9 months in, 9 months out

Happy 9 month birthday to our little Miss S!  Mei-mei turned (turns?) 9 months old at some point between today and tomorrow.  (How exactly does one celebrate a monthly birthday if one is born on the 31st and there is no 31st day in the current month?)  I can’t believe she’s already such a big girl and I’m a bit nervous about what’s just around the corner:  mobility.  Right now she moves around using a combination of belly crawling and rolling, but knowing her determination (especially when it comes to getting to her big brother’s toys), I expect to find her crawling, and then walking, soon.  And next thing you know, she’ll be asking to borrow the car keys.

Mei-mei has had a hard couple of weeks leading up to her 9 month birthday, but she’s a trooper!  She had the stomach flu for a solid week (I had it for four days and felt like I’d been hit by a truck, so I can’t imagine how terrible she felt), then her brother dropped a train on her head, and then she hit one of the most fuss-inducing developmental milestones in her first year.  After getting to the point where she could sleep through the night (6 PM – 7 AM) about 2 of every 3 nights, she entered the dreaded “9 month sleep regression” stage.  She’s back to waking up once in the middle of the night and is now having trouble taking naps during the day as well.  Hopefully we will get through this stage quickly!

On the fun side, she is babbling up a storm.  She keeps up a running commentary to herself while she plays, and she grumbles loudly in her crib while she is refusing to nap.  (Considering how much her brother talks, I’m a bit worried about how anyone will get a word in edgewise around here.)  She also snuffles while she grins at you.  I love this.  Sometimes she breaks into a full snort, which makes me laugh, which then makes her snort again.  It’s adorable.

She’s still nursing 4-5 times a day and eating 3 solid meals as well.  So far she hasn’t refused anything I’ve offered her, although she did break out in hives after I gave her avocado.  I’m going to try avocado again in a few weeks, but for now she fills up on pears, carrots, peas, squash, sweet potato, green beans, zucchini, chicken, rice and quinoa.

I’ve been keeping her in the infant car seat because I’m not quite ready to give up the convenience of the grab-n-go baby.  However, I suspect that her 9 month check-up will verify that she’s outgrown the bucket seat and needs to move into the full-size car seat.  Bye-bye portable napping apparatus!

Anyway, enough Mommy babble and on to more cuteness!  Here’s a video of the little Miss Chatterbox from today.  Happy 9 months, sweet angel!

Baby’s Little Self

Ever the social butterfly, Mei-mei gives kisses to the baby in the mirror. And yes, even though the title of the song is "Babies Little Self", I changed it in this post’s title because if I left it, I would stay up at night thinking, “Shouldn’t it be ‘Babies’ Little Selves’?  Or maybe, “Babies, Little Selves’?”  I’ve already spent half of the morning puzzling over it.

Compare & Contrast: Guard Dog

  

Different baby, same sweet Cowboy

(Images:  Aug 2008 – 9 months old / Apr 2010 – 8.5 months old)

Glee Flash Mob: Last video (I think)

I like this video because it shows pieces from all of the locations (Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill, Westlake Center, the Space Needle, and Pioneer Square).  I’m posting it here because I want to be able to find it easily. 

Happy Birthday Chris!

Screaming Bird

Apparently, it runs in the family.  Here’s a video of big brother Z doing the same thing when he was 8 months old:  “Wait for it”

Glee Flash Mob

Yesterday I posted a video showing what I spent most of the day doing:  the Glee Flash Mob!  The second season of Glee premieres this Tuesday, so a group of nearly 1000 Gleeks (including me) got together and flash mobbed downtown Seattle in celebration.

If you haven’t seen or heard of a flash mob before, it’s basically a large group of people performing random silliness in public.  The idea is to act like you’re just hanging out or walking by when you hear some music or notice a few people start to dance.  A crowd gathers to watch the dancers and people in the crowd start to join in the dance.  More and more people join until there’s a “mob” of dancers, all dancing the same routine.  It’s exhilarating to be a part of it and thrilling to the people who aren’t expecting it.

No one knows where the flash mobs will appear (not even the dancers – we didn’t find out the locations until an hour before our first performance) and once the dance is over, the dancers quickly disperse.  It’s pretty surreal.  However, due to the huge number of Gleeks in Seattle, it wasn’t very subtle.  It’s very difficult for 1000 people to nonchalantly show up at the same place without people noticing.

My friend Mary and I left the kids with their dads and spent a sunny day walking around the city, eating doughnuts and humbow from Pike Place Market, and breaking into dance at random times.  It was a glorious day.

Here’s the official video from the first flash mob (at Westlake Center).  Stay tuned for videos from the Space Needle and Pioneer Square as well!

What I did today

Compare & Contrast: Grins

Apparently 8-month olds are fans of the “open-wide” approach to smiling

Sequence: Peek-a-boo

Mei-mei often looks serious in photos because she only smiles or laughs when she can see my face.  Since I use a DSLR most of the time, I am hidden behind the camera unless I focus first and then try to look up without moving.  Since I am one of those people who steers my bike into the middle of the street if I turn around to look over my shoulder, you can imagine that looking up without losing focus is not my strong point.  However, sometimes I manage to do it!  Here is a sequence of photos I took today.  I started off behind the camera for the first picture, then I looked up for the second.  I continued to alternate like that (doing my best impersonation of a groundhog), so I was behind the camera for every other picture and looking at her for the pictures in between.

If you look closely at the open-mouthed grinning pictures, you can also see that she’s cut her second tooth (bottom middle, right next to her first tooth).  Soon she’ll be able to eat all of the food that Z keeps trying to share with her!

The outtakes

Lest you think it’s easy to capture a decent picture of a 2.5 year old and 8 month old together, here are the other pictures I took while Z was giving Mei-mei hugs.  That’s my phone in his hand.

Sitting pretty

Mei-mei took her own sweet time learning to sit up by herself (she finally got the hang of it right before she turned 8 months old), but now that she’s a sitter, she’s the cutest sitter there ever was.  She’s also a big fan of trying to make motorboat sounds and sticking her tongue out.

Go see mamarazza

You have to head over to mamarazza to see the latest picture I posted.  Z is in a phase where he doesn’t mind having his picture taken (once or twice) AND he likes to “snuggle snuggle” with his sister.  The combination of these two miraculous events provides photo opportunities that make my heart melt.

Then and Now: Siblings

December 2009 (25 months & 4.5 months old) and April 2010 (29 months and 8 months old).

What has changed:  Mei-mei can sit up by herself and Z actually chose to sit with her (I grabbed my camera just in time to capture the picture).  What hasn’t changed:  Z always has something in his hands and Mei-mei looks a bit apprehensive.

Duck, duck, goose

Not to be outdone by Easter eggs, plastic eggs and chocolate eggs, Mei-mei simultaneously joined the egg-stravaganza and accomplished another milestone:  her first goose egg.
Mei-mei is a big fan of Z’s toys, and she particularly likes the toys with pull-strings.  One such toy is his wooden clown car (see pictures below).  Until yesterday, the clown car was stored on the top shelf of the bookcase.  It’s since been moved to the bottom shelf, now that we’ve discovered that she can reach the pull-string and pull it down onto her own forehead.  It raised a pretty good bump and left a bruise, but in typical baby miracle-healing fashion, after 10 minutes she was as good as new.  And ready to tackle that clown car again.

Pants smoking

Z’s pants aren’t quite on fire yet, but they are smoking:  I think he is taking his first tentative steps into the wide world of lying.  (Aw, what a big boy he is!)  As our own little Howard Cosell, he generally keeps a running commentary of every single thing he thinks and does (“Z find plug…Z pull plug out”).  He also announces what he did in the past (“Z went playground, climb ladder, did very good job, didn’t fall”) and makes requests for what he would like to do in the future (“Z put shoes on, go walk, eat Mighty O donut”).

When I pick him up from playgroup, we talk about what he did while we drive home.  Normally, he recites a list of toys or friends that he played with (“Z play car wash, draw crayons, see Milo…”).  Today he listed the things he ate.  I prompted him by asking about the different things I’d packed in his lunch.

“Z go playgroup, eat pancakes with peanut butter!”
“Pancakes with peanut butter?  Yum!  Did you eat anything else?”
“Z go playgroup, eat avocado!”
“Mmm, avocado.  Is that all you ate?  Pancakes and avocado?”
“Z go playgroup, eat orange!”
“You had oranges too?  What a lucky boy!  Was that the only fruit you had?”
“Z go playgroup, eat blueberries!”
“Oh, I love blueberries.”
“Z go playgroup, eat Booty!”
“Pirate’s Booty is so yummy!  You had lots of good things to eat.  Did you eat anything else?”
“Um, Z go playgroup, ummmm….”
“Did you have any cheese?”
“Look see school bus…”
“Yes, that is a school bus.  Now back to playgroup.  Was there any cheese in your lunch?  Cheese with crackers?”
“Um…look see water.  Greenlake!”
“Yes, that’s Greenlake.  We go for walks around Greenlake, don’t we?”
“Z like go walk Greenlake with Mommy Daddy Mei-mei Cowboy.”
“I like to do that too.  And I like to eat cheese with crackers.  Do you like to eat cheese and crackers?”
“Um…Z like ride escalator!”
“Escalators are a lot of fun, aren’t they?  Sharing is fun too!  Did you share your cheese and crackers with friends at playgroup?”
(His face lit up and he was very excited to answer.)
“Z go playgroup, share Combarty (Havarti) cheese crackers, friends!  Cyrus eat Combarty.  Z eat strawberry!”

So it appears that Z traded his cheese and crackers for Cyrus’ strawberries.  Or, more likely, he helped himself to the strawberries and later noticed Cyrus helping himself to the cheese and crackers (it’s kind of a free-for-all at playgroup).  Regardless, it was very amusing to watch him struggle with how he was going to approach the subject of the uneaten cheese and crackers.  He opted for avoidance until I gave him an out, and then he jumped all over the sharing scenario.  So he’s not quite to the level of lying yet, but he is learning how to leave out parts of the truth for his own benefit.

In “NurtureShock”, Po Bronson explains that all children lie and how lying is actually an indicator of intelligence.  Most children will start to lie around 4 years of age, but some precocious children will start as early as 2 or 3.  That’s our Z!  Liar, liar, smarty-pants on fire.

Happy Easter!

Easter Saturday was pretty blustery and cold, so we decided to check out the Easter Egg Hunt at Wallingford Center instead of the Woodland Park Zoo (where we went last year).  Big mistake.  It was crowded and confusing, and the Egg Hunt itself was over in the blink of an eye as the older kids snatched up all of the eggs and left the younger kids (like Z and Mei-mei) with empty baskets.  (At the zoo, they spread out hundreds of plastic eggs -- in plain sight, because it’s for the “under 3” set -- and continue to recycle the eggs so that the field is full of them the entire time the kids are there.  At Wallingford Center, the only time we actually saw an egg was when we tripped over a broken one on our way to the car.)  But on the bright side, we got some cupcakes from Trophy Cupcakes and we went to Julia’s for brunch before the Egg Hunt, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

(Note to self:  Next time we go to Julia’s, order Z the adult-sized Belgian waffle so that he doesn’t finish his breakfast in less than 5 minutes and immediately start in on yours.)

At home, we dyed Easter eggs with Z and Mei-mei.  We dyed 10 eggs and 4 of them were cracked by an over-exuberant 2.5 year old.  We think we did pretty well – more than half of them survived!  And Z seemed to really enjoy pouring dye over the eggs with a spoon.  Mei-mei preferred to watch, but I’m sure she’ll be very excited to dye eggs with us next year!  This year she was more excited about chewing on a wooden spoon.

In addition to dying eggs, I’ve been putting bunny ears on various smaller family members and taking pictures.  Mei-mei is the least perturbed by it;  Cowboy is the most.  Z isn’t thrilled with it either, but I think in general he’s more bothered by the camera than the bunny ears.  I posted his bunny ear photos in my last post, and I’ve included the rest here.

Instead of posting a bunch of pictures on this page, I’m trying out this new “Photo Album” feature.  Click on the link below the spread of photos to see the full album.  UPDATE:  I don’t like the Photo Album feature because it forces me to use Windows Live, which I don’t want to use.  So I’m creating my own photo albums on my SmugMug photo site.  Click on the images below to see the full albums!

 

Sequence: Bunny ears

Why are you giggling?  Wait…what’s this?  Who put bunny ears on me? 

Sequence: Smiley girl

Toys

Z's latest thing is to bring all of Mei-mei's toys to her.  She’ll be lying down on the play room floor or sitting in her rocker or hanging out in the Bumbo, and suddenly she’ll be covered in toys.  “Bring Mei-mei toys!  Mei-mei play!”  When I tried to explain to Z that his sister can only play with a couple toys at once, he said, “Mei-mei only play one-two toys.  Zachary play other toys!”