peas please

to continue with the Oliver! theme,

Please, sir… May I have some……… more?

Now- peas tell me HOW do you get peas out of neck rolls???

week 28

let me share some of the things she’s doing now that pretty much make us laugh:

- speaking of laugh, she STILL doesn’t know what to make of it when we/i laugh at her.  so she gets this awfully confused look on her face.  which only makes me crack up even more.  she’s adorable when i go get her from nap time, and she’ll do something to make me laugh & we begin a cycle.

- she is constantly blowing raspberries.  she even has graduated and mostly does the phbbhhtt sound.  and i think she thinks this is conversation.  it’s funny to see that she just does it without thinking; and oftentimes in the middle of looking around or focusing on something else.    ….she may think this is convo b/c for the first couple months of her life, her daddy never knew what to say to her, so he’d do a big phbbhhtt sound at her & he sorta makes it sound like he’s zipping it up.  guess it got her attention.

- she is trying to touch every!thing!  she constantly has her arms out to her side, ready to grab anything that she can.  i fear when she touches yiminy w/o my guidance.  these are 2 “people” that can’t understand what the other is doing.  he gets quite feisty.  and she yanks HARD.  not to mention the fact that her hand spends 96% of her waking day in her mouth.  couple that with kitty fur and ewww.   i’m thinking when she’s mobile we’ll have our work cut out for us. 

- she has again reinstated her daddy attachment.  it’s quite insulting, actually.  several times while he was on vacation for christmas, he’d get her in the morning and plop her in bed so i can feed her.  when he would leave, she would cry.  ummm- doesn’t she know how important eating is???  for a while now, she’d be distracted when he’d come up to visit us in the bed.  poor guy has learned he needs to stay away until he hears her playing & squealing a lot.  otherwise she won’t finish eating.    and now that he’s back at work and things are normal again, she’s just fine w/ me.  but as soon as he comes home, she starts to fuss if he doesn’t look at her and make her smile then grab her out of my arms.

- she’s not very good at telling me what she wants.  oh, sure- i know i’m not very good at understanding what she wants. but seriously:  she can be content in dad’s arms (or even mine).  or even happily at play.  not a peep of frustration or anything.  as soon as i scoop her up and get ready to feed her, she turns into this hungry baby.  she starts to whine and squeal and cry.  until i can shove me in her mouth and she just devours it like i’ve never fed her in my life!  all she has to do is show me some hunger signs whenever she’s hungry.  but since she spends the whole day w/ her fist in her mouth (which used to be her cue), i feed her by the clock.  it doesn’t matter how long i wait or how quickly i feed her, it’s always impatient hungry baby!

- if anything even thinks about going near her face, she catches her breath and sounds like she’s going underwater.  it’s kinda funny.  but i wish she’d hurry up and figure out she has to only move whatever’s on her face & she doesn’t have to “drown”.  we play with her clothes before we put them on. that seems to help the scream factor by at least 3%.  but she never knocks the clothes off of her face. which is funny.   harvard anyone?

and i am very glad to say that at the dr.’s office last week, the numbers & percentiles confirmed that she is finally “evening up”.  she looks like a 6 month old.  which is appropriate.  but she’s looked like a 6 month old for like 4 months now.

food, glorious food!

nummy-num

now that jovie has reached the 6mo mark, The Mr. & i decided to give her her first taste of food.  i know some of you out there have fed your baby at 4months (some even sooner).  but truthfully, neither one of us was ready.

the doctor said at that 4mo appt that i can feed her “if i want”.  i was surprised to realize it wasn’t based on anything in particular.  the books and emails these days say to introduce solids b/t ages of 4 & 6 months.  i always just assumed it was based on each kid individually.  —you know, like those other milestones.  and how in one sentence, your baby should be grapsing/babbling/crawling/talking.  but  in the next it says “or not”.—

however, tho she’s always had good head control, it wasn’t until fairly recently that she would hold it upright for a long time.  and sitting w/o slumping. and keeping her tongue in her mouth. 

also- i was expecting her to reject food for awhile. b/c  other than her hand, she really doesn’t like to have anything in her mouth for longer than a nanosecond.  teethers?? not yet.  i assume when she’s in pain and they feel comforting she may hang on to them for longer than she does now.  & she’ll grab a toy. immediately mouth it and make a face and spit it right back out….only to repeat the same move a few more times before tossing it.

and i wasn’t ready.  feeding her (nursing) is so easy/convenient.  now it’s bibs, spoons, high-chair, washcloth… and undoubtedly more laundry. (have i mentioned the raspberries!?!?)

still, on saturday, we gave her her first lunch.  and everyday since.

in true jovie fashion, the first day didn’t really hold her attention.  she did fine, though.  just ate a tiny bit.  at least she didn’t wail the whole time.  but of course on the 2nd day, she did a little better.  made some cute yucky faces and lots of puzzlement faces.  by monday, she had this thing down pat.  she smiles when i open my own mouth and say “aaahhh”.  and she ate the whole bit that i made.

pretty soon i guess we’ll introduce her to more than just rice cereal.  that’s when the real fun will begin.

one half

today marks jovie’s 6mo birthday.  she is officially a half year old.  no other time in her life is “one half” a big deal. 

i mean, do we really care when we make it to “one half  of forty??”  or yippee- i’m halfway to 60!  ??

i do know it won’t be much longer where she will proudly declare that she is ___ and a half!  if she’s a math whiz, she’ll probably also argue when she is ___ and 5/6th.

i vividly remember when i was pregnant with her at 20 weeks.  i joked that she was “half baked”  but now she’s made us go half crazy.  tho’ luckily, she’s half as fussy as she was.  still, i don’t think i even know half of what i’m doing!! 

we’ve enjoyed the past month or more— she’s pretty funny now.  i joke w/ everyone that we have an understanding and that she won’t be older than 6mo.  The Mr. wants to fast forward to when she’s like 10.  (ha! boy does he have a lot to learn, huh??  let’s use this blog to “mark his words”…  b/c i bet it will be quite different.)  Me?  i’m enjoying what i’ve got.  i’m acutely aware of how some things have already been changing.  let’s not forget, i’m the one who still calls our pets “kittens”. 

i know as she gets older, i’ll enjoy what she’s doing then, too.  but right now- i’m loving one half. 

she’s one half The Mr. & one half me.  but she’s twice as cute!

tutu part tu

here’s the original picture

here she is 4 months later…   (thanks again, aunt barb!)