Summer

This summer has been slow to start. The weather has been beautiful by my standards (not too hot, lots of rainy days), but most people have been complaining about too much rain and not enough sunny heat. Yesterday we finally got one of those sunny, really hot days. Annie and I took a long walk around town, first to the bank to take care of our banking business, then to the pet store to take care of our looking-at-cute-puppies business, then back through town towards the playground. Then I remembered one of our time-honored town traditions: the spraypool. We stopped to cool off, and after I showed her how to splash in the puddles, Annie really enjoyed herself. I'm finding myself hoping for more hot days so we can make more spraypool trips this summer!

Annie at 12 Months

Annie just hit 13 months this past week. Here are the notes I took during her 12th month:

She walks way more than crawls.

She loves stepping up steps (with help, of course).

She loves her bathtime.

Finally learned how to nod rather than shake her head, but she has to concentrate really hard to remember to nod rather than shake her head when she means yes. You can see the wheels turning, it's pretty funny.

She has to be holding a stick when she walks outside.

She loves wiping things with cloths, baby wipes, wash cloths, and paper towels. Future clean freak maybe? I hope so, it would mean less cleaning for me!

She is constantly pointing at things she either wants or thinks are interesting, and says, "eh?" We call it her Griffin phase, since our godson went through the same thing.

She loves apple juice and animal crackers.

She is trying to say "dog." She hears a dog barking, sometimes really far away, we don't even notice it until she starts saying "duh" over and over again, pointing outside. She doesn't have the ending "g" sound yet.

She says mama a lot and we think she might actually mean it. She says "da" when I ask her where her daddy is, or tell her he's coming.

She gets all excited when she sees pictures of Elmo now. She hasn't actually seen him on tv yet, just on her diapers and in books. Seeing him on tv might blow her mind, we'll have to try that!

She went to Strong Museum for her birthday. She loved the pictures of all of the Sesame Street characters, "driving" a taxi with Elmo & Cookie Monster, riding the train with mama, and playing in the stone pit with the other kids. She was enthralled by the giant in story book land. The whole experience pooped her out, she was exhausted afterwards! It was a really fun day though.

We had a big birthday party in the backyard with our family and our closest friends. It was a beautiful day and everything went great. Annie skipped her nap, which was extremely unusual for her. She takes her naps like clockwork, and I planned the party around naptime and everything. She must have gathered that something was going on because she flat out refused to sleep. I was worried, but she was a trooper and made it through the party and then some. She looked exhausted when she was eating her cake, but she was still in a good mood! I can't believe she's one. That really flew.

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.

The Feet Thing

Annie went to the caridiologist this week to get the whole "cold feet thing" checked out. In a nutshell, it's very common for babies to have cold feet and hands because their circulation systems are still maturing. It's even common for them to turn all sorts of colors, like hers were doing. Before he told me this I told him how her feet were bright purple while we were in our pediatrician's office, and he smiled at me expectedly and said, "and what did she say?" I said, "she was concerned, and that's why we're here." He looked baffled and said, "well, she should have told you that it's absolutely normal." Sooo, basically we paid for an ultrasound and all sorts of cardio testing to be informed that it was something that is very common and will go away.

I don't know, I still think it's good that she's so thorough and makes sure we look into things, just in case. It could have been a much different story, and I'm so glad it wasn't! And it is nice to have a doctor who hears things and does her best to prove that it's nothing, rather than blow it off. Because I've heard horror stories. So I'm still glad we went.

It also was kind of fun, to be honest with you! It was a pediatric cardiologist, so there were toys everywhere and the nurses and doctor were so good with kids. They loved Annie, she charmed everyone. She has this thing where when we introduce her to someone, she smiles really big and holds her arms out to people to be held by them, and my lord, people LOVE. IT. I mean, who wouldn't love a baby who is so friendly? The nurse who prepped her and ran the tests was awesome. She sang to her and played with her through the whole thing, Annie didn't even mind having 20 stickers with clamps hanging off them pasted all over her chest or blood pressure cuffs on her arms and thighs (little baby cuffs, so cute! Oh, and the nurse theorized that she might not even feel the leg squeezing since her thighs are so chunky. He.) Then we went to see the doctor, who was equally awesome. Very reassuring, knows his stuff, great with kids, genuinely seems to love what he does. Can't do better than that.

He said it was still good to have her in so she could get a full heart workup. The only issue he found was a murmur. He said it has a very "musical tone to it," which Paul found hilarious. He said he's not concerned about it and we shouldn't be either, that it shouldn't cause her any problems, and that he just wants to see us next year to check it to make sure it's still nice and musical. (He didn't actually say that last part, I just imagine it's something he would say.) So we go back next year almost to the day. I've got to be honest, I'm looking forward to seeing these people again, that's how great they were!

Funny story, I told my mom that the doctor said it was so common it has a name, but he didn't write down the name, so I couldn't remember what it was. So Paul acts like he's thinking about it for a minute, and says, "Hmmm...I'm pretty sure he called it 'Pediatrician Paranosis.'" He. Poor Dr. M. Seriously, we're glad she's thorough!

This week Annie is saying "Ba ba ba ba" over and over again, and if you say it to her, she'll repeat it back. Yesterday she threw in a couple of "Pa pa"s and "Ma ma"s. Thursday Wendy said that she was crawling towards a big book on the floor and when Wendy said "Annie no!" and she stopped crawling and headed back to Wendy. Wendy was amazed. I was surprised too. I've been working on it since she started crawling, and usually when I say "Annie....no...." in a firm tone, she stops what she's doing and looks at me, but she'll go back to it. I'm very excited that she's starting to get what it means! Especially since she's so active--she crawls from the living room to the kitchen now, and there are a lot of no no's out there. And I'm afraid walking is going to be here before we know it: when she's standing she takes steps. Paul said she went from one end of her crawl and cruise to the other the other day. Lord help us. I'm still hoping for a couple more months.

So this whole "understanding words" thing means that I really, really need to focus on cleaning up my, ahem, language. I will be on the lookout for some good, catchy alternatives to the usual swear words I throw around. Which have not been good lately. Oh no, they have not been good. Hopefully something will stick soon!