what a big helper!

Wheeerrre's the baby???

THERE SHE IS!!!

See, Josephine? Doing laundry is FUN.

What's that you say? You want to take over this responsibiltiy as soon as you possibly can? Weellll, ooookaaaayyyy, I guess so...

Sean would have none of it. Josephine would!

Apparently many disappointments come with fatherhood. Just ask Sean.

You'll remember that the first kick he felt from the womb was quite the let-down for him. We should have known then that for someone with ZERO baby experience, Sean tends to have a lot of notions about how things should be.

For instance, a newborn should get excited and giddy when he wants to run, play, and jump in her face hollering BOO once she's had a whopping three days of oxygen. Why on earth would she look so frightened??? If he's making funny noises, she should be laughing! Too bad that after nearly five months of this, she's only SOMETIMES on board, which frequently leaves him a tad disappointed. Not that he's given up; he thinks she just needs practice growing a sense of humor.

He also seems hurt that she hides her face from his prickly, unshaven kisses. She has learned: if Dad gets too close, quickly turn away and let him kiss the back of your head. I try to tell him-- she's a smart kid. She knows it hurts. I finally have someone else on my Please Shave team. Yessss!

Then there was the time she spat up on his face (a great deal of milk, really, right on his cheek, first thing in the morning). That was quite the blow the the fatherhood ego which supposes, "Surely MY daughter would never do anything as disgusting as other babies!" That was rough for him. He seemed to take it personally and kind of avoided her the rest of the morning. I made her apologize.

All of these, however, pale in comparison to his heartbreak over her bald spots and hair loss. You would not believe how frequently this comes up in conversation. He compares her hair to other babies'. He encourages her to grow more. He compliments her anytime he imagines it might have grown another millimeter. I frequently catch him saying things like "Yes, you ARE so cute... even though you're bald-- I DO love you, yes I do... it doesn't matter that you don't have hair..."

And perhaps the only thing Sean could be more sensitive to than the standard, male hair-loss-phobia is FOOD. Yes, food. He got really excited when I said we should make homemade Pedialyte for her, since between being outdoors in the extreme heat and what seemed like it might be diarrhea, I decided it wouldn't hurt to add a little to her diet for a day or two. Then I gave him the recipe: 4 cups water, half a teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar. He was devastated. The first thing he was making for his daughter was essentially saltwater???? I found out later that he cut down the sugar because he thought it was excessive, he only surpassed adding some homemade watermelon juice because he'd used honey to sweeten the juice, and the one "redeeming" part of the mixture was that he used Fleur de Sel rather than ordinary salt.

Up that a notch, and you have yesterday's event. Josephine's first solid food. I'd been telling him the pediatrician recommended we give a tiny bit of rice cereal (like a teaspoon) to start her in on the solids. So we strategically timed The Big Event around Sean's calls for work, during the east coast lunch hour-- he broke out the video camera, he started giving Josephine pep talks-- Rah, rah, REAL food! And then he saw the rice cereal. Adamant protesting ensued. This was NOT real food, this was HARDLY solid, he was expecting Rice Krispies, dang it! I can't even describe how crushed and disappointed he was at the mash I was mixing.

Despite her dad's disbelief and horror at what constituted her first "solid" food, Josephine was not put off for a second, as you can see below. Sean claims that's only because she doesn't know any better. He duly took some footage, but wasn't exactly happy about any of it.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't end by saying that a great deal of AWESOMENESS also comes with fatherhood. Just ask Sean.

(But a post detailing all the cutesy things he does [and would never admit to doing] would have fallen somewhere along the spectrum of cheesy to sickening, don't you agree? This was much more fun. :-) )

Deep Eddy

We visited Deep Eddy for the first time this afternoon, which is a spring fed pool in Austin. Quite nice-- school is back in session, so other than some lap swimmers and a couple other babies, it was really quiet. These post-swim photos of Josephine were my favorites; since I didn't have to use the flash, they look like the baby we actually look at every day.

(Smitten, photo-happy Grandmothers, please note: if the images are pixelized, like they appear to be on my blog preview, it has something to do with me uploading them. I can get you a non-pixelized version if you are intending to print any out.)

Can I just note how much the above expression looks like Sean in his old birthday picture???

We also saw a super-cool moth on the pecan tree we were sitting under...

...which reminds me of the little gecko in our kitchen last night. I failed to get a photo, but he clearly thought he was camouflaged sitting there on our rosy-salmony-peach colored walls. It was cute.

ah, babies.

On Saturday, Josephine had a little play date with her friend, Zanna, while Zanna's folks went to a wedding. This was actually their second time hanging out, because she stayed at Zanna's recently while Sean and I went to a concert. We know Zanna's parents, Sarah and Cameron because I went to Austin College with them... (okay, enough of the linkage)...
In short, they're awesome, and we're thrilled they live so close and that we (and our kiddos) get to hang out!

Anyway, there's just very little in life that is more adorable than watching babies interact. I do not understand it, but they are instantly more connected to each other than they are to adults. Josephine might get smiley and happy when I walk into the room, but if a baby enters her presence, she is ENTHRALLED, instantly chatty, animated, and grabby. Sean accurately described their intense conversations like recordings of whale song.

Zanna, being 5 weeks older, is a perfect little role model for Josephine. Josephine did her gorilla-sit better than ever for Zanna as they sat across from each other-- you could tell she was trying to impress this older, more able child-- which was cute. Zanna is also much more out-going than Josephine is right now and was very good at setting a social, up-beat example for our teething, cranky daughter. Sean and I nearly died laughing every time Josephine started fussing because Zanna would sit there, watch Josephine melt down, and start giggling like it was a comedy show! It was hysterical. I constantly tormented my own little sister (sorry, Darla) so seeing a barely-older baby laugh at a the angst of a younger one was somehow very funny to me (not that it's funny, Darla).

Here's a picture of the two giggling at my peek-a-boo game with the baby in the book. Another instance of role-modeling: Josephine frequently looked over to make sure Zanna was laughing before she would laugh along. By the end of it, Josephine had put her arm around Zanna's shoulders, which was TOO cute.

And here's their little fuzz-covered heads...
We love you Miss Suzanna Grace!!! See you soon!!

Doesn't THIS look familiar

Here's a play-by-play of Josephine's trap in action:

"Hello, Ducky! I'm so surprised to see you!"

"I'm even more excited to be holding you! Thank you, Mom!"

"Now, come here, Ducky-- Let me take a closer look at you..."
"YES! YES! Your face is PERFECT for eating!"

Like I tried to explain before, the thrill over any new face is a merely a guise for her desire to eat it. Here are four other common postures for Josephine lately:

The "someone just came in the room and I must look up and see who" pose.

The "flying angel" pose (or at least that's what my mom always called it when babies did this).

The "face-toe scoot" (her simultaneously preferred and unpreferred mode of transportation, since she quickly decides she DOESN'T like inching around on her face, and then quickly forgets and tries it again and again and again... siiiiigh...)

And, of course, the ever casual "I'm just hanging out talking to my toy" pose.

And that, folks, is going to have to suffice for a while, because a little tab has snapped off my camera memory card, and apparently snapped off in the "locked" position, so I cannot take any more pictures on this card. Unless anyone knows how to remedy this, I'll need to look into getting a new one.