First Words

So, you can probably see why 16 years later, I still haven't completed the first journal I ever got... I am HORRIBLE about remembering to write, apparently even when it's online.

So, Little Chub is crawling all over the place now, and she pulls up to stand holding on to chairs, couches, sliding glass doors, toys, cupboards, etc, etc. She gets entertained the longest when she stands at the sliding glass doors though because she can stare outside and babble to herself about all of the wonderful things she sees dada dada da da da We're off to see the... Oh, wait. I guess that would be "does". Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

This brings me to another of her very cute behaviors. Little Chub has officially said her first words, about a week ago. What were they? "Hi Daddy!" Of course, seeing it written gives the errant impression that she spoke these words clearly, but if I had to write it out sound by sound (I wish everyone understood IPA!) it would be more like "Haee De Dee!" She actually had been saying it for a while before this, but we weren't positive she knew what she was saying, or that it was real, so we waited to make it official until last week, when it was obvious to us both that she really was saying the words. We were all lying on the bed, Little Chub and I had just woken up, and Daddy woke up a few minutes later. So Little Chub was by his face and smiling at him, and I smiled at her and I said, "Say 'Hi Daddy!' ". So she looked at me, smiled her little knowing smile, turned her head to look at Daddy, and said, "Haee De dee!" It was the cutest thing ever! Since then, she's only said it a few times, but we think she still says "Hi" sometimes. It's hard to tell because 'd' is in her babbles too, so we only notice if she repeats after me, which happens quite frequently. "Hi Daddy" is the phrase she probably hears more than any other (many times a day).

And then there are her babbles! Little Chub will sit staring out the window, or playing somewhere, and she'll switch into either a whisper, or a high pitched 'motherese' sort of voice and start making the cutest babbles I've ever heard! Sometimes she sounds like she's trying to sing (usually spurred on by hearing music somewhere) and--the one we love the most--dance! When she sees us pretend to dance (bob our heads back and forth or move to the beat), when she hears music, or when she hears steady rhythms, she takes her whole upper body and shakes it back and forth from hips up to the top of her head! When she does this, we say "Dancing!" or "Dance dance!"

Then, one last thing. Poor Little Chub is sick! She has a horribly stuffed nose, noisy breathing with a noisy chest and nose, and she had a fever the other night. We bought a vaporizer cheap from Target ($10) and that has helped a lot at night to help her breathe well enough to be able to nurse and sleep. We were a little scared at first because this is only the second time she has gotten sick, and the first time it has been more than just a stuffed nose. Her fever the other night was high enough that holding her was making me really hot! But, she seems to be sloping back down to healthfulness, so we're grateful that her illness wasn't anything more. We leave tomorrow for Tucson for Christmas, so hopefully she'll feel pretty good by then.

All in all, we think this age up to a little over a year is the best baby age, but maybe we'll change our minds as she keeps growing up!

She Crawls!

Well, Thanksgiving vacation in Utah worked WONDERS for Little Chub!! Seeing all of her cousins running circles around her helped her realize that she could actually move...and so she did! Little Chub learned to crawl with many fans cheering her on, and she also pulls up to a standing position on things that are taller than the 1 foot in height that she could previously stand with. Now, she still doesn't crawl much, but her favorite thing in the world is to stand up holding on to the nearest stable item (and sometimes unstable) she can find. Then she just stands there, and it looks like she's practicing how to stand up with good balance. I will try to get a picture of this soon...

More on Mobility

So Little Chub has made a little bit of progress on the path to mobility... Sunday night was a squirm forward. Little Chub was playing on the floor with her toys and started eyeing a ziploc bag with a loaf of chocolate chip pumpkin bread in it that we had on the floor to occasionally grab chunks of. She started reaching for the bag, and right when she was about to get it, I moved it forward a foot or two, so she squirmed her arms and legs and got closer to it, and I moved it again. So she squirmed again. And again. And again. And again. You get the point. She squirmed probably about 8 or 9 feet, all to get this bag of pumpkin bread. (She did rather like the taste of it, but I think she was a little more interested in the bag.) Then, I moved the bag so that she had to turn, and she squirmed bit by bit halfway back before she got tired of chasing the pumpkin bread. The funny thing is that she had no idea when it was all done that she had done something she's never done before, and personally, I think it's because she's been capable of this for a VERY long time. So, now my hopes of her starting to crawl are coming back. I'm thinking maybe this time it actually won't be too long before she really crawls! She'll be 9 months in 5 days!

New Teeth!

Lest I forget, I should also mention that Little Chub has 6 teeth now!! Her "two front teeth" came out a couple of weeks ago, and the next two followed shortly after. The teething seemed to be giving her a lot of problems, but she only woke up 4 times in her 11 hours of night time sleep last night, which is really good for her these days.

Halloween

So, I haven't posted on here in over two weeks, and you'd think that maybe, just maybe, Little Chub would be crawling by now, right? WRONG! She still lies on the ground on her tummy and wiggles her little legs and arms, trying to move forward, but gets nowhere. Every once in a while, she'll roll over once, twice, maybe three times, but that long awaited first crawl has yet to happen. I've kind of given up on hoping she'll do it soon, so when she actually does, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Crawling aside, Little Chub, a.k.a. The Chunkiest Chunky Monkey Ever, dressed up as--you guessed it--a monkey for Halloween. We went to a little pizza party in our apartment's courtyard, and she and I marched in the little costume parade they had. She was very cute!

Unfortunately, most people thought her costume was of a bear, which I have to admit is the first thought I had when I took it out of the box, and I KNEW what it was supposed to be! But in the end, who really cares what the costume was? She looked dang cute in it, whatever it was!

Mobility and Another Journal Entry

It's been a few days... Little Chub has reached a few milestones since I last wrote. First being that she enjoys eating solids now. At 7 1/2 months, that's not too surprising, but it seemed kind of sudden. Now, whenever we eat anything, she starts banging her hands around and getting wild, trying to communicate to us that she would like some food too. So, two days ago I bought her her first highchair, the Fisher Price Space Saver Highchair. We love it. She can sit there with us at the table while we eat, playing with her food, and getting a few bites of it down her throat. Right now, she is breastfeeding enough that she doesn't need to eat any solids, but she sure loves to eat with us!

Second, all of a sudden two days ago, Little Chub decided that she wanted to be a little bit more mobile, and now she turns and rolls and squirms all over the place. She still doesn't crawl, and she still doesn't entirely control where she goes, but it seems to have eased at least a little bit of her frustration with being immobile. And for the first time yesterday, as she was struggling to crawl, I saw her push with her legs and pull with her arm simultaneously, which moved her forward about 4 inches! That was the first time she had ever used an arm in an attempt to move herself forward. So, anyway, maybe one of these weeks she'll start crawling. Everybody tells me that I should be enjoying the non-crawling days as much as I can because soon she'll be into everything, but as a first time mom, I can't help but be excited for her to crawl very very soon. It doesn't help that her main source of fussiness is related to not being able to go where she wants and reach the things she wants.

Little Chub also seems to be looking a little less Chubby these days, at least in her legs. While her legs have always had these beautiful fat rolls on the them, they've never been quite at the level of her pudgy little face and belly. I think she'll have chicken legs when she's older...

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Today's new journal entry:

"Sunday March 14, 1993

Marie gave me her phone number on Thursday. It's ###-####. It is very easy to memorize. I just put it in the phone book. Yesterday we went on the Romero Canyon Trail. We didn't go all the way up because it was boring. After that went swimming and mom said Charlene, Sarah, and Lisa could come with us. I ate dinner at Charlene's house last night. I had a mashed potato, two pieces of chicken, and Charlene had my peas. I had half of a grapefruit, and some salted peanuts. We played cards. They were round ones. We played Knock-Knock and War. We had fun. When Charlene's dad was driving me home Charlene gave me about 15 crackers. I finished all seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia. They were very good. They were also very long. We have a lot of oranges and apples. It is getting warmer that's why we can go swimming. After I write in my journal I am going to read Mandie and The Abandoned Mine. It is a mystery. Laura made her pillow into a punching bag. It will be really cool to use."

An Old Journal Entry

Today's journal entry:

"Sunday March 7, 1993

Yesterday we went to the pancake breakfast. We played house in the church classrooms. My bedroom was the Junior Primary room. Laura's room was the nursing mothers room. She was lucky because it had a recliner chair and a rocking chair. It had a wooden table, 3 wooden chairs, and one metal chair. Chickies room was the nursury rooms. It was very very big. After we got back Mom and Laura went to go get the Girl Scout Cookies. While they did that everyone else watched Beethoven here. It is a very funny movie. When Mom got back Stacey came to get her order of cookies. After that the Girl Scouts went to Fry's to sell more cookies. Charlene bought a box of Thin Mints. She shared them with me. The girl scout troop shared one box together. We got 6 cookies each. We sold 3 hundred ninety five dollars worth of cookies. When we got home I did my chore and Charlene came over to get the rest of her cookies. Her mom drove over and got the cookies Charlene sold. She needed a whole box of Thin Mints. I had tacos for dinner. Charlene called. After that I sorted out the cookies."

Crawling

When a baby first starts learning to crawl is such a painful process to watch, not because it actually hurts the baby, but because they are SO CLOSE to reaching something, and your body just aches to nudge them the last two inches to reach their toy. Little Chub has been doing this for about a month now. We know that crawling is just around the corner, but until then...

My New Blog

This is my first attempt at a blog--we'll see what
happens. But, it just so happens that the other day I told Peter that we should start our own blog, since we send so many stories and pictures of Little Chub. I told him that for all we know, both of our families are sick and tired of hearing stupid little stories about how Little Chub loves hummus but has no desire to eat strawberry yogurt. Anyway...

Here we are, me and Little Chub in this picture, on Hawk Hill just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. We've gone up there twice now to see migrating raptors, which fly over that point by the hundreds each hour (not around the clock, of course) at this time of year, and wouldn't you know it--both times it was so foggy and windy and sun-less that there was nary a raptor to be seen. OK, that's not true--we saw 4 or 5 the first time. But, we've started to realize that this is all too common. Oh well. We've gotten nice pictures of me with Little Chub both times, not to mention the exercise of climbing up the steep hill, so it wasn't entirely wasted effort.

Anyway, this picture was actually taken a week and a half ago, but I decided to put a random picture up of Little Chub, and this is the one I clicked on. :o) Mostly I think this blogging thing will be a really cool way of keeping a journal, which I have neglected doing for many years. I actually am still not finished filling up the journal I started when I was 11. Motivated by Chris' recent journal entries sent in to the Lewfamzoo, here's my first entry of that journal:

"Dec. 27, 1992

Two days ago was Christmas. I got this journal for Christmas. I got a lot of presents for Christmas. On Christmas Eve we did something about Baby Jesus being born. Dad read the Christmas story out of the Bible. After that we had angel food cake with whipped cream and cherries. After that we watched a Christmas carol. It was a good movie. On New Year's Eve the Dewey's and the Jamison's are going to come over to our house. They are planning to stay up all night. Maybe I can stay up too. Debbie got to give out the presents. I wanted to do it but dad and mom would not let me. I got KODAK crayons for Christmas. I got nail polish remover, candy, two pairs of socks, and hair rubberbands in my stocking. I also got a punchball, a necklace and bracelet, and two brushes. Kenny is lucky because he got a bike for Christmas. Kenny also got a NERF bow and arrow set. Pookie got a tennis ball thing that is velcro. Chickie and Laura mostly got the same as I did."

So, there you have it. Maybe I'll put more journal entries in later. It's pretty fun to re-read them all. :o)