Carrying the baby, vaccuming, and feeding her all at the same time.

Jordi and Josie

How her first year keeps flying by! We’ve been struggling this month with more colds but she’s gotten so strong and lots taller. About two weeks ago she did a major growth spurt which made all of her 12 month pants suddenly fit rather than require a bit of rolling.

This past month she’s spent her time perfecting her walking. She’s learned to slow down while going over door jams and hold onto the wall. In general, she’s excellent at walking anywhere she wants to go. She moves very quickly and if she hears the baby gate open she charges after me. She doesn’t need her carts anymore at all although they are still fun for her to play with. She can even ride her cart herself and bounce on her Rody with many squeals of delight.

Her coolest new skill that she loves is clapping. She doesn’t make a noise yet but she’s so thrilled when we sing clapping songs that she can join in now! She also can roll a ball back to you, although she tends to get up and take the ball with her in the middle of the game.

She is also enamored with flipping pages while reading books. She goes forward and backwards and even has enough patience and self-control to generally wait until I indicate that I’ve finished reading the page.

She’s gotten very loud and likes to babble to herself as she walks around playing with things. Her favorite habits as of late are picking up our shoes and carrying them around. She often brings me my slippers. Our underwear also mysteriously moves from the laundry pile around the house. She also likes to pick up all small pieces of anything on the floor and I have to watch her carefully to make sure she isn’t eating icky things (or at least spits them out).

• Size/weight: size 12 month; 28 inches tall and 16 lbs 1 oz
• Favorite food: breastmilk, broccoli, potatoes, rice cakes
• Favorite toy: sophie the giraffe
• Favorite book: touch and feel books
• Favorite activity: walking everywhere and picking up small pieces of things and our shoes
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:00; two one hour naps if I get her in the car or the stroller; gets up 6-7am
• New skill: clapping
• Teeth: 3 4!  two on the bottom and top. That second top one came in last night after I wrote this
• Vocalizations: very loud, ma ma, baba, dada, aat

Josie sneaking up on Fred

Josie snuggling Fred

We took Josie in today for her 9 month well-baby visit and she is continuing her skinny trend. Unfortunately she’s been sick for about the last week and a half and it has had a real impact on her appetite and so I think she’s dropped a little weight recently. Per usual, I have also been sick at this time which probably doesn’t help things either. Everyone on the town email list keeps saying that everyone has one really bad winter with each kid and then their immunity improves. Let’s hope this is the one. Oh and Josie has her second-ever ear infection because of this cold but the antibiotics seem to have cleared some of that up but haven’t removed the pain.

Anywho… onto the data. She weighs 16 lbs 1 oz which puts her in the 8th percentile for weight (kids on average gain 1/2 a lb a month after 6 months, this was a one pound gain for her over three months). She is 28 inches tall, but I don’t think they did a good job measuring as I think that’s a little shorter than she really is. That puts her in the 67th percentile. Looking at the weight for length charts for girls, she has now fallen off the bottom. She really does seem to enjoy eating at least but she just doesn’t stop moving ever so the doc says she’s just burning it all off. The doc was not concerned, Jordi and I are a little disconcerted.

Any other of you parents have similarly stringbean kids that have pudged out a little?

Josie's lovely face

As of me writing this on Saturday night (I am super cool as I blog on Saturday night, duh, right before I go to bed before 10) I am now caught up on my photo blogging. I thought some family might enjoy some more photos from the holidays. Note the big huge dog Zeke, he’s about 120 lbs and was really unsure of what to make of the baby. He got very upset when she cried and oddly he didn’t clean the floor after she ate, guess sweet potatoes and green beans just weren’t his thing that night.

Also at Xander’s birthday party Josie had an odd fascination with a plastic card. She repeatedly held it up in the air as if she were bidding on something at an auction and let out a scream! We couldn’t quite get it on video unfortunately.

She’s been growing like crazy lately and now this outfit below no longer fits at all, it was already busting at the seams for this shot. In fact at the mom’s group last week she bent over to pick something up and her overall snaps covering her bum popped open. How embarassing! Thankfully those pants still have another button to leave room to move and grow.

Josie and her card

No this isn’t about making a jam for your baby, or making jam out of a baby. Instead, earlier this month we went to a fun birthday party for our friend Xander. He loves playing the drums like his dad and so at his party we put together a whole baby rock band. As you can see from the video they are wildly popular and successful since their pictures were taken almost constantly (note the flashes). Let’s hope the band all stays together.

Josie now seems to reliably understand one word and what a sweet word that is! She knows what a kiss is. We tell her to kiss her friends and she quickly gives them a smooch. She also kisses all cats, dogs, pictures of the above, and the koala in her book because it is also fuzzy.

Josie on her racing cart

Following the holidays Josie now has a large amount of toys and so we wanted a place to put them so I don’t trip over them like I did the other day. We went down to IKEA and found some fairly easy shelves and drawers that she can enjoy and abuse. My parents helped us put them together although they were actually not that hard to assemble contrary to usual IKEA! Here’s a quick video of her checking them out for the first time as they were assembled at night after she went to bed. The following picture is the mess about three minutes later.

Josie amongst her toys

I’ve gotten a bit behind in the food photos department, although they’re all starting to look the same so it’s not so much fun. We’ve been trying lots of new foods and basically Josie still is preferring the old standby of broccoli, rice cakes, and potatoes and seems moderately eager about carrots and sweet potatoes. From the title you can see we’ve tried a bunch of new foods and pretty much all of the fruit was summarily sent to the floor after trying it. The blueberries did a pretty good job of painting her face. The oatmeal was fairly interesting to her although the spoon concept was thrown to the floor. Instead I just make the oatmeal thick and put it in a pile in front of her and she dug in. She seems to have my food preferences quite a bit, man the peach was sour. Can’t wait until we get back to some new vegetables rather than all these fruits although I am doing a good job trying new fruits this way too.

Josie eating blueberries and rice cake

Final results of the blueberries - note the eyebrow

Josie and the peach