Tuesday, October 30, 2007

What's she up to?







Everything! She laughs a lot -- sometimes it's a chortle, a burst of rapid-fire chuckling. Mostly she just grins. Suburban life is very amusing. Today, she enjoyed watching her stuffed animals tumble humpty-dumpty-like from the upper edge of her crib. Does it mean she lacks empathy or like her daddy, she enjoys seeing a well-executed PLF (parachute landing fall)?




We are at two teeth and counting. The Niagara rush of drool has abated, so perhaps we are between teeth right now. She uses the existing ones to masticate tortellini and the ear of an extremely patient dog.




Crawling is fast and purposeful -- usually the purpose is to get to the dog's dishes of food and water before the tall people notice. Lately, she has discovered the joy of hanging over the edge of her high chair after we have removed the tray but before we have released the prisoner. I think she is trying to test the gravitational pull of the pergo flooring, or the balance/load capabilities of the chair legs. I still have my money on civil engineer but daddy is pulling for LPGA pro.




She is not shy. Last week, she went to work with mommy to meet all her fans. High-level pols and other greatness doesn't phase her. I am pretty sure she was sizing up the offices to see which one she will take.




Words are still more like sounds -- although we get a lot of "Uh Ohs" now. "Mama," "Dada/Baba" have always been with us but "VaVa" arrived with the teeth (I keep waiting for the "Voom!"). A squeaky "Hello" seems to be getting a trial run.




Did I mention that she can throw a tantrum now and has lost interest in potty training? She still knows what the potty is for but will only use it if she is allowed to stand on the seat, Hunan style.



And lest we forget who is in charge, the fussing over the baby monitor (A.K.A. Grace TV) caused me to dash upstairs and miss the last pitch of the World Series. She is definitely a Sox fan, but her timing is lousy. I think she is actually a bigger soccer and football fan and was trying to signal as much to me.




Gotta go -- Grace TV is beckoning.






Monday, October 29, 2007

New Fall Photos - October 2007






From the intense heat of a late Indian Summer to the (finally!) cooler days of autumn, here's Gracie, taking it all in. Oh and yes, GO SOX! (Another World Series Win today.)

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Pics from Gramma Honey's visit 1st Week in October



I Have a Mystery for You! (apologies to "Raymond")


Question: What weighs 3 kgs at birth, 6.2 kgs at 3 months, 5.2 at 8 months, 7.2 9 days later and 6.8 kg one month after that in the U.S., having outgrown a clothing size in that same month and eating everything in sight?

Answer: Nothing. The scales in China don't appear to be calibrated.


It's Potty Time!

It seems just yesterday I was balancing over the squatty potty in China while Grace dangled from the Baby Bjorn above, wondering why she had awakened to face a toilet stall door....

Too much information? Okay, I promise not to post any pics of Grace (or any of us) on the pot but I swear on my late Grandmother's peanut butter captain crunch that our daughter was "Potty Aware" at 8 months! Back in China, when we would have her in the hotel bathrooms and stick her over the toilet, she would compliantly pee. Now that we are going through enough diapers to build a 9-hole par 3 on top of the landfill, we are more diligent about getting her on the potty.

[I think they call the diapers "Cruisers" because they know you will have spent on them the equivalent of a first-class cabin ticket for Alaskan whale-watching departing from Key West by the time you get the baby potty-trained.] Nevertheless, I am ecstatic to report that we have achieved both #1 and #2 on the pot with great regularity (don't call between 10:05 and 10:07 am!). Once she has the dexterity and foresight to take off her own diaper, I feel certain we will have a potty trained baby!

More September pics




Wednesday, October 10, 2007

September pics






One Month Later...

Time flies when you have the most precocious baby in the big blue-green planet. After a week at home, Grace started to crawl...backwards. After two weeks home, she mastered the forward progression, though it was not really a crawl but more of a lunge/drag/swivel/pitch forward/repeat motion. After three weeks, she took off like a shot in a straight line and we ran around installing baby gates and putting locks on cabinets. No more leaving her on the kitchen floor while preparing the bottle!


Shiny pretties (thanks to Sarah for that cute phrase) caught her focus in China; now she has moved on to anything made of a silvery grey plastic, needing a power source and sporting buttons. Baby wants cell phone, blackberry, remote control, laptop, portable phone, microwave (okay, it's white, but the noises make it really interesting), and more... And if my glasses survive the year, it will only be because she tired of the game.


And food -- still the omnivore, Grace has mastered the grasp (in September, actually) and can lock on to morsels of food with left or right pincers, and manage to get it into her mouth. She is clearly right-hand dominant, though, and so we expect her to major in engineering in a few years. Here she is with couscous (thanks, Tasha!), which actually doesn't get too close to the alimentary canal. Must be because this is not a chopstick-ready food.


We've had lots of great visitors -- grandmothers, aunties (related and unrelated), neighbors and more. Grace welcomes them all with her drooly grin. She grew a tooth upon our return from China and is working on a companion -- both lower jaw, center. More to come.
What else? Sleeping was great -- 10-11 hours at a stretch, mostly uninterrupted. But after all the company and the return of mommy to full-time employment, Grace decided to try waking up every hour all night long. This is not as fun.
Oh yeah, there's more but I'll save that for another post...coming soon -- the Potty Diaries!