Updating the lexicon

If you have a dictionary in your house, please go get it. I’ll wait.

Okay, go to the H’s and look up “hug.”  Whatever is there, erase it and write the following:  ”(n.) An affectionate gesture in which one plants their mouth on another’s chin. May involve sucking.”

Ask the baby for a hug, this is what I get.

Don’t mind me…

Some day soon we’re going to come downstairs in the morning and find her sprawled out on the floor with the Sunday paper and mulling over the puzzle on Weekend Edition.

After which she will get up and practice her dance moves (the Babylegs finally fit around those thighs!).

Reminder

This is a note to myself:

The next time around (assuming there will be a next time around), you will never be able to make good sense of what the hell the baby is doing. As long as she’s not running a fever so high that you can warm a bottle by strapping it to her head, or vomiting a substance that looks like it came back from NASA’s mission to Mars, she’s doing whatever she’s supposed to do.

Going six hours without nursing when all else seems perfectly normal isn’t sufficient cause for worry.  Now get back to work and enjoy the rest of her unusually long nap.

Patience

Just a couple more months, and we can get out there.

And one more thing…

We have pincer grasp; we have chewing motion; we have Cheerios.  Nuala is now feeding herself. Sure, she may be 3 for 10 on her attempts to get the Cheerio from her fingers into her mouth, but she’s a persistent little booger.  She puts her face down on her high chair tray to Hoover it up with her mouth if need be.

She’s mobile. God help us.

Boy, when things click, they really click.

I spent some time this morning frantically vacuuming the carpets and cleaning the kitchen floor and moving the houseplants and putting plastic guards in the outlets and whatever else I could think to do…and she still managed to create a small disaster.  There was a bucket of water (dirty, of course, from cleaning the floor), a soaked sleeper, and a diaper-less child involved.  I feel lucky that she hasn’t figured out a way to burn the house down yet.

Month 8

Nuala,

Eight months. Four months away from your first birthday. Holy cow. Believe it when people tell you how quickly the time flies by when you have children of your own.

It’s hard to keep track of everything that’s happened in the last month. You cut one new tooth on the way down to Mamaw’s for Christmas, so now you’ve got three on the bottom (and no sign of the fourth?), and in the last couple weeks you cut the top two teeth at the same time.  The ones on either side of those are just a couple days from busting through as well, so you’ll have a respectable array of chompers here in no time.  Based on the way those front two are coming in, I’m thinking you’ve inherited the “Berry gap” that runs so strong in Grandmom’s side of the family.  A dimpled, gap-toothed little girl?  I had my heart set on curly red hair, but this will be a very close second.  I will miss the gummy grins, but I’m looking forward to seeing your little baby face turn into a little kid face.  And then I will sob hysterically because you’re growing up so fast.

On the locomotive front, over the past several weeks, you’d gotten really good at scooting backwards and turning in circles.  And then all of a sudden, in the last few days, something clicked.  Let’s just say that if you ever join the military and need to crawl on your belly under a low-slung web of barbed wire, you will be well-prepared.  So now, I turn my head to read an email or write another couple lines of a lecture, look back and voila! You’re across the room already.  I get a great deal of joy out of this, but it would be awesome if you would stop heading for the linoleum by the front door and putting your mouth on it.  I’m sure it’s nice and salty from our efforts at keeping the front steps de-iced, but really, I mean, gross.  In spite of this great leap forward, you’d still rather be up on your feet.  If someone’s near you and you’re sitting on the floor, you lean towards them and flap your arms until they give you hands to pull up with.  If you’re on your belly, you slither your way up to a lap or legs and look for hands to push up to your knees, then pull yourself to standing.  If you find hands, we do laps around the house, pausing at chairs and low tables to cruise along them for a little bit.  I fully expect you to one day get the hang of crawling on your hands and knees, and then start walking a week later.  And then a week after that, Dad and I will be sitting at the dining room table one morning and you’ll stumble downstairs mumbling about what a rough night you had and is there any coffee?

I’m more astonished at how you’re starting to understand us, and how you’re starting to try to communicate a little bit.  You know “baby” and “baby doll,” so that when I ask you where your baby doll is, you look for it.  And you know “kiss,” so that you lean in for a kiss when one of us is holding you and asks for a kiss.  You know, the really important stuff.  Also, I’ve been saying “Uh oh!” when you drop something, and sometimes you do a kind of “Uh oh” back at me.  It’s more like “Ah! Ah!” with a surprised look on your face (raised eyebrows and all) but it’s definitely a different sound and expression from your regular babbling.  This, too, is really important.  It’s how you’ll alert me one day that you’ve removed all your clothes and tried to flush them in the toilet.

By the way, please don’t flush your clothes in the toilet.

Love,

Mom

35 Years

JJ beat me to the punch this morning, and I can’t say it any better. Go read, and then throw some happy-anniversary vibes towards Jacksonville, Florida, where Mom and Dad are vacationing and visiting family.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Crawling!

Okay, okay. It’s no hands-and-knees zipping across the room, but it’s sustained and purposeful motion forwards.

Alllmooooost there…

Who needs a crawling baby when a trying-to-crawl baby is so much more entertaining?

Hands stretched out, knees in, butt bumped up…

You’re doing it! Kind of.

A leg in the air helps! Or maybe not.