Makin' Daddy Proud

Here's what's currently new and cool about my daughter. I can TEACH her stuff. Actual stuff!

I've taught her to:

• Kick a soccer ball.
• Use her shape sorter
• stack her rings (not in order yet)
• Strum the guitar instead of chew it.
• Blow bubbles
• Use a spoon with about a 40% success rate.

It's really fun to teach her the names of various things. I'll point at various pictures and say "Zebra", then "Flamingo", then "fish" and then later ask her were the Zebra is, and she'll often find it! Very fun.
We've started playing "baby hat/daddy hat (mom hat, dog hat, etc.)", which involves picking up various things and seeing if they stay on her head or mine. Not only is this extremely cute, she seems to get that it's a game. She understands the idea and thinks it's funny.

She's learned to climb on to the dining room table (I didn't teach her that), and climb and descend the stairs with varying degrees of success.
Just a few minutes ago we caught her sitting at the dining room table with a pen in her hand "drawing" in a magazine. Crazy.

13 months

Anya is now 13 months old. I've been a bit lax on posting this last week. I've been busy. In retrospect, I don't know exactly what I've been busy with, but it was very important stuff I'm sure. Here's the monthly roundup.

Locomotion

Anya is pretty good at walking, and walking quickly. It hasn't occurred to her to try running yet, which I am thankful for. It's coming, though. Probably as a Christmas present to us :/. Speaking of Christmas, we will not be putting up a tree this year. The bug is a climbing fiend. I just know the second I put it out, she will attempt (and probably succeed) to climb it, knocking down and breaking all the ornaments in the process. No stockings over the fireplace either. And no presents out. Any decorations will be way up high, theoretically out of her reach. She's bad, that baby. Apparently she takes after her uncle Brian (Chris' brother), who was a notorious climber. I've been told stories of his climbing feats, like how when he was 4(?) he managed to climb on top of a full-sized basketball hoop. I'm not even sure how that's possible, but please let that not be in our future.

Speech

Like I mentioned in the last post, Anya started a mini-language explosion over the last few weeks. That's still happening. She's picked up some words that we didn't specifically try to teach her. Like keys and flower. And phone. One she is finally saying (that' we' had previously been unsuccessful at teaching her) is "Grandma," but that comes out as "gaga". Close enough.

Other development

I can't really think of anything here. Probably lots of stuff. Oh. Chris was thrilled yesterday when Anya figured out how to stack all the stars on her stacker toy. That takes a little dexterity. Chris, what else am I foretting?

Food

I took away the bottles a little over a week ago. So now Anya is totally on straw cups and sippy cups. She has also decided that actual baby food is disgusting (except for the fruit that we stir into her yogurt every morning and her Baby Mum-Mum crackers). She only wants grown up food now. Current favorites (subject to change weekly or more often) are smoked salmon, edamame (she calls them mama, which is confusing...I dont know if she wants me or edamame), chicken, peas, and the Mum-Mum crackers. She just went through a big growth spurt, where her stomach was a bottomless pit. Now it's back to normal and she picks at her food and/or tosses it overboard.

Bye Bye, Babyhood

Anya is no longer a baby. I'm a little sad to say it, because in some ways I miss things from her babyhood, like being able to rock her to sleep, feed her a bottle (or breastfeed) first thing in the morning and last thing before bed as she snuggles with me and looks into my eyes. I'll miss her sitting in one spot and still being there if I walk out of the room for a minute. Her needs were simple - food, sleep, diaper change.

But Anya is now definitely a toddler. And a handful. I thought we were well babyproofed. I was wrong. She now climbs (or attempts to) almost everything in sight. Yesterday as we were getting ready to have some friends over for dinner, we walked into the dining room and found her standing on the dining room chair holding a corkscrew in one hand and reaching for a fork with the other. Gah!

She has also been getting frustrated lately and making sure we know it. There are some words she knows, but there is still a disconnect between her wants and her ability to communicate them. For example, she knows to use the word "up" if she wants to get on the couch. Occasionally she forgets to use it, though. So when we don't pick up on that fact instantly that she wants on the couch, she screams and carries on and enters this inconsolable state and appears incapable of communication or rational thought. I don't know if this is a temper tantrum or not, but this behavior is a pain in the butt to deal with. We're working on it, though. Ugh, I think we're headed for the "terrible two's" already.

But on a good note, yesterday Anya hit a little milestone. She strung together two words for the first time (technically, she may have done it the other week when I asked if she wanted more cheese. She said "no..............cracker" indicating she wanted a cracker instead). Chris went out the front door and she said "bye, dada. bye, dada" (a few times). Over the last few weeks, she seems to have started a mini "language explosion," as they call it. I would like to think this means our daughter is brilliant and will probably be the next president or Nobel Prize winner. But apparently I was like this as an infant too. And while I'm obviously a total genius, as all who have ever met me can attest to...I'm also unemployed and take care of a baby (I mean, toddler) all day. So this is no indication of her future greatness. But it still is cool to watch unfold.

A Plague of Boils!

As promised I'm posting the horrific photos of Anya's immune response to her measles vaccine so that when our friends get around to getting their little loved ones immunized if they happen to be far away from home when something like this covers their child head to toe they don't freak out. Miraculously, this didn't bother Anya at all. No itching, no scratching. I however did get a psychosomatic (I prefer to call it empathetic) rash.

There is a funny story though. Anya DID have a crazy allergic reaction while we were out at BBQ one night. Her entire arm turned bright red and all the measles pox turned stark white. It happened very suddenly was very ugly and scared the crap out of me. When your kid starts to have a reaction like this you should check out her belly and neck and make sure it's not happening there (which would be very bad) Everyone around us had clued into the fact that I'm freaking out, and we stand Anya up on her high chair so everyone around us can see, we lift up her shirt to reveal this:

"Eh, she's fine," we say and go back to eating. Everyone around us must have thought we were nuts. I washed off her arm and the reaction went away very quickly. Must have been something she rubbed up against under the table or somewhere.

* this was posted by Chris, not Amy

Traveling with Baby

Our little family is on the East Coast for a week of visiting friends and relatives.
So far we've been to DC to see Brian, Tara, and Mia (Chris' brother's family) ; and Chad and Megan (old good friends).
Now we're in Charlotte, NC where we're staying with Don, Koby, and Alivia (Amy's oldest brother's family), and we've seen Grandma and Grandpa B. So far the visiting has been wonderful and the travel pretty terrible.
Anya has been awesome, so we can't really blame her for it. She very diplomatically walks around the airport waiting rooms charming people and making friends before the flight so as to lessen their annoyance should she have a rough go of it. But she's slept pretty much every time we've gone more than 20 minutes to anywhere.
The 5 1/2 hour layover in Detroit starting at 5 am was the worst so far. Anya wanted to walk all over and say hi to everyone she saw so we had to take turns sleeping on the floor.
Amy had the double whammy of a very painful decent in Detroit due to a cold, and a very squirrelly decent into Baltimore that activated her motion sickness.
Every time we drive anywhere over the last couple days it has dumped rain, which makes driving a little precarious.
Now to top it all, Anya is having an immune response to her measles vaccine and is breaking out in the most startling rash you've ever seen (provided you haven't had the measles yourself). It keeps getting worse and we have to remind ourselves it is totally expected. But there is something built into parents that makes them anxious when their child is covered with pox of any sort. She doesn't seem to mind at all. But I'm here to tell you it's FREAKY looking (photos will be posted upon our return).
Still, we're very glad to be here and are having a wonderful time of it.

PEPS Birthday party

Yesterday, our PEPS group got together for a group birthday party at The Little Gym. Anya, being the oldest (along with Ardashir) got to relive her birthday glory, while the younger ones got to see a taste of what's to come in the next few weeks. It was fun. Unfortunately it took place when Anya normally has her second nap, but she rallied and we only had to leave a little bit early.

babies and balls

Anya completes her first flip on the bar and is quite pleased with herself

Benjamin and one of his countless expressions

Anya is not cooperating on the balance beam.

babies and bubbles

12 month checkup

Anya had her 12 month checkup today.

Weight: 21-1/2 pounds (50-75%) chunker!
Height: 29-1/2 inches (50%)

It was a good thing I had to reschedule her checkup for this week. Apparently she has an ear infection. She was a little crankier than usual the other day, but I figured it was teething-related. The doctor wasn't going to initially treat it, since it was mild. But since we're flying in a few days, he decided to give her antibiotics to make sure it's gone. Otherwise, there was the possibility of a ruptured eardrum in flight. That would have been fun!

Besides the ear infection, all is well. She's very healthy and a little ahead of the curve developmentally. She also got her shots today. After much deliberation, I opted for the standard vaccine schedule, but made sure she got a few "safe" specific brands. And there ya go.

A Great Day

Dear Anya,

Last night you got to witness a very important moment. Our first African-American president was elected. You were oblivious as to why all the adults in the room were excited and cheering. You were too busy having fun playing with Eva, Eloise, and Flynn and climbing on your piano to care. But yesterday was a big day. Hopefully our country's reputation will now begin to be restored in the world's eyes. And hopefully our nation's health care system will begin to be fixed, among other things. The state of the country you were born into was not what we want to raise you in. We hope this marks the beginning of change for the better, and that you will grow up to take pride in where you come from.

love,
mom and dad

I love catching the kid doing cute stuff. She's mastered climbing onto her rocking horse. So now this is what she does when she sneaks off to her room. Could be worse.

Halloween costume

Last Halloween was the day we got to take Anya home from the hospital. It was a relatively quiet evening, with a few trick or treaters, Chris' parents making us dinner, me on lots of pain meds and trying to remember (and failing) to sit down gently (ouch). And a beautiful little girl that we were all mesmerized with.

This Halloween was also fairly quiet, since Anya was cutting some teeth and wasn't quite her usual chipper self. We had some bigger plans to hang with friends and go to a little Halloween carnival, but ended up just trick or treating a little bit in the neighborhood.

Even though Anya wasn't in her costume much on Halloween, we still got a fair amount of mileage out of it this week. I sewed her a skunk costume, because she's our little stinker (har dee har har) and it's also freakin' adorable.

At Sadye's Halloween-themed birthday party last Saturday

At infant co-op Halloween party. 

Infant co-op babies. Anya is in the ball pit. In the 2 seconds I ran up to take the picture, she took off her headpiece and looked in the other direction. Badness.

At the PEPS Halloween party Wednesday night. Again with trying to take off the head piece

Anya and Flynn (and Chris & Josh) trick-or-treating on Halloween

Trick or treat!