ELEVEN

We're long overdue for a Poppy update! She is 11 months old, and there are 11 days left until her first birthday.

She has two teeth. They grew in at the end of her ninth month, so that must have been late February.


She claps. Just started doing that last week. Another new thing from last week was that she learned how to say "Dada." She's been saying "Mama" since January. I was thrilled that she said Mama first, since Rosemary was the other way around. ^_^


You already know that she crawls. She started that at the beginning of April.


She's started trying to climb the stairs. She can make it the second step. There's a door that opens to the stairwell from the dining room, so, needless to say, we leave that door closed now when Poppy is crawling around. Rosemary needs to learn how to use the door so she can make it to the bathroom!


Poppy loves to do everything her sister is doing. She learned how to use straw cups and sippy cups way sooner than Rosemary did just from watching her.


She loves to rifle through the diaper bag, looking for fun things to play with, including her sister's underwear and Mommy's wallet.


And she still loves food.



Well, there's our Cookie, just shy of her first birthday. She's almost walking, too. Mommy and Daddy are super proud. :-)

She Crawls!

Poppy is crawling!! She had been experimenting with it for the past two days: slowly shifting forward two paces and then sitting upright, effectively erasing her progress. We finally saw progress tonight!

As I was trying to nurse her to sleep in our bed like usual, she didn't fall asleep right away. In fact, she got to rolling. She rolled towards Senpai's empty side of the bed twice, giving me the duty of goal keeper: baby falls off the bed, score 1 on Kyla! No, she didn't fall, even though she threatened as such. It had been an hour, she wasn't falling asleep, things were getting more and more interesting, so I broke down and moved her into the nursery.

Her crib used to be in our room. I used to put her in there more often. But then teething happened, and rearranging furniture for house showings happened, and honestly, it's been quite some time since she hasn't slept in bed with us. For the record, she has never slept in her room. Her room was a disaster area  (or you could call it "storage") for her entire life, you know. Now that it is cleared out and actually looks like a nursery, and now that we have a MOBILE baby, well, it's time to put things where they belong. Cribs belong in nurseries. Babies belong in cribs.

I took Poppy into the nursery and then called Senpai upstairs to help with the task of rearranging things to make them work. The crib mattress needed to be lowered (yeah, it's been a long time since Poppy's been in the crib!), and other things like the baby monitor and a heater needed to be moved from our room into the nursery. While we were getting it all set up, Poppy was thrilled to explore the room. It's not like she'd never been in there before; I take her in sometimes while I hunt for clothes in her dresser. Tonight, though, she fully realized her ability to transport herself to whatever thing interested her the most. In short, she crawled. She zipped about from one side of the room to the other and then back again with a huge grin on her face. Ahh, my big girl!!

Getting her to fall asleep after all of that excitement, of course, wasn't the easiest task. I foresee a difficult night ahead. I will most likely have to be up constantly, reassuring Poppy that we're still here and we still love her. In spite of that, I'm excited to see what new adventures for Poppy tomorrow will bring.

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When I crawled in bed next to Senpai, I said with awe, "There's no baby in our room."

He frowned a little, "I know, I'm sad."

"You are?" I was surprised; hadn't he been the one hinting that it was time for us to have our bed back?

"I liked watching her sleep."

Ah. I know, I thought, I liked watching the two of you sleep together.

I Wish to Remember...

Poppy is on the cusp of some huge developments. She can now stand while supporting herself against a play-table for about half a minute. On her own. No help. She isn't sitting on her own yet, but she's getting there. She tried to push herself forward when she was on her stomach yesterday. She can occasionally bring a morsel of food to her mouth, but she's still figuring out what happens next.


The following vignettes are all about Rosemary:

She called our long-haired cat "kitty-fur-walking." Pretty accurate description.

She found a small stone. "It's a rock! Baby rock!" She then proceeded to sing, "Rock a bye baby..."

She saw cracks in the bricks of our garage wall. "Uh-oh! It's broken!" She patted a broken brick and consoled it, "It's awwight. All better! Give a hug!" She hugged the wall.
I said, "Aww, that's sweet, honey. C'mon, let's get to the car."
Except she found another cracked brick. "Uh-oh! It's broken! It's awwight. All better!"
I started to say,"Okay, Rosemary, that's enough..."
But she kept going, "Give a kiss!" And she kissed the wall. TWICE.
"Rosemary, get your lips off the wall!"

Today was monumental. Remember when I said I was working on getting Rosemary to say hi to Ms. Sue?The reason we were going to the car this morning when she kissed the bricks was to go to Barnes & Noble. Storytime is on hold until after the holidays, but we still drove up there to get out of the house. In spite of some huge meltdowns at the house earlier, Rosemary behaved beautifully while we were out. She was social, talking to other kids and adults. She listened to me when I said it was time to go potty or time to leave. She didn't give me much response when I asked her if she'd say hi to Ms. Sue, but when we did see Ms. Sue later, Rosemary babbled to her at length and then asked for a hug. Ms. Sue looked at me in surprise and I exclaimed, "Hallelujah!" It was a short hug, but it happened. And that is amazing. When it was time for us to eventually go, Sue said, "You have my heart!" as we walked away. :-)

Wordless

My Mom, R's Oma, is concerned that R doesn't know any words yet.

I gave up keeping track of milestones around 7 months for R because it was so hit or miss with her. The books all say, "Here's what an average full-term baby will do around a certain age, but preemies will do what they'll do on their own timeline, regardless of their corrected gestational age." To that, I said, "Okay," and just let R develop as she pleased without pushing her.

But now that it comes to words, something she can't instinctively know, I guess I need to step up and "give her the words," as my Mom put it. I'm starting simple with toys that she interacts with daily: ball, doll, book, block (can I pause here and tell you how awesome HABA toys are?? R got this block set as well as Big Voyage for Christmas and she plays with them all the time. You just can't go wrong with HABA). Every day I've been putting two of those things in front of her, repeating what they are, and then asking her to pick one. She doesn't understand the question.

Kelle at Enjoying the Small Things had mentioned flash cards that have been working for her baby. Her baby is only two months older than R, but she was born full term. R will be one year old at the end of March, but technically she wasn't due until mid-May. Maybe it is a little soon for R to know how to pick a certain object out of a lineup. Or is it?



I think we'll go buy some flash cards today.

8 Months

R turns 8 months old tomorrow! There were new developments today and yesterday that must be added to the record books, aka my blog.

Yesterday- R was on her new Dora playmat, and she decided to roll and roll and roll until she ended up way off the mat, against the wall, with her head in the cat food dish. :-D The best part is that she couldn't figure out how to roll back the way she came, so she kept going around and around in circles up against the wall (yes, I moved the cat food dish)! That was the first time she had ever rolled consecutively, and, consequently, the first time she ever succeeded in moving herself somewhere. She kept it up today, too, going all around the dining room floor. I have yet to see her actually chase after something... I think she just rolls for the sake of rolling. ^_^

Today- Senpai sat her up on her playmat. She didn't fall. She stayed sitting upright for at least 15 minutes! Even then, she still didn't fall: she was starting to get bored so I put her on her stomach for her new rolling adventures to begin.



My baby girl is getting so big!

What 7 mos. Looks Like

R is 7 months old! Not that it happened today, actually it was October 29th, but I was feeling nostalgic and decided to write about what she can do now.

I love that she is 7 months old because she is so much more fun to be around now! Crying has decreased dramatically, and smiles and laughter have flourished. She is so curious, looking and smiling at everything. She especially loves the pets. Her favorite toy is her ladybug book. She didn't pay her much attention before, but she likes Sophie now. She will grab a toy and whip it up and down with ferocity. She has started burrowing her face into whatever body part of yours is closest and gnawing with her gums. I can't wait to see her first tooth... She says words now, though she doesn't realize it. We've heard her say "hi," "okay," and "yeah." She rolls over! She can go from her front to her back, but she still needs help getting from her back to her front. She sits up with support; I'm looking forward to when she can do it all by herself. She sleeps through the night (usually.. unless she's teething). She eats pureed food, and sucks frozen strawberries or bananas out of a mesh feeder. Just as of today she has figured out how to drink water out of a sippy cup. What else, what else, what else? I don't know! I am just so in awe of and in love with my little R-baby.

On a separate but related note, R has been in our lives for the past 223 days. 223 days of laundering cloth diapers, pumping breast milk, and washing bottles. Exactly how much time have I spent attached to a breast pump? If I average a pumping time of 15 minutes 6 times a day, then I would have pumped 334 and a half HOURS total. I say "would have" because that average grossly under-represents the truth. In the beginning, I pumped for 45 minutes EVERY 3 hours-- including during the night-- desperately trying to keep the NICU stocked with milk for my baby. And though now I don't pump quite so often anymore, I do sometimes pump for as long as 40 minutes, depending on how long R naps for and how drawn into the interwebs I get. But still, 334.5 is a lot of hours, and there are many more to go until I reach my goal of feeding R breast milk for a year. I can (and will!) do it!!