with love (and drool)

and your point is...?

yesterday, suddenly, bebe figured out how to point at things. her index finger has been working overtime ever since.

and here she is checking out the chubby little digits that make it all happen. they sure are amazing, huh beebs?

buddies on the move

nora jane and her mom came over to visit today. i tried to get a good picture of the girls but it was impossible -- superstrong nora jane has been crawling for a couple weeks now, and although bebe is nowhere close to crawling herself, she was inspired by nora jane's mobility to roll around more than she ever has before, back and forth and back and forth all across the floor.

nora jane brought a present for bebe: a dinosaur book that i had admired last time we were at nj's house, because i love dinosaurs and want to introduce bebe to how cool they are.

thanks, nora jane!

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mangoes for teed

today is teed's birthday, and it's a big one. 60!!!!


bebe can't believe it. mainly because she can't count that high yet.

it's true, though, and in his honor she tried one of his favorite foods for the very first time this morning: mangoes.

she loved them, but not as much as she loves her teed. happy birthday, teed!!!!

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fun with daddy, part 2

raspberry jam

bebe was blowing raspberries all day long today. here's a little sample:

self-regulating, my ass

apparently, bebe did not get the memo that babies are supposed to self-regulate when it comes to food, not taking in more than their bodies can handle. here she is with two huge pieces of pear and a giant chunk of pizza crust in her mouth at the same time.



eyes on the prize. she loooooooved that pizza crust.

mid-cough. it turns out, she couldn't swallow it all at once!

i may have to regulate her for now, and put fewer options on her tray at one time.

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at the grands

bebe got a really cool new booster seat to eat in (or play with) while we're at mems and teed's house.


she also got lots of love from mems and teed.

pears and cheerios and playdates, oh my!

this morning, bebe had some pear for breakfast. it was a bit slippery but she managed to eat a respectable amount. hopefully it will, ahem, get things moving again.

then a bit later, i was having a bowl of cheerios with rice milk. i had tried giving her some dry cheerios on her tray with breakfast but she hasn't yet perfected the pincher grip and so she couldn't get any of them into her mouth. she looked so interested in my bowl of cereal that i tried putting one on the end of my spoon and offering it to her. she loved it and ate about twenty.

this is her cheerio-chomping face:

today was day two of the great gym swap, and it was just as much fun as last time. bebe and euan had a lot of fun together again, although i am trying to teach bebe that "we are gentle with our friends." so far, she hasn't caught on.

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.