Avery and I did her first dog walk in the back-carry position of the Beco this morning. It went really well. I did learn that I need to buy her a sun hat that stays more securely on her head because, with her behind me, I was constantly worried it was falling down into her eyes. I was quite pleased with myself for remember to bring a mirror on the walk so I could look at her position if needed. Of course, because I brought it, I didn't need it.
Speaking of the back carry, I also managed to get Avery into it when I went to the grocery store yesterday. I'm not very confident at putting her in the back carry position over concrete. Anyway, I managed it, but one of her arms was sticking out of the top. I prefer they be tucked in, though the instructional video says it's fine for arms to be out. I kept trying to reach around to grab her arm and tuck it in, but each time she would yank her arm away from me and give me this look like, "No way! If you tuck it in, I can't reach for everything in site!" I had to walk in the exact middle of the aisles so she wouldn't reach out and grab everything off the shelves.
And speaking of reaching out, Avery is so cute when I pick her up out of her crib (ok, she's ALWAYS cute, but particularly so in this instance). She is so curious about everything now. Her eyes get wide and she has this look of wonderment on her face. I'll carry her on my hip, but she cannot leave her back arm resting behind me. She has to twist and have her whole body facing forward with both arms out so she can properly lean towards anything and everything. She will twist to grab for anything. As we walk down the stairs, she sees one thing after another to lean for. It's adorable.
And speaking of adorable, she has started to push her arms through the sleeves as I get her dressed. I put her little hand at the bottom of the sleeve and say, "push, push, push!" and she does! She's done this for a while now, but it's very obvious now.
And speaking of things she's done for a while, her rolling over is in full swing. She'll roll for pretty much anything. Sometimes she'll even stop on her tummy for a while to see what's on the floor and pick at it. She likes to look at the pictures on her play mat, the pattern on a rug, or anything else that catches her interest.
And speaking of things catching her interest, she is totally into Turtle and Eddie now. If we're on the floor playing with her and T or E walks in, she stops whatever she's doing and just watches them with wide eyes. She smiles at them and tries to pet them (neither will let her pet them - they both just get up and walk away when she leans for them - I think their tune will change when bits of heaven start dropping from the sky, aka food from highchair).
Friday, May 30, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Movie Short
The other day, Avery and I headed over to Christie and Henry's to make a movie short. Avery was the consummate professional, as was Henry. The end result was this lovely short Christie put together. For your view pleasure, I present Babies Meet Jaws.
Huck Finn Meets His Doom (again) from Christie on Vimeo.
Huck Finn Meets His Doom (again) from Christie on Vimeo.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Crib Kicker
Avery has turned into quite the little crib kicker lately. Her favorite new game seems to be to spin herself 90 degrees in her crib such that her feet are facing the back of the crib. She then proceeds to kick it as hard as possible. I think she just must like the sound of the crib bashing against the wall, and knowing that she is the one with the power to make this noise. We'll go into her room after the bashing starts and peek over the crib to discover this gigantic grin on her face. She loves that game!
She's also turned into quite the little napper. Naps in the 2 hour range are not unusual and she's quite good about going down with no fuss at all. Mind you, she's still a baby so none of this is guaranteed, but I'm very thankful for her good napping skills at this point in time. As I'm typing this, she's been down for 2 hours 15 minutes. I guess she needed her sleep since she had a highly unusual napping day yesterday where she napped for maybe 1 hour 30 minutes all day.
Damian and I just can't get over how adorable she is. I know, I know ... everyone thinks their baby is adorable. But she's just freakin' cute! D and I will do little imitations of her after she's gone to bed and just giggle at each other. She's starting to giggle a lot more, though they're still hard enough to eek out of her that everything stops when there's a giggle and we focus all efforts on getting more giggles!
As you saw from the last video, she doesn't get a lot of tummy time because, well, she just says no! She does seem to be starting to grasp, however, that she needs to roll over to get a toy that is placed slightly too far out of reach. She's not quite there yet in terms of putting together the rolling with achieving her objective, but she's making progress.
Another big change in the past few weeks is her strong preference to be carried around when I'm doing chores versus playing with her toys on the floor. She will make little noises for me to come get her and when she sees the carrier starts kicking those little legs for dear life. It just kills me. So cute!
Finally, we can't wait for swimming lessons! (Note: that is a friend's dog, not Eddie, behind Avery).
She's also turned into quite the little napper. Naps in the 2 hour range are not unusual and she's quite good about going down with no fuss at all. Mind you, she's still a baby so none of this is guaranteed, but I'm very thankful for her good napping skills at this point in time. As I'm typing this, she's been down for 2 hours 15 minutes. I guess she needed her sleep since she had a highly unusual napping day yesterday where she napped for maybe 1 hour 30 minutes all day.
Damian and I just can't get over how adorable she is. I know, I know ... everyone thinks their baby is adorable. But she's just freakin' cute! D and I will do little imitations of her after she's gone to bed and just giggle at each other. She's starting to giggle a lot more, though they're still hard enough to eek out of her that everything stops when there's a giggle and we focus all efforts on getting more giggles!
As you saw from the last video, she doesn't get a lot of tummy time because, well, she just says no! She does seem to be starting to grasp, however, that she needs to roll over to get a toy that is placed slightly too far out of reach. She's not quite there yet in terms of putting together the rolling with achieving her objective, but she's making progress.
Another big change in the past few weeks is her strong preference to be carried around when I'm doing chores versus playing with her toys on the floor. She will make little noises for me to come get her and when she sees the carrier starts kicking those little legs for dear life. It just kills me. So cute!
Finally, we can't wait for swimming lessons! (Note: that is a friend's dog, not Eddie, behind Avery).
Thursday, May 8, 2008
There haven't been a lot of updates lately, but I've done better with videos! As always, Avery is doing very well. She's as kicky as ever and growing more adorable by the day (I didn't think it was possible!) She is starting to sit up on her own a bit. One of our favorite activities is to sit in the gliding chair in her room. I'll prop her up in the corner and she'll sit like a big girl all on her own ... with me guarding the front of the chair, obviously. I can then put toys in front of her to play with or read some books to her. Her favorite activity, though, is still playing kicky games on the floor. And she prefers to do that in just a diaper or nothing at all. We go the diaper route a vast majority of the time because, well, Mommy just isn't that into cleaning up messes.
Other activities she really enjoys are sitting on my lap anywhere I happen to be and pulling everything off the table and hopefully into her mouth. Most of it ends up on the floor, but she continues to try diligently nonetheless. She has very good motor coordination skills and can now grasp toys quite well.
We also enjoyed a play date with Ian recently. Avery wore some of her more boyish clothes so she could play rough and tumble games with Ian. Look at 'em all rough and tumbly.
More than milestones, Avery and I are really finding our groove during the day. She's a really good napper and doesn't seem to have a problem if we need to change up her schedule, so this is just awesome. Just like the sleep book said, she consolidated her naps around 4 months, right on schedule!
This post will have to end a bit early as I need to get dinner started. Please note Avery's new Twitter updates section over there on the right. Yes, you can now know the ins and outs of Avery's day. She's a total cutting edge baby, so she needed her own Twitter account.
Other activities she really enjoys are sitting on my lap anywhere I happen to be and pulling everything off the table and hopefully into her mouth. Most of it ends up on the floor, but she continues to try diligently nonetheless. She has very good motor coordination skills and can now grasp toys quite well.
We also enjoyed a play date with Ian recently. Avery wore some of her more boyish clothes so she could play rough and tumble games with Ian. Look at 'em all rough and tumbly.
More than milestones, Avery and I are really finding our groove during the day. She's a really good napper and doesn't seem to have a problem if we need to change up her schedule, so this is just awesome. Just like the sleep book said, she consolidated her naps around 4 months, right on schedule!
This post will have to end a bit early as I need to get dinner started. Please note Avery's new Twitter updates section over there on the right. Yes, you can now know the ins and outs of Avery's day. She's a total cutting edge baby, so she needed her own Twitter account.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Kickiness
Before Avery, I had no use for iMovie. Now that we have her, I find myself sorely lacking in both the skills to use it properly and the creativity to make it flow well, not to mention a tendency to not get her entire head in the shot when I'm videoing*. I doubt I will improve much, so you'll just have to look forward to videos like this one. It was intended to be a montage of her kickiness, but then I found some other cute video I took one morning when I went in to get her up. So really it's a hodgepodge of Avery cuteness and iMovie bells and whistles applied in the tackiest of manners.
*I have just discovered the original video does have her whole head in these shots. I must be doing something wrong in iMovie. Ah well, you get the idea! Besides, her adorableness surely makes up for all that my video capabilities lack, right?
*I have just discovered the original video does have her whole head in these shots. I must be doing something wrong in iMovie. Ah well, you get the idea! Besides, her adorableness surely makes up for all that my video capabilities lack, right?
Thursday, April 24, 2008
4-month check-up
Avery's 4-month check up was today. She is doing wonderfully! She's ahead of the curve with her motor coordination, but that wasn't really surprising for me. I call her a very "movey" baby. Her stats:
I can see her coordination improving rapidly. For months, she's been trying to grasp the toys on the toy bar of the bouncy chair. She's been able to make contact for quite some time, but couldn't figure out how to sit up to grasp them. The other day she finally figured out the secret: prop herself up with one elbow to give her more balance and leverage to grab the toy with the other. Her ab muscles must be terrific!
We're also enjoying our walks more - both of us! She is content to sit and stare from her stroller as we walk the dogs around the neighborhood. In fact, she even fell asleep on a walk the other day. This is major progress as before she would have just screamed from over tiredness if she started to get tired while we were out on a walk.
Her napping and sleeping are coming along very nicely. I'm pretty much guaranteed an hour when she goes down, if not two. She's close to consolidating to two naps per day, but we still have the third nap most of the time. She is still waking twice a night for a bottle, but goes down easily afterwards, so it's not too taxing to get up with her. And we are happy to report that she hasn't been waking until after 7 AM for the past few weeks. I am particularly thrilled with this development since I am so not a morning person!
It's hard to believe that 4 months ago she wasn't in our lives. It seems like just yesterday she joined our family, but it also feels like she's always been a part of us. There is nothing like a baby snuggling into your body to make you feel whole and warm inside.
- Weight: 14 lb 9 oz (75th percentile)
- Height: 24" (50th percentile)
- Head Circumference: 16.3" (50-75th percentile)
I can see her coordination improving rapidly. For months, she's been trying to grasp the toys on the toy bar of the bouncy chair. She's been able to make contact for quite some time, but couldn't figure out how to sit up to grasp them. The other day she finally figured out the secret: prop herself up with one elbow to give her more balance and leverage to grab the toy with the other. Her ab muscles must be terrific!
We're also enjoying our walks more - both of us! She is content to sit and stare from her stroller as we walk the dogs around the neighborhood. In fact, she even fell asleep on a walk the other day. This is major progress as before she would have just screamed from over tiredness if she started to get tired while we were out on a walk.
Her napping and sleeping are coming along very nicely. I'm pretty much guaranteed an hour when she goes down, if not two. She's close to consolidating to two naps per day, but we still have the third nap most of the time. She is still waking twice a night for a bottle, but goes down easily afterwards, so it's not too taxing to get up with her. And we are happy to report that she hasn't been waking until after 7 AM for the past few weeks. I am particularly thrilled with this development since I am so not a morning person!
It's hard to believe that 4 months ago she wasn't in our lives. It seems like just yesterday she joined our family, but it also feels like she's always been a part of us. There is nothing like a baby snuggling into your body to make you feel whole and warm inside.
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