Monday, February 23, 2009

Negotiating with Terrorists

Sara Beth likes bananas much better than oatmeal.  Heather thinks that they might be her favorite food.  I began feeding her breakfast on Sunday, but when Heather walked by pealing her banana, SaraB decided she no longer wanted to eat any more boring cereal.  She would become distracted and if I brought a spoonful of oatmeal to her mouth, she would shut her mouth up tight.  If, however, I brought the tasty yellow fruit near, her mouth would open up ready to grab a mouthful.  For a while we were at an impasse.  I decided that she needed to finish her cereal, she decided that she was going to have a banana.  A compromise was reached; three or four bites of cereal and then a bite or two of banana.  Sometimes she would try to cut short the process and demanded her "monkey bite" before a full 3 bites of cereal, but she caved and I prevailed.  She almost ate the entire banana, but she also ate the whole bowl of food.  Heather dodged the whole issue by mixing the banana into the cereal this morning. 

Most times that I get to play with Sara Beth in the play room, I turn on the radio.  It is typically classical music.  Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag began playing and I decided to bounce Sara Beth around the room in time with the music.  She loved it.  She bounced her legs, laughed, and had a giant smile painted across her face.  When the song came to an end and the bouncing stopped, she started to cry.  Fortunately, I was able to distract her with a rattle, but next time a fast song comes up on the radio, I'm going to bounce her around again.

Sara Beth has improved her crawling skills.  She will now army crawl across a room to get to a stuffed toy that she wants to play with, as long as she doesn't get distracted by something along the way.  

Monday, February 16, 2009

The tooth deamons

Our little Sara Beth's upper two teeth are beginning to come in and they are causing more trouble than the bottom two.  She doesn't want to eat much.  She acts more fussy.  She certainly doesn't want to take naps.  But, on the upside, she does want to be snuggled more.  

  For a while she went on an oatmeal strike; more oatmeal got on her face than in her mouth as she deftly dodged the incoming spoon.  A cease fire was called after two days, and she has begun to eat her morning food again.

Heather wanted to point out that she does not like our camera.  Sara Beth was reaching up for the top of the table and making attempts to pull herself up, but by the time the camera started to work, she had given up on that and had moved on to playing with the table legs instead.

There is debate over whether SaraB is now crawling or not.  I say that any intentional forward progress constitutes as crawling.  Heather wants to use the more strict definition requiring the use of hands and knees to propel the baby forward.  So by my definition, Sara Beth was crawling around the living room trying to catch our cat Little Bit.  By Heather's definition, Sara Beth was propelling herself across the living room in a fashion very similar to crawling, but not actually crawling.  I think my sentence rolls of the tongue easier.  SaraB will roll over her elbow on one side, as in the below picture, instead of using both hands.  In any case, she is now gaining mobility, and the cats will soon have to sleep with one eye open.

For Valentine's day, one of our neighbors brought over a heart shaped balloon for Sara Beth to play with.  She was able to pull the balloon's string down in order to get at the shiny red part and has had loads of fun playing with it for the past couple of days.  I enjoy watching her with it, but also watching the cats as the circle around Sara Beth and her shiny floating cat toy.  Whenever thy get the chance, they will run up and start playing with the string as well.


Monday, February 9, 2009

Back that baby train up

So Sara Beth is now crawling, for certain definitions of "crawling."  She can hold herself up on her hands and knees, and rock back and forth.  And she can also push herself in a direction.  It just so happens that that direction does not happen to be forwards.  

Sara Beth can entertain herself a lot more easily now.  I placed her in the middle in the play room and didn't bring toys to her.  Instead, she rolls and schooched her way to a toy.  She picket it up, played with it for a while, and then when she got bored with it, she set it down and moved over to the next toy.  I did have to help her get a plastic toy train set from the shelf.  While SaraB is mobile, I do worry when she gets close to hard objects like the shelf.  She does have a tendency to bonk her head.  But she was fine with being moved to a safer location in the middle of the room to play with her train.  I'd put good money down that by next Monday's update, I will be extolling Sara Beth's crawling abilities.

Here Sara Beth is chllin in my friend Jon's hat.


Sara Beth loves drinking from our cups.  And now she learning to actually consume the liquid instead of just putting her lips on the cup and dribbling any water that actually got in her mouth back out onto her shirt.  Also, take note that when she concentrates real hard, she will clench her hand into fists.  


It was another gorgeous weekend.  We had the doors and windows open, and Sara Beth got to play at the park.  She is wearing a size 12 month dress, and wearing it quite well.  We will probably need to start looking for 18 month clothes, but Heather wants to wait till the stores are offering more summery style clothes.

In this final picture for the week,  if you click on it to bring up the larger version, you can see her bottom teeth.  Oh, and she is demonstrating her ability to multi-task, pulling off her socks while rolling around.





Monday, February 2, 2009

Half a year

Sara Beth turned 6 months old on Saturday.  Today, she went to the doctor for her checkup.  She now weighs in at nineteen pounds and thirteen ounces and measured up at 28.75 inches tall.  According to the growth charts I can find on the internet, the average 12 month old is 28.75 inches tall.  By extrapolation, that means by the time she enters kindergarten, she will be the size of a 5th grader.  

She has really become experienced at rolling around.  If you place her on the floor, she will roll over to whatever she wants to play with.  She pulls toys and baskets off the bottom shelf.   When she wakes up from a nap, she will roll all around in her crib.  The transition to crawling will happen any day now.  Heather and I have said that we will need to baby proof the house within the next couple weeks; if we wait much longer past that, Sara Beth might be capable of helping us.

Heather found mummums for Sara Beth to eat and she loves them.  You can place the whole 2x4 inch cracker in her hands and she will chew it down to nothing and then look for more.  During her time in the nursery on Sunday, she somehow conned the nursery workers into giving her two mummums.  We don't really care, and, in fact, are rather proud of her persuasion skills.  

This past weekend, the temperature finally rose above the point where Heather and I felt comfortable taking Sara Beth out to the park.  Those of you in Dallas know this, but the trend for the past couple of weeks has for the weather to be beautiful during the week, and then get all cold and rainy right around the time I get home from work on Friday.  Well, this past week was different.  It was cold and icy in the middle of the week, and by the time the weekend rolled around, it was shorts weather or, at least, weather where people acclimated to a Colorado climate wear shorts.  Sara Beth loves the swing, but not the slide.  The swing moved slowly enough that she was able to take in all that was happening.  I think the slide still scares her a little.  I blame the camera for the problems with the focus in the below pictures.  We're going to get a new camera real soon now.