tawbubby

This chair has been great. When we first got it, she slumped over in it. Now she sits so straight and tall. It also fits on any counter and the table so she can be wherever we are.

Here she is holding onto my pinky to balance herself.  Most babies start sitting by doing a tripod with their hands on the floor.  She never really did that.  This week she just started correcting her leaning and pulling herself back up, I guess using her abdominal muscles.  She sits by herself for 10 seconds several times a day. 

She ate like crazy for maybe 5 days.  This weekend she is sleeping a lot.  She slept 2 hours, was awake for one hour, and went back to bed for two more hours both days.  She was 16.5 pounds on Friday and growing fast!

Some funny picture merges to share with you.

Inspired by a big pack of “beautiful, beautiful” strawberries that Ethan bought last weekend, and then an old picture of the daffodils at NIH.

Here’s a night vision (daytime with the shades down) view of Amelia’s old aquarium that she helped me put into Daphne’s crib.

After a while, Amelia asked for her pink (blanket) and Goldie and baby and buzzy bee and quilt and hope blanket…all her crib friends…and said she was going to nap at 9am. She didn’t, but it was a little adventure for her to enjoy Daphne’s bed.

Daphodil is now our most common nickname for Daphne. Sometimes she’s Daphadoodle, and frequently just Daph.

This girl is eating like a maniac since yesterday. She even had

TWO

jars of food for dinner last night. Her favorite so far is sweet potatoes.

“I wanna help!” is a phrase we hear several times a day. Here is Amelia making waffles this morning.

We’re still adding pictures to the Flickr page whenever we can. Sometimes it’s updated more than this page. You get to it here.

Amelia’s been choosing her words carefully lately. Trying to get the right meaning. It’s really fascinating to watch.

Also, she’s been picking up colloquialisms, which can be funny. Like:

Amelia: Where we going?
Ethan: To the video store.
Amelia: What we… what we get?
Ethan: I’m not sure.
Amelia: Maybe we check it out!

It’s emboldened me to use more slang with her, because it’s so fun. So yesterday she was choosing her words and taking longer-than-normal to get there:

Amelia: … uh … uh….
Ethan (smiling): Spit it out.

Amelia just stared at me with a serious expression for a few seconds, then leaned forward and spit into the toy box that was between us.

In February, during our stomach flu phase, I got Amelia a toy nurse kit. She was going to a daycare with a nurse that takes slightly sick kids. That toy made it a little easier to go because she loved playing ‘nurse’ with the real nurse. That night, she still had a little tummy ache so she used her bandaids to fix it.

Daphne sat on the bathroom counter while I got ready this morning.

She likes her friend in the mirror. They held hands, put their heads together, smiled at each other and had a good time.

It’s been a while! Daphne is getting over an ear infection & cold, and doing great. For a few days she liked to eat looking over her left shoulder- it must have made swallowing easier while her ears hurt. She has started grabbing her feet and whacking herself with jerky arm movements. She still loves her hands and anyone’s hands. She says “Ahhhh” all the time. Sometimes we catch her “chewing”. She’s working on sitting up. It’ll be a while but sometimes she can prop herself oh-so-delicately on on elbow. I swear I saw the slits in her gums of her first two teeth, but I couldn’t find them this morning…not sure about that now.

The big event for Amelia in the past few weeks was sleeping in a Twin Bed at the lake. We woke up to her crying around 2am the first night. Ethan went to help her, and I followed a minute later. She was standing by the bed and sobbed “I…. fell…. out….”, to my hidden amusement because that’s such a moment of passage. She went back to sleep right away. The second night she stayed in the bed.

Amelia’s favorite thing to say right now is “We can check it out!” if we don’t know the answer to her questions. We played outside before dinner last night with our 2-year-old neighbor Trey. They ran around together, shared bikes, and ran away from us when we asked them to come back…Amelia is starting to play with other kids rather than next to them. She can tell stories, remember the littlest facts, and has to have a lot of things in a particular place or state. We feel like she will potty train very soon.

That’s about it. We’ve missed you! Come back soon, we won’t stay away so long this time.

Welcome to the new hone of the Amelia & Daphne blog!

Why “tawbubby”? Well, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that Amelia said a LOT of cute things as she transitioned from baby talk to speaking. Our favorite word was what she called her favorite fruit.

It’s a word Allison and I still use sometimes, even if Amelia doesn’t.

Anyway, welcome to the new blog. Expect cosmetic changes while we get settled.

We missed Daph’s six month growth photo when she was in the hospital. Here’s seven.

BTW, Daphne is doing quite well now. Getting over an ear infection, but that’s normal. Lots of smiles as you can see here.