Pumpkin

7 Months

Dear Silvie,

You continue to amaze us with the speed in which you are growing.  Every week brings with it new developmental milestones. The week you turned 7 months old you moved from “army crawling” on your belly to the more standard crawling position on hands and knees.  Instead of plunging straight ahead as fast as you could go, your new position seemed to cause you to stop and ponder the world more.  We often see you crawl three or four paces, stop, sit up, look around, think for a while, and then head out again in a different direction.

The week after you began properly crawling, you added to your repertoire by pulling yourself up on the coffee table into a standing position. Now you spend every possible moment pulling yourself up on the couch, the coffee table, the chairs, and experimenting with different ways to move your feet and the hundreds of different ways to fall.  You are so proud of yourself when you’re standing.  You usually check to make sure one of us is watching so you can grin and snort at us.

Your other new trick involves all sorts of sounds coming out of your mouth.  You literally say “blah blah blah blah” over and over again (or is it Bob LobLaw?).  You buzz your lips, you shriek, your papa even heard you accidentally whistle the other day.  We think your receptive language is coming along too.  Whenever we say “Where is Abraham?” or “Where is Keegan?” you look around for your doggies.  You also have waved hi to us several times.  Or maybe you were just flailing about.

One of your favorite times of the day is bath time.  After dinner (puffed rice cereal that you pick up yourself and some avocado that your Papa coaxes you to eat), we play for a little while and then we go run your bath.  You are fascinated with the water coming out of the spigot.  You like to splash, splash, splash.  And you chortle with delight when the water goes down the drain.  After your bath, I give you a little massage and dress you in your pajamas.  You’re growing so tall that we had to move you up to 12-month sized clothes because everything was too short for you.  You are tall and relatively slender, so clothes that are the right length tend to be plenty wide.  In this way you take after your Papa, because goodness knows that my side of the family tends toward “square” dimensions.

After 6 months of co-sleeping, last month we moved you up to your crib in the upstairs bedroom.  For a while your papa and I slept in the same room with you so we could feed and comfort you during the night.  That was working out just swell for you, but not so great for us.  We were desperate for an uninterrupted, comfortable night of sleep so we decided you were old enough to make it through the night on your own.  You did not agree.  For the first four nights you woke up sometime around 4 a.m. and cried off and on for a while.  Hard-hearted (sleepy) parents did not come to your rescue and now you’ve started sleeping from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. without interruption.  Thank goodness!  For the first time in over a year I have had a full nights sleep.  Joy of joys!

And you, too, are our joy of joys.  We are having so much fun watching you grow.

Love,

Your Mama

Calendar Girl, 7 Months

My friend, Stacey, reminded me tonight that we hadn’t posted the calendar girl for the month yet. Here it is. I really did take it on or about Oct. 8 when Silvie was 7 months old.

Florence and Newport

Last week I had an education conference to attend in Eugene. Since Nate is not working at the moment, he and Silvie came along. While I attended tedious session after tedious session, the two of them went hiking and explored Eugene (it didn’t take long). After the conference we intended to head east into the mountains. We’ve been wanting to visit Crater Lake ever since we moved here, and we thought this might be the time. However, a quick glance at the weather forecast for Crater–rain and snow–sent us scurrying west to the coast instead.

We spent the weekend meandering up the coast from Florence to Newport. We ate good seafood, drove up secluded forest roads to spy on mosses and mushrooms, saw seals and seal lions, poked around tourist towns, and visited the Newport Aquarium.

Nate and Silvie on Spencer’s Butte, Eugene

The port at Florence

The misty, moisty woods

A random stranger took this picture for us.

As always there are more pictures on Flickr including some videos of Silvie “army crawling” and snorting for the enjoyment of the grandparents.

Calendar Girl, Six Months

I’m not sure if the calendar is going to survive the Calendar Girl.  Immediately after this photo, she bent down and tried to take a bite out of the corner of the calendar.   A quick save by the parental units this time, but the calendar should be on warning that it’s days are numbered  (snort).

Six Months

(Originally written Sept. 9  but not posted)

Dear Silvie,

This was a month of firsts–first airplane ride, first time to meet Grandpa Homer and some of your great-grandparents, first time playing with your cousins, first birthday party for a friend (Adelaide), first teeth, first solid foods, and first attempts at crawling. How about working on that other first—first time sleeping through the night. Yeah, I’d really like you to master that one and soon!

Now that you have five little (sharp!) teeth, eating is your new hobby. So far rice cereal in its unappealing white lumpiness is your favorite. You’ve also eaten pureed pears and sweet potatoes. The other night we pulled out a can of smooshed peas. You HATED them, choked and gagged and made terrible faces. So we tasted them, and, you’re right, they were awful. No more canned peas for you.

We thought one of the changes this month would be you starting daycare when I went back to work. But then your papa got laid off. So we’re just switching roles again and he is home with you during the day. Most of the time you guys seem to work out pretty well together even though he never planned on being a stay-at-home dad. He can make you giggle like nobody’s business!

One of your favorite activities right now is bath time.  Now that you can sit on your own and splash, splash, splash, you love it!  You also like tasting the bath water.  The other day you decided to taste the bottom of the bathtub.  Fortunately, I grabbed you in time.  You don’t believe me when I tell you that you can not breath underwater.  You especially love the end of your bath when you get to watch all the water go down the drain.  I’m not quite sure what the attraction is…the sound? the round black hole? And you love being wrapped up in a towel and hugged and squished and loved on.

Happy first half year birthday, darling girl!

Love,

Your mama

September

Despite the fact that it’s my birthday month, can I just say that August is one of my least favorite months?  It’s hot and dry and crunchy and brown in Portland.  Growing up in Indiana, August was always hot and intensely humid.  It’s invariably a month of changes and transitions.  And I am one slow to transition.

This August was no exception.  The whole month just seemed a little off-kilter.  The first week Silvie and I  traveled to Indiana to spend time with our families.  Silvie did a great job traveling but lost her sunny personality to teething pain.  The second week Nate came to join us and we spent even more time with family.  All that travel and time with family is good but tiring, and I missed sleeping in my own bed.  The third week we got back home to Portland, and Nate got laid off from his job.  The fourth week I had to go back to work and gear up for the school year.  The whole month was disconcerting and off-kilter, I tell you.

But now it is September, and September just might be my favorite month.  It’s cooling down a little, and there’s often a brisk fall feeling in the air when I wake up in the morning.  It’s started to rain again, and the dead brown stuff is returning to the verdant green that I have grown to love so much here in the Northwest.  School is back in session, and our daily routines are being re-established.  Different routines than we had planned, with Nate unexpectedly doing the bulk of the childcare, but routines none the less.  September is sliding on  like a well-worn pair of jeans.  We know how to do September.

And so, hopefully, we’ll return to somewhat regular blogging.  We certainly have lots of pictures to show and stories to tell.

Here’s to a comfortable routine and the soft worn jeans of September!

good morning

brief update

the sprout…

… is crawling (the dogs are not too thrilled with this)

more stories and pictures when we have time.

5 month-ish pictures