Baby Blog

I’m a little late to the game on this one. We gave Adria a little trim to her bangs on February 17:

Adria’s first cut lock of hair

She still doesn’t have all that much hair, so it was sad to cut any of it off…but she had these handful of bangs that were far ahead of the pack and they were getting in her eyes. So Amanda gathered them up in her fingers and snipped them off with the kitchen shears.

Here’s to the digital age, when this memory is captured in a photograph instead of a plastic bag.

Uh-oh.

Adria has known what doors do, and what door knobs are for, for quite a while. In our house, when a door is closed and she wants out (or in), she will stand on her tippy-toes and reach for the door knob and whine. She can just now touch our door knobs, but she needs a few more inches to get her hand around them (which is, what, another half year??). I’ve held her up and let her try it, and she either doesn’t have the knowledge, coordination, or strength to turn the knob just yet. But it won’t be long.

At our hotel in SLO this weekend, the door knobs were the handle-style, and they were “conveniently” quite low. We had a little suite so that Adria could have her own room and we didn’t have to go to bed at 8pm. She first started by playing with the bathroom door, but when we discouraged that she moved to the extra room. She quickly went inside and closed the door behind her, and then squealed when she realized that she was alone. Amanda and I waited a few seconds to see what she would do…and then, like a bad horror movie, the handle slowly started to move.

A few seconds later, with another squeal (of delight), she opened the door and popped out. I took many videos. The one above is pretty much as soon as she figured it out. This one is after she had pretty much mastered it, and was obviously quite pleased with herself:

And here is a very short clip of what it looks like from the inside…

Time to break out the child-proof doorknob covers for our bathrooms??

Adria started something new this weekend. She now trails a blanket around by its corner, in total Linus stereotypical fashion. It is so cliché that it made both Amanda and I stare. At home, her blankets usually end up in her crib, and she can’t easily get at them from the outside. But in our hotel room this weekend, the blankets were lying around, and she started doing this:

Adria trailing her blanket around by the corner

Looks like the age of the ‘blanky’ are upon us.

We have a handful of special toys that stay in the master bedroom where Adria’s crib and changing table are. Since we spend most of our time in the living room, these toys keep some measure of novelty, and we hand them to her on the changing table, or when we are getting dressed in the morning, etc.

We have noticed that, rather than pull these toys out of the corner where we tuck them out of the way, she crawls into this little toy nook, and sits there surrounded by her toys:

Adria playing in her toy nook

It wouldn’t surprise me if Adria has been able to use a slide by herself for a while…they have several at daycare. But up until this weekend, we have been pretty protective on the slides, and the most we’ve done is to have one of us send her down from the top, with another of us at the bottom to catch. This works pretty well on the straight slides, but we’ve had her turn around sideways or backwards on the spiral slides a couple of times.

Well, she’s getting stronger and her balance is constantly improving. This little slide is quite small, so we set her up there to try it by herself a couple of times. As you can see, she’s not afraid to push herself over the hump…and she loves it!

I might be biased, but I think we have the cutest baby ever.

While in San Diego this weekend, I snapped the following photo, which I think deserves a caption contest and a ‘bad parenting’ tag. Click here and here to see why it’s perfectly fine after all.

I hope you learned something about playing near wells…

Ok, give it your best shot in the comments…

Adria is getting pretty good with her animal sounds. This is, in fact, not the best performance I’ve gotten…but it’s the best that I’ve gotten on tape, and it’s a good one. This was actually taken first thing in the morning…she didn’t even want out of her crib right away, and she was in a great mood. So, I pulled out the camera. The dialog goes:

“Adria, what does a cow say?”
“Meooo!”
“What does a dog say?”
“Woof.”
“What does a sheep say?”
“Ba-aa!”
“What does a horse say?”
“Nay!”
“What does a cat say?”
“Light!”
“What does a cat say?”
“Mao?”
“Meow…very good sweetheart.”
“Uh-oh…”

For the long President’s Day weekend, we drove up to Amanda’s aunt Janet’s home in Oakhurst. We had a great time hanging out, hiking, and even getting a chance to see a bit of Yosemite while Janet and Ken watched Adria for the afternoon. They also sent us out to a great dinner on Valentine’s day, which was very sweet…thanks Janet and Ken!

For the first two days in Oakhurst, Adria was fantastic. As the weekend progressed, however, she started to show the early symptoms of the Roseola…in particular, a mild fever and some mild fussiness. We confused this with teething, but as it turns out the treatment is about the same…Tylenol and Motrin for the fever and general well-being, as needed. Still, despite being a little sick, Adria was generally great during the visit.

She loved having so much room to run in Janet’s house, and especially the big loop that she could run through the kitchen and back past the wood-burning stove in the living room. She would go around, and around, and around…and since there were 4 of us and someone was often in the kitchen, it wasn’t required for someone to chase her around to keep her safe. We played a zone defense.

We were there for 4 nights…Thursday (late, around midnight), Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Out of 4, Adria only slept through once. In retrospect, some of that may have been due to the Roseola. But she also just seems to have a hard time sleeping away from home, and I have noticed that it’s having the effect of me not being so eager to take her to stay with friends. We can’t figure out if it’s the difference of the crib, the light, the temperature, the noise, or some combination of this. She sometimes has to bunk in the same room with us, which rarely seems to go well. The thing to do is probably to “Ferberize” her away from home…but for a short trip, and when other people are trying to sleep, it often seems easier just to placate her by whatever means necessary (usually cuddles for an extended period, like an hour). Since we’ve been home, we’ve gotten her right back onto her schedule.

Here are a few photos and videos of some good times with Janet and Ken over the President’s day weekend:

Adria and Janet cozy in the recliner

Janet helping Adria color with markers at the kitchen table

A rare sighting of Grumpa smiling at the adorable baby

Why does Adria laugh when the cat toy hits the door and Amanda yells “ouch!"? I dunno…why do we laugh at the 3 Stooges?

We are starting to get a little better at getting Adria to eat. There are several tricks. The big one is the obvious one: figure out what she likes (see the list below).

Another interesting trick is to ignore her. We set her in her chair, give her some healthy food choices to eat on her tray, and then ignore her. You know, watched pot, and all that. We do dishes, laundry, cook, eat, etc….but if you aren’t paying her too much attention, she seems less likely to do playful things like toss her food or utensils, and more likely to try things both old and new.

One of my tactics of last resort is to eat with her…in fact, to let her feed me. If I get down at her level, she’ll take a carrot, waffle, string cheese, etc, and try to put it in my mouth. I’ll take a playful bite or two, and eventually she sort of gets jealous or wants to imitate or something, and she does it herself. And often, once she gets started she’ll go for a while on her own (we call this “priming the pump"). Back when we were feeding her baby food, sometimes this would involve tricking or surprising her into the first bite, which she would actively refuse…but then she would smack her lips a few times and get a taste, and eagerly take more.

Here’s a list of things that Adria seems to like to eat at the moment. We would love to hear your suggestions as well…anything that your kids particularly liked to eat around 14 months?

• waffles (Eggo brand, but we’re not sure that matters)
• oatmeal (adult oatmeal, flavored…like cinnamon and brown sugar)
• corn flakes
• rice chex
• cheerios
• blueberries whole
• scrambled eggs
• sweet potato pancakes
• whole grain pancakes
• goldfish
• cheese its
• snapea crisps
• chunks of apples and bananas
• yogurt (almost any flavor/brand without fruit chunks in it)
• string cheese
• rotini pasta with alfredo sauce
• rice cooked in chicken broth
• ground turkey seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and peas (thanks Emilee!)
• steamed carrots
• mighty minis popsicles
• soups or stews drained of the liquids

We’ve had a little rain in LA over the last few weeks, and we discovered that Adria loves puddles. Here’s a cute video just outside of our condo door, where she found some shallow puddles near the courtyard:

Later on, we took our eyes off of her for a second, and when we looked back she was trying to drink out of a puddle. When I grabbed her, she had a big grin on her face and water dripping out of her bangs.

Adria has just finished up with yet another childhood illness. This one is called Roseola, sometimes called “Sixth’s Disease". This is a rather interesting illness…it incubates for 1-2 weeks (meaning that it gets spread around daycare before anyone knows the kids are sick), then it manifests with virtually no symptoms except a fever. In Adria’s case, she had a mild fever (that we attributed to teething for a while) for about 3 days, but was still reasonably upbeat. When she hit 101.5 on the third day, we chickened out and took her to the doctor, worried again for her ears.

The doctor was actually not able to discover any symptoms other than the fever, either. He proposed that Adria might have Roseola, which can often manifest this way. The main characteristic of the disease is that, soon after the fever breaks, the child gets a rash on her trunk, arms, and face that lasts from a few hours to a few days. And sure enough, the very next morning after Amanda took her in, she got the rash. I kept her out of daycare for 2 days while she got over her rash (although, again, at this point she was feeling mostly fine, did not have a fever, and wasn’t contagious. But it sure looked sickly, and we’re not supposed to take her in with a rash).

There is interesting history behind the name “Sixth Disease". In 1905 (according to the Wikipedia), six common childhood rashes were given numbers. These were: measles, scarlet fever, rubella, Duke’s disease, fifths disease (erythema infectiosum, slapped cheek syndrome), and roseola. Duke’s disease turned out to be something of a myth…it was never linked to a specific pathogen, so is no longer diagnosed. Adria is immunized against measles and rubella. Scarlet fever is uncommon these days and easily treated with antibiotics. Adria has had Fifths disease, and now Sixths too. So she’s basically had all of the historical common childhood rashes that it’s possible to get these days. What a distinction!

Amanda had a good thought. The blog is a great record of Adria’s developmental milestones, but it can and will be very hard to scan (note that at last count I have made 424 posts since I started on 6/2/2008). So a summary of the milestones that I have noted might be in order! I started with Adria’s birth (no point in browsing the 2008 stuff about the pregnancy), and took notes all the way up to my latest post. Here’s what I came up with:

Gotta love this convergence:

1/23/2009: Drew’s mom goes home
1/23/2009: First cry with real tears

Now ask yourself…who do you think it was exactly, that was crying?

A few weekends ago we went to a housewarming party that one of our friends was throwing. Adria was wandering around, exploring in her usual way, and wearing herself out. (As it turns out, she was also getting sick, but we didn’t know that at the time.)

I was playing with her, and as a game I quickly wrapped her up in her blanket and tossed her on the sofa…and she immediately pulled up her knees into her ’sleeping position’. I rubbed her back a little, and she pooped out on the spot…on the sofa in the middle of a house party:

Top view of Adria sleeping at the party

Side view of Adria sleeping at the party

After about five minutes, she popped up, and was ready to go again. Just a quick little power nap. I love how you can just barely see her little nose and the side of her face in the side view photo…

Today I was letting Adria use a marker to draw on some paper, and I noticed that she preferred her right hand to draw with. As an experiment, every time she would drop the marker I would give it back to her in her left hand. Every time, she moved it to the right before she would draw. It would appear that she likes orange after all.

Amanda gets a weekly baby development e-mail, and last week it mentioned that a 13-month-old is increasingly able to understand what you say, even if they can’t communicate back very well. In fact, we’ve started to notice this a lot lately. Amanda gave an example, where she’ll say something like “Go find your Dad and he’ll take you outside!” and Adria will indeed go off to hunt me down.

This evening in her bath, I asked “Adria, are you almost done with your bath?” She shook her head in a distinctively negative way, and said “No!” without even looking up from her toys.

She is also starting to “invent” her own sign language. They are classic gestures, of course, but she was never actually taught these things and picked them up on her own. For example, she throws her arms up in the air to be picked up. She points at things that she wants. She looks back at me and holds one or more of her hands up in the classic ‘take my hand’ gesture if she comes upon steps or uncertain terrain.

She will even ‘ask permission’ with her eyes when she wants to touch something and she has some reason to believe it is dangerous or off-limits. She will put her hand out towards the thing (I’m thinking of a particular instance where it was a remote control on the coffee table) but not quite touch it, and then look back with a sly grin that says “I’m going to grab this, Dad, unless you say not to in the next few seconds…” And believe it or not, if I tell her “not for babies", she’ll leave it alone. (I’m thinking I shouldn’t get too used to this, especially if the next baby is a boy?)

I love this video.

I caught Adria dancing to the tunes on her fridge magnet toy, so I pulled out the camera, and luckily she kept it up. She will dance a few beats to each new song, and then between tunes she would hand me a magnet or two, just because.

I forgot to mention that Adria is drinking 100% cow’s milk now. It has been about a week. We phased it in by mixing up a small amount of formula and then topping it off with milk…truth is, though, she never really cared. A couple of times, just out of convenience, we gave her an all-milk bottle, and she took it just fine.

For about 2 weeks we had daycare doing 50/50 milk and formula, and then a week ago we let them switch to all milk. We still have some formula at home, so we were doing partial formula bottles for a few days more, but soon we also slipped to milk-only out of convenience. Adria likes it just fine, and doesn’t even mind it cold.

The formula is actually fortified with vitamins not found in cow’s milk….they recommend a multivitamin (in dropper form that you mix with the milk) once they aren’t taking formula anymore. We’ve got that on hand, but we’ve also got half a container of formula left too. I think that I’ll try and slip a scoop or two of formula in every day until we’re out…then we’ll do the vitamins.

Oh boy, what have we done?

Yesterday morning when Adria woke up I heard her talking in her room, and when I went in to get her she was standing in her crib flailing her hands and saying “all done!".

This morning while I was changing her diaper and dressing her for the day (but not finished!), she made the sign and said “all done, all done!”

And so it begins…

I have mentioned earlier that Adria is learning new words daily. While she is definitely talking, I can’t emphasize enough that it is baby speak, and takes a trained parental ear to know what she is saying. Exceptions are ’shoes’, ‘hi’, ‘bye’, ‘dada’, ‘mama’, ‘uh-oh’, and maybe a few others.

So, here are a few things that she can say (with some interpretation) that are previously unreported: rain ("rain!"), meow ("mao!"), moo, neigh ("nay!"), gentle ("een-tell!"), night-night ("nigh-nigh"), bottle ("badda"), fish ("feesh"), hello ("ell-oh"), ball ("ball!").

That’s four nights in a row that Adria has slept from earlier than 8pm until later than 6:30am! We had our alarms wake us up at 6:30am yesterday and today…which, after about a year of not having any danger of sleeping that long, is kind of startling…

[Edit: Oops, jinxed it…this morning (2/10), she woke up at 5:25…Amanda changed her extremely wet diaper and gave her a tiny bit of water, and then she slept until 6:45.]