Monday, January 26, 2009

Real Food

We have been working on introducing new foods to Sara Beth.  Every time we sit at the dinner table, Sara Beth will longingly gaze at us as we eat our food.  So, this past week, we decided to put her teeth to work.  While eating a fruit salad, I picked up an orange slice to feed to her.  Heather pointed out that citric acid and babies don't mix.  The next fruit I grabbed was an apple slice.  Since Sara Beth eats baby food apple sauce on a regular basis, I knew that this one wasn't going to cause lasting damage.  So I placed it in her mouth.  She initially tried to suck on it; I helped her out by grinding the apple against her lower teeth.  She started to get the idea and began to furiously gum the slice.  Since then, her hunger for apple slices is insatiable.  Whenever we are eating apples, she will want some.  Now we will typically bite off a small grain sized piece and put it in her mouth.  She will chew it down and ask for more.  Tonight at dinner, I put a full sized apple slice in her mouth.  She knew just what to do and got to work grinding it with her teeth and gumming it with no prompting on my behalf.  Once she gets those upper teeth, she will be an unstoppable apple eating machine.


So there is a story about this bow in her hair.  But first, the back story.  We have been placing bows in Sara Beth's hair since she was born.  But as she has grown older, the long dark hair has fallen out, and has now been replaced by the blond duck down type hair.  And while soft, it does not have enough texture to solidly hold bows.  Note how the bow is precariously attached to her head in the below photo.

  Well, Heather took advantage of the great weather we had last week, and took Sara Beth on a walk.  At the beginning of the 40 minute long walk, the bow was in her hair.  At the end, it wasn't.  So, not wanting to leave a bow lying around, in case a squirrel choked on it or something.  So she retraced her steps and walked the whole circuit until she found the bow in the middle of the street, at the very end of the loop.  But since Sara Beth loves walks and it was about 75 degrees outside, no one seemed to mind.


This is a shot from the following day.  Note that the bow has been swapped out for a hair band.

Sara Beth is getting better at playing with her toys.  This purse contains plastic toys in the shape of lipstick, mirror, bracelet, and money.  And the purse sings.  I don't like singing toys.  They play the same song with only little variation.  Fortunately, the purse has an on/off switch on it.  Unfortunately, whenever Heather plays with Sara Beth, she turns it back on, and then switches the volume control to the "Extra Loud" setting for good measure.  She claims that Sara Beth likes the music, but I suspect she does it for me. 


One final anecdote, and then I'll sign off for the night.  This evening, Sara Beth and I were having a grand old time.  Dinner (including apples ) had been eaten, she had taken her bath, and we were winding down, reading "Voyage of the Dawn Treader."  She yawned a couple times, so I figured it was time to get Heather for Sara Beth's nighttime meal.  So, Heather comes in, and I pass Sara Beth over.  In Heather's lap, she turns back towards me and begins to cry.  She wasn't done playing.  I picked her up, and she calmed down immediately.  We walked around the house and played for a while, until she was REALLY yawning, and only then did she consent to having her night time meal.  

Monday, January 19, 2009

Teeth

This week, Sara Beth became the proud owner of her first two teeth.  She handled the experience with a calm quiet and dignity... mostly.  She didn't want to nap for the three days prior to the teeth making their appearance, but there was no massive drooling or excessive crying.  Around Wednesday, we noticed that the two bumps on her lower jaw were growing.  As the week progressed, the bumps became wither colored, and SaraB became restless, literally.  Her first tooth poked through on Friday, and the other half of the pair emerged the next day.  I gave her a couple ice cubes to suck on, and while it made a watery mess, she seemed to enjoy it.  We might try to get a picture of the teeth, be so far, it has been rather difficult to even view the teeth with the naked eye.  Every time we pry open her mouth, she will stick out her tongue.

As you can see from the below photo, Sara Beth has developed quite a grip.  She can now hold up bottles with a single hand.  She also sort of understands how a bottle works, and wants to chew or suck on the top of whatever I am drinking from, in hopes that she will get some too.  Heather won't let me actually give her anything with carbonated bubbles, or caffeine, or alcohol, or sugar.  She even frowns upon my practice of letting Sara Beth drink her bath water, even though Sara Beth seems to love it.

Heather's Aunt and cousin came in town for the the better part of the week, so Sara Beth got to play with her two month old cousin, Wesley. 


In this photo, we find Sara Beth trying to chew on a silver spoon while prepping for the above photo.  And from the look on her face, it is apparent that she doesn't enjoy the flavor of it.


Sara Beth loves to touch peoples faces.  But be wary, she tries to grab hold of your face to bring it to her mouth for a close inspection.

And, to close out this post, I present another poop story.  As I have detailed before, Sara Beth is an excellent pooper.  She will lean forward and grunt in a most unladylike fashion until she does her business.   Tonight, she was doing that while we were eating dinner, so afterwards, I checked her diaper and am surprised to find it still clean.  Well, about 15 minutes later, we get Sara Beth ready for her bath.  I strip her down to her diaper, and carry her over to the tub.  I pull off the diaper to find that she managed to silently soil herself in the past quarter hour.  Heather takes the dirty diaper and tells me to hold Sara Beth while she goes to fetch some baby wipes to clean up her backside.  So, I sit with an undiapered baby in my arms, fearing the worst.  Heather comes back in, and we are able to clean SaraB off without any incidents.  But then, I turn to put Sara Beth in the tub.  I make sure the water is the correct temperature, and realize that I was 5 seconds too slow.  My pants leg was all wet, courtesy of Sara Beth.  Heather gave her a bath while I changed pants.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Sippy cup sensation

So apparently prune juice mixed with watter doesn't taste good.  We call it a Sara Beth cocktail, but even with the drink being named after her, she does not ever finish it.  She loves the cup, and will play with that.  She swings it around, smashing it into whatever will make the most noise.  She will even gum on the spout of the cup.  But actually drinking from it is a different story.  She prefers to let the liquid ooze down her chin and drip onto her bib.  And she loves drinking from a "big person" glass.  She can suck down water from a big plastic cup (if I help hold it to her mouth, so I suspect that prune juice is the reason.


Here, SaraB is chillin on the couch.  Despite the fact that we propped her up on pillows to get this shot, she can now sit up quite well on her own.  She will keep her balance and keep herself upright right up till the point where I turn my head to look at something else.  At that point, she has an uncanny tendency to throw herself head first at some solid object like a chair leg.  I typically react quickly enough to catch her, but on occasion her topple will take some path unexplained by Newtonian physics.  She will look up and me with eyes asking the question "Am I hurt?" I will clap my hands, smile, and say "no."  Then I quickly tell her what a good job she did, and distract her so she doesn't cry about it. 


Sara Beth has become nearly mobile.  She has been able to roll from her back to her stomach for a while, but this week, she has perfected the act of rolling from her stomach to her back again.  This allows her to barrel roll across the floor.  She has also demonstrated the ability to pull her legs under her and use her arms to raise up her torso.  And when there is an especially enticing target nearby, like a sleeping cat, she has even used some combination of these new skills to scoot towards the unsuspecting target.  More often than not, her efforts result in just an inch or two of movement, but she is well on her way to crawling.  When that happens, we are going to need to invest in some more calorie infused cat food so our poor felines will have the energy to outrun SaraB.  Oh, and we will also need to figure out a way to prevent SaraB from eating out of the cat's food dish.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Raspberries

Sara Beth has learned how to blow raspberries.  She will stick out her tongue and blow.  Heather will wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of SaraB practicing making these noises.  I'll take her word for it, as I sleep through the night like a log.  I will occasionally remember some noise that awoke me in the middle of the night, but I gain enough consciousness to discern if it's SaraB or a playful cat.  

  By the way, on a tangential note, the best way to make a cat stop waking you in the middle of the night is to ignore it.  It turns out that Gracie cat enjoyed being chased through the house, watching me bump into stuff in my attempts to spray her with a water bottle after waking me.  Ignoring her and staying in bed works much better (and we conserve water).

Getting back onto the Sara Beth track, we cooked 3 sweet potatoes for dinner tonight, one for me, one for Heather, and one for Sara Beth.  Heather and I finished off our plates.  Sara Beth might take a little longer to finish hers.  But she does enjoy it and will lean towards the spoon in order to get it in her mouth quicker.   We're probably going to start mashing up steamed carrots too.


I have enjoyed all the holidays and shortened weeks.  I worked with Sara Beth showing her how to GENTLY pet a cat.  It became hard to find a willing feline participant as they all quickly learned that staying near SaraB would result in some minor amounts of hair removal.  Note how I had to hold down Little Bit for the following picture as she tries to subtly to slip off the couch.

Finally, I don't know what has changed, but I, for one, and happy to see that Sara Beth will now continue to smile even when the camera comes out.