffant hairdo most often seen after she has a restless night of sleep and ends up sleeping nestled in my armpit), so I took a bunch of pictures of her fluffy hair only for Ryan to tell me he had just washed it. So apparently there is less difference than I realized between her freshly-washed fluffy hair and armpit hair. Oops.

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Watching some Curious George]

[Winner of the awkward sleeping position for the week]

[Ryan messing with her and Josie getting her revenge]

This week was another fun one in terms of development… but not in terms of sleep, since Josie slept weird all week – waking up more frequently at the beginning of the night, being more difficult to get to sleep to begin with, etc. I blame the time change.

Anyway, last weekend was the first clear example of Josie learning – and doing – from watching someone else. Ryan hit two of her blocks together, she was captivated by the noise, and she then picked up the blocks he handed to her and promptly hit them together herself.

She also, rather adorably, started shaking her head “no”… although I definitely don’t think she’s doing that to mean “no” yet, especially since we rarely shake our heads at her when we tell her no. Mainly, I shake my head at her ruefully when I ask her what in the world she’s doing or tell her she’s a crazy baby ;)

Josie continued with her main three sounds/”words” (mamamamamamom, ded-ded-ded-ded-DAD, bob-bob-bob-bob), and also made a few “bla-la-la” sounds and an “n” sound a couple of times, so it looks like she may be gearing up to expand her repertoire again. She also is getting pretty good with her pincer grip, and was able to pick up blueberries and a grain of farrow (although she would usually drop it before actually getting it to her mouth since she would open her hand to examine it first). She also helps Ryan with the night-time routine by turning off the light switch for him :)

This week also marked the first time in her entire life that Josie was put to bed by someone else other than me (thanks, Mom!). Ryan and I went out for a dinner with friends on St. Patrick’s Day, and we all survived, so maybe we’ll even try it again someday ;)

We also started putting Josie in 12-month nightclothes, which I insist on calling her “big girl jammies” although they’re still really just baby jammies (but bigger and with nubbins on the feet). Ah well. The problem with the 12-month sleepers is that the fit is different now – there seems to be two options: “snug fit” cotton sleepers or looser fit polyester flame-resistant sleepers. I would prefer to have her in all cotton, but it seems we don’t have much of a choice: poor kid has such chubby legs that there is zero chance we can stuff her into most of the snug fit sleepers. So I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time shopping for the loosest fit cotton sleepers I can find, and I just ordered some 12-mo and 18-mo sleepers (in both materials) since 12-mo clothes aren’t nearly as big on her as they were even a few weeks ago.

[Big girl jammies! And my phone...]

[...that she licked...]

[...chewed on...]

[...and typed on.]

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[She was more excited to chew on her mat than on the cucumbers we gave her]

[She rolled herself all the way over to the coffee table, snagged a magazine, and then proceeded to "read"/gurgle at it...]

[...before taste-testing it and tearing off the outside cover. Go destructo-baby!]

Ryan’s latest compilation video, and one of my favorites so far (although I say that with each new one he puts together). This one has Josie doing the following:

• shaking her head no
• hitting her blocks together
• saying “dada”
• making the “t” sound
• riding on Ryan’s shoulders for the first time (and eating his hair)
• eating a blueberry with her pincer-grip
• having one of our first laughing conversations
• eating lettuce
• squealing at herself on the video chat

First off, Ryan wanted me to note that Josie threw up in his mouth this week. This was apparently a traumatizing enough event that it needed to be shared :) He had been tossing her around right after she had had a meal and when they were laughing, inches from each other’s faces, she managed to share some spit up with him. She had gotten close before (which usually makes me laugh hysterically, at least), but this was the first time she had actually made a goal, if you will ;)

Moving onto less gross topics, Josie is either starting to enjoy solids more, or we just happened to hit upon some favorites so far. After being a bit lackluster about eating some of the (awesome) multi-grain cereal Ryan cooks up each week for my breakfast, she was decidedly more into it this weekend, with the addition of some milk and banana. Usually, I was measuring how much she seemed to like a food based on how much she cried when she dropped it, but this was the first time that she seemed excited and happy about food – kicking (always with the kicking), flailing her arms, and making her “heh-heh” and “mmm-mmm!” sounds all seem to indicate she was a fan :) She also apparently loves blueberries, since Ryan made the mistake of giving her one last night, and then watched as half of his blueberries went to her belly instead of his.

[Helping clean up]

[Apparently, watching Ryan use the blender requires one hand to remain upraised at all times...]

[...and there's the other one]

I’ll have to apologize to Josie for this later (especially if her friends exploit it the way mine have), but while Josie may have gotten Ryan’s cute little ears and my dad’s blonde hair flecked with gold, I’m starting to think she got my penchant for goofy facial expressions:

For development this week, she continues to prefer standing over sitting or lying down, since she apparently has lost the ability to bend anymore. We try to get her to sit down, and she locks her knees now so it’s like trying to bend a piece of wood. Josie also is initiating silliness more now, which is great. She put her mouth on my cheek and nose last week and then did her “heh-heh” laugh that normally has something to do with food, and then giggled. I’m still not sure what exactly she was doing, but she found it funny, so I did too :)

After a couple weeks of not being too talkative, the babbling is back with a vengeance. She interrupts nursing to babble at the wall, she babbles in her sleep, and babbles immediately upon waking (before her eyes are even open, sometimes). She has also added a new letter, one that I especially like: “m”.

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Sometimes you just need to put on a pink frilly dress to keep Grammy happy ;)]

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