Baby Steps

Anna Sophia took her first steps yesterday. She is ten-and-a-half months old. It seems amazing what she has learned in the last two months, in the time since I had to take a break from documenting her life due to the busy-ness of living life. If I can, I will return to this blog and fill in some blanks, but for today I'll stick with the present.

For a week or two, Anna has been at the Wile-E-Coyote-over-the-edge-of-the-cliff stage of standing independently. In other words, she has been able to stand up until she notices that she is not holding on to anything, then she reaches for the nearest support or gently lowers her bum to the ground. The cliff edge of standing unsupported has been getting less scary for her, it's true, and sometimes she has waved her arms in the air and wiggled her butt before realizing she wasn't holding onto anything.

But yesterday morning, we noticed that she was standing around unsupported and aware that she was unsupported and was relatively unperturbed. She tested her balance and tested her weight. She rarely wanted to plop to her bottom and scoot on her bum, and instead spent her time scooting along the edges of furniture, along walls, and around corners. She eyed the cat as though she might be able to catch her this time.

At her Grandma Marjorie's in the afternoon, after yelling at her Aunt Andrea's cat for being hissy and ducking around the edges of the coffeetable, she was well-settled in to the environment. When Andrea came home and sat on the floor with hair and earrings dangling like temptation itself, Anna let go of her mother and walked three or four steps to Andrea. This little march was witnessed by both Anna's parents and by her grandmother and Aunt Cathy and Uncle Frank. Anna was delighted with their response to her accomplishment and knew she had a hit dance move. (Aunt Mary Jane took in a "rerun" later in the afternoon, when Anna went for another little walk to try to snatch her camera from her.)

Today, Anna clearly understands what we mean when we ask her about "walking" and has put on a few more demonstrations of her new skill -- when she doesn't have to get anywhere far away or get there in a hurry. She has also spent a good part of the day just standing around, dancing in place, lifting or lunging heavy objects one would expect to put her off-balance.

In addition to walking, Anna is up to so much these days. She will not eat anything pureed and wants only food she can pick up with her fingers -- preferably bits of whatever her parents are eating. She is lamenting the end of raspberry season, since she has been a little raspberry fiend for weeks, sitting in her high chair imperiously, waiting for us to raid the bushes at her command. She adores potatoes and will eat almost as much potato as her dad at supper. She loves cheese and peaches and rice cakes and toast. She will eat almost anything that has been laced with trace amounts of her beloved yogurt. While she loved vegetables only a few weeks ago, she finds them a challenge to chew and won't eat them pureed, so they tend to sit on her plate and then get thrown to the floor, but we expect this is temporary, since she still likes the taste of them.

Anna loves books and especially loves books with pictures of animals and words that include animal noises. She met a number of farm animals for the first time at the provincial exhibition and was astounded by them. She made special friends with an uninhibited goat who tried to eat her father's t-shirt. Anna sorts through her books constantly, picking up her favourites and carting them to her parents' laps, where she asks us to read them three, or four, or eighteen times. And she thinks about books even when she isn't reading them. We can tell, because she practises her animal noises as though she is telling herself a little story. She tries to "moo" and "meow" and "woof" and "baa," but they all come out as a very cute "ma-a" like the bleat of a little kid. (The goat kind of kid, I mean.) Today, she managed a "mew" for Moonlight and was so excited, she fell over.

She also applauds herself when she succeeds at anything, and she waves at anyone passing by.

Music is her other great joy. She's a big hummer and singer, and she walks up and down the length of the piano keyboard, picking out notes -- confidently, I guess you would call it. Certainly not "delicately." She also has figured out how to work the buttons on her CD player and knows that the centre button will turn off the god-forsaken CBC programming her mother is trying to listen to and will turn on, instead, one of her groovy kiddie CDs. She will then dance, bouncing her bum up and down, tapping her feet, and humming. Anna also thinks grandparents were invented just to sing to her to make her dance. And, who knows? Maybe they were.

Leaps and Bounds

Anna Sophia is learning and growing at such a rate at the moment that documenting it seems like a lot of work, and there's precious little energy left in us after a day of following her around, extracting her limbs from the cat's dish, pulling her out of cupboards and closets where she engages in her never-ending, unhelpful, "reorganizing," and picking bits of food (and non-food items) out of her fingers and mouth and off her clothes.

Fortunately for us, though, her leaps and bounds aren't literal. Not yet. She's still just bum-scooting around wildly and pulling herself up on stuff willy-nilly. She also has learned to wave for hello and bye-bye and has become a pro at a new game, Head Tilt, which was started by her Aunt Andrea, who one day leaned her head down onto an armrest and got a similar head tilt from Anna, who now happily flops herself sideways at all hours (including suppertime when spoons are headed mouthwise) and expects her playmates (or parents or pets) to follow suit. Very cute.

She woke up one morning last week making all kinds of new sounds that exist in the English language (and that should, if they don't), and she has rarely been quiet since. She constantly practices her "b" and "p" sounds (and smacks her lips kissily while eating her yogurt). She learned to blow a proper raspberry -- tongue out and vibrate-y -- yesterday (messily, while eating her yogurt). She also has four "words": "ha-a" (with a dropping sing-song inflection) for "hello"; "ga-a" (with excitement and pointing or arm-flapping) for the cat; "mamamamama" for "mom" or for when she wants just about anything; and "dadadadada" for her dad, or when she has gotten what she wants.

To be honest, it is other family members who credit her with these "words." I, her mother, am waiting for more indication of true understanding. I'll count it as "hello" when she gets the diphthong in "hi" -- though I will admit that she mostly consistently gets at least the context right with her "ha-a" -- something she does less reliably with "mamamamamamamama." Heart-warming as it is to think her first word might be "mama," she doesn't have a full grasp on the concept. Last evening, she woke briefly soon after she had been tucked in and her dad gave her the dregs of her bottle. She drank them down, her eyes lolling sleepily back in their sockets, and just before passing out completely, she smiled up beatifically and said, "mama." Of course, her father is a good mother.

Anna is in a big hug and kiss and cuddle phase. Her bum-scooting lets her carry and cuddle a toy with one hand while steering with the other as she scoots. It also gets her to her parents' ankles where she can climb to our knees and reach up for lots of hugs for dad (who is too fuzzy in the beardal region for kisses) and hugs and kisses for mom. The kisses continue to be the sloppy, wet open-mouthed variety. If mom and dad attempt a hug or kiss without her, she yells at a high pitch and comes tearing across the floor to get in on some group hug action.

Anna doesn't want to be changed at the moment, and her happy naked kicking, which she used to do just to get her ya-yas out, now rattles the room and puts actual holes in her changing pad. Hmm. Her cloth diapers may be more comfortable on the days she would prefer to be naked, but they sure ain't designed for bum-scooters. The cloth all gets pushed to one side as she scoots, and she leaks -- on the very side she is pulling against the ground. We figured this out from the big red soil stains on her butt after a day spent bum-scooting in the yard and garden. She likes to scoot to the edge of the grass, where the soil has been dug out, and carefully remove stones and twigs and leaves from the soil. This is part of her craze for reorganizing. Sadly, it also becomes part of her craze for putting things in her mouth too. Yummy, yummy rocks.

Well -- can't be much worse than the taste of baby formula, which tastes like it has had its mineral content boosted with iron shavings. No wonder Anna is so keen on grown-up food. Her whole body shook with excitement when she first chomped down on her Grandma Carolyn's French bread. And last week she weirdly commandeered her mother's curried split pea dal for her own lunch. Since it was just split peas and spice and was as mushy as her usual baby food, I figured there was no harm in letting her develop a taste for curry. Her parents sure hope she'll like a wide range of foods from different cultures . . .

Anna is sleeping off her Grandma Marjorie's very exciting birthday party from yesterday afternoon, but her nap will soon end. We'll enjoy a peaceful Monday of walks and gardening and naps, and then her dad will tuck her into bed to sleep as long as her still-sore teeth allow.

First Vacation

It seemed like a good idea at the time: a long weekend getaway to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, on the warmer-than-here South Shore, in a quiet bed and breakfast, just hubby and baby and me. And it was a good idea, and it was a good vacation. It was just a bit . . . damp. And snotty.

On Thursday night, before our trip, Anna came down with the cold I had had all week. Every time Anna has gotten a cold, she has gotten the same cold that I have had, so I have had to solace of knowing her symptoms a few hours in advance. Thursday night, I knew that she would feel snotty and sore-throated and that she would sleep better sitting up. However, there are few ways to help a baby sleep sitting up without sitting up oneself, so Friday morning found me packed and ready to go, but a little sleepy.

No matter. Stephen was driving. We made the boat in plenty of time, and Anna loved her first trip on a ferryboat -- it provided classic people-watching. She seemed less distressed than I felt by the collective ugliness of the Maritime people I call my own. She just found them all interesting. Ah, to be innocent.

Anna travelled well in the car, alternately playing and sleeping. Friday evening, a warm welcome at the B&B, where a two-year-old was already in residence (a good omen that the place was baby friendly), a lovely supper out and about in Mahone Bay (I love paying people to cook for me), and a sleepy baby who drifted off at her usual bedtime, allowing her parents to read their books. (Books! Imagine.)

Anna woke for her bedtime bottle in wonderful humour, but with a bit of a fever. And that began a long night. She couldn't sleep lying down. She woke every time we set her back down, and I ended up letting her sit up to sleep all night. Without the props and places to go that we would have had at home, we got precious little sleep as we tried to make sure Anna could sleep as much as she needed to.

And so, Plan B. When we woke, sleep-deprived, to pouring rain, we decided that if we were to enjoy our day of touring around Mahone Bay and Lunenburg, it would be best to spend the night in Halifax -- an hour closer to home, and among family at Aunt Gen's.

This plan, generously accepted by Gen and Pete, allowed us to spend as many hours as we wished wandering the galleries and tea shops of Mahone Bay and Lunenburg, keeping ourselves and the baby as warm and dry as possible. Anna's production of snot and drool was prodigious, but the rain was less prodigious, so the day was very pleasant. Anna is easy to be around, even when she's under the weather, under the weather.

Late afternoon found us in Halifax, where Anna was more than happy to find herself in Gen and Pete's cozy livingroom where she could bum-scoot around the floor and where there was furniture to be climbed and overturned. Her uncle Danny came over to play, and soon Gen and Pete arrived home, with more aunts and uncles (Cath and Phil!), and a plan for supper that also included cousin Mark and Amanda (and Anna's wee second-cousin-to-be).

So, with ten at the supper table, we found ourselves at an impromptu party, and there's nothing Anna likes better than a party. She stayed awake until she couldn't stay awake and missed as little as possible. She woke again at 10, with a stuffed nose and sore teeth and a bad attitude resulting from her severely overtired state, but she only yelled for half an hour and then slept through the whole night. Her dad and I had a wonderful nine-hour stretch of sleep, a big treat.

We didn't manage to organize ourselves to leave on time to make the boat and so opted to take the bridge home, a long but leisurely drive. Anna got lots of extra sleep to chase away the remnants of her cold.

As interested as Anna was in seeing all the sights and visiting new people and places, she was never more excited than when we drove in the driveway. She recognized her very yellow house right away and kicked and shouted excitedly. Once in the house, she scooted around to see all her toys and familiar favourite spots in the house, and she chased the cat with great glee. Moon, for her part, chased right back.

So while it didn't exactly meet the ideal of the original idea, the first vacation was much better than it seemed like it was going to be at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning in Mahone Bay, with a warm, sticky baby in my arms and a fear in my heart that I had proved a very irresponsible mom for taking a sneezing baby anywhere outside her house.

On the Move

On Saturday, Anna Sophia hit the seven-month mark and her first tooth made an appearance above surface. She purses her lips around her still-sore gums, and she hums and hums.

Anna spent the weekend trying to propel herself forward, mostly overbalancing onto her face. She tried "creeping" flat on her belly but could only go backwards -- and then yell when she realized that she was farther and farther away from her goal.

On Tuesday, we finally had to name whatever it is that Anna is doing to get herself around the room "crawling." It's kind of a bum-scoot with a lean-over. It involves one foot flat on the floor, knee up, and one foot in front with the knee down. It looks weird, but it gets her where she wants to go. Mostly, she wants to go where the cat is. Barring that, she'll settle for the catfood. We have had to move the catfood.

We have given up on having furniture. There were so many head bumps on Tuesday alone that we put away two chairs and a coffeetable. When she kicked up the attempts to climb up on things, we had to move the piano bench and . . . umm, I don't really remember what furniture we had anymore, now that we sit on the floor so much. The piano legs, the couch, the remaining chair, the bookshelves, and parents' legs and bodies remain to be climbed. And there are always walls to be scaled. Now that Anna can get into previously inaccessible parts of the room, she spends a lot of time banging her hands on the baseboard heaters, enjoying the sound, and then trying to climb the walls. She definitely knows that the climbing will get her standing, and standing will get her walking, and walking will get her running, and running will let her catch the cat and rule the world.

(Earlier today, she tried to climb her aunt Emily, but she kept sliding down the bump in the belly that is her little cousin.)

Meanwhile, the cat is alarmed at the lack of furniture and even more alarmed that the baby is turning up in places the baby has never been before. Cat and baby have clearly negotiated some kind of detente, though, since they seem quite comfortable angling around the edges of each other's prescribed territory, and kitty more and more often waltzes past baby (though healthily just out of reach). She likes to live dangerously.

Bouncing Baby

As we've met other parents of children under one, we've noticed a sad phenomenon. So many new parents believe their children to be the most gorgeous, the most adorable, the most active, the most advanced of all babies ever born in the history of the world. And the phenomenon is sad because these parents are all so clearly suffering delusions. Because we have the most gorgeous, the most adorable, the most active, the most advanced of all babies ever born in the history of the world. And we can only shake our heads with sympathy at the other poor, poor deluded parents.

Hee hee.

Of course, as parents we are finely attuned to Anna Sophia's individual baby superpowers, but we know that if she were a different person from whom she most definitely is and who she is most definitely becoming, we would simply attune ourselves to a different set of superpowers. I hope. Sometimes we're so busy being attuned to Anna's busy being, it's hard to tell what we would think under different circumstances, if we were able to think straight at all.

These days, Anna is teething hard but very slowly. There must be teeth in there somewhere, but they aren't showing themselves. She is drooling in buckets. She is then climbing into and out of the buckets.

She is still desperate to walk and is trying to decide if crawling is worth an investment of energy. She no longer stays in one place when set on the floor. She bounces on her bum, reaches impossibly far in front of her, grips the floor with her feet, and either spins in a circle or pulls herself forward or tries out a crawling position or faceplants, depending on her mood and her sense of adventure. She can boogie her way over to her toy basket and empty its contents one by one onto the floor (an activity she also likes to apply to laundry baskets and any shelves at baby level). She is still most adept at spinning in a circle where she sits, which usually leads to a ring of toys just out of her immediate reach, with her sitting in the middle of the ring still trying to decide if crawling is worth an investment of energy. She has faceplanted just often enough to make her wary.

If her parents are nearby, we automatically become jungle gyms. If we sit next to her, Anna grabs pantlegs, pulls herself up to standing, and bounces and dances. Or faceplants. If we sit or lie on the floor next to her, she climbs over whatever part of us is closest. She tugs and pulls our parts, and she hangs over and balances on our parts.

Anna is only still while sleeping. And she prefers to save her sleeping for the night-time rather than daytime naps, though she likes to wake in the evening long enough to check out American Idol. She was a Sanjaya fan, but he went home last week, and we were surprised last night to find Anna inclined to support Blake. Perhaps since this season of Idol is so boring, Anna will soon choose to sleep through the night??

Anna loves adventures outside, now that spring is in the air. She has greeted many upstart crocuses and six early tulips in the garden. We've been enjoying "field trips," adding to our usual destinations (Confederation Centre Gallery or Confederation Centre Library or Mavor's at Confederation Centre) some new, scenic locations around town. And one day this week, we went to the greenhouses around the corner to buy fresh green beans (Anna's favourite of all her favourite vegetables) and to look at all kinds of blooming flowers and seedling plants. Anna hummed to them very happily. She also tried to grab them and rip them to shreds. (She seems to understand an alarming amount of what we say to her, but "Gentle" is still a concept beyond her, um, "grasp.") We also visited the bunnies that live in the greenhouse. They were at it like, well, rabbits. I decided it would not be age-appropriate to explain this aspect of spring.

Happy Easter!

In some climates, in some parts of the world, Easter might fall in springtime, but here, where springtime exists only as a state of mind and our closest approximation of "spring fever" is a warmish reddish rash from friction burn where we tried to scrub off a layer of mud, Easter has brought a blizzard. It's a real blizzard -- the one they've been forecasting all winter but that has never materialized.

Anna's first Easter brunch with grandparents Ledwell will be, if we are lucky, Easter late lunch with Uncle Patrick and Aunt Tara, who are within walking distance and are still young and strong.

We're determined to make it out for turkey dinner at Grandma MacInnis's. We're told the turkey is in the oven and that it would have died in vain if we don't make an attempt to get there.

Only two logistical hurdles to face: digging out whatever has blown in since Stephen dug out earlier this morning, and getting Anna into baby leotards to keep her legs warm in her Easter dress. Given that she resists all and any clothes, I'm not sure what army will be able to get her into leotards. Come to think of it, I can't think what army would be able to get me into leotards, but -- really -- if you can't apply double standards to babies, who is left to apply them to?

Anna is happily watching the snow breeze past the window as she scoots back and forth in her non-saucer shaped exersaucer. It's called an "intellitainer," but we refer to it as the "intellicizer" when we don't refer to it as "the contraption."

Anna's up to her old tricks but is adding new ones. On Thursday, she decided her favourite new game is to grab hands or arms or anything she can and use them to pull herself to standing. She did this again and again and again on Thursday, and not only is she able to do it with ease, now, she is able to look proud of herself for doing it. Very proud of herself. The girl knows an accomplishment when she sees it. On Friday, she showed off her new skill for her uncle Danny, home from Halifax.

Her parents are proud, too, but most days, we look at each other and say, "Hoo boy. We are in so much trouble." We can barely keep up with her now, when she's barely mobile at all. We aren't sure how we'll catch her when she manages to walk, a goal she has decided is more interesting (and possibly more attainable) than crawling.

Right now, she can mostly launch herself forward and backward from sitting, either bonking her head or narrowly missing bonking her head. (We surround her with pilllows and our own selves, so mostly she bonks her head on pillows or legs.) She loves to try to crawl over her parents -- we are obviously obstacles to getting where she wants to go. As usual, where she wants to go is wherever the cat is. Which is never far away, because Moon loves to be near the baby. While the baby naps, Moon naps -- on the changing table.

Anna's other favourite toy, for when the cat is out of sight, is a stainless steel bowl and a rubbery ball. Who knew that what she most wanted to play with was a bowl from the kitchen? We thought all baby toys had to be created by teams of baby psychologists with theories about how many whizzbangs and gadgets and colours and questionable baby-fied representations of major works of cultural importance could be safely fit into ten inches of plastic to create a genius.

Anna is sitting in her intellicizer full of whizzbangs dangling her feet and happily sucking on her finger. There's drool everywhere. Do you think she's doomed to a life of non-genius?

A Whole Half Year

Tomorrow, Anna will mark six months on the "outside." She had her six-month check-up with the doctor this morning, and was called by Doctor Kathy "the most independent six-month-old I know." We know, too.

She is growing and thriving on all the measurements: height in the 75th percentile, weight in the 50th, head in the 95th. This percentile business is not particularly meaningful except as an explanation of why her feet reach the bottoms of her sleepers before her belly fills out their width, and why baby hats are laughably tiny on her huge noggin. It has its own atmosphere and satellites. (The atmosphere some days is mostly methane. The satellites, we suspect, are us.)

By all other measures, she's well beyond her age. At least we, her parents, aided and abetted by her adoring grandparents, assess her as extraordinary in every possible way.

She can sit up, unsupported, and play with toys all the live-long day. (Her mother even cavalierly leaves the room for whole minutes at a time and leaves her sitting up.) She figures out how new toys work in minutes. She eats her sweet potatoes and rice cereal and carrots as though she had a full set of teeth (except for the chewing part). She loves books, also to eat. She loves the phone -- to eat, to listen to, to push buttons on, to yank from her parents' hands.
She loves to pull blankets over her head until someone says "Where's Anna gone?" at which point she pulls down the blanket to show a big giggly smile and to hear a happy "Peekaboo." She loves her new sitting-up and looking-outwards point of view in the stroller without the infant car seat attachment. She gazes at the world with a frightening level of knowingness. And sometimes she (almost) catches the cat, who continues to be a careful playmate, strutting in front of the baby but keeping a safe distance.

Anna is still a striver. Desperate to crawl, she pulls herself onto her belly from a sitting position and then shrieks with unhappiness as she flails her arms and feet and scratches the floor with her fingernails, all to no avail in getting her forward. She reaches for whatever is in front of her and rocks on her belly and bends her knees, but she can't coordinate her actions. God help us when she can. Nothing will be safe from her. (Please, no one tell her about the rolling-across-the-floor option, or the bum-scooting option!)

Getting her dressed is a huge ordeal now, because she is so busy and so strong. She pulled a diaper out from under her bum one night and waved it in the air while her sleepy father was trying to change her. The fewer pieces the outfit comes in, the better. Pants and socks make her cry -- if you can get her into them at all. "I'm ready for the rodeo," Stephen laughed one day after wrastling her into something or other. If only her long legs and feet were better accommodated by one-piece suities . . . Grandma Carolyn might have the best idea -- she just yanks off the baby's outer clothing as soon as she gets near her and lets her eat her toes in peace.

Beyond clothes, Anna's "new look" this week is the nose-squinch, the first sign that she might be related to me and my family. Previously, she had two smiles, the close-lipped impish grin and the big toothless open-mouthed show-offy smile. This week, she added a brand-new smile with an open mouth and a squinched-up nose (and a little laugh created by inhaling and exhaling through a slightly stuffy squinched up baby nose). The nose-squinch was, of course, perfected by her aunt Emily when she was a baby. (Emily famously used her nose-squinch "ph-mile" to charm and distract grown-ups so she could put her arm into their whiskey glasses.)

What Anna loves best in the world is to be praised. "Yay" and "Hooray" are her favourite words. Applause is her favourite sound. What a little diva. The praise is obviously spurring her on to great accomplishments -- and, uh-oh maybe that's what swelling her head?!