boot scootin boogie

...And we're off!

We deemed yesterday evening her first official "crawling" day, as she managed to traverse the entire living room rug in my parents' house. Quite the improvement on what had remained her best up until that point (see video on second to last post). I caught some footage of it this morning. By this evening, she could even perform on slick surfaces in leggings, which is quite the challenge.

Tour de Turkeyday

I'm still behind in posting my snapshots of Josephine over the last couple months, but I don't have access to those right now, and I do have these, SO let's just jump ahead to Thanksgiving (now that it's nearly Christmas).

First stop on our little road trip: my family in the DFW area...

(The above photo is courtesy of Grandma. Goodness knows I never see that calm expression!)

My mom managed to catch all six of our eyeballs open at the same time, which is an award-worthy feat:
Then we headed down to the Simsside for a second feast, and some quality time with the family wolf (Badges). Josephine has a pretty good deal of trepidation when it comes to Badges. She was a little calmer with my aunt's smaller dog, but not by much.

Josephine (and Sean and Gam) had a fun time swinging with Mama Jo at the park...

The following weekend was in San Antonio with Sean's maternal grandmother and aunt...

Practicing her jumping:

Practicing her jollying:

What fine musculature!!!

Unless you can count tooth growing, Josephine's physical accomplishments have been pretty... ummmm... true to her genetic limitations, shall we say. When her pediatrician asked us at her 6 month appointment whether Josephine had started crawling or pulling up on things, we just laughed-- the way I laugh when people who don't know me invite me to train with them for things like half marathons. That's hysterical-- you must be kidding! And insane. But I'm happy for you; have a great time with that!

Not that we've been bothered by her lack of physical prowess, because if you've been in our house, you understand that we are NOT ready for her to be testing the boundaries of things like electrical sockets.

Regardless of that, my heart did get all flippity floppity to watch her tonight as she turned a new leaf. Josephine now sits herself up! I am not ready for her to be anything other than a baby, but I got a little proud and giddy, nonetheless.

She actually did it for the first time last Monday, with Sean as her witness, but we've yet to see her sit herself up since. Until tonight, when she mastered it and did it repeatedly. Of course I ran to get my camera.


This all happened right after I put on her disposable (we don't attempt cloth at night-- I have a possibly irrational fear that it will result in night after night of leaks, meaning more work in the form of extra laundry, sheet changing, dealing with a crying baby in the middle of the night because she's cold and wet, etc. Not that I never will brave it, but so far I haven't. I value sleep a LOT).

Anyway, this brief interlude between the application of disposable diaper and pajamas is invigorating for Josephine. It's when she tries all her stunts. Either she's trying to keep moving to ward off frostbite, or she senses the lack of extra weight/restriction and figures if she's going to succeed at the triple lutz jump, now's her chance.

Tonight's interlude was less brief because we were as amused as she was with her new found ability. So as she did all her sitting up and stuff, and I recorded her, she got braver (or bored) and went for her books. Which resulted in me getting footage of her BEST attempt ever at crawling.
In other words, she went forward.
That's astounding for a child who has previously been limited to backwards or sideways. She's made efforts at getting on her hands and knees and then lunging forward at things, but this was her finest effort at sustained forward motion.

And while I know she's nearly 8.5 months, and I should probably permit her to mature and develop in this way, it sort of freaked me out. So I turned off the camera, told her to stop that immediately, zipped up those pjs tight, and sent her to bed. Sitting up is one thing; asking if she's old enough to start shaving her legs is another.

random

A few recent pictures I enjoyed:

"Oh, look. A disembodied arm with a camera has appeared from somewhere in the front seat and is now hovering over my head. "

"What have they done to my hair???"

"Baby, it's cold outside"

He's getting all prickly about it.

Wilbur's incriminating look.

Wilbur's fed up with Josephine hogging this blog-- as he snidely pointed out, the verb itself suggests that's better left to hedgehogs. He's even further irritated that I should be giving so much air time to ducks. That really pushed him over the edge, so he was ESPECIALLY noisy last night in protest.
He made his point. I have asked forgiveness, begged for more sleep tonight, and promised to make amends publicly.
So in case any one's forgotten, HEDGEHOGS ARE THE MOST ADMIRABLE OF ALL GOD'S CREATURES!!!!! And Wilbur is the smartest, cutest, fastest, strongest, perfectest, best one of all! Just look at him go!!

In an odder twist on hedgehog fascination, a friend from my neighborhood sent me this link. Very curious, indeed-- thought I'd pass it along.

ducky début deux

So we have a penchant for ducks.

I only wish I could say that this played out in a deliberate attempt to dress her up as a duck for Halloween. In reality, I was too preoccupied to get into it. So on the morning of, when I noticed Sean's cousin's sweatshirt from when she was a baby (thank you, Emily!), I decided we could throw in matching babylegs and a yellow diaper cover and say she was a vintage duck for Halloween!

...???...

Yeah, yeah-- I know-- we're all doubting my ability to foster a creative and fun world for Josephine, but don't worry. I'll work on it.

I still found our 5 minute dabble in Halloween sort of cute, so here she is.

We've come a long way since our original ducky outfit...

still catching up...

We went to Teague the second weekend of October for Sean's mom's birthday.

Naturally, Josephine was a big helper during the gift opening. While the trip sadly included a funeral for Sean's grandmother's stepmother, Dena, those occurrences do tend to gather relatives together, which is nice. Naturally, Josephine enjoyed playing with Brayden (her distant cousin born just a week ahead of her). It's always a bright spot to watch babies together, even on sad occasions.

I'm including the picture below because I appreciate that Josephine's interest in Keely's camera is trumping her care for the ball. :-) Maybe all her camera cheese has really just been that she LIKES cameras. A photographer in the making!
A little worn out from all the socializing, rescued by Mama Jo...

We also visited Sean's granddad, who has been in the nursing home for several years now with Alzheimer's. It's just a short stint from his grandmother's home, so she visits him several times each day. Sean and I aren't always lucky enough to catch him awake, but this visit was especially rewarding because he was really cognisant of our visit, stayed awake a LONG time and was fascinated with Josephine. I have never been happier that she looks so much like Sean did as a baby, because I bet that helped him make the connection.

And though this is unrelated to the Teague visit, in an effort to keep track of things in one easily accessible place, I'm transferring some scattered notes I've made to the blog.

She had her 6 month pediatrician visit on September 30 (a couple days shy of her 6 month birthday). At that point she weighed 15 lbs 8 oz (7 pounds more than when she was born, but still not doubling her birth weight). They said her weight was in the 25th-50th percentile. Her height was 25.5 inches (also in the 25th-50th percentile). Her head circumference was in the 50th-75th percentile at 42.7 cm.

In the first week of October, Josephine started announcing all her forthcoming bubbles with a "buh" or even "bub" sometimes, and saying "Mmm" or "muh" at the table when she wanted more. Since "bubble" and "more" are words I've used with her a million times, daily, since her birth, I guess I wasn't really surprised that she started mimicking them. I don't know what's normal for kids, but in Josephine's case, she still rarely practices her consonants while she's playing alone. When she's alone she pretty much just says "aaaa" or "uuuu" with EVERY SINGLE BREATH. But when she's around people and perhaps more in her communicating mode, that's when she throws in the consonants in efforts to talk. Like when she started using "buh" and "muh" they were in context, at appropriate times, when she was trying to tell me about her bubble or that she wanted more. So when it comes to language capabilities, how's that for classy? My kid's first semi-words were solely focused on her GI tract. These have remained consistent since then, although she only talks about a bubble now if it's really causing her grief, until it finally emerges, rather than announcing each and every one before it pops. Her ability to enunciate the words has also improved since October. When all her little synapses are firing juuuust right, she can really say them quite well! I just wish she would rely on her words more frequently than she relies on fussing to communicate.

Also, in the early part of October, a few things peaked. Mainly my patience. The lack of napping schedule was leaving me at a complete loss for how to schedule in errands, exercise, and activities-- much less my work on the house renovations (and those of you who've done home renovations know that having an entire room under construction and dealing with the resulting mess is a serious stressor). Nighttime sleep was lousy. (Having been spoiled by her wonderful sleeping that first trimester, the unpredictability of nights was perhaps the most difficult part). Nursing wasn't going well, either-- she was showing less and less interest in it. And all of this was further strained by the knowledge that Josephine had dropped another level in her height/weight percentiles. While she was still, on whole, a happy, healthy baby, I felt like my attempts to remain flexible and juggle everything were drowning.

Cue Drill Sergeant Mommy. Those splendid Haigler roots kicked in, and a schedule was implemented. Not perfectly at first, but it gradually took hold. I didn't want to change it anytime in the foreseeable future, so I went ahead and started her on a three-meal, two-nap, overnight sleep regimen. The meals were small at first, but I've let her eat as much as she wants (though not necessarily WHAT she wants ;-)). The naps took reinforcing, and a deliberate attempt to adhere to the clock on my part, but she got used to them fairly quickly-- and they've made her awake time far more pleasant. The overnight sleep part was fairly successful, though it's still a little iffy. But at least now we know what to do if she wakes up at 2 AM... (I go in there, say "not now, Josephine. It's too early." and then we all go back to sleep).

As for her physical growth, her eating/nursing improved a tiny bit with the predictability of the schedule and getting more rest during the day, but not really enough. Generally speaking, Josephine is an impatient nurser. I'm not one of the moms that needs nursing pads because I'm always on the verge of leaking if I hear a baby cry. Nooooo, I'm missing that level of maternal instinct. In my case, I need her to work on it for a minute or two before the milk lets down. And unfortunately, she frequently doesn't have the patience for that (and trying to make her nurse when I feel like she doesn't want to stresses me out to the point that the milk never lets down at all). Anyway, since breast milk is about 50% fat, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out that the bulk of her calories need to come from milk, not baby food-- strained carrots can't compete. So around mid-October, after the Teague visit, we started supplementing with a bottle of formula at night before bed. We needed to know she wasn't waking up hungry in the middle of the night before we could realistically enforce the overnight sleep, and the evening nursing session was always the worst.

In short, that's worked well. Here's where we've wound up: Josephine usually takes about 6 oz of formula before bed, and then I nurse her when she wakes up around 5 or 6 AM. We go back to sleep, then she nurses before breakfast at 8:30. She naps for 1.5 to 2 hours in the last half of the morning, and when she wakes up, I nurse her and then feed her lunch. She naps from about 3:30-5:30, and then I nurse her before feeding her dinner. Then she gets as much formula she wants right before going to sleep. If our nursing sessions are especially distracted and ineffective during the day, I mix formula in with some oatmeal to make sure she's getting calories (but I don't want to offer the bottle during the day, because I guarantee she'd throw breastfeeding completely out the window if she thought Instant-Mommy-in-a-Bottle was available to her all day). And I still want her to get some antibodies from nursing, even if she can't get all the calories she needs that way.

But generally, she doesn't seem to care much for nursing, so I'm guessing she'll be happy to wean whenever I finally let her. She gives it very little effort-- even when the milk is down and ready to go, she'd rather sit up and play with my hair or make eyes at me and babble away. Which is cute, but frustrating. Other than sleep issues, I think this has been the most challenging aspect of motherhood for me. It's difficult knowing that I'm home with her all day, every day, perfectly willing and capable of breastfeeding-- a situation many moms would like to have. I know how good it is for her health, and it's FREE. I struggled with the idea of introducing [expensive!] formula a long time before I caved. But in the end, I can't MAKE her nurse, and she still needs the calories from somewhere. Like my mom pointed out, it's supposed to be a pleasant experience. (She also pointed out that I did the same thing to her at 7 months-- I totally refused nursing altogether and was weaned by 7.5 months). I guess I'm getting at taste of my own medicine!

Anyway, I have a lot more to catch up on, but I promise future posts won't be this text-heavy. I've just needed to fill in a lot of what's been happening over the last couple months!

fiber