The good and the (not too) bad

First, the bad. Rebecca's sleep has been a little messed up of late. She has trouble settling down at night. We try to put her down between 7:30 and 8pm, and she gets up at least twice between 9 and 1am, sometimes three or four times. Depending how agitated she is, it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour to put her down again, unless it goes badly, and we cave and cuddle her for an hour. What can make that tough is that once she's calmed down, night time is when she's the most into intimate one on one interaction, staring into your eyes and talking, playing with your face, etc etc. Then you go to put her down and she turns on the waterworks.

Anyway, we blame the latest bout on possibly a bit of a cold, reaction to her vaccines last week, and teething, pick one or more of the above.

Anyway, on with the good. She's babbly like anything these days, and at times it seems she's really expressing things in particular. I think it's only a matter of time before it coalesces into full on speech (or babbling + words).

She's really into the belly zrbtt game now, taking any opportunity to attack the vulnerable midsection of unsuspecting horizontal adults. She gets a big grin on, and moves in for the kill, tongue hanging out. It really drives mom into a laughing conniption, which I think has been pretty great positive reinforcement for her.

We went to the park, and enjoyed time on the swings this weekend, she loves it, and is becoming more confident on her feet climbing over obstacles and such.


There was a little puppy there who Rebecca wanted to chase, but the little girl who was their with her grandma told us in no uncertain terms "She's not friend-uh-ly." I think it was the grandma's dog. Anyway, the warning was appreciated and we steered our little animal terrorizer to the opposite side of the playground.

Molar #3 - the whimpering

The first corner of Rebecca's left upper molar has come through. Many nights of whimpering (ours and hers), and cuddles have brought us to this point (pun intended), and I anticipate several more evenings of dental woes. I sense the remaining molar will be out soon, as the gum is already bulging.
But hooray! This is the harbinger of crunchy snacking! Already, she is willing to tackle small pieces of raw celery and raw cucumber. It will be such a relief when she can consume raw vegetables with ease because not only do they make a tasty and healthy snack, but it is a far easier manner to introduce more veggies into her diet.

Meal time, now with cutlery!

Well Madeleine and I haven't been spending a lot of time poring over our parenting books in the last couple months, so we're not up on our milestones.

Turns out Rebecca's supposed to be feeding herself with a spoon now. Heavens to murgatroid! We decided to buckle down and face the messy fury of self-feeding Rebecca.

She showed that she's way ahead of us by grabbing the spoon and very smoothly feeding herself a big spoonful of yogurt.

She then proceeded to use her free hand to grab some yogurt, and alternated, but she got enough successful spoons that we're pretty confident in saying she gets the concept.

Next up, we'll let her tie her own shoes.

Dancing! (maybe)

Unconfirmed reports of dancing in the household. Rebecca today bopped her body up and down while swinging her arms with some semblance of rhythm (music courtesy of Lilo & Stitch). When will it be repeated? Only time will tell...

Willing to climb onto the couch in order to nab a paperback

Suicidal toddlers

Rebecca's had a monkey streak a mile wide for a while now. One of the more frightening things she's done is when playing in the drawers in her change table/chest of drawers, she will pull her self up with the drawers, which, when they're all open, can cause the whole kit and caboodle to start to tip forwards. Eek.

(like this, only without the shelves above the changing surface)

Anyway, today I was tidying up in the living room and Rebecca toddled off to her bedroom, I followed a few seconds behind. She hadn't been in her room more than 5 seconds when I hear something disturbing. Two quick strides and 0 heartbeats later (you know, because my heart had stopped) and I round the corner to see diapers sliding off the top of her change table as it tips forwards on Rebecca. I caught it at about a 45 degree angle, but the bottom drawer slid open clocking her in the face. I held it there for just a second, not breathing, waiting for Rebecca to make a noise. She started babbling and I carefully set the whole thing down.

I bent down, looking for injury, nothing. Rebecca seemed oblivious to the whole experience, happily talking away. My heart started beating again. Another 10 seconds and I started breathing and talking to Rebecca.

Anyway, gotta see if we can attach that unit to the wall, which obviously should have been done a long time ago.

Oh, and Madeleine wanted me to post something about Rebecca trying to brush her own hair, but it just didn't seem that important at the moment...

Rebecca attacks mommy!

If Madeleine's lying on the ground, Rebecca will sometimes play the attack mommy game. She walks over and throws herself bodily across mom's stomach like a pro wrestler, I think. Very cute.

Anyway, she did this today, but mom's shirt was up a little showing some belly, and Rebecca leaned in and gave her a big zrbtt on the belly, then giggled. A couple seconds later she's walking around and very deliberately sits on mom's head. I think she has my sense of humor.