Milestones (Anna)

Emma has one of those wire toys threaded with beads. Today, for the first time, instead of just upending it or putting it in her mouth, she sat down in front of it and started to move the beads. It's the first time she's acknowledged a toy as having a "correct" way up.

She's got a host of new sounds, including ra ra, fa fa, abala, ga-ga-da-da, Mu-ma, An-an-an-an-a and bla-bla-bla. When she puts ananana together with blah blah blah, I start to wonder if I'm talking too much ;)

I'm enjoying being "Mumma" because I can pretend that Emma is referring to me when she strings together M sounds. Caroline, on the other hand, is regretting that "Mummy" will take Emma longer to master.

She pulls herself up on everything, and has started to walk sideways while she's holding on.

She can now put herself back to sleep when she wakes up (yayy!)

Somehow - we've not sure how - she can partly undress herself when she's wearing a sleeper, leaving her feet bare.

She's enjoying feeding herself and sometimes growls at us when we try to feed her. When she's tired, she will still happily lean back in her high chair, open her mouth and deign to let us shove food in it.

She likes to unload the dishwasher. We're hoping this is a permanent feature...;)

She's learning about edges, and will now often stop when she gets to the edge of the bed or the top stair going down to the living room instead of catapualting over the edge (the big staircases are gated; we prefer small-scale experiments at this stage.)

Christmas prep (Anna)

Two years ago, we tenderly placed deeply symbolic baubles on our Christmas tree to represent our dreams of having a family.

Last year, we exchnaged baubles that represented the tiny human being growing inside the warm, cosy confines of Caroline's belly.

This year, the whole tree celebrates the fact that we now have a kid. But it's a little more pragmatic this year - there are no ornaments on the bottom metre of the tree, since certain little fingers will just try to pull them off!

In other news, a certain someone whose name begins with A locked the car keys inside the car today and had to be bailed out by a certain other someone whose name begins with C. So in addition to German Christmas cookies, there's some humble pie being consumed in our household tonight. *blush*

Domesticity (Anna)

Our poor little schnuffling creature has a cold and is feeling very sorry for herself. So instead of climbing up everything and crawling all over the place, today she spent large quantities of time curled up with one of us in the rocking chair reading stories. Which is beautifully intimate even though we're sorry that she's feeling bad.

And Caroline's been making traditional German Christmas cookies, so our entire house smells of vanilla and baking. Mmmm....

Recent highlights (Anna)

Life is crazy busy, but a few highlights.

- Caroline organized for us to have a date on Sunday sans le monster. We left her with a friend and went for a long walk along the sea wall and then lunch. It was fantastic!
- Caroline and Emma have a game they play with the dummy, where Caroline sucks on it and Emma grabs it back out of her mouth and giggles. Recently, Emma has started offering the dummy back, which is just adorable.
- Emmy has started to pinch things between her forefinger and thumb - which apparently is the thing that separates us from monkeys. But she climbs everything, so the difference is hard to ascertain at this point....;)
- We went to the open house for the childcare that Emmy will start attending in a few months time. A fabulous place, even for me with all my issues about childcares. We're quite relieved.
- At swimming, Emmy can now dunk for several seconds, without having her face blown on first. The idea is that blowing on a baby's face makes them close their eyes and hold their breath; I started to realise that Emmy was doing that from the verbal and physical cues anyway, so I stopped doing it and she was just fine.

Anyway, that's about it for spare time...crying baby...

8 months!

Emma is eight months old today!

It's been an amazing month. She is amazing. New sounds and actions every day. We spend a lot of time with her and we still ask each other "When did she learn that?" She's also a lot more physical and is getting a real mischevious glint in her eye. She continues to call the shots around here. The Mums continue to drag their weary butts after her and hope she doesn't have too much of a head start.

It's exciting to hear her baby babble taking off. She has a whole language now, and isn't afraid to express her many opinions. You'll be pleased to know that she thinks that her teddy bear is "Vbdadadammmggggfloop".

Some pics....

In her toybox - it has wheels. Lots of fun. Wheeee!



For some reason, she is fascinated by the remote control; she's quite happy even when we take the batteries out. We've tried the "pause" button on her, but it doesn't seem to work.



On Jay's farm north of Victoria. We spent Thanksgiving in a warm, cosy farm kitchen waiting for fresh apple pie.



"This is my treat. Now, where's my credit card?..." First high chair experence at a thanksgiving meal in a diner in Victoria.

"I'll have extra cream on my pumpkin pie, please". (we're not ashmaed of making her pose for ridiculous photos just for our amusement...)

Emma's fascination with her friend the "mirror baby" has continued. They don't upset each other as much as they used to. Perhaps it's because Mummy is moderating.

Reading a book. This one has textured farm animals, with lots of flaps to open. Hours of fun.

Curling up with books is so much part of our everyday we sometimes forget to take photos of it, so we tried harder this month.

Playing with a "new" toy from the toy library. The play mat in the background came down this month. It's already hard to imagine her lying on it as tiny baby unable even to roll over.

Food has been an important theme this month. We've been very relieved that she's taken to it really well and is willing to try to eat all sorts of things (some of which are even food items...).

At first, she managed to get herself up on her knees....

And before long, she was standing up....and then climbing up...on everything. The bookshelves, the rocking chair, her toy box, the toilet, the bath, the bed. It doesn't matter whether it's stable or not, safe or not, she will climb it. Sometimes she gets stuck and yells "Waaaaaahhh"for a rescue.

We had to drop her crib down. We now wake up in the morning to a baby peering over the edge of the crib at us and smiling. There are worst ways to wake up. Sometimes, when she's in bed with us, we wake to find her climbing up our bed's headboard.

Skooching on her belly became real crawling. She can now make it up the stairs between the living room and the kitchen. Bye-bye baby safety pit (and Mums' sanity).

On a walk along the sea wall. All that standing and crawling has worn her out.

Happy eight months, kiddo. We love you!

We know, we know

Yes. We're still here.
Yes. We need to blog.
Yes. We owe you photos and updates.

Yes. We will commit to probably, maybe, perhaps making that happen soon...

Crawling (Anna)

Today, Caroline phoned me at work to say that Emma had taken her first few movements in full crawl position! For several weeeks now, she (Emma, not Caroline) has been able to get anywhere she wants to go by schooching on her belly, and has been furiously practising the crawl position. She is an expert at downward dog, too.

Here is some archival footage of one of her training sessions (we've been meaning to post it, but hadn't got around to it).