White Elephant 2009

So tonight we had the annual Grad Group White Elephant gift exchange. It's always one of my favorite holiday things but this year it was especially bittersweet because Ben, Gretchen and Lily are leaving us, getting in the car in just a few days to drive to New York, and a new pastor post for Ben. There were lots of hugs and "Merry Christmases" at the end of our meeting, and even a hug from Lily to Holly that turned into a tackle, sending Holly falling (almost) into a couple of big-ish rocks in our front yard (and fortunately not the saguaro cactus that was about a foot away). As Ben said, "That will be a goodbye to remember!"

But while we were celebrating, we were too busy to be sad. We took a group picture, ate potluck food, and then all checked in as Lily (2 1/2), Audrey (1 1/2) and Elliott (11 months) competed for airtime. Then came the White Elephant. Everyone had brought an item, so everyone, including Lily and Audrey, got a number, and the games began. The most popular item was a pair of books, one a Tucson hiking guide and another a book on desert gardening, which were stolen the maximum 3 times. Hale ended up with the big box, with two tray tables and a giant stuffed bear inside, although Lily ended up going home with the bear, who will likely be her pillow on the cross-country trip to come. And Paul ended up with the "classic" white elephant gift, a Christmas Yoda (see picture).



As we gathered outside to say our goodbyes, Lily discovered that when she cupped her hands around a colored Christmas light bulb on our porch, her hand turned green or blue or whatever color the light was. She loved this and kept doing it, causing Audrey to start running from light to light, cupping her hands around each bulb, just like Lily. It was a sweet moment of them playing together - something to remember as we go our separate ways.

So as we start this Christmas week, Godspeed, Ben, Gretchen and Lily, and know you will always have a place here in our hearts and our homes in Tucson!

The 17+ months update

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I don't know what happened to October, but November got away from me because of job applications. The first weekend of November Paul went up to Carefree, Arizona (Phoenix-ish) for an art show. Since it was only about a 2 hour drive, Audrey and I went up to support him, and to see what doing an art show with a toddler would really be like. We thought she might be bored, but she really loved it - lots of people to charm, and she thought the whole show area was a big game of "chase Audrey." She would walk away from Paul's booth, then turn around and smile to see if one of us was following her, and then she's scoot a few more feet away, merrily walking in front of show visitors and their babies and dogs. Though I didn't get any pictures of her at the show, I did take this one of her eating breakfast at the pancake house one morning before we went out to sell some art.

After we returned from the show, I was buried in job applications and presentation preparation for a few weeks, and then we headed to Virginia on Nov 25 for Thanksgiving and, for me, a trip up to Philadelphia for the AAA meeting the next week. Audrey has been enjoying hanging out with Nana and Poppa (and she can now say both of those names) running them ragged by being in constant motion and making most of her desires known with her still somewhat limited vocabulary. Although many of her words sound alike (dog and duck both sound kind of like "doh") she often uses a sign to distinguish which word she means. She also has some words that she exclusively says (like "plane," that we don't know the sign for) and others she exclusively signs (like "cereal," apple" and "signing"). Though she's enjoyed being the center of attention as the only grandchild on this side, she also had fun playing with her cousin Owen, about 8 months older,one day after Thanksgiving, and all the Guilford Avenue roommate's kids a couple of days later (she is the youngest of a 6-kid group, the oldest being 5 1/2 and the closest to her age being 3 months older).

One of the funniest moments of this trip to my parents' house was that they bought her a little kid cell phone that makes noise when you press the buttons, and also, if you close the phone, it waits about 5 seconds and then rings. Audrey was attempting to wave bye-bye and leave the room (one of her favorite things to do, followed by a re-appearance a few seconds later) but every time she closed the phone and said bye bye to us, the phone would ring. The first couple of times, she answered it, but after about four times, with all of us laughing as she got more and more put out, she handed the open phone to Paul and then successfully left the room.

The Tao of Bei: Linguistic Development a la Audrey

Anal PhD mom that I am, I was recently making a list of all the signs and words Audrey now uses at 14 months (at least 6 signs and 8 words, in case you were wondering) and I started thinking about one of her favorite multi-meaning words, namely "Bei" (or maybe "bay"). This is a word Audrey uses, with slightly different inflections and associated hand signals, to mean "belly button", "baby", "bird", "cat" and "dog."

If it means belly button or baby, she points at the item in question (typically real babies but sometimes her baby doll). If it means bird, she makes a hand signal that looks a little like the sign for "bird." For cat, she uses a sign that looks a bit like "cat." For dog (which can be prompted by real dogs or our neighbor's dogs barking) she doesn't use the American Sign Language sign for dog, but instead a hand motion that looks a little like summoning a dog.

She is also experimenting with stringing words together. Her longest phrase so far has been 4 words ("No, mom, no, mine!" when I closed the refrigerator door before she was finished positioning her water bottle appropriately inside) and she's also signed a two-word phrase ("more signing" when I turned off the Signing Time DVD)

Audrey's first road trip

So we have finally taken the plunge and gone on a long-overdue trip to San Diego. This is a seven-hour drive for us, pretty easy and boring. BUT Audrey has never been in the car for longer than it takes to drive to Oracle (or thereabouts, for Jessica and Sean's wedding) We tried to be cunning and leave just in time for her morning nap, but she saw right through us. She refused to sleep, trying to figure out what we were doing and where we could possibly be going that took more than an hour.

After the first hour I moved to the back seat but still couldn't convince her to go to sleep. Finally as we approached Yuma (and lunch at Subway) a little after noon, she fell asleep. But as soon as we carried her into the restaurant, she woke up. This enabled her to fully participate in the ritual eating-of-food-that-is-not-good-for-you of road trips.

By my estimation, here is what Audrey ate yesterday, in addition to some milk...

• about 10 french fries


• a sandwich bag of grapes


• a small container of "dry snacks" - graham crackers, goldfish, cheerios and yogurt melts


• chocolate milk and bites of chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia cookies


• bites of turkey, bread, black olives and apple


• bites of hamburger, veggie burger, more french fries and an onion ring


• bites of ice cream from a root beer float

After lunch Audrey stayed awake the whole time until we got to San Diego around 5 pm, and then through dinner and playing at the park after dinner. She was tired but didn't want to go to sleep by herself in a strange pack and play in a strange room, so she stayed up until 9:30 before finally falling asleep!

Memorandum of Understanding

I am amazed at what Audrey understands. She is 13 months and one week old and I talk to her a lot, but still. Just today she was able to come down ten stairs at my friend Jenne's house by herself because I reminded her to sit down and then put her feet down on the lower step. No physical guidance, just talking her through it. And tonight she spit out some cheese on the floor, then continued on with her activities. I said "Where's your cheese? Can you give it to me?" and she stopped doing what she was doing, went over and picked up the cheese and handed it to me. Also today, she was heading toward the above-mentioned stairs for the tenth time, and I was able to distract her by asking her to pick up a toy and bring it to me. Which she did, and by then she had forgotten that she was going to try to go up the stairs.

On a related note, if asked, she can point out her belly, her nose, and sometimes her toes. I don't know when kids are supposed to know these things, but I like to think she's advanced for her age. She also uses the word "lights" (this is probably her fourth consistently-used word after mama, dad, and ah-da (Audrey)) and also has a word that sounds suspiciously like "mine!" when something is taken away from her.

Sometimes I ask her to do something or find something, and I can tell I've used too many dependent clauses (or something) because she sort of stops and looks at me blankly. But most of the time she understands. Amazing!

Do Unto Others

So Audrey has discovered the Golden Rule. Not that she grasps its philosophical implications, mind you, but she has discovered that some of the things we do to her, she can now do to us. It all started a couple of weeks ago (or probably earlier) when she found that if she didn't want to eat a cheerio or goldfish cracker, she could hold it up and whoever was watching her at the moment (Paul or I) would eat the cheerio or cracker out of her hand. She always gets a little smile on her face when she feeds us, a sort of self-satisfied "see, that's what it's like when you feed me!"

These behaviors have now expanded beyond feeding us to a sort of "bathroom valet" role. In order to keep her interested in using the potty, we've started reading to her and allowing her to look at books as she sits there. She does sit there longer, and the books do hold her attention. But now she has a potty-book link in her mind. So as she follows us into the bathroom when we use it, she inevitably brings over one of her books for us to read on the "big potty." And today I asked her if she would close the door so I could have some privacy (well, quasi-privacy, with the one-year-old still in the bathroom), so she closed the door. She's very solicitous - "Are you comfortable, mommy? Can I get you anything else?" I half-expect her to one day hold out her tiny hand and ask for a tip as I walk out of the bathroom. But for right now she just does it out of the goodness of her heart, and a fondness for the Golden Rule.

Happy First Birthday, Audrey!

Audrey is one today. Today at 1:09 pm, pacific time, to be exact. I will probably be at mom-baby group at that time, although our group days may be numbered because most of the babies are so much younger and Audrey's favorite thing to do is to dash off into nearby rooms where she is not allowed to go, meaning that I spend the whole group chasing her down. She is now a full-fledged toddler, though she still looks too tiny to be walking around and getting into things.

Motor-skill wise, walking is the big thing. She still scoots across the floor when she wants to move fast but she walks well and only starts tripping and falling when she's tired. She can climb stairs (although getting down is more challenging) and can go down small slides at the park by herself. Verbally, she's making lots of sound that might be words, but they're still in "baby", so we don't understand most of it. Sometimes she gets frustrated because she'll walk up to me and say something like "Bob" and I won't respond, so she says, louder, like maybe I'll understand her if she speaks up, "BOB!" Socially, she's still the same social butterfly. She feels it's her job to greet everyone and make them feel welcome. She waves and smiles. For all I know she's saying "Hi, my name is Audrey, what's yours?"

Her sleeping is getting a little better, she still wakes up a couple of times a night but only eats once. We've run into a few people who said 13 months or so was the magic "sleeping through the night" age, but we're still dubious since people have been telling us since 6 months that she's supposed to be sleeping through the night. Oh well. She's napping now but may be up soon - I think I hear her moving in the crib on the other side of the wall. Happy Birthday, Audrey!

First Conversation with Audrey

So today, Audrey and I had our first two-way conversation. She is now 11 1/2 months old, and has a few words that are intelligible, at least to Paul and I. She says Da and Dada for Paul, Mei-mei and sometimes ma-ma for me, and Ah-da for herself. Also sometimes "up" and "eat." Today at lunch, however, I was feeding her turkey and vegetables, which she did not want. She showed me she did not want them by trying to sweep them off her tray onto the ground. I said to her, "Okay, so you don't want your turkey and vegetables, what do you want to eat?" And she looked right at me and signed "milk."

She is now also walking about 90% of her movement time, as this 10-second video clip shows...

Mother's Day

It started out as a typical day - Audrey is teething, so she had been up it felt like every 20 minutes last night, and she woke up for good at 4:30 am. After some grumbling on both of our parts and a valiant attempt to put her back to sleep by Paul (he had her all the way asleep in his arms but she woke up as soon as her head touched the crib mattress), we got up. It was only 5:30, too early to even go get a bagel. So, we did what any sane, sleep-deprived parents and baby might do...ate a banana apiece (even Audrey had a bite of mine, a big concession since she dislikes bananas) and walked to the playground.

I've been going to the playground with Audrey in the morning after breakfast, and it's nice at 7:30 am or so - still cool, hardly anyone there, so I wanted to show Paul her new playground skills. So the three of us walked up stairs, slid down slides, and Audrey showed Paul her "crawling-through-the-tunnel" abilities - truly an independent skill since the tunnel is too small for mommy or daddy to fit through...

After playtime, we came back to the house and Audrey went down for a nap (playing with mom AND dad is exhausting!) and Paul made me vanilla and cinnamon waffles with berries and powdered sugar. After eating two and reading the front page of the paper, we decided to go back to sleep. As I write this, Paul and Audrey are both still sleeping - Audrey's going on 2 1/2 hours, Paul on 2...I was able to get back to sleep for about 20 minutes, but then I was up. I'm trying not to do anything chore-like (wash dishes, fold laundry, etc.) because I figure, as the Family Circus cartoon so aptly pointed out this morning, how many chances do I have NOT to do those things?) Anyway, despite the veneer of tiredness, a nice mother's day so far!

Picnic at the Park

Just a quick post to say that in the past few weeks Paul and I have been trying to go over to our local park with Audrey for a picnic dinner at least once a week and hope to keep doing this until it gets too hot in the evening to sit outside.

We take our towel and pack an easy dinner - usually tacos - and just go sit in the grass. The park is nice because people are almost always there to have a good time -to spend time with their family, play with their dog in the dog park, celebrate a birthday or some other occasion...only on rare occasion have we seen people having some sort of negative interaction in the park. And there is plenty of grass (well, relatively, this is Tucson) and plenty of trees.

Audrey loves it because she can make a big mess and it doesn't matter. Tonight she grabbed some of the beans for the tacos and stuffed maybe 8 in her mouth at once. She lost a bunch of them when she started chewing but then picked them up and ate them again. She also got into (literally) her sweet potatoes and carrots, and then finished up with two whole strawberries and a whole grape. I took pictures but deleted them because it looked like she was bleeding as the strawberry juice dripped down her arm. So instead you get a picture of her commandeering the avocado before we opened the container!

Audrey, 9 months

So I feel perhaps that I'm part of a new trend here. Instead of filling out the traditional baby book for Audrey, instead I (and other parents who blog about their kids) will have the "Baby Blog," an intermittent recording of baby's accomplishments, archived on the Blogspot server, at least until Blogspot goes out of business or otherwise tells bloggers they need to move their content somewhere else.

Audrey is now a little over 9 months and her development is proceeding apace. She can do three signs in conjunction with appropriate activities (milk, potty, and more) although her use of "more" has dropped off rapidly since grandma Mary left and she now has only an audience of mommy at meals. She also responds to commands - she pulled the pig's tail in a barnyard book when asked on three separate occasions for me, grandma, and grandpa. This also has more practical applications - when asked, she can often sit back in her highchair to make it easier for me to feed her, or sit up/back on the potty so she doesn't get so engrossed in the bathroom linoleum that she falls off the potty onto her nose. She has also started pointing, which can help some with communication too - she can point in a direction she wants to go, although she's not quite to the stage where she can point for "I'd like some toast rather than the apples."

Motor-skill wise, she is walking well with support - one of her favorite games is to hold daddy's hands (or if she's feeling brave, just one hand, using the other to grasp the wall or furniture) and walk around the house. Her balance is good and she can "cruise" along furniture, though she still takes the occasional tumble. She has also started "scooting." I wouldn't even call it crawling, and I'll have to get a video of it - basically, from seated, she walks her hands forward so she is up on her hands and feet and scoots forward a couple of inches and sits down again. It's not very efficient but she can cover a few feet when motivated. The big thing though is that she can now go from her belly up to a seated position. She doesn't like to do it, since it's a lot of work, but now she is no longer stuck on her belly when she starts to scoot/crawl and doesn't quite make it.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of for the moment!

Jessica's wedding

Departing from the usual Audrey musings, I want to tell you about Jessica and Sean's wedding that Paul, Audrey and I attended last Saturday. It was held at the beautiful Triangle L Ranch in Oracle, Arizona, about an hour north of Tucson. Paul and I agreed that it was the best wedding we'd been to in some time, despite the fact that we knew almost no one there except the bride and groom.

Their wedding reminded me:

• That you don't need a lot of words to have a lot of meaning

They got married in the Quaker tradition and the marriage ceremony is silence, exchanging vows, more silence, speaking by those moved to speak, more silence, and an embrace by the couple at the end.


• That potlucks mean fabulous food if you move in the "good potluck" circles

Jessica definitely moves in the good potluck circles.


• That walking along a path illuminated only by a string of white lights is simultaneously romantic to adults and magical to babies

The Triangle L ranch hosts an annual arts event called "Glow" where they have art viewing by night. Being there at the ranch made me want to come back for that event.


• That carrot cake by committee is the best carrot cake ever

I was on the "cake team," making the icing for all the cakes, and a perk of this was getting to do the taste test a month or so back - we (the four cake bakers and I) tasted 3 carrot cakes, took notes (yes, we are grad students) and picked the best features and ingredients of each to meld into a new recipe. As Paul said "This cake is awesome."


• That Audrey loves a party

She was even dancing with one of Jessica's aunts and allowed herself to be held by another aunt for about 3 songs as Paul and I did our first swing dancing in almost a year. I was totally wearing the wrong shoes for it but it was fun.


• That sometimes staging a picture gets you a good one

Jessica and Sean were going to formally (at least semi-formally) cut the "display" cake but everyone was dancing so they just decided to cut into it and let people eat between dances. I saw them after they had cut about two pieces and said "You're not going to cut the cake? How about cutting it for me and I'll take pictures?" So they said OK and I took a picture of them "cutting" the cake they'd already cut. They didn't feed each other cake, but one of the pictures of Sean eating cake looks like Jessica just fed him a piece and it's one of my favorite pictures from the wedding!

This one is about the potty

So if you're not into reading potty stories, don't read further. To respect Audrey's privacy, no photo illustraton is available.

So as Audrey nears 9 months, there are many things she can do. Her grasping is getting better, she's still working avidly on crawling, and is considering bagging the whole thing and moving right to walking. She is strong enough to stand for a while now, and working on her stability so she can simultaneously hold onto the edge of the coffee table and pull all the magazines and coasters off of it.

But the potty - a couple of weeks ago, two moms at our mom & baby group talked about elimination communication, or EC. This is like early potty training, where you look for cues from the child, and give them "potty opportunities" or "pottytunities" as I have been calling them (I think this is what the main EC book calls them). There is no pressure to train completely, the idea is just to keep kids in touch with their bodies and save yourself a few diaper changes too. At group, both moms had kids who were just a few weeks older than Audrey, and had been doing this with them since 3 or 4 months. Both kids had small potties they could now sit on (before they can sit, you hold them over or stand them in the sink). They say EC works best if the kids wear cloth diapers, so they can tell immediately when they are wet or dirty. But Audrey is in disposable diapers, and we're probably not inclined to change this plan. Despite this, the "stay in touch with your body" message made sense to me.

So I bought a little white potty (Audrey chose this color over hot pink). I had noticed that in the morning, whenever I changed Audrey's overnight - and pee-filled - diaper, I would go to wash my hands after, and 9 times out of 10, she would have pooped in the new diaper by the time I got back. So the morning after I bought the potty, I went in to wash my hands and took Audrey with me and sat her on the potty. I washed my hands, came back and made the cuing sound (pssss) and let Audrey hang out on the potty, exploring her new surroundings for a few minutes. I finally decided she wasn't going to do anything, but when I helped her off the potty, she had pooped! First time sitting on the potty!

After that, I put her on the potty at least a few times a day, most days. Sometimes she didn't do anything, but often she did. She may less than 9 months old, but she got the idea of the potty pretty quickly. So we're nowhere near the "diaper-free baby" but I have avoided changing some poopy diapers, which is always a plus. And I like to think Audrey is becoming more aware of her body. Maybe someday soon, she'll say "pa-pa" for potty (don't worry, Paul is da-da :-) and we can go for a pottytunity on her say-so.

The anti-crying-it-out sleep plan

So Audrey is almost 8 months old now, and has been going through an extended phase (since just before 6 months) where she has wanted to eat at least every 3 hours at night, sometimes much more than that. This started off because we went to see my parents over the holidays, and then went on to a family reunion in California. Both of these situations promoted a lot of "Audrey in bed with us" because she was just starting separation anxiety and we were in strange places, so it was easier for all if she slept with us. After we returned to Tucson, we worked on getting her back into her crib for the night, but she resisted, and then I got sick, meaning I didn't want to be getting up multiple times in the night to feed her, and so we were back to square one.

A little more than a week ago we decided to try a quasi crying-it-out plan - she would be in bed with us, but after eating, mom's restaurant would close down and she would have to sleep. This worked for a night or two, but then she wised up and just started crying for long periods. Like pretty much 3 hours straight one night. We couldn't stand it. So goodbye "cry-it-out-in-bed."

Last Friday, we decided to try something new, what I'm calling the tag-team plan. How it works is this: since she's been used to eating mostly all night, we don't want to cut her off completely (even though she can probably make it through the night without eating, as evidenced by "many other babies" everyone is always telling us about). Anyway, I decided I can handle 2 feedings, one at midnight (or later) and one at 4 am (or later) after we put her to bed (usually averaging around 8 pm). The tag-team part is that if, after I put her down at 8 pm, she wakes up anytime before midnight, Paul is on duty. He will go in and calm her down, walk with her (if he has energy), rock with her, and ultimately put her down and hold her hand until she goes to sleep. I then sleep as much as I can from 8:30/9:00 pm to midnight-ish, and then I feed her the first time when she wakes up after 12 (she tends to prefer 12:30 am). Then if she wakes up between the end of that feeding and 4 am-ish, I perform the same walk-rock-hand-holding maneuvers that Paul did before 12. Then if she wakes up after 4 am (give or take, I am not super-stickler about this and will feed her at 3:45 or whatever) she gets another feeding, hopefully to last her until at least 6 am.

So far it is working well. There is definitely less crying, especially after the first couple nights when she woke up quite a bit and stayed awake for longer than 20-30 minutes (the duration of a feeding or a quick-ish settling down). Since we are generally holding her when she cries, it is much easier to settle her down vs. having her in the crib crying and getting more and more worked up. Because neither of us is "on" all night, we are able to get more sleep - I might wake up at 11 if I hear her cry and Paul doesn't, but then he'll go settle her down and I can go back to sleep.

Our hope is that we can work down to one or no feedings overnight, and Audrey seems to be working toward the one-feeding goal too. The other night she woke up just once, at 2:30, to eat, so we'll see how it continues to go. Paul and I decided that "consistency is key" - we both try to do the same things to settle her down, and we follow the same tag-team plan so she knows who she's getting based on when she wakes up. The big challenge on the horizon will be Paul and I going on our belated "Valentines date" on Saturday - we'll see what effect that has, although it may not be too bad since it might just delay her bedtime (or mean she gets a "bonus" feeding when we get home at 9:30 or 10 pm). Keep your fingers crossed for the continued success of the tag team and Audrey's continued cooperation with our efforts!

Renewing Vows and Unanswerable Questions

Just to be clear, the two parts of today's title are not related - I just have two short topics I am thinking about so I figured I'd put them in one entry.

On Valentines Day, Paul and I renewed our wedding vows while holding Audrey, who was content to try to dismantle the two roses tied together with ribbon that they had given us. The renewal ceremony was held at a Lutheran church on the southeast side, and most of the people participating were from that church, but a few, like us, had read about the ceremony in the paper on Thursday under "alternative things to do for Valentines Day" and called the church office on Friday to RSVP.

The service was at 2 pm, and Paul's story is that he got so frustrated with me complaining that I had nothing to wear (that fit, anyway) around 11:30 am that he took Audrey and sent me out to buy something , anything that I felt looked decent and not to come back until I had something. It took me almost 2 hours but I managed to get a black skirt. I couldn't even find a whole outfit. But I put the skirt together with a shirt I already had, fed Audrey, and we got in the car and went to the service, making it just in time.

My story is that although we made it to the service, I forgot my camera so we have no pictures of this event. We ended up waiting a bit anyway once we got there because they were waiting for one more couple who had RSVPed. The service was nice although I did have to get up and walk around with Audrey when the pastor made his remarks - a sort of mini-sermon, but still too long for Audrey to sit through. After several readings and the remarks, we got up to renew our vows. The church was octagonal, and had an octagonal alter rail around the central altar, so we spread out around the alter, facing our partners. There were 13 couples, and the pastor had specifically admonished us that we were to say our vows to our current partner and not to someone we happened to be standing next to as we circled the alter. One couple had been married 50 years that day, so they stood up on the alter with the pastor and he read the vows for them. The men went first, with the pastor saying "I, Don" which Paul quickly changed to "I, Paul" then..."take you, Roberta" to which Paul promptly repeated "take you, Roberta" I started laughing as Paul pressed on, repeating the vows and slipping in "Kay" in a few spots so he could assure me that he was renewing his vows with me, and was not in fact marrying Roberta.

After the service the ladies of the church had made a variety of valentines cakes - one looked like a mini wedding cake but others were heart-shaped with jam and the best one, a low-sugar chocolate cake. They were all very tasty, and people admired Audrey who of course put on her most charming looks for them. As I told Paul, I wanted to renew our vows because it was a sentimental thing to do on Valentines day, but also because I knew there would be a story. Or in this case, at least two.

Now, to close with the unanswerable questions. There are two, right now. One is "How's your dissertation going?" and the other is "Is Audrey sleeping through the night?" The short answers are "Slowly" and "No" and I don't really want to get into either!

Something New Every Day

So I was going to write an entry about the "migrating insomnia" - no, not insomnia related to migration, since we've been happily ensconced in Tucson while much of the East coast has had bad weather. But migrating in the sense that first Paul couldn't sleep, then Audrey couldn't sleep, and finally I couldn't sleep. It lasted 1-2 nights for all of us but has thankfully finally abated.

So instead I'll write the Audrey update. Lots has been happening. She still can't crawl or walk, but she can use her stomach muscles to pull herself up to sitting with a minimum of help and then push up on her legs to stand (again, with minimal help). She can hang onto a table or something briefly although she's really not steady enough to stand there by herself. She's sitting very well, and we practiced today with sitting in the bath (tricky because it's slippery in there). She has her two bottom teeth now - their advent put a slight damper on her usually sunny disposition, but she's better now. She will now "reach up" for us when she is sitting or lying down to be picked up, and her grasping is getting better continually - she's working right now on holding a cheerio between her thumb and forefinger to eat it - she's not quite there, but has the right idea. Speaking of eating, she has tried lots of foods, she even gamely ate some pureed broccoli last night. We have a little food mill so we usually try her with whatever vegetable or fruit we're eating. So far she's nixed kiwi (too tart!) but will eat at least a little of many other things. She can also feed herself (sort of) a cracker or piece of pita. More later...she's awake now to work on even more things!

Um, Excuse Me?

So today Audrey suffered her first public embarrassment. We were at the Sleep Lab meeting, a regular (and very Audrey-friendly) event. The members of the lab were talking about some issue on which there was a difference of opinion, and Dick, the professor who heads the lab, had just finished a statement on the topic when Audrey, standing on my lap right next to him, farted loudly. A hush fell over the room and Dick looked at Audrey and said "So that's what you think about that, eh?" The other grad students and visitors to the meeting chuckled, and Audrey took one look at Dick and started to cry. I stood up and tried to reassure her everything was fine (while simultaneously chuckling to myself about this turn of events). Audrey, who had quieted down, looked back at Dick, who said "All I said was, was that your opinion?" and then Audrey burst into a fresh set of tears. I took her outside to calm her down, and came back for the end of the meeting, during which she was looking at Dick dubiously. There are, of course, no pictures of this event, so this is the best recent one I have of Audrey looking vaguely dubious.

Jumper

Last week or so, Grammie Pat brought over a Johnny Jump-Up - a jumper that you clip onto the doorframe. She figured Audrey would love it, since she loves to "fly" and jump with us. Plus she's keen to crawl and/or walk and can't do either yet. She wasn't so excited about the jumper at first, but she's warming up to it - at least enough to pose for photos!

Making Friends

At six and a half months, Audrey is now old enough to start making friends - or more precisely, she is old enough to remember that she's seen some of these babies before. She and Gavin have been "friends" since about 8 weeks.


Other friends are newer - at the Birth Center mom's group that I go to on Tuesdays, there are three little girls (including Audrey) who were all born within about a week of each other - Zarya is the oldest (by 3 days), then Audrey, then Casey, six or so days younger. Here she is with Casey - look for Zarya in future posts.

Blame it on the heat

There are many things on which I may blame Audrey's tendancy to sleep for just a few hours during the night. Teething, growing, not having had enough milk, having too much vegetable at dinnertime, etc. One of the most perrenial, though, is temperature. I'm always thinking she might be too hot or too cold - we've been using sleep sacks (wearable balnkets) at night to keep her warm, but when she was teething she was running a low fever and seemed to be burning up in her sleep sack. So I stopped putting it on her for a few nights. Plus it had gotten warmer (no more temps in the 30's at night) so it didn't seem she needed it. Until last night when it seemed uncommonly cold. And she woke up every 2 hours and wanted to be cuddled up to me all night.

In the morning, Paul said we had forgotten to turn on the heat last night - it's warm during the day so we open the doors (and turn off the heat). We had grad group over last night so even as the evening temps dropped, out house with a dozen people in it remained a toasty 75 degrees. We even opened the windows. Then we closed everything up and went to bed. But we didn't turn the heat back on. So maybe that's why she was up so much...who knows!

Sleeping through the night

Audrey and I went yesterday to have a playdate with Lauren and Gavin down in Sahuarita, and we started talking about sleep. Lauren said Gavin has now been sleeping approximately 12 hours at night, and she achieved this by a means she called "Every 15 minutes" but what I would call "cry it out." It's hard to argue with the results - 12 hours of time to sleep, plus spend some time with Paul or pursuing my own interests (actually reading a book? amazing!) seems very tempting.

But I am besieged with thoughts about all the "other" things that are going on. In addition to the thought of having to listen to Audrey cry for perhaps hours for four or five nights (the time Lauren said it took Gavin to adjust, although there's no telling how long it might take Audrey) I think, should we really be forcing self-soothing on her when she's growing? When she's teething? She's a pretty good self-soother (no losing your pacifier when it is two fingers on your left hand - always there!) and will sleep in her crib, but there are just some times that she adamantly does not want to be in the crib, she would rather be close to us (well, me, sorry Paul) to sleep.

So I don't know, though some of Paul's co-workers say we're "spoiling" her by going to her in the night and bringing her back to bed with us if she won't settle otherwise (or if I'm too tired to spend the time to try to get her back in the crib) I prefer to think we're raising a happy, secure child. Will Gavin, or other "cry it out" babies turn out insecure or be somehow otherwise lacking? Probably not, but I guess each set of parents just does what seems best to them at the time and no one knows the results until much later!

Getting Baptized

So much has happened since I last wrote. If I was a more dedicated blogger, you would have heard about going to Alexandria for Christmas, including hanging out with great-grandma, and then going to the Stanley family reunion in Ventura, CA, where all the cousins but one (and there about 20 of them, 15 males and 5 females) made it to California for two days of hanging out. But the most recent event in Audrey's life was getting baptized on Sunday, January 11. This was also "Baptism of the Lord" Sunday in the liturgical calendar, so the rest of the congregation also got sprinkled to remind them of their baptism. But Audrey got the full "water-on-the-head" deal thanks to our pastor friends Ben and Gretchen. Grammie Pat Orzech made her dress, which is now the "heirloom baptismal gown" (well, at least it will be once I clean it). She actually seemed to like the fuss of getting in the dress, and especially of going down to hang out with the little kids at the children's sermon. They were all rubbing her head, like they were saying "welcome, Audrey!" and she was just loving it. The pictures I have are from after the baptism, in the church's cry room - not that she was crying, she just wanted to play and tends to want to compete with the pastor by "talking" during the sermon...So here is one of her hamming it up - after all this, and a few more pictures after church, we took her out of her gown to ride home and she fell asleep in the car seat and slept through most of the celebration lunch.