What a treat this girl is! I just love every minute I can get with her sweet face. My heart runs over.
She seems to grow in surges. One day I'm thinking, hmm.. she hasn't done anything new lately. Then the next day, boom, three new things. This month her big milestones was crawling. She waited the whole week she and I were gone visiting family and decided she'd give her daddy a birthday present and crawled on his birthday. She was so cute and so proud of herself. She still does the army crawl, or as we like to call it: the wounded soldier. She pulls herself with one arm, pushes with one leg and drags her other leg, like she's dragging herself off the battle field. She's getting pretty fast at it and trying so hard to crawl on her hands and knees, but she just doesn't quite have it yet. *I just found out this is actually called creeping.*
She continues to love to stand. I mean LOVES it. She can't pull herself up from the floor yet, but when she is standing between the couch and ottoman, she can move back and forth between the two. She can pull herself up on soft things, like if she's on the couch with us, she'll pull herself up on one of us and then onto the back of the couch, or she'll climb up on the arm of the chair and then up to the back of it (yikes).
Her awareness just blossomed one day. It seemed like all of a sudden she noticed things at a deeper level or noticed things she wouldn't usually. I feel like she does this every so often, maybe not every month but at least every couple of months. This month I noticed it in how she mimics anything she can. If she hears someone make a sound that she can she quickly does it with a smile, so proud of her sound. She does this too with some hand movements. If I say or make a sound she can't produce, she instantly snaps her attention toward my mouth and studies it to see what I'm doing. She'll give it a few tries and if she doesn't get it she'll go back to whatever catches her attention next.
My favorite thing she does lately is what I call giving me tastes. She'll be chewing on something and if I open my mouth or make the 'eating sound' she'll look at me, look at what is in her hand, and then offer it to my close to my mouth. When I 'try it' she laughs or smiles, tries it again for herself and then give me another 'bite' and back and forth. Of course this doesn't really make sense because she isn't eating solids yet, so it's not like we've given 'bites'. I guess she just figures that she likes to put things in her mouth so why wouldn't we want to try it out too. It's pretty darn cute.
It was also funny to see what she did with her new mobility. It was like she had a little bucket list of things she wanted to check out the first chance she could. The first time I put her down to play while I did something else she started creeping her way to her corner of the room. I watched her out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was b-lining (if you can call a slow crawl b-lining) toward the bookshelf. Oh boy, I thought. When she got there, she pulled off a stuffed giraffe. I'd never really let her play with the few stuffed animals she has since I assumed (rightly so) they'd just go straight in her mouth, get all slobbery, then dry and be crusty and need to be washed. Probably a week or two earlier I was desperately trying to get her to hold still during a diaper change and I gave her the giraffe. She like it, and I had noticed her looking at it from the glider when we were reading books after that. Maybe I'm reading into it but it was like she hadn't forgotten about that giraffe and as soon as she could she was going to go pay him (her?) a visit. I read this article about a grandmother's similar observations in her grandson, which is probably what makes me interpret it that way. There were a few other things I noticed her doing that with too.
She also does this pretty adorable thing called 'So Big', I'm sure you've seen it before. I don't actually know where she learned it. My mom used to do it with her but before she really got it and she'd just look at her funny. I never really said it to her but I heard someone talking about it as if it were a milestone skill like blowing kisses and I thought.. hey I guess we'd better try it out. So one morning I said to her in a normal voice, "you are getting so big! Are you so big?" and then with an adorably innocent little look on her face she raised her hands above her head. I wonder if it was just a coincidence so I tried it again, "are you so big?" Again, she raised her hands up and this time she smiled. It was pretty much our favorite activity for the day. By the time daddy got home she would raise her hands up laugh and try to clap them (because I had started clapping when she did it). Her clap is a little hit or miss right now, but it does seem to be an attempt at clapping. She also tries to say 'yay' when she does it, which is pretty cute (because that's what we do). Here's a quicky of her So Big debut:
And because it's my blog and I can add a thousand cute videos that only grandmas and me and the occasional auntie will watch anyway.. here is one of her in the 'jump and jump'. We borrowed a Jolly Jumper from the neighbors and it's so much nicer than the Johnny Jump Up (the strap configuration is better and her head doesn't scrap against the straps each jump in this one). This girl loves her some jumpin! You'll have to excuse the background... we only have one real doorway in the kitchen, so you're looking at my messy pantry. :)
Needless to say, she's so entertaining of late. She just gets a kick out of almost everything. She loves tagging along while I do laundry or cook dinner (about the only things I get accomplished in a day besides the dishes). When I pick her up to go somewhere in the house she gets this half excited half serious look on her face like, 'what's the next adventure mom?' She insists on facing forward, and checking everything out along the way. I usually carry her on my hip but instead of having one arm behind me, she twists herself and puts both arms in front so she's facing the direction we're going. She does this in the grocery cart too, has to see where we're going so she twists around to check it all out. It's hard to get something past her if it makes any sound at all or protrudes any light. She'll bob, weave and whip around quickly to check out what she sees or hears to get a good look at whatever it was. She's a happy, smiley baby, but if you're new she'll study you for a long time, watching me talk to you and waiting for me to smile at you a few times until she decides it's safe to smile. Then you're as good as BFFs and she'll go right to you. There are some people that don't pass the test, even if I try really hard to show her that we like them.. usually this is older people with hoarse voices (!?).
A little clip of her standing at the mirror. The little sound she makes at the beginning is her scared/worried sound. She makes this when she knows she's gotten herself in over her head (like when she crawled up the back of the glider and it started moving or when she is losing her balance); when something startles her and when she drops something she wasn't done with. It's her 'help me' noise. She still adores... ahem.. herself. Even as I preview these videos for this post, she hears herself and tries to get a glimpse of the screen to see herself (even though this is against screen time regulations). When she does get to watch herself she just loves it. So the mirror is little like that. :)
I could probably go on (and I might we'll see) but you get the idea. So much going on in that little head of hers. So many little expressions that give away her thoughts (or just look like adult expressions so we attribute adult thoughts to them because it's cute). She checks things out with her sweet, chubby little pointer finger and thumb and loves anything that looks like she shouldn't have it. She is vocalizing, moving, listening and growing. We couldn't ask for a better baby! (Even though she isn't sleeping all night anymore ;), we didn't really expect that to last anyway. More on that later...)
Sweet Emerson Jane is weighing in at 20.2 pounds (give or take 0.2 our scale is acting up lately) and just over 28 inches long. She is wearing almost all of her 12 month clothes and some 18 month clothes but still rocking the 9 month clothes too. However, she is quickly growing out of 9 month footie sleepers. She has maybe one or two 6 month outfits that I always hang dry and I can still get them on her (I just love them so and can't give them up yet). Diapers are all over the place.. some we've had to return to the first rise snap because her legs have thinned some from moving, other still fit fine on the second snap. It seems to depend on which insert is in there too.
This was our most challenging photoshoot yet! Just sitting there laughing at me was not nearly as interesting as crawling up on the arm and back of the glider. It took serious effort to find enough funny sounds and faces to get her to look my way!
There was a lot of this
and this
and this but this was where we drew the line.
My teeth are cool
This finger, right here. I love it.
and I love my toes
At some point I had to bribe/distract her with objects.
What mom? Ya, this is fun.
I super love this giraffe.
What else do you have down there mom?
Selfies
Mom's teeth are cool too.
Fingerprints all over there mirror.. not sure why?
Daddy came home! This girl loves her daddy. When I hear him come it the door I'll ask, 'where's daddy?' She looks all around until she finds him and then he gets the biggest grin of the day. :)
As a parent, you get to have to make all kinds of decisions. Some are big, some are small but in the end it just comes down to the two of you pretty often. Well this was a small decision but we are making the decision and calling this Emerson's first snow. ;) Sure there has been snow flakes in the air before and even a few on the ground. We've also seen it in the pass... but this was the first time it really snowed hard and covered anything.
It was the first time we all stayed inside and enjoyed the soft, sweet quiet of a family snow day weekend. Well, we stayed inside except for a quick little trip outside to see what this white stuff was all about. Spoiler alert: someone wasn't that impressed.
What is that stuff?
She grabbed my finger and wanted to try it.. this was her opinion of it.
