The baby that ate Manhatten...

We're almost into sentences. Baby comes up, says "up", you lift her up, then she points at what she wants and says "more". Lately, this seems to often be the food on the counter, such as the banana or the apples. Here, she swiped an apple and spent quite a while wandering around munching on it (I'm not really sure why the front door...) Ended up eating half of it. And this was after eating half a box of macaroni and cheese for lunch. If you look closely, you can actually see a tangerine in the next picture, which is another victim of "more".

She's getting more explicit about wanting you to do things. She's come over, grabbed my fingers, and dragged me to the piano so that she could sit in my lap and pound on the keys. She also likes you to open things she can't quite manage, so she can watch and do it too. And she'll hand you socks and shoes to put on - sometimes hers, sometimes yours. It's very funny to watch her try to get one of our shoes on her feet...

I'm normally really good about not buying things, but I've become a sucker for fun baby toys. I don't know why, because her favorite toys are: the cookie tin some friends brought over, taking things in (and out of) the recycle bin, tearing up mom's papers as she's trying to review them, taking the toilet paper off the roll and tearing it into shreds, a wet wash cloth, carrying her jacket around, carrying mom's shoes around, the toothpaste tube... That said, I bought her a bunch of wooden fruit that you can "cut" apart (velcro'd together) when I was at Whole Foods. So far, sticking the knife in the handle of the cutting board seems to be the best thing to do.

I'm afraid we didn't do much for her birthday - just went down to the park and the library. I also spent some time outside with her on Sunday since it was so nice out. She played on her plastic play set, but had a really good time crawling in, around, and on the Adirondeck chairs. And picking up every acorn on the driveway. She had a bit of trouble walking up the driveway, but the next day tootled right up it. We're going to have to be very careful about closing the gate so she can't get to the street.

Banging on the piano is fun, but mom's not allowed to actually play. She'll hold my finger and then make my finger press notes. Then help me turn the pages.

Bill was out of town Saturday until today, which was exhausting, and the house looks like a hurricane hit it. I opted out of day care for Monday because the furnace guy was coming over anyways to look at our noisy fan. She's been a bit better about keeping herself entertained, but I feel like all I've done for the last few days is put food on her tray, put more food on (constant calls of "more", I think sometimes just so she can watch me open up the box), then get her water, then wash her hands and face, then the tray, then the chair and the floor... and by the time I'm done, she wants more food. Sigh.

It's getting harder and harder to get her to go to sleep at night. She doesn't want to be held and rocked anymore - she screams and pushes with both arms and legs and flings herself around. So I've been putting her in the crib, which she thinks is fun. So I lie on the bed while she stands up, sits down, does head stands, rattles the crib, wraps the blanket around herself, flops down, rolls around... eventually she starts getting fussy, but when I try to pick her up, more screaming and thrashing. So I finally just gave up and went to brush my teeth and change, which led to hysterical screaming. But at least she was tired when I got back and she lay in my arms for another 5-10 minutes before she actually started closing her eyes. I think she wants to lie down and go to sleep (she's been doing that at day care - they put her in the crib and pat or rock her to sleep) but she just can't unwind enough. I tried for an hour tonight, then just gave up and brought her downstairs. Despite being exhausted, it still took Bill a half an hour to get her to go to sleep. On the plus side, she has been sleeping better - only waking up once before wanting to nurse at 5 ish.

I had a bit of a scare with the stairs (which she's very good at going up and down). I'd gone downstairs to do the laundry, and since she couldn't follow me down stairs she went up instead... found her poking around in the bird's cage. I'm really only worried about her wanting to go down the stairs - she hasn't quite figured that out, although at the moment she seems quite content to wait for one of us to come help her down.

She's figured out how to turn all the faucets on now. And open doors. At least she's learned that she has to step back to let me open the door to the shower. Mostly she's pretty good now about playing until I get out, but this morning she was not at all happy.

She actually went from 8 to 3 on Friday without nursing, and didn't seem too bothered. Of course, she was being entertained by Kurt, who kindly took her and carried her around his labs while Bill and I were at the advisory board meeting. Good thing she has no stranger anxiety...

Robert and Andrea came over last night to keep me company. Isabella kept crawling into Robert's lap with her book, something she's been doing a lot of lately. It's very sweet, even if she only stays put for a minute or two.

Time to go to bed now so's I can roast the turkey tomorrow.