Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Florida

Our trip to Florida was a success.  We made it there and back with no difficulties.  Because of Sara Beth's young age, we figured that we would do all the driving at night, after her bed time, and let Sara Beth sleep the whole 11 hours.  Sara Beth didn't agree to our plans.  So we left Texas at 8pm on Wednesday, and instead of falling asleep, she sat awake with a very confused look on her face; she knew her bedtime routine and sitting in a car seat was definitely not a part of it.  She finally closed her eyes around 10pm, but didn't sleep well the whole night.  Whenever the car went over a bump in the road, she woke up and started crying.  

  Once we got to Heather's Aunt and Uncles house, she got a little nap in before starting her day for reals.  We finally did get her schedule back to normal just in time for the return trip Sunday night.  This time, Sara Beth realized what we were doing and went right to sleep.  It was a much smoother trip.  She woke up every five hours and let us know that she REALLY wanted out of her car seat, so we pulled into whatever was the next gas station and she helped fill up the tank.  After the brief interlude, she was ready to get back into her seat for five more hours.  All in all, I think she did really well on her first long car trip. 


You can't go to Florida without going to the beach.  Unfortunately, the beach was not baby friendly.  The sand was too hot, and instead of a gentle slope into the water with inches of watter gently flowing, the waves crashed hard on the steep beach. Heather stayed on the beach, taking pictures while Sara Beth and I went into the water.  Sara Beth did enjoy splashing the water while on my little boogie board, as long as I stayed away from the crashing surf.   


Sometimes an unexpected wave would sneak up on us and Sara Beth got a mouthful of water.  

Sara Beth got to play more with her cousin Wesley.  They would get in races around Heather's Aunt and Uncle's house.  Sara Beth always won the races, but I think that is because she had a four month head start.



Once back at our house, Sara Beth got back to doing what she does best: act cute.  She decided that she wanted to have a ankle bracelet.  She would put the ring over her foot, act all proud, and then start to crawl around.  The ring would fall of after a few feet.  At that point, she would stop, sit back, and reapply the ankle bracelet.  She repeated this process before deciding that the jewelry was too much work to maintain. 

Her next attempt at jewelry was to use the cat's beads as a necklace.  These worked much better, as she successfully paraded around the house without having the adornments fall off.

Sara Beth loves to play with her medical supplies.  We figure that she wants to grow up to be a doctor, as she will get all her medicine droppers and thermometers out and play with them.  

Monday, June 22, 2009

Sharing

Once again Sara Beth got to chow down on spaghetti.  She has started some bad habits though.  No longer will she waive her hands in the air signing that she is all done eating.  Instead, she will now start to pick up her food and throw it around once she is done.  While it conveys the message to Heather and I just as clearly, it does make the after meal cleanup longer.


Sara Beth and Heather have started having tea parties.  They will take out all the plastic toy plates and cups and such.  Sometimes, Sara Beth will check to see if the sugar bowl lid tastes like sugar; it doesn't.  

While having the tea party, Heather will hold one of the tea cups up to her lips and make a slurping noise.  Sara Beth, with a grin on her face, will mirror the action, making her own sipping noises with her cup, and then will offer her cup to Heather to sip from.  

  While out in the kiddie pool in our backyard, Sara Beth demonstrated her newfound sharing ability.  She got a pool toy full of water and took a sip, and then offered the pool water to me as well.  It was not fresh water, but I politely made yummy noises as she held the cup up to my lips.  She was so happy to see that I liked it that she proceeded to offer me more pool water for the next 5 minutes, until I successfully distracted her with a crab pool toy to the belly.

Sara Beth got some Jello for lunch in the below photograph, and doesn't quite know what to make of it.  She has been very good about trying new things.  I am very thankful that she will consume almost everything that we put on her tray, with varying degrees of gusto.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Chores

Heather, being the good house wife that she is, routinely does the laundry, folding up everything that comes out of the dryer and putting it up.  Sara Beth, being the good baby she is, gets into everything, and tries to mimic her mother's activities.  In this case, she is trying to figure out how to fold towels; Heather makes it look so easy.

Heather also will vacuum the carpets.  Sara Beth will follow around with her "vacuum" and make a "hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm" noise in imitation of a real vacuum.  If anyone is looking for a good business idea, here's a doozy: sell a fully functional toddler sized vacuum cleaner.  That way, when they play around the house, it is actually cleaner than when they started.

I was out in the garage, working on guy stuff, and Sara Beth was out there with me.  She kept crawling towards all the cool stuff that had the potential to hurt her, and so I sat her in my car.  She was so excited about it, I had to snap a picture.  With all the knobs and switches in the Porsche, it was just like one of her toys.  I was able to get stuff done, and she had a great time bouncing in the drivers seat and pulling all the Kleenex out of the side door compartment. 

After a hard day of work, there is nothing quite like taking Sara Beth to the pool.  She loves to be tossed about between Heather and me, or just straight up in the air.  There is no fear in her as I cannot toss her too high.  Her only request is that I keep her head above water.  If she goes under, then she will cough and sputter and want to be held for a little while before the acrobatics are resumed.


After her high-flying act, we came in and worked on the delicate coordination skills.  She would take her large plastic coins and put them one at a time into her piggy bank.  She would carefully position the coin in the slot and then push it in.  Her levels of concentration were very high as she repeated the process of putting a coin in, and then pulling it out of the door on the side.  If I tried to help guide the coin with my hand, she would push it off with a waive of her hand, and would get back to doing it all by herself.

We have noticed Sara Beth will often pull herself up on her two feet, then let go of whatever she held onto.  She falls back onto her backside, but the duration between letting go, and falling over has increased.  Heather found a inflatable pool for the backyard.  SaraB will experiment with standing up in there, and will recklessly flop over on her side.  The eight inches of water cushions her fall so well that she has no qualms about practicing her standing abilities.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Words, watermellon, and wittle teeth

Alliteration ... gotta love it.  She got her eight tooth in this week, and I couldn't come up with another word that started with w for the title.

So, Sara Beth is starting to make some sounds that are eerily similar to words.  She will say "ki-ki" as she chases after the kitties, and she will also say "ha" as a variation on "hi".  These are in addition to her staple "ma-ma" that she calls out anytime she wants Heather.

  She also understands and can respond to phrases.  Heather can ask her "How big is Sara Beth?" and SaraB will raise both hands in the air as Heather then says "Sooooo big!"  In addition, whenever she hears the phrase "good job," Sara Beth will start clapping.  I think she understands a lot more than that, but these are the things that get consistent responses from her.

Unlike her mother, Sara Beth loves melons. Heather bought a watermelon for Sara Beth and me to share.  We took it out into the back yard so she could eat the watermelon as messily as she wanted to.  Also, ignore the hair: she was at the pool earlier today and hadn't had a chance to get her hair styled since then.

Note that in this photo, she is no longer wearing her dress.  She took to the watermelon like a fish to water, and chowed down on 2 whole slices before she began to be more interested in playing with the food than eating it.  She ate the piece in the below photo all by herself.  Later on, she tried eating the rind, with limited success.  


Sara Beth is making figurative steps towards making her first real steps.  Occasionally, Heather or I will catch her standing up and balancing using only her two feet.  She will push her little cart around, at least, until it runs into an immobile object.  In this case, she started banging on the ottoman once she realized that her cart would not move any further.

So, whomever designs baby toys needs to take notes from the cat toy people.  She spends so much time pulling the cat toys out of their basket, and then dragging them through the house.  

I suspect that Sara Beth is flashing a gang sign in the below picture.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Colorado and Fruit

We all went up to Colorado this past weekend, and, unfortunately, I left the camera in my bag, so there are no pictures of our time up there.  It was the first time that Sara Beth got to play with my parents since Christmas time, but this was the first time that she got to play on their turf.  She would crawl around in the back yard, finding things that were edible, and some things that weren't, into her mouth.   She got to munch on raw rhubarb and some editable flowers that my parents have growing in the back yard.  Heather got to change a dirty diaper or two that contained some partially digested grass in them.  

She probably would have tried to chew on the local wildlife if it moved as slow as the plants did.  We pointed out the plague ridden prairie dogs along the sides of the highway, and the bird that nests in a flower pot in the backyard.  The more elusive foxes and coyotes made an appearance, but Sara Beth didn't see those.  There was an animal that was a little too friendly though.  Heather came in from outside Saturday afternoon and explained that there was a snake, at least 40 feet long and carrying ninja stars, that tried to eat both her and Sara Beth.  Upon cross examination, it turns out that the snake was a more respectable 3 feet long and did not have weapons of any sort, but that it did have a cold reptilian look in its eyes.  I saw the snake the next day while it was climbing a tree, presumably preparing to ambush any small deer that passed by.

Anyways, getting back to thinks that Sara Beth placed in her mouth: she got to try some new food.  My dad handed her a raspberry one morning.  She looks at the red thing in her hand, then at my dad, then back at the berry.  After deciding to stick the foreign object in her mouth, her eyes lit up, and she looked back at my dad with an expectant gaze and reached out her hand for more.  While at a Chinese restaurant, she sat between Heather and I and was keeping us both busy, asking each of us, in turn, for a mouthful of food.  She wolfed it down so quickly that neither of us had a chance to eat anything until she decided she didn't want anymore.

Back home in Texas, we found that our peach tree is ready for harvest.  Sara Beth can eat a whole peach in only a couple minutes, and we let her munch away after cutting it into more bite sized pieces.  And since I realized that I didn't have any pictures to post with until tonight, all of them are variations on the theme "Sara Beth eating peaches."  Talk to you next week.