It's MY turn

Dad: You know, she really is a cute girl.
Mom: I know, she IS.
Dad: All her features are in proportion you know.
Mom: Yah, dad.

Five minutes later.

Dad: You know, she really is a beautiful girl.
Mom: It's true, it's true.






Mom: Uh-oh dad. Hold the bottle.
Dad: Huh?
Mom: DAD. HOLD the bottle for a minute ok?
Dad: oh, okay okaayy.
Mom: ah-choo!!










Mom: Ok, that's better.

Mom: Wow... look, she drink the whole bottle DAD. She's such a good eater.
Dad: I know mommy.















Dad: Now it's MY turn. Ohhhhh look at you. What a happy girl you are. What a beautiful girl you are.
Mom: I know Dad. Really. Really.

Good things come in small packages

"Who would put me in something like this?"

"I guess I'll just have to make the best of it!"

Feeding Herself

Joanne read this article earlier this week, which raises the possibility of introducing more solid foods to babies at a younger age. The basic idea is that if they can pick the food up, put it in their mouth, and then force it into their throats, they're almost definitely going to be able to swallow it. Obviously you need to closely supervise the activity and only appropriate food should be offered.

Well this made sense to us and we decided to give it a try. The first night was hysterical - basically Cecilia's mission in life right now is to grab everything she sees and put it in her mouth. And if she can't grab it she'll bring her mouth to it and taste it that way (notice the smudges on the little mirror in her room).

Thinking it would be a breeze, I put a small slice of banana on the tray in front of her. She looked at it, picked it up, dropped it on the floor, and then stared intently at the bowl of mashed bananas I had been feeding her from. This went on for 10 minutes as she absolutely refused to feed herself and kept staring at the bowl. It was like she was saying, "come on Dad, quit playing around and feed me already!".

Anyway I found it quite amusing. Last night we tried again as I was basically hand feeding her the contents of some chicken soup I had made. She loved the noodles, carrots and broth (hated the chicken) and after several attempts finally took a small piece of carrot off of her tray, brought it to her mouth, and took a small bite. We call celebrated and she was quite pleased with herself.

The only bad part of the night was when I tried feeding her the broth from a big Chinese soup spoon and she put her nose in it and sucked it up in there. She was not very happy with that but everyone survived.

PS New video camera coming for the Holidays so hopefully we'll be posting footage of her eating by herself soon.

Gratitude

On Monday night Cecilia woke up for some reason at around 2:30 and wouldn't go back to sleep. We changed her, replaced the binky, patted her back, but nothing seemed to work. Since we weened her off of the middle of the night feedings we were reluctant to give her a bottle, but after about an hour I relented.

As I sat with her on the rocking chair in her room and she gulped her first mouthfuls, she stared at me with the most intense look of gratitude and love I have probably ever received. Our eyes locked for a few minutes, in the kind of moment you can't really have with another adult.

The experience was well worth the exhaustion I had the next day.

Six Months Ago

Smallwood

We went to Smallwood with Heather and Cassie two weeks ago. It was great to be at the place and see our friends but unfortunately some idiot dropped our camera on the top of Slide Mountain, so these could be the last images captured by our once steady companion.

Luckily Heather has some really good pics too and I will get them on here eventually...here they are - some are pretty nice.



On Sunday morning I took her for a walk around the lake in her stroller. I enjoyed it profoundly while she slept. Saturday she stayed in with Mom while we had our excursion to the peak, and everyone had a great time.


She really liked looking at the fire.

Thanksgiving

We went to my mom's house for Thanksgiving and had a great long weekend. Cecilia got to meet her cousins and Joanne and I got to take Saturday morning off and go to Queens for some fantastic Dim Sum. Overall it was a great trip, although by the end Cecilia was a little overwhelmed and was definitely happy to get home on Sunday. It is amazing to see her develop like this - a few short months ago she would not have known the difference where she was.

Joanne took lots of great pictures - along with the one above this is my favorite.

The only bad part of the weekend were the people who were not there. Ben and his family went to Worcester to be with Jen's dad because he is sick and this was my first Thanksgiving without Uncle Marty. Last Thanksgiving was when we announced that Joanne was pregnant, so at least he got the good news even if he never got to meet her.