Annie At 11 Months

Yikes, a full month since my last post. Too busy living life, I guess! And trying to figure out where time has gone. I am busy making plans for Annie's first birthday, which has me both excited and incredulous that my tiny baby is quickly making her way into toddlerdom.

This is Annie at 11 months:

She can get up the stairs in 20 seconds flat.

She can give kisses and hugs.

She points to things constantly, and calls them "Guh."

She is very chatty and likes to tell long stories filled with "buh buh buh"s and "duh duh duh"s.

She is walking more and more every day, but still crawls some of the time.

She loves veggie burgers with cheese, hot pretzels, animal crackers, puffs, hamburger, green beans, peas, eggplant, and hot dogs. But especially hot dogs.

She still loves her books!

She is getting ticklish. She laughs when you tickle her neck and hands, but doesn't laugh when you tickle her feet. That just kind of annoys her so she pulls them away.

She loves feeding Gus & George from her high chair. Needless to say, they love it too!

She tried some real milk at Grandma & Grandpa's and she loves it!

She has a mouthful of chompers and knows how to use them. She will hug you and sink her teeth into your shoulder if you're not careful. I'm actually afraid to reach in there to count how many she has! I think I'll leave that for the dentist next month...

Speaking of teeth, she's got the "Maroney gap," a gap between her two front teeth, named for my mother's side of the family. All of us Peppers kids had the same one! They all pretty much closed up when we got our adult teeth though, so no worries. It's pretty cute anyway.

She loves hugging her stuffed animals, and giving them kisses. She especially loves a puppy in a Yankees shirt that her Grandma got her at Yankee Stadium.

Oh yeah, she went on her first trip to New York City! She was awesome in the car and loved the hotel room. She especially loved that she could stand up in her pack n' play and check out what Mommy & Daddy were doing when she was supposed to be sleeping. She had a lot of fun chatting away while we tried to ignore her so she would settle down. Oh, and she didn't mind at all when our baseball game was rained out, after waiting around for FIVE hours at the stadium. In the rain. This kid has some patience, I'm telling you!

She can ride a bike! She loved it too, she cried when we picked her up from it (in FAO Schwarz). First time she's thrown a semi-fit in a store, yay for us!

She loves bath time, especially touching the water coming out of the faucet.

She loves playing at Grandma & Grandpa's house. She really loves pushing around the doll stroller Grandma bought for her!

She experienced the joy of trampolines for the first time a couple of weeks ago at the babysitter's. Wendy put her on and she went to town, crawled over to the side to hang on to the net and bounced away on her knees. We bounced it for her with our hands and she laughed hysterically. I've always pined for a trampoline, so this might be a good excuse to get one!

She made her mama a birdhouse for our first Mother's Day, with the help of Wendy, Doug, Wendy's daughter, Danielle, and Paul. It might be the cutest Mother's Day gift ever.

On that note, I had a lovely first Mother's Day. I slept in until NINE A.M. and woke up to presents (the birdhouse, a really nice lunchbag, a new coffee mug, and a new water bottle. Hubby knows what I like. :) ) We went to breakfast with Paul's mom and Harvey, went shopping at the garden center and the mall for a few hours, went to the Lilac Festival for dinner and a nice walk, then went to my parents for dessert. A perfect day! Oh, and did I mention I slept in until NINE A.M.?? So good.

Teeth

It turns out Annie has not 1 tooth, but 2 teeth poking out on the bottom. A nice wide ledge of teeth that she tested out by scraping up both ends of her crib. Doh! We decided it was time to start experimenting with some finger foods to use those teeth for good for a change. We started out with american cheese, and oh man, did she enjoy it. She wasn't sure about the chewing and the sharp-ish taste at first, but after a little while she was munching away happily, smiling and laughing and holding it up in the air with joy. I told her that's how I feel when I eat cheese too, it's just not socially acceptable to do that when you're an adult, so she should enjoy it now.

Cheese! from porkchop on Vimeo.

Tonight we tried out some of those Gerber puffs, sweet potato flavored, and she could not get enough of them. So yay for finger foods! Today she also made a grab for Paul's sandwich, so I think she's pretty into this whole eating like a grown person thing!

Bonus video: I love it because it totally looks like she's checking to make sure I'm recording before she starts walking. She's catching on!

Walker from porkchop on Vimeo.

6 Months, Sympathy

Annie turned six months old this past Thursday, which is unbelievable to me. She is wearing outfits that looked huge to me when I first put them in her dresser. It's all going so fast, but it's so much fun. She is very chatty now, plays peekaboo, and prefers that we leave her toys in her bucket so she can pull them out herself. She can stand while holding onto something, she has such strong little legs. She has also been very mobile lately, rolling around like crazy (both ways now, thank goodness!) and getting up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth. We're thinking it won't be long before she starts crawling, lord help us all! She's very much drawn to things she can't have (like all babies are): paper, diaper cream, my mom's VCR. This should be an interesting ride.


Moving from porkchop on Vimeo.

Yesterday she started veggies! We tried squash first, and she seemed like she liked it, gobbled it right up with only a few "what is this" faces. She gets excited when I come over with a bowl and spoon now, so that's a good sign. Hopefully she'll be a good eater!

Funny story: We were in Old Navy yesterday looking for pants, since she's outgrown her old ones. She woke up from her nap a bit cranky, so I decided to take her to the dressing room to feed her. We've never done that before, and she was all excited when she figured out what we were doing. She would eat for a few seconds, then pull off and look up at me with a huge smile. She was enjoying herself immensely, until a very unhappy toddler entered the dressing rooms. He was crying and crying, and as soon as she heard it she pulled off and looked up at me with huge eyes and a startled expression. I told her it was okay and she went back to eating for a few seconds. But then he kicked it up a notch, and I don't know if she felt sympathy for the kid or if she just didn't like the way his cries were echoing in there, but she pulled off and started screaming immediately. It was such a sad face, which of course was hilarious to me. Poor baby, here she is all freaked out and her mother is laughing at her. It was too funny though. I had to sing a few bars of rubber duckie to calm her down, and just kept singing a few lines each time she seemed like she was getting upset again. The kid and his mom left after a while, Annie finished eating, and she was much happier after that. Too funny though. I like to think I'm raising a compassionate child, more compassionate than her mother anyway. ;)

This one is also titled: Why Babies Don't Sleep With Blankets.


Annie vs. Furry Blanket from porkchop on Vimeo.

5 Months

Annie turned 5 months old on election day. I have no words for how nerve-wracking and exciting that day was. We stayed up way too late to watch Obama's acceptance speech, which of course was totally worth it. So inspiring. We are feeling better about where this country is headed already. That night Annie woke up at 4 in the morning. She's been waking herself up in the night lately by rolling over onto her belly. She's having trouble figuring out how to roll back to her back, so she gets frustrated and lets out these little screams until you come in and roll her over. We don't know what to do about this. We bought her one of those things that keep them from rolling over in the crib, but she gets out of it. Sometimes she's okay with that, I come in in the morning and it's at the other end of the crib, and she's lying on her belly, snoozing. But most of the time she doesn't want to be on her belly so she lies there and screams until we come in to roll her over. So needless to say, we're putting her on the floor to practice her rolling as much as we can! It's almost funny how mad she gets when she can't get back over. She doesn't even try, she gets onto her belly and then gets really angry. And they say rolling from their front to their back is easier for babies. Hmph! In other news, she's started her cereal! We tried right after her 4-month checkup, but she didn't seem very interested and wasn't getting the hang of the spoon, so I decided to wait a few more weeks. We started last weekend and she's doing much better. She seems to really enjoy it, she grabs at my arms and sticks out her tongue for more. She's getting much better with the spoon too. Next month we can move onto fruits and veggies. Man though, is that going to be messy. The cereal is messy and sticky enough! Totally worth watching her face when she reaches for more though. She's definitely into this eating thing!