11 months old

Alita Walks!

See the telling footage captured by home video. No amount of cuddly toys, treats, or enticements could convince the child to walk on her own, until...

Growth Spurt!

After an exciting trip to Anchorage, Alaska for the Thanksgiving Holiday, Alita began an industrious campaign to eat everything. The night after we arrived back home, the house was in a shambles as Amy shoveled spoonful after spoonful of food into the ravenous baby's mouth. Erik ran frantically between kitchen and dining room in response to Amy's cries of "more food! My God she ate the whole bowlful - again!"

Luckily she appeared to slow down just before Erik got the emergency canned Spam open.

Alita Speaks!

Her first words were "Da Da!" I am not making this up. More soon!

10 months old

Today Alita’s cousin Maeve Abigail was born in NY, and it reminded me that we should update the blog to celebrate Al’s surviving her 10th month. I say surviving because she has developed a keen interest in walking and will cruise around the house holding on to whatever’s handy- couch, ottomans, passing pant leg. She has not yet learned which objects are stationary and will support her, and which are
going to leave her waving her little hands in the air, falling over backward in slow motion as her now-huge eyes stare at us with a mixture of bafflement and accusation… thud.

Often, she only needs one hand to support her in her travels, and she’s determined to get around as efficiently as possible- if she reaches the end of the couch, for example, she’ll stick her hand up and out without taking her eyes off her goal (usually something shiny across the room). Only if we don’t immediately offer a hand for support will she look up at us as if to say “come on slowpoke, I got places to be!” Once balance is assured she’ll take off, nearly at a run if she has her eye on a particularly tasty treat like a set of keys. Or the nanny.

She doesn’t actually try to eat the nanny. But she is sure excited to see Nadia every morning, and as she does whenever she sees something exciting (a picture of a baby, Obama magnet, those keys) she’ll grin, wave her hands around, kick her little legs and yell “Doh! Doh! Doh!”

Speaking of grins, it’s no longer toothless- she has one lower front tooth, and the other one is on its way. It’s a little razor. Hasn’t bitten the milk fairy (Mom) yet, but if she does we’re in for a rather precipitous weaning. Aside from “Doh!” her vocabulary has progressed to include raspberries, duck noises (kid you not- sounds like Donald Duck) and monosyllabic near-singing. Kind of like Bjork only not as loud or annoying. She laughs sometimes, and chuckles frequently- usually, but not always, at something in particular.

She’s close to understanding the waving bye-bye concept, and she actually looks at books when we read them, as opposed to immediately trying to eat them (she does still try to eat them, just not immediately). She bounces and waggles her butt around when she hears the music of certain toys, and we think she’s dancing- either that or music makes her lose her balance. Therefore we figured she was ready to learn how to mosh, so she was Headbanger Baby for Halloween- Matthew gave her a Motley Crue T-shirt from LA, and we built on that. You can’t see the sweet spiked collar (thanks PetCo) or black nail polish in the picture here, but trust me they were badass.

9 months old

Alita's favorite thing to do is practice walking. She has learned to raise her arms up to be picked up, but if you offer her your hands she'll grab hold, pull herself up to standing and stagger across the floor. She hasn't learned to do this with inanimate objects yet, but it's only a matter of time and then all hell will likely break loose. Our backs are all sore from leaning over to hold her up as she wanders around, though I've found that shuffling along wearing knee pads (not kidding) is preferable to stooping.

She is much more talkative now, and smiles much more often. She has a fantastic gummy grin, and when she's really excited she wrinkles her nose, gives a wide smile and happy little yelp, and kicks her legs about as if to run to you, or her stuffed animal, or the poor helpless cat next
door, whatever is stimulating those little neurons to make her happy happy happy. She is particularly overjoyed by mirrors, which may bode ill
for the teenage years. She remains a pretty serious kid most of the time though (see the attached photo by her Auntie Amber), and very attentive to details- she likes to manipulate the labels on her toys, and spent most of her time on the swing today trying to remove a screw.

Almost 8 Months

BIG NEWS!

Alita eats.

Almost grownup food. And not only does she eat it off of a spoon, but she tries to feed it to herself! Just as you approach with the spoonful of mushed-up whatsit (sweet potato, carrot, peas, apples, some kind of grain cereal that I cannot pronounce), Alita GRABS the spoon and shoves it into HER OWN mouth! Then she turns the spoon around and puts the handle in her mouth. Then she smears the food on both hands and her front (bibs are brilliant). Then she throws the spoon down the heating register in the floor.

Priceless.

What else is going on? Swimming on Thursdays; a trip to the zoo; new car seat - really new this time, bought from a STORE and everything! (Not our usual found-on-the-curb; found-on-freecycle-website; borrowed from friends/neighbors; bought for $3 from craigslist.org; built-it-ourselves-from-leftover-scraps-from-the-basement-remodeling thing.)

Where are all the cute snippets of video? Still on the camera. Oh, they're very cute, but just like the big fish that got away - the best moments are never caught on tape.

What did we catch on tape? Hours of relatively boring images of Alita doing relatively boring things, while a grownup voice says "She was just doing it! It was sooo funny (or cute)! Alita, do that again! Mommy (or Daddy) has the camera going now! Go ahead sweetie, just like you did before!")

So, as a public service, we will edit the videos before posting - in an effort to reduce the application of silverware to our viewers' eyes. Yes, One Day, we'll edit those videos. One Day we'll post those videos - right after the BIG GRANT submission is done; after the IRB SUBMISSION is done; after the HORRIBLE WEEKEND ON CALL is done; after the DOWNSTAIRS BABY-PROOFING is done; after the ... well, you know.

6 months old!

Ok, we've been rather lax in posting updates on our little miracle's development. Mea culpa, we'll do better, blah blah blah. Here's a summary of the wonderchild's accomplishments over the last month: 1. she learned how to roll over front to back. Then she forgot again for a couple of weeks, but she's got it down again. The dreaded Tummy Time is no more, as she now knows how to escape this hellish torture. She will probably learn how to walk before she crawls, which means we can avoid vacuuming for another couple of months. 2. She doesn't need much help to sit up, and she loves to stand with support. We're still waiting for her to figure out the Johnny Jump Up. 3. She had her first swimming lesson last week, which she ... tolerated. Time will tell whether she'll become a real waterbaby. 4. We tried feeding her a little avocado recently, which mostly sat in her mouth for a bit while she looked bewildered, then plopped onto her bib. She was a little more interested in the sweet potato, which I'm trying to encourage in hopes she'll get enough in her hair to dye it orange. 5. She can entertain herself with her toys, at least for a little while- long enough to give everything a slick spit sheen while one of us gets some cooking or cleaning done. 6. She's not sleeping through the night yet, but she goes to bed at a fairly regular time and is up to eat just once between 1 & 4am. 7. Finally, her latest trick is recognizing the water faucet. She seems to know that water comes out of it, and she leans forward excitedly and waves her hands around in the stream. I keep trying to get her to do some dishes while she's at it, but the lazy tyke isn't interested. Practicing for her teen years already, it seems.

Almost 4 months old

Alita learned to laugh last week. So far she has found the following things hilarious: discussion of computer viruses by Erik, endless repetition of "who's wearing jammies?" in annoying baby accent while clapping her footie-clad feet together, and her grandma Dianna's face. We're pretty sure that last one is meant as a compliment. She has her 4-month checkup tomorrow, at which time we'll learn how well she's growing (spoiler alert: like a weed), how many milestones she has met (babbling & cooing- check. Shoving her whole fist in her mouth to suck her fingers,-check. Drooling enough to drown a small coastal town- check), and how many she has yet to meet (learning to roll over is tough when you tolerate just 30 seconds of tummy time in any 3-hour period). She met her Aunt Anne this past weekend, as well as Reverend Luopa, who married her parents. She has been on her best behavior during these busy days, until her nightly Yelling Time, about which she is fairly punctual- fussiness appears to be mandatory for about 30-60 minutes sometime between 6 and 8pm. Her work then done for the day, she can go to sleep. It's important to go to bed early, because she has to be up sometime between12 and 2 and again between 4 and 6- it's a tight schedule.

3 months old!

Thank goodness for the www. Our computer crashed last week, and had we not posted this blog or our web album on Picasa, we would have no pictures of Alita. Let that be a lesson to all of you- back everything up, buy a safety deposit box, don't run with scissors. In the last 6 weeks Amy has gone back to work, leaving Alita in the capable hands of Nadia during the day. She (Nadia, not Al) speaks 4 languages and is picking up a little sign language on the side, has more energy to play with the baby than both parents put together, and Alita never seems to cry when she's around. We're hoping the baby will eventually like us as much as her nanny, but so far the odds are stacked against us. Alita is smiling and vocalizing more often, though she attempts to communicate with her mobile as much as with us. Overall she spends most of her time looking pensive, no doubt contemplating weighty issues such as why her parents turn into blathering idiots when trying to make her smile for the camera. Or perhaps when she should alert the neighborhood to the containment breach in her diaper. Despite having a pretty thoughtful expression most of the time, her pompadour keeps us from taking her too seriously- models would kill for that kind of body in their hair. The rest of her body is keeping up with her mop; as of last week she has grown too big for the bedside bassinet so has graduated into a regular crib.

Weeks 4-6 (Amy)

At her 4 week visit, Alita was gaining a pound a week. According to a TV nature program watched by Nancy and Abby, baby rhinos grow at this rate. We'll keep on the lookout for a horn. Note that said program was seen while Nana & Aunt Abby babysit ALL NIGHT so Amy & Erik could get some sleep. We're very lucky to have such support. Not to be outdone in the great grandparent race to spoil the baby, the grandads went to the superbowl in Arizona & Walt brought back a pink onesie with a giant football on the butt, complete with matching socks & bib. At the rate she's growing, Al will be able to wear this 2 yr outfit next month, while sporting her first tattoo.

Aside from outgrowing all her clothes, Alita's major activities the past few weeks have included: 1. lightening her hair color, 2. getting a jump on adolescence with some baby acne, 3. firmly establishing her title as Most Unphotogenic Baby in America as we try to get a passport photo for a medical conference in Toronto on May. Serial photo sessions have confirmed that even if we can get her to look in the general direction of the camera without flopping over or crying, she has the uncanny ability to position herself such that she either has a double chin or the pissed-off look of a baby one would not want to meet late at night in an alley. A rogue's gallery of her mug shots will be added soon.

Weeks 3-4 (Amy)

It's amazing how much time these little creatures require. I had the naive idea that maternity leave would be a productive time for me- clean the house, sort the finances, etc. Instead I'm lucky if I get a shower and three square meals. Alita hasn't changed much in the last few weeks, aside from growing out of her newborn onesies and establishing a rigid schedule with a 2-hour period of alertness smack in the middle of the night. That wouldn't be so bad if she didn't demand entertainment (read: walking/bouncing) during that time. Fortunately I have discovered that the entire works of Jane Austen on the public television channel can be successfully appreciated while pacing back and forth in front of the TV. We're working on a web photo album so those of you who just can't get enough baby pictures can see more- stay tuned.

Weeks 1-2

1/11/08 Alita's doing well. So far she excels at looking cute, gaining weight and detonating poo bombs, preferably just after she's been changed. We get 3 hours of sleep at a time at night, so we aren't too sleep-deprived just yet. Several people have asked how we came up with her name- we wanted to reference our shared Alaska history somehow, and Erik used to be a commercial fisherman on Kodiak Island, near a bay and cannery named Alitak. We simply took the "k" off the end and made it the first initial of her middle name. We figure "Al Attack" will be a darn cool roller derby name once she's big enough to play.

In the hospital (Erik)

Our new baby is here! After months of kicking Amy's ribs, our little girl decided the time was right. Amy was minding her own business Saturday night 12/29 when things started happening. We went to the hospital at 01:30AM and the baby was out by c-section less than 2 hours later! Erik announced that she didn't have any red hair but had instead thick, long, brown hair. 

Amy replied "nobody's perfect."

Little Alita helped wake us up in time to ring in the New Year. The next day, she got the OK to go home by her pediatrician, and off we went!