Six months old

183 days and counting ...

A game of inches

Dictionary.com defines crawling as the following:

crawl ¹ (krôl)
intr.v. crawled, crawl·ing, crawls

1. To move slowly on the hands and knees or by dragging the body along the ground; creep.
2. To advance slowly, feebly, laboriously, or with frequent stops: We crawled along until we reached the open road.

Yeah, she's almost there. She's taken to getting up on all fours (either her knees or occasionally standing on her hands and feet) and rocking forward until she falls. And repeat. Granted – when she rocks she usually slides backward twice as far as the goes forward ... but I'm pretty sure that's where the "to advance slowly, feebly, laboriously" comes in.

But she is obviously trying to go somewhere. She'll see the dog, or me, or a toy, lock her eyes to the target and start scooting in that general direction. Or at least attempt it. And when the task proves too difficult, she gets really frustrated and starts throwing a fit.

Rae seemed to insinuate that she gets that from me. But I have no idea what she is talking about.

It won't be long now and she'll be tearing it up around the house. She already has Pork Chop nervous. (Not to mention Rae – who I'm pretty sure wants to anchor every piece of furniture we own to the walls so Kaylee won't pull it down.)

Kaylee today: Rockin'.

*splish splash*

If you think this is cute – you should see the ones I won't put online.

Kaylee had her first "real" bath today. No silly little plastic tub that she's outgrown. Full-on two inches of warm water in the bathtub action. No bubbles though.

But it only took her about 10 seconds to figure out how cool splashing is.

She spent the next 8 minutes trying to chase a rubber duck around the tub while I tried to scrub her. I think bath time just got a lot more fun for all involved.

T-minus two days and counting until she's six months old.

Kaylee today: Squealing.

Photo extravaganza!

Kaylee and Moxie.

We've moved on from peas. Now we're on to squash.
You can see how much Kaylee likes the idea.

Wait! She likes it!
Or she's just laughing at her Dad's goofy look.
Or maybe a little bit of both.

This solid food thing is much messier than the liquid diet.
(On both ends.)

Kaylee today: Urpish.

Locomotion

I decided to shoot a little video tonite "just because." And then I decided to go ahead and process it because I just didn't spend enough time in front of my Mac today. So I went ahead and uploaded it for your viewing pleasure.



Kaylee today: Bumpy

You're motorin'

So she's not crawling – yet. But she's getting close. Kaylee's got that rolling thing down pretty well. Put her down in one place, turn your back and she's across the room by the time you turn around again. She's also taken to pushing herself across the floor. As long as she's got a couch or a chair or a dog to push off of, she can scoot an inch or two. It won't be long now before she's all over the house – stirring up trouble here and there.

In food news – we continued the quest to introduce vegetables with another round of mushy peas. Once again, it didn't go so well. After you give her a bite, she sticks out her tongue as far as she can and lets it all fall out on her bib. Though, after mixing the peas with a little cereal they seemed to go down a little easier.

It seems she only wants whirled peas on her terms. Maybe she's a Republican?*

Sounds like she knew I was talking about her. Now she's laying on the floor grunting. I have a feeling that I'm about to find out what those peas look like on the other side.

(EDIT) Yeah – I was right. And now I'm beginning to rethink this whole "solid foods" thing. At least until she has the manual dexterity to clean her own butt.

Kaylee today: Gabby

* I've tried really hard to keep my political views out of this blog. But c'mon. Whirled peas? World peace? That's too cute not to include.

Peas and thank you

Well, cereal seems to be going pretty well. So we decided to press our luck this evening and try introducing something new. Vegetables. Peas to be exact. Green. Mushy. Peas.

After seeing the contents of the package – I think I have a VERY good idea of what her diaper is going to look like tomorrow.

Pre-peas: Kaylee's in her chair and ready to go.
Bring on the rice cereal!

Round one: Rae gives her the first bite and ...
"What the hell is this? Where's the bland, watery cereal substance I know and love? Take this away!"

Round two: "Hey, it's Dad. I like him. He's a pushover.
Maybe if I flash him a smile, he'll give me what I want.
Nope, More of that green crap."

Post-peas: Bad news is she didn't like it so much.
Good news is we kept her pretty clean!

Kaylee today: Critical

Home for dinner

For once, I got home just in time to feed Kaylee. Normally doesn't happen on a week night. I'm actually pretty lucky if I catch her awake these days.

Dads make funny faces when they feed kids cereal.
Mmmmmmm … papier mache.

Kaylee loves having her dad home for dinnertime.
Look how happy she is!

Kaylee today: Pasty

Looks like Mom? Looks like Dad?

I've been meaning to get around to this for about 5 months now ... but I finally dug into the big bin of photos for the Mother's Day post. Now you can really get a good look at who looks like who. (Personally, all I see is smooshy-faced babies. They all look alike to me.)

Oh – THAT'S what my hair looked like ...

Now we know where the faux-hawk came from.

Cuter than the sum of her parents.

Kaylee today: Healthy (Unlike her father who is home sick)

Happy Mother's Day

The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. – Rajneesh

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
No man does. That's his. – Oscar Wilde

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
– William Makepeace Thackeray

Date night

Well, we were supposed to go to Phoenix tonight for a work thing, but our baby-sitter flaked out on us.* But, after I had given my tickets away, someone else** offered to take Kaylee for the night. So Rae and I jumped at the opportunity to have a child-less evening out. Dinner and a movie has never been so appreciated.

Spider-Man 3? Not so great.

The veal?*** (Yes, I am a heartless soul.) It was awesome.

Kaylee had a great time apparently. No grumping and she ate well. Rae was just happy that Kaylee seemed excited when we walked in. (Though, I think she looked even more excited when she saw the kitten.)

Kaylee today: Somewhere else

* Melissa – I KEED! I KEED!
** The awesome Penny, who apparently is a faithful reader of the blog.
*** Step 1 – You cut a hole in a box. Step 2 – You put your cow in the box. Step 3 – Make her eat the cow in the box. And that's how you do it.

Just in case you were wondering

Changing a flat tire, in your work clothes, with a screaming baby in the background?

Not fun.

Kaylee today: Gorged

I don't know what she did right ...

But I hope Rae can do it again.

Kaylee's been a pretty spotty eater so far. A little here. A little there. It's fine, but it usually makes for a grumpy baby around bedtime - and it doesn't help her sleep through the night.

By the time I got home last night, Kaylee had already had a marathon breastfeeding session, downed a bottle AND almost a full bowl of cereal. She fell asleep around 7:30 and didn't wake up until I nudged her at 6.

11 hours of straight sleep. Too bad she did it on a night with no TV worth watching - but we did appreciate the one night of uninterrupted sleep.

Kaylee today: Chipper

Movie time

Kaylee wasn't too sure about this whole cereal thing at first. But now she seems to have taken to it like something that stereotypically likes something a lot.* I was going to post pictures, but the video gnomes cobbled this together for your viewing pleasure.

Do not taunt the gnomes. They see what you do when you are alone. And they are recording.


Kaylee today: Fickle

* I'm beat. Sue me if I can't come up with a decent analogy. You think it's so easy? You try working all day, raising a 5-month-old AND keeping up a blog. With video! (Bet you thought you had me until the end there didn't you?)

See ya sis ...

Well, Becky and Matt and Alice hit the road this morning for the Grand Canyon. Before they left, they burned all of their photos from the week onto a DVD for me. I'll spare you the 18 shots of the same fountain at the botanical gardens, but here's some highlights:

Auntie Becky with the cutest baby in the house.
(I can get away with saying that, because technically there is currently only one baby in my house. Anyway – it's my blog. I'll dub my baby the cutest if I want to.)

Me with the girls. The cutest 30+ pounds of poo and vomit-spewing kids ever assembled. (Both of them did their fare share this week.)

My baby can roll over. Becky's can't. I win.

Kaylee was pretty much fascinated by Alice.
Alice just wanted her personal space back.

The two of them get along just about as well as Becky and I did.
Well, without the hair cutting and name calling.

Kaylee today: Lonely

Why's my milk so chunky?

So today we decided it was about time to attempt solid foods. Naturally, we decided to start with rice cereal. We mixed it up with some nice warm milk, runny at first and then we thickened it up a bit … (you know the drill, click photos to bigify)

Yeah, that didn't go so well. But after five months of nothing but sucking, you have to assume a spoon is going to be a little strange. Good thing we didn't go for the fork.

Kaylee today: Solid

Sick days

So we took a trip to the Doctor of Babies yesterday. All he did was tell us, "Yup, she's sick" and "Nope, there's nothing you can do about it." Rae worked from home to take care of the monkey yesterday. She's still really fussy (Kaylee, not Rae) but she seems to be doing better now.

Luckily, it doesn't seem to have transferred to Alice. But we've still got two days to go. I imagine a baby with explosive diarrhea would be loads of fun on an airplane.

I also wanted to show off Kaylee's brand new white crawler (seen above). Now I know what you're asking yourself. You're saying, "Self? We're not crazy are we? That crawler isn't white, it's pink. Right?" Self would be correct.

With all the dirty baby laundry we've had to do lately – Rae decided to combine a bunch of smaller loads that weren't directly related to Kaylee's illness. She threw in some of her white underwear, her white nursing pads, Kaylee's brand new white and yellow crawlers AND four bright red placemats.

If you think this white crawler looks good – you should see the yellow ones.

Kaylee today: Mending

Ummm, yeah*

Alice and Kaylee. Yin and Yang.

Apparently they've been stealing toys from each other all day.
Well – it's mostly Kaylee stealing. (That's my girl!)

On a side note – Kaylee's a bit under the weather. She feels fine for the most part – but there isn't a diaper that can contain her wrath. We've done more laundry in the last 48 hours than we have all week. Visiting the Doctor of Babies in the AM.

Kaylee today: Crappy

*It's getting really hard to keep coming up with witty titles for all of these. I've been at this for more than a year now. How many baby puns do you think are out there?