Snowbound Herpetologist

Even though all my videos on blogger upload to be sucky and compressed, I still like posting them!  Here's a window into our day. Morning wakeup: Afternoon playtime - this is as close as she gets to "rocking" on hands and knees: Dinner time (might want to turn down your volume):

And now I'm at home doing work(!!!!), but I had to take a one minute break to post: I keep listening for the baby like she's taking a nap upstairs - and I keep "hearing sounds" that might be her :)  I wonder how long it will take for that to stop…? P.S. I absolutely love her day care, LOVE.  I will have to write a whole post about it soon!

Happy seven months, Maya!  Trucking along, aren’t we :) At seven months, Maya is nothing if not willful (perhaps she comes by it honestly, though).  She is definitely going through a whiny phase, which is actually a welcome relief from the “all out screaming” response to not getting what she wants that she’s had since birth (always complicated by the fact that we often don’t know what she wants!).  She’s also in the “Mommy should never leave the room phase,” which is somewhat trying.  But she’s also a friendly, adventurous, loving little girl who gives really awesome hugs when you pick her up - well, when she feels like it :)  She smiles at strangers in the grocery store, loves dancing (and music of all sorts, really), and embraces any and all outdoor adventures. The very best new development of the month has happened within the last few days.  Maya has started “sharing” things with me, taking whatever she’s been chewing on and putting it in my mouth ...

Baby-led weaning isn't as easy as it's touted to be, at least for us.  While Maya seems super excited about eating everything (which is great!), she really can't hold on to a lot of food with her hands.  She either squeezes the bejesus out of the food item, rendering it to mush (banana sticks are a prime example), or they fly out of her grasp from too much juice (e.g., mango pieces).  Some things (like brussels sprouts) are just the absolute wrong shape and size to promote adequate ingestion.  And then things like yogurt? Yeah, right. This means that we mash up a bunch of our food and feed it to her by hand.  Sometimes we pre-load spoons for her, but this is an exhausting process of picking said spoons up off the floor and picking the cat hair off of them.  So for the purists, I guess we're not actually doing baby-led weaning. However, the one, single food that Maya can consistently feed to herself (and has since day 1 of solids) is asparagus.  So,...

Maya loves swimming lessons!

We are back from a wonderful trip up north!  Maya got to meet another baby who's only 9 months older (and can walk and talk and play!), which was great because we got a preview of what Maya will soon be like!  Thanks to Meg for inviting us up to her family's fantastic working cherry farm - we learned a ton about a yummy North Country staple :) Independently and unknowingly (until the next morning), we bought and dressed the babies in the same pj's…freaky! Baby boo in her second Great Lake! Such fun had by all! We also had a great visit from my in-laws, who stopped by to visit the baby on their way back from a wedding.  What a great weekend all around! Baby's learning how to swing :) A hit, methinks! The fam :) Everything is more fun with Daddy :) I have decided that this - from 6 to 7 months - is the ideal age for a baby.  They're super cute, not really mobile yet, and best of all, they run on "dual fuel" :)  If we...