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.

SHE'S CRAWLING!!!

She's not very good at it yet, but yesterday we officially saw Alex crawl, and we've seen it again today. While she has been creeping a lot, she now can move her hands while on her knees. A little tiny bit at a time.

And so the problems begin...

Jason found her under the dining room table yesterday, she crawls over the cushions that are supposed to be blocking her in, and she wants to be in motion all of the time. She's also learned how to pull up on things and can bring herself to a supported standing position on her bouncy chair, which she can't really use anymore.

I have no clue how we're going to keep this child contained. She's absolutely adorable.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to upload videos recently. I'm so sorry! (And pics aren't working at the moment either... sadness. Oh well. Most of you will have the real thing soon enough anyway.)

Being a Trooper

Alex was sick for a little over a week, ending finally yesterday. She started out with a really bad cough, and then she got a really stuffy and runny nose. The col ran its course in the normal time, and she was so great. You could tell she didn't feel well sometimes, and she was a little sleepier and a little crankier, but other than that, she was great. We kept calling her a little trooper because she did so well with it.

And now she is as frisky as one could hope, possibly more so. She has completely mastered the art of creeping, where she gets up on her hands and knees, pushes her body forward without moving her arms, falls to her stomach, and then adjusts her hands accordingly. It's very efficient. She can get anywhere.

And I do mean anywhere...

Yes, she is officially a baby in motion if she wasn't before. And while as I've previously mentioned, we're biased, we think she's pretty smart. If we move her, she'll go back to the thing she was just playing with. She has these foam mats with borders, and yesterday she figured out that she could lift them up and chew on them, and now that's all she wants to do. She's also trying to bust out of her "jail" by climbing over the couch cushions. And actually, I just paused there, and she has climbed ON TOP of the cushion. So much for that idea of containment. Back to the drawing board.

Recent updates - She hates potatoes. She just doesn't like them, and I'm trying to get her used to them without having to add something sweet, because I suppose she has to learn that not everything is sweet. Other than that, she's still doing great with solids. All of those weird head pealies that she had on top of her head? They're almost entirely gone. She is talking so much the past few days, I think a lot of it because she's feeling better. And she is in love with the itsy bitsy spider. It's adorable. She has also become a champion at sitting up and doesn't cry nearly as much. Actually, if I catch her at the right time, she doesn't cry at all. On Sunday she was in a crawling position and kind of turned sideways and sat, which is great, but she hasn't done it again. She is also still obsessed with tags. She has recently found one on the mattress of her pack and play and attacks it over and over again with delight.

It's wonderful to have a daughter who isn't in physical therapy, isn't on medication, and is well and healthy. I can't wait for her to come home and see everyone. We have our last doctor's appointment next Tuesday, and then we leave Thursday. I probably won't be updating this for a while because of moving and Christmas and everyone seeing her anyway, but I'm sure I'll pick up again after the new year if I don't before.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Here is a list of Alexis' current favorite pastimes:

1. destroying leaves when we go outside to look around
2. pulling blankets off of her face when we place them there and ask "where's Alexis?"
3. scooching under her bouncy seat so that she can have the tags right on top of her to pull on, play with, grab, and put in her mouth
4. having her father or mother gently toss/roll her to the other side of the bed, where the other parent is waiting to do the same
5. having a beach ball bounced on her face (yeah, that seems kind of weird to me, too)
6. getting up on her hands and toes with her butt in the air, then her knees, and rocking back and forth, trying to figure out how to crawl
7. destroying pages from magazines

Six Months!!!

Yes, Alex is six months old now. It's hard to believe. She had her checkup on Monday and gained a full pound the last month, which is great; she now weighs thirteen full pounds. Dr. Mora again said she's doing great, and next month will be her last appointment with him.

She's developign so much. She's so inquisitive about everything now and reaches out to grab things she wants AND things she shouldn't have! One of her favorite new things is a page from a magazine, but I have to supervise her closely if she plays with it because all she wants to do is eat it! She's still doing great eating and has been practicing with her sippy cup. She still initially just bites it, but once she realizes that golden nectar (apple juice) flows forth when she sucks, she usually gets the hang of it. Everyone still tells us what a happy baby she is, which of course makes me proud, even though I didn't have anything to do with it. Jason is currently doing her exercises with her and she just started bawling a little bit, but what can you do? I think she's going to be sitting up on her own really soon. She can already do it for a little bit, althouh she's really shaky about it. I've discovered that all these milestones that people talk about are really hard to determine. She's sat up a tiny bit for about two weeks, and she gradually increases the time, so how does one know the exact moment a child actually does something? It's kind of weird.

Sorry folks. I've tried twice to attach some really cute videos, but it doesn't seem to want to work. My apologies. I'll try to put a few pics, though.

5 1/2 Months

At the moment, Alex is sleeping in her bouncy seat with her cheek smashed up against one side and one arm stretched to the sky. It amazes me the positions she can sleep in. This is just a quick update. She started rolling over all the time from her back to her stomach, so now she is all OVER the place. We had to create a bigger area for her with some mats that we have, and she just rolls all over it. Her physical therapist hopes that she'll be crawling by the time we go home but thinks it's optimistic to think she'll be sitting up in two weeks, which is what Dr. Mora wanted, even though it's still in the early time period for that. We also aren't allowed to let her stand up anymore because she's using it as a reflex of some sort, so it's sitting for her, and she does not like it! She's getting better at it, though. And she has started to grab her feet and put her toes in her mouth all the time; it's so cute! She's been eating well and loves her cereal, endures carrots, and enjoys apple juice, which she has also begun drinking out of a sippy cup. I have to help her, of course, but she does a really good job and even tries to use the handles. Lots of little developments that make her seem so big to me.