Shoes

Here we are at work, sitting on top of the new car. I tried to get some decent pictures of her at work, but didn't get any good ones.

What has she been up to... she's finally feeling better, although still has a bit of a cough. Parents are almost well, too, although I still can't hear anything. It's such a relief to have our happy, non-velcro child back (although she's still nursing much more frequently than before she got sick). Everyone at day care is sick or sniffly. And it's been well below freezing, which hasn't helped.

Her latest tricks... she followed me up the stairs, climbed over the bottom rung of the gate at the top of the stairs, then turned around and closed the gate! She's quite insistent that the gates be closed - I don't know if she just likes to close them, or she thinks they should be closed. Sometimes she wants you to open them, then she'll put whatever she's carrying (penguin, a diaper) on the other side of the gate, then close the gate. Then you have to open the gate so she can get them back again... I still don't think we really need the gates, but I suppose it does save an accidental fall down the stairs.

She's gotten very good at sliding off of the bed and the couch. She turns around and wriggles until her feet touch the ground. Every morning she wants to sit on the couch and play with the cord from the blinds. And look out the window. If it wasn't for her bad habit of *standing* on the couch, I could just leave her there to play. Fortunately, she hasn't really figured out how to climb up on the couch by herself, although I think she could if she really tried. She's getting pretty tall - she can reach the top of the table, just. Still doesn't seem inclined to knock things down, though - we still have all of the plants and such within reach.

Other tricks... Dad's been playing "Where's your nose/ears/hair/mouth?", and she'll now point at hers (or yours) fairly reliably. She definitely understands basic sentences, like "Where's your shoes?" and "Let's go upstairs/downstairs and get the birdie/laundry". She's also learned "no" - she says "no" and does this shake of her head, then looks at you and grins. "No" with a vigorous head shake seems to mean no, while a half a head shake is more of a maybe or a yes. We're working on yes - she seems to get it, sort of, but doesn't want to say it. And kinda does a head circle like she can't quite make it from no to yes...

She likes to crawl into laps now. Sometimes she'll go get a book or the blocks or whatever she wants to play with and then gets you to sit down and then turns around and sits in your lap. While sick she ate a lot of meals sitting in my lap, and she wanted me to feed her with her spoon. Fortunately, she's back to her usual, two-fisted eating habits. Unfortunately, we let her have some pineapple orange juice, and now she wants it all the time. And she can down a cup of it in nothing flat!

She's been getting a lot of use out of her bouncing zebra, the push toy, and the train. She knows about the on-off switch on the zebra, and can turn the push toy so that it works right. Her favorite game with the train is to be pushed around on it - which is a bit hard on the back! Penguin's still going everywhere, although not quite so much now that she's feeling better. She's still modeling things with him - she put him in the high chair and tried to buckle him in. At day care she put him in a bucket, then pushed the bucket down the stairs. Then took penguin out and pushed just penguin down the stairs... Throwing things seems to be fun now.

I'm going to try something new - this is a video of her dragging my shoes around the office. I'm not sure why my shoes are so much fun to drag around, but she does it pretty frequently.

She's still not sleeping through the night, and she's really insistent about nursing and seeing me. Sigh. Especially since Bill was gone for a couple nights and I was the only one putting her to bed... I ended up with her sleeping with me most of the night. We seem to be able to keep her in her crib until 3am, then it's mom or an hour long screaming fit. She is sleeping longer, though - from 8ish to 7:30 or even 8:30, depending on how long she was up in the middle of the night. And seems to be getting by with a 1 hour nap in the middle of the day. We've had two nights in the last week where we just couldn't get her to sleep, one of them we let her stay up just 15 min past her normal bed time, the other one she was also a bit late getting to bed and had had a late, 4pm, nap. So now we're being very diligent about getting her to bed on time. It's hard, because her favorite playtime is just after dinner.

EC'ing's getting better - mornings are pretty reliable, and we've even caught a piddle or two later in the day. Still no signs of signaling, although a couple times she's gone into the bathroom and sort of indicated she had to go by pointing at the toothbrush...