reminds me of the one I love

Josephine recently had her first visit to Lost Prairie where she got a brief glimpse of the land that's been in Sean's family for what is now eight generations. I felt like Mufasa telling her how, someday, aaaallll this would be hers. You could almost hear an inspirational soundtrack developing-- the wind blowing through the trees, the rustling grasses, birds squawking, the bellows of distant cattle, [the oil compressor two properties over], locusts buzzing, a random dog bark-- all joined in a harmony fit for any heartwarming Disney movie... And then Sean sort of ruined the awe-inspiring moment by getting technical and explaining, "Well, not back there, and only up until that treeline where there's a fence, and it stops at the road if you were to keep walking in that direction..." etc. Not sure she caught all the details, especially because she seemed focused on squirming, sweating, and squinting in the immense Texas heat, but that didn't stop us from taking some photos and generally enjoying our visit. (I'm just relieved that the cattle were nowhere in sight. I know Sean would have wanted pictures of her practically sitting on the beasts, and I have certain maternal concerns about one of her sudden cries instigating a stampede and us all being trampled to death or fatally impaled by a longhorn).

I'm guessing since she's bigger than a cow skull, she's probably not the littlest cowpoke anymore. There's probably one out there smaller. She is the loveliest.

You might have seen Sean's latest post. Here are a couple of out-takes...

... like father like daughter. But we refrained from putting a cigar in that little fist (AND I'll note that Sean's cigar was NOT lit during this little episode. We opted to keep her tiny lungs cancer-free and sacrifice a little authenticity.)

I didn't realize this was a step in recovering from the strain of pregnancy until the end of Monday. Takes the "official" care off your tired shoulders. I no longer have to be the wisest one-- there is now a number to call with an awesome nurse practitioner on the other end, and a very respectful, kind, sweet doctor. It is a relief. I feel just a little more recovered now.

So at 11 1/2 weeks, Josephine had her first pediatrician appointment. (Yes, Mommy is running 3 1/2 weeks behind, but that's pretty good for me!) Dumpling is now a hefty 14 pounds, 3 oz. I'd have actually guessed she was at least 15, so I'm a bit surprised that she came in lower. But thankfully she's slowed down the whole gain-one-pound-per-week stint. My arms are tired enough, as is. This weight has her at the 95%ile. (It's fun being at a pediatrician now where we get to hear percentile info!)

Unfortunately, she seems to have inherited her mother's short legs, because she's all out of proportion. If they had a percentile for trunk length and cheek roundness, I'm sure she'd hit 95%ile there too... but because of those squat stumps, her length is only in the 75th (she's 23 3/4 inches). Ah well. Maybe her dad's leg length will kick in later.

Since Dr. Boes is supportive of alternative vaccination schedules, we're doing the Dr. Sears one where she'll only get one vaccine with aluminum at a time. (I haven't done a ton of research about this or anything-- just read The Vaccine Book. According to Dr. Sears, there's limited research about the build-up of aluminum and its toxicity, so since our co-pay is low and I don't have to take time off work to take her in, there's no reason to bunch up a lot of aluminum vaccines at once... just in case.) So today she got her DTaP (Daptacel) and Rotavirus (RotaTeq) vaccines. Handled them like a champ, although clearly the RotaTeq stuff tastes preeeeetty nasty, and YES a needle in the thigh DOES hurt. She made a quick recovery from the pain, seemed extra fussy the rest of the day, had a 100 degree fever yesterday (Baby Tylenol helped), and today seems especially drowsy. Hopefully these side effects won't last much longer...

In other news, this last week and half has held a variety of milestones for Miss Josephine!

We are now reaching and grabbing with success (left hand preferred, and seemingly the only one discovered-- should I be worried about this??). This has also led to a pleasant increase in thumb sucking!

We also rolled tummy to back ONE time so far, unassisted in any fashion! A few other times with slight assistance; it turns out that being in a disposable diaper helps. I'm afraid she might encounter a few cloth diaper handicaps along her developmental way. But she doesn't actually seem to know how to do the rolling thing, because since the first time, I haven't really seen a pattern of understood behavior. So I think it might have been a fluke-- the arms, head, legs just happened to move in the correct direction at the same time, which resulted in rolling. Usually we just get one appendage doing the correct thing. Here's a shot of our typical ending point-- stuck.

Anyway, best of all, on Saturday, June 13, I SWEAR she mimicked back "Thank You" like six times in a row! And since then, she's said it clearly several times (garbled, many times), although on whole, not much compared to all her other babblings. Obviously she can't do the "th" since she's lacking front teeth. But she does have a two-syllable "ank-coo!" :-) I'M SERIOUS! Well... coincidence or not, my efforts to teach her the phrase have been reinvigorated! For those of you who haven't heard this yet: I don't much care if she says "mama" when she sees me, so we haven't practiced that. Even before she was born, I decided if she could just look at me and say "thank you" all the time, my motherhood experience would be that much more rewarding. So ever since her emergence we've been working on "thank you" multiple times per day. It's always just been a fun game where I say it and she smiles really big. Finally getting a mimic out of her was AWESOME... I actually shed a few tears because it caught me so off-guard-- she'd hadn't even been anywhere close to saying anything like it, and then suddenly, June 13, she looked at me and said it SOOOO clearly! I said it back, she said it back, I said it back, she said it back, you get the beautiful idea. Lovely.

Update: Okay, I'm sure you all think I'm delusional (and that's possible), but since I started writing this on Monday, it sure seems to me that she has started using her "ankoo" as a reward for when I do something she likes. For instance, she loves her swing. So if she's fussing away, and I put her in the swing, TWICE now since Monday, she has immediately stopped crying, looked at me sweetly, smiled, and said ankoo-- the word she knows I want to hear. She also did it this morning when I finally fed her (I was trying to get a few things situated and she did NOT have the patience for it. So when I was finally ready, she latched on like a hungry, starving monster, and after a few minutes of shoveling food into her face, she broke away peacefully to smile, make eyes at me and say "ankoo" before getting back to business.) These moments are hilarious to me. She has no idea what Thank You means, but I really think she knows I want to hear her say it. It seems that several times now, when she's been especially pleased with me, she's done her darnedest to respond with that little word. Which works out perfectly, because those are appropriate times to thank me. :-)

Anyway, it's going to be the cutest thing when she starts mimicking it on cue!

And now for a few more pictures from our travels. In all my moaning about how trying it was, I actually failed to point out that we had a GREAT time seeing everyone, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. It was such a treat to visit with our friends in Atlanta and see how much their little ones had grown. I also got to know some of Sean's extended family better while we were in Teague! Here's Josephine with her 4th cousins:

The newest one is Brayden; he was born just a week before Josephine! Josephine's wearing a hand-smocked dress given to her by other members of this same extended family... Dena and Carlos. According to Josephine, such a pretty dress obviously deserves to be christened by spit up, hence the different outfit she's wearing above, and in the black/white photo below.