First Step

She has taken ONE step. Not two, just one. She stands really well for about 10 seconds at a time, but she's not walking quite yet. However, I went out this afternoon, and when I came back Jason had taught her a trick. She grabbed hold of his fingers and used him to balance, and then just shot off putting one foot in front of another REALLY fast. It was SO COOL and she did it a bit for me. We tried to videotape it, but of course, she wasn't doing it for the camera. She's not a circus monkey, after all... She's getting so independent, though. She does a wonderful job holding her own bottle now, and she's cruising all over the place, and having lots of fun with the first toy that we've bought for her as parents! (That was pretty cool.) We'll keep all of you updated as she approaches the walking stage. It might be soon, it might still be months. She just seems too small to be walking!!!!!!

Baby in the Box

Yes, it's only been one day since the last post, but you know how I mentioned that Alexis had begun pushing her toybox around? Well, she was playing in her room, and I started to hear her crying a bit. Not really upset crying, more like not being able to solve a problem crying. Or stuck crying. Which she was.



Somehow, she got herself inside of the box... it was pretty funny.

On a separate note for grandparents and family, I'm posting a list of some birthday items that would be great for Alex to get. I know it's not until May, but I thought I'd go ahead and list some things. If you get her something and want to let other people know about it, you can just leave a comment like you did for my Christmas list. Here goes:

Board books: (Goodnight Moon, Happy Baby Sad Baby, Yummy Yucky, Big Little, The Happy Egg, or Baby Einstein books for 12-18 months old) - We have a number of classic books already, so you may want to ask before purchasing books.

Baby Einstein Discovery Cards - You can usually get these on ebay cheaply or in TJMaxx, etc. We have the seasons one but would like others. Baby Noah, Numbers, Colors, etc.

Crayola Tadoodles for 12M+ crayon buddies - these also come for older kids, but she would need the 12M+ ones. And maybe some paper to go with it - feel free to save old paper so that it can be recycled on the other side :)

Gifts or gift certificates to Carter's. (There's a store close to our house.)

Cherokee blue ocean infant girls plaid shirtdress 12M

If you can find these inexpensively on ebay, there's a set of 25 Baby Einstein dvd's, or a Treasury of 100 Storybook Classics on dvd. (I think amazon has the stories one for about 50 dollars, which is a good price for it but still kind of expensive.)

SHOES! She needs a few pairs of casual shoes.

bibs with a toy attached - Nanny got her one of these and it is the BEST thing ever for going out! It has a hole in the bottom and a toy attaches to it. I think she got it at Wal-mart but I didn't find it when I looked. It would be great to have 1-2 more of these.

She also has a wish list on amazon.com

These are just some ideas! :)Also, if you get clothes, we aren't trying to be picky, but it would be great if you include a gift receipt. Her sizing is so hard to know sometimes, although generally speaking she's running about three months behind. That varies a lot, though, even within the same brand.

10 Months and My First Mohawk

It's really hard to believe that Alex is soon going to be one. Time certainly flies. Some friends from Nicaragua just had a baby, and when I looked at pictures, it was hard to believe that Alex was ever that small. She's starting to morph into the toddler stage, although she is still very much a baby. Her bald spot is finally gone, she's babbling a whole bunch at different times, and some of her favorite new things to do are blow raspberries, attempt standing up (which she does every day now for a few seconds at a time), putting her leg up when she's eating in her high chair, and pushing her toy box from one part of the room to another. That's a new one from yesterday... She seems to enjoy it, though.

Jason was in Peru last week, so we went to Richmond and Yorktown to visit family there. I think the conclusion is that our daughter is the family dustbuster. She crawls along the floor and picks up any tiny, minuscule speck that she sees lying around, and then she puts it in her mouth. It's pretty funny to watch. She didn't get sick this time, which made for a much nicer trip. When Jason got back into town, she got herself so excited that she wouldn't go to sleep that night and ended up staying awake until almost 1 1/2 hours after her bedtime. However, for the past week or so, she's been sleeping in usually until about 7:00, which is awesome! I've been up before her most days. This is MUCH better than the two week phase of getting up at 5:20...

And here she is with her first mohawk.

9 1/2 Months

Alexis Grace Edgerton has turned into a little ball of spunk, curiosity, laughter, and delight! We always knew that we would love our kid, but I don't think either of us ever imagined that we would enjoy our kid so much.

First, the stats. She is 27 inches long and 14 pounds, 2 ounces. She's still on the small side, but she's been gaining more weight recently and we changed around some of her eating habits, and she's doing really well. She did get sick for the first time a few weeks ago with ear infections in both ears. She was so sad during that time but is all better now. She appears to be on track developmentally as well.

Now for the fun stuff. She transitioned great into Virginia and did a wonderful job with the "world tour" that we took when we first arrived. A couple of days after we moved we had to take a big trip to IKEA. There was this crazy puppet that she really liked and was inexpensive, so we got it for her. (It feels really good to be able to do little things like that now sometimes...) Anyway, Jason was playing with the puppet with her while she was in the stroller (a new addition to our life which has been WONDERFUL!) and when the puppet went away, she actually looked for it! It was the first time that we really, truly saw her understand the idea of object permanence. Now, she's always looking for things and remembers where things are. For example, we had to move her diaper stacker and simply nail it to the wall because she was she started always going back to it and pulling diapers out.

She's crawls amazingly well now. She's really fast, and if we put her down in her room for one moment without the gate on her door, she's headed out as fast as she can go. ESCAPE!!! It's really funny. She seems really coordinated so far, something she certainly didn't get from me. A lot of times when she's in her nursery she's standing holding on to the couch or holding on to the edge of the plastic tub that has her toys. And, of course, she stands up in her new crib. She LOVES her new bed, except when she wants out, of course. It has so much more room than the pack and play did, and she can crawl all around it and have her toys in it. She's starting to want to walk we think, because she tries to stand on her own occasionally and because when she crawls, she's gotten into the habit of putting her left foot flat on the floor with her knee up, like she's trying to get on her little legs. She loves to pull out the entire contents of her toybox and leave them all over her room, and when she's had enough, she goes to the gate and pulls herself up and cries for us to come get her. It's especially cute when she's in her crib and we walk into the room and she's standing in it. The side facing the door is solid, and she's so tall now that we can see her little eyes peering over at us as we come in, and she gets absolutely delighted.

Speaking of which, Alex is in love with being surprised and being attacked, especially by her daddy. Peek-a-boo is a great game especially when we're hiding around corners and not just under blankts or behind our hands. But she adores it when she's in my arms and Jason will come up and "attack" her! She screams and buries her head into my chest with absolute trust and excitement. Her favorite version of this is actually when he's across the apartment. I don't think either of us has ever seen her as excited as last night. Alex and I were on the bed playing, and Jason came and started to attack her from the other room. Alex saw him coming and bounced up and down on her butt, fell over, and then rolled over a couple of times like she was trying to escape but wanted to be caught. And we did this over and over and over again and she never got bored of it! It was amazing, and she just laughed and laughed. She likes being tossed onto the bed and rolled around like a sack of potatoes. And she loves being on Jason's shoulders; that's the best place in the world!

She is babbling a ton, although she does it in spurts. She was getting really good at both M and D, but then switched completely to D, and last weekend we really think she said "da da" twice, but then she stopped babbling for a couple of days, and this morning she was saying N. Regardless, she's always very vocal and will sometimes have little conversations with people. And she still loves all people. She has a definite preference for us, but she's done really well being in nurseries as we've visited churches, and she's done great with family. And she'll love you especially if you have a necklace, glasses, id tags, or buttons.

And she's weird. Just this morning she started taking her leg and sticking it on top of the feeding tray of her high chair, another thing it's great to have! She can always be amused with a sock, and it doesn't matter if it's a big person sock or a little person sock. She loves them all indiscriminately. What else does she love? Her bath time. She got a little inflatable tub to stick int eh bathtub, and she has some toys, and she has the most fun. We have to take her out because she starts to get pruney. She loves eating crackers, biter biscuits, cheerios, and especially these little Gerber puffed stars that we buy. She also loves muenster cheese, although recently she's been playing with it more than eating it. I think she's fascinated with the texture.

Alex is just an incredibly happy kid, and we feel so blessed for that. She's healthy, curious, high-spirited, and a joy to be around, even though she drools an awful lot.