I can’t believe I forgot to mention this in my earlier blog posts, but Josie took her first unassisted steps last Friday. (I blame it on my current strep-like disease) We were at a playdate of neighborhood kids and she just let go, stood, took a step, stood some more and then fell over! Two other mom’s confirmed that I didn’t just imagine it. She has since taken a couple of steps in a row. Our neighbor Gideon age 8 months motivated that first step. She still doesn’t even come close to crawling or pushing up on her hands and knees. But she loves to stand and so we got her this new toy shown below that she can practice standing with. We also picked up a rug for the living room and got rid of the coffee table in anticipation of her falling more as she morphs into the mobile world.

One exciting activity we had going for the past few weeks is that we had our house stained. It had been a long time coming and required negotiations with the upstairs neighbors over 3 years. So now if you come to visit, no longer can you look for the three brown houses in a row and see us in the middle one. They’ve painted theirs and so have we!

 

Josie has been having a rough week and therefore so have I. Lots of fussing, maybe teething, maybe growing, maybe the yeast infection she’s now lucky enough to have from the antibiotics? I also am now sick yet again with a sore throat and congestion. Last weekend we had a fun trip out, need to post on that too, but for now, here’s some cute photos!

We’ve seen a number of similarities between Josie and her uncle Javi at times. For instance we’ve been told that Javi was an exceedingly active child and walked early. Josie is already practicing walking across the room after a cat with us just holding her hands. She also likes to just let go of our hands, despite the fact that she can’t actually stand up by herself for more than a few seconds. She also heedlessly walks off of steps, counters, and tables without noticing the edge. While I do believe Javi has mastered the idea of edges and drop-offs, he still seems to be a bit accident prone. See a video of Josie lunging off the edge of things at my dad’s blog.

On a more positive note, Josie also greatly enjoys music, from banging her cups together or on a pot, to ‘helping’ her daddy play the guitar. Uncle Javi is actually a professional in this area, so we’ll happily watch her pick up his talent!

Well here’s a title I wasn’t looking forward to writing, but Josie has unfortunately come down with her first ear infection. The previous colds didn’t seem to clear out fast enough and so she has an infection in her right ear and can’t hear anything. It was diagnosed on Thursday and hopefully she’s feeling better now but her sleep is still awful. That’s actually how we figured out there was a problem in the first place as she didn’t have a fever, but she suddenly refused to be put down in her crib at night and insisted on staying in bed with us. She was also waking up more often at night. During the day she was fine which was annoyingly perplexing, thankfully the doc has a device that unequivocally tests the ear drum’s ability to vibrate (no vibration = infection) and didn’t rely on outward symptoms. She is not a fan of the ammoxicillan, neither am I since I have to force it into her now. In theory by now she should have relief and she slept well on Saturday night, but last night was a wreck for no clear reason that sleeping in our bed didn’t even help.