nooks and crannies

at some point, i'm sure i'll stop feeling the need to document every time bebe tries a new food. but there have been few enough of them so far that each new taste is still newsworthy, at least to me. and part of how this blog functions is as an online baby book. i hardly ever make time to write in her actual baby book but i post here (almost) every day -- so whenever i do sit down with the physical book i can check here to see what happened when.

this morning, i was all out of oatmeal, so i gave bebe a piece of a toasted english muffin along with her banana. it was a bit hit.

the only problem with all this food is that it seems to be having a hard time making it all the way through her poor little system. i think we'll be introducing pears next!

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meow

bebe has discovered the cat. until recently she didn't pay any attention to him, but now, unfortunately for the furry little fellow in question, she is enthralled by him. she watches him intently whenever they're in the same room, and should she be lucky enough to get close to him, she shrieks excitedly at the top of her lungs or, more rarely, grabs at his fur (and the skin underneath) and PULLS. either of which, of course, send him fleeing for cover.

here's how it usually happens.

the initial sighting:

the smile of delight:

reaching out:

shrieking:

and the inevitable departure:

today, we were in her room and he was asleep in the glider. she hadn't spotted him yet, so i asked her, "bebe, where's the cat?" i didn't think she'd understand me, but she started looking over my shoulder, first one side and then the other, until she caught sight of him and started beaming.

i'm not totally sure but i think she might be the smartest baby in the world.

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the great gym swap playdate

our neighbors on the first floor have an 18-month-old son named euan. ari, his mom, was a big help to me when i was preparing for bebe, schooling me about cloth diapers and loaning me maternity clothes. she and i recently discovered that we're both struggling with finding time to get to the gym, and decided to try a childcare swap where each of us goes to the gym in turn, leaving the other home with the two kids. today was the first time we tried it, and it was great! euan was thrilled to come up to our apartment with tons of unfamiliar toys to play with, and bebe loved watching him run around.

it was almost impossible to get her to look at me long enough to take a picture, but finally i did.

they really seemed to like each other -- bebe kept shrieking with delight while watching him, and euan alternated between bringing her toys to hold and hugging her over and over again. ari and i were glad it worked out so well and are planning to do it twice a week from now on.

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baby places

these days, i spend a lot of time looking for places to put the baby. bebe likes to be close to me most of the time, and while i often have her in a carrier, i also like to encourage her to sit and play by herself while i do whatever it is i need to do.

sometimes, what i need to do is pee. so i put her in her little bathtub, on the floor of the bathroom, and give her some toys.

other times i have things to do in the kitchen, like emptying the dishwasher or getting dinner ready. i've been trying to limit the amount of time she spends in her walker, per her pediatrician's recommendation, so recently i've started putting a few blankets and some toys down on the floor. today, i left her like this for about thirty seconds,

and when i turned back to her this is what i saw:

she had rolled over the boppy onto her belly, and then flipped herself over again onto her back. she was pretty pleased with herself.

baby rat mouse

in 2004, the family that i nannied for was expecting a new baby. they didn't know if the baby was going to be a girl or a boy, but 3-year-old jack, with his amazing memory, recalled from a dinner at a chinese restaurant weeks before his parents told him the exciting news that 2004 was the year of the monkey. so, the baby (who ended up being will), throughout its time in utero, was known as "the monkey baby."

when i got pregnant josh and i checked the zodiac excitedly to learn the name of our in-utero baby, only to learn that 2008 was the year of the rat. the rat baby? awesome. despite josh's best attempts to tell me all the virtues of rats (they're smart, resourceful, they work together), all i had to say in response was "they carry disease."

i was less than thrilled that our poor baby was getting such a crappy zodiac sign. but some sources call it the year of the mouse, which was easier for me to accept. i don't like mice in my house, at least not in a cage, but they are much cuter and less offensive than rats. and in fact, we do call bebe "little mouse" or "growly mouse" quite often.

several years ago, while visiting my sister in new york, we spent an afternoon at pearl river mart (if you've ever been there, you know how easy it is to spend an entire afternoon there!), and josh and i bought these cards, which have been on our bedroom door in our last three apartments. he's the tiger and i'm the dragon.

last winter, when i was staying with maggie while doing some research, we went back so i could get a new card for the door to the baby's room. it was actually the one thing i was superstititous about -- all the other baby preparations, i reasoned in my irrational, neurotic moments of worry that something would go wrong, could be for any baby, for the baby we would ultimately bring home even if something were to go wrong with this pregnancy. so i had no problem setting up the nursery, washing clothes and diapers, etc. but the year of the rat card could only be for our baby if that baby were born in 2008. so it stayed on a shelf until we brought our little mouse home from the hospital.

pearl river mart also had baby tshirts, kimono style, with the zodiac animals embroidered on them. while buying the card, i got one for the baby, who has just recently gotten big enough to fit into it.

wearing mommy's hat

(josh is laughing so hard in this one because i kept saying, "bebe! bebe!," trying to get her to look up, which she wouldn't do. finally i said, "face!" and she looked right at me. oops.)

further adventures in baby led weaning

after a brief hiatus, we are back to having lots of fun with food. a couple nights ago, bebe had some butternut squash for dinner (with a rice cake too).

squash is an appropriate name.

she really liked it.

and this morning, bebe joined me while i had my usual bowl of oatmeal with sliced banana. i gave her a banana to eat,

which got much easier to do once she broke a big piece off.

this was the food she liked most of any she'd encountered so far. with everything else, it has been more of a general exploration, sort of the way she explores everything with her mouth, and it seemed almost accidental that some of it ended up getting swallowed. not with the banana though -- she went back for more and more and more until about half of the big piece had made it into her belly and the other half was on her bib and clothes and high chair and the floor.

banana only occupied the "favorite food" pedestal for a brief time, however. it was quickly knocked off by the spoonfuls of oatmeal i handed to bebe to feed to herself. she couldn't get enough, and made a "mmm, mmm, mmmm!" sound the entire time she was devouring it.

amazing quilts

last christmas ('07, not '08), josh's parents gave us a quilt that had been made by his stepdad's aunt rosy. she is an incredible quilter who spends months and months on a single quilt, and the one they chose for us is a colorful beach scene. it was the last gift we opened, and as he gave it to us glen said, "this is your big present." then, after we admired it for a while, we handed them their last gift and said, "this is your big present." it was a picture frame with an ultrasound picture in it, annoucing our pregnancy, so i'm pretty sure we won the who's-giving-the-best-present contest that year! but a very close second was the beautiful quilt, which josh and i almost instantly decided would be hung on the wall in the baby's room, and would inspire the rest of the decorations (i refuse to call it a "theme") -- all ocean animals. this was a great choice for us because we both love going to the beach and josh especially feels a connection to the ocean.

then, at my baby shower, rosy gave me another quilt she had made, after hearing that the big one had inspired our decorating. we hung this one over the crib (these are pictures josh took before bebe was born -- we don't really have that many stuffed animals in her crib! hello, suffocation hazard!). this one has scenes of dolphins and rays and tropical fish swimming in a coral reef.

we really love these quilts, and so does bebe. the big beach one, especially, makes her smile every time she sees it -- which is multiple times a day, since it's hanging on the wall behind the glider where i nurse her. in fact, sometimes she is so interested in all the beautiful colors that she will get distracted and keep pulling herself off my breast to look at it!

so you can imagine how excited we were when a package arrived a few days ago addressed to beatrix, with a return address of one "a. rosy". inside was a beautiful new quilt, with mermaids all over it. i would have loved it anyways, but what makes it even better is that we need a clock for the wall in bebe's room, and a while ago i found a great one online that i haven't gotten around to ordering yet -- it is purple with mermaids on it!

we may hang this one on the wall as well, but for now i have it draped over the back of the glider. bebe loves to look at it and to reach out and explore the texture of it with her little fingers. and i am so glad that she is surrounded by so much color and so much love, in the form of all her wonderful handmade gifts!

new games

here's one that daddy made up:



and here's one that bebe made up:

out to dinner

last night, we went out to dinner for josh's birthday. bebe got all dressed up for the occasion.



we were happy to discover that she is big enough to sit in a restaurant high chair, which made dinner easy and enjoyable for all of us.

what a big girl!

she drank some water while we sipped hot sake,

and munched on a rice cake while we ate sushi and beef negima.

yum, yum!

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