Day 151

Addie is 5 months old today (or 151 days, whichever you prefer). Somehow 5 months seems a lot older than 151 days. She's on the verge of crawling, and I don't think we're really ready for that yet. I do believe that a thorough house-cleaning is in order.

I think I shall officially adopt a style of parenting known as "Knock On Wood Parenting." I've noticed that ending any sentence about the baby with the word "yet" is a surefire way to make that "yet" a thing of the past. Case in point: a couple of days ago Ame handed me the baby after she had finished nursing. She was wearing a diaper (cloth, of course), but no diaper cover. Noting how often she pees, I remarked to Ame, "I'm surpised she hasn't peed yet." Not more than five seconds later, the front of my shirt looked like this:

We have a large plastic tub sitting in our living room that is full of clothes that are (supposedly, though I've seen little evidence of this) being sorted. Addie found her way over there while lying on the floor, and upon further investigation I noticed that she was in fact licking the tub.



Indeed, she seems content to investigate whatever is within arm's reach, including one of Dad's shoes.


Lastly, Addie has taken a keen interest in my watch lately. Whenever she realizes that I'm wearing it, it takes quite the effort to pry her eyes away. So today I let her play with it a bit, and then held it up in front of her and moved it back and forth, letting her track it. Apparently I was moving the watch a little too fast, though, because she was a step behind (or ahead, depending on how you look at it) of where I was. Ame and I were enjoying this immensely, and decided that a video would be a good idea. Addie is more interested in the camera than in the watch at first, but about halfway through she finally catches on. Well, not really catches on, as when the watch goes one direction her head goes the other, but you get the point. If you get half as much enjoyment out of this video as Ame and I did, you're in for a treat. Here you are.

The Photo Gallery, part VII

It's been a busy week, and we've got pictures (and more video, finally!) to prove it.

Addie is becoming quite the roller-over-er (translation: she rolls over a lot), though she has yet to make successive rolls in the same direction. She has, however, repeatedly rolled from her back to her stomach, then from her stomach to her back, then from her back to her stomach again.

She is also doing quite well at holding her upper body up with her arms. She's beginning to kick her legs, much in the same was as a frog might do, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to move forward. She doesn't actually get anywhere, but she looks funny doing it.

She also had a bit of unintentional alone time on Thursday. Ame had washed a load of diapers and was making repeated trips out the back door to hang them up on the clothesline that we rigged up. Well, on one of these trips the wind blew in from the windows in the front of the apartment and actually shut the back door, locking Ame outside and leaving poor Addie crying on the living room floor. Shoeless and phoneless, Ame decided to go next door to see if our neighbors were there, so she could use their phone to call a locksmith. No such luck. So what next? Ame went to the front of the house (thankfully we live on the ground floor) and proceeded to push in the screen from an open living room window and crawl in, with a rather perplexed-looking Addie as her audience. Perhaps most disconcerting is not that one can push in the screens of our living room windows and crawl inside, but that one can do it in the middle of the day on a busy street without a single call to the police. We'll be closing and locking our windows from now on.

Not only does Addie kick like a frog when she's on the ground, she does it in the water as well. We gave her a bath a couple of days ago, and I finally thought to document it. I've uploaded two more videos on YouTube, which you can see here and here. They're both pretty much the same, but they're each too cute to be left out.

Now, on to the pictures.

We had a rather purple day at church this morning. Ame put on a purple shirt, I put on a purple tie, and we figured we might as well complete the look with a purple dress for Addie.


Happy Addie:

Addie finding herself wrapped up in her blanket:


"I swear, I wasn't doing anything..."


Lying on her blanket after a recent diaper change, Addie looked up and noticed that her basket of toys was just a short s-t-r-e-t-c-h away. And... success!


We went for a little hike at our local state park yesterday. Addie got to take it all in from the luxurious front-row seat, in a sling that Ame rigged up to carry her in. She was thrilled (though you can't tell by this picture) to be able to kick her legs (again, of course, as frog-like as possible).


Lastly, the author Henry James once stated that "summer afternoon" are "the two most beautiful words in the English language." That may very well be, and I have no desire to contest his point, but I would like to submit that the two cutest words in the English language, without doubt, are "baby's butt."

Toes and Pictures

For the last week or so, Addie's toes have been inching closer and closer to her mouth during diaper changes. Well, today she finally got them in her mouth. It's the little things that make you proud as a parent.

With that little milestone comes a few pictures, the first two from a couple of weeks ago and the last three from last night.

Kisses, feet, teeth, graduation, and rolling over? Check.

It's been a busy past couple of weeks. Addie has started giving kisses, grabbing her feet, is perhaps teething, has 'graduated' from college, and, yes, has finally rolled over.

We'll start with the kisses. We were in Springfield two weeks ago to see family and friends, and Addie decided to be rather friendly with my mom. My mom would hold Addie so that she was facing her, kiss her on the cheeks, and then Addie would kiss back. And by "kiss back," I mean that she grabbed my mom's face, leaned forward with mouth wide open, and rivaled the best dog kiss in terms of wetness. I think that "slobber" would be a more appropriate term than "kiss," but given that she's only four months old, I suppose we can excuse her for the time being. Mom and Dad have since been kissed, but only very little.

Diaper-changing time is now a grand opportunity for Addie to reach down and play with her feet. As soon as the diaper is off, the feet shoot up and are instantly met by her hands. I don't think it'll be long before her feet finally find her mouth.

As for the teething, we're not sure, but we think she is. She had a bit of a temperature a few days ago which, accompanied by some rather interestingly filled diapers, is one sign of teething. Plus, she has come to enjoy chomping down on our fingers whenever she's able to get them in her mouth (which is quite often).

And our baby isn't quite a child prodigy. Ame has been taking Addie to class with her this semester, and it has been a bit of a running joke that Addie is starting off her college education early. (As an aside, Ame had only one class this semester which met for an hour and a half each Tuesday and Thursday. Addie may not have actually qualified as a college student, though, since she didn't attend class very often, due in large part to someone else not attending class very often. Anyway...) So graduation was Saturday, and Ame, possessing the means of feeding the baby, took Addie with her for the first hour or so of the festivities. Ame then passed the baby off to me after finding her seat, and I held a sleeping (through air horns and shouting, nonetheless) Addie for the remainder of the ceremony. So, Addie's college experience is now done, for the next 18 or so years at least.

And no more need for an armless baby; Addie has finally begun rolling over by herself. She did it the first time by rolling from her stomach over to her back, what appears to be an easier maneuver than the from back to front. So she did that a couple of times, and then last night finally just flopped on over from her back to her front. It happened so quickly we almost weren't sure it even happened. "Did she just roll over?" "I think so..." Addie then gave an encore performance, albeit about 18 hours later, today. If you happen to hear a low hum in the background sometime over the next couple of weeks, it's probably us making a mad dash to baby proof our apartment.

Those are the big updates for now. I'll hopefully get some new pictures up as soon as I find my battery charger so I can recharge the camera batteries. At any rate, I've still got a few older pictures that I've been meaning to put up but just haven't gotten around to yet. So until next time...