Sylvia is 11 months old!

This is at least my 3rd attempt to do this! Blogger, my phone, and bad wifi / cell reception have all been conspiring against me, but I feel good about this time...

Sylvia woke up in a very good mood on her 11-month birthday! She stayed in a good mood as we sang to her while we finished packing up, and as we put her in the car, and even as we started driving and kept going... and going... and going... After a nice long nap, though, she was FED UP, and we still had about 2 hours ahead of us before getting to Yosemite. I'm not sure what she makes of the big rocks or the falling water, but she enjoys the many relatives (and random people on the shuttle bus) cooing over her. But I think I'll post about Yosemite later...

We weighed her in at 20 pounds, ?? ounces today. It's harder to tell now that she wiggles so much! Sylvia now has 3 teeth -- two on the bottom, and one off to the side on the top. It's pretty amazing how efficient she is with them, though. She's been eating all sorts of things. She wants just about anything Mom & Dad are eating -- unless it's green! I keep having to remind her that avocado is better than in looks.

For not being able to walk, she sure is mobile! She zooms around on all fours, and is really good at pulling herself up and cruising around on available furniture &/or people. She also likes to sit and spin around in circles! (When we're back in civilization, I'll try to get some videos of her zooming around. But it may have to wait until some more progress has been made on the dissertation...)

I guess this is a common feeling, but I think Max and I both oscillate between feeling amazed that it's almost been a whole year, and having a hard time believing that there was ever a time before she was part of our lives. One thing is for sure: a lot happens in 11 months!

Sylvia's Dad

We're spending Max's first Father's Day in Oregon. We have wanted to come to Oregon for ages to visit Max's family up here, and a conference finally gave us the opportunity to do so. On Father's Day, we'll be finishing up the last day of the conference and then heading to Max's Aunt Betty's place. Since I don't see myself getting up any earlier than I'll need to just to get ready for the day to go get Max a nice breakfast or anything, I figured the least I could for his very first Father's Day was to acknowledge him on the internets!

Happy Father's Day, Max!

(P.S. Max, don't worry about the time stamp! I fudged it so that the date would be Father's Day! I really will / did go to bed before midnight!)

Sylvia is 10 months old!

This isn't the very best monthly picture, as it was taken with my phone when I was supposed to be helping move boxes. We did take better pictures with our camera, but I don't know where the camera or the camera cable are, so for now the phone picture will have to do.

Everything that we would usually use to estimate Sylvia's monthly stats is away in a box somewhere, so I'll have to report her week-old stats from her last pediatrician's appointment: Last Thursday, she weighed 19 pounds, 4 ounces and was 27.5 inches long. (For anybody who's keeping score, that's about 11.5 pounds and 8.5 inches more than when she was born.)

And - if you haven't surmised from the many references - we are presently moving to a new apartment! Yesterday was the first day, and it was rough on Sylvia because she was getting shuffled around a lot but not getting as much attention as she's used to. I think today made up for it, though. We had help from my parents and brother, so Sylvia didn't have to get shuffled around as much, and she was rarely without a captive audience.

Unfortunately, once we're done moving, things aren't going to calm down much for a while. We'll try to put something fun up soon if we have a chance!!

9-month progress report

Sylvia had her 9-month checkup today. Her pediatrician said she is "perfect"! She said that Sylvia is very social and is doing great. She is still a bit small compared to other babies her age (less than 50th percentile for height and weight), and she still has a huge head (75th percentile)! She's a happy, healthy little girl.

She even stayed pretty happy when they pricked her toe to take some blood for a test. When we had to lay her down for her vaccine, however, she was NOT happy. Fortunately, this time she only had to have one shot. She recovered pretty quickly, and went on to smile at all the strangers at the deli where we had lunch.

As is my custom, I offer a picture of her sad little bandaids:

And here's one of her happy little smile:

You can't handle the tooth!

I wonder how many blogging parents have used that as a title for a post... Anyway, Sylvia's first tooth has broken through! I would offer photographic evidence, but it's really hard to get a picture of the inside of an uncooperative baby's mouth. Anyway, I promise it's there!

She's such an amazing little person. She crawls and pulls herself up and cruises and plays with her toys. (That's amazing, right?)

For the 7 years of our tenure as graduate students, we've been living in subsidized student housing. After the 6-year limit and the 1-year extension (plus the fact that we won't be graduate students anymore), we're finally getting kicked out. We found a place and we're going to be moving in a few weeks. In many respects it'll be very similar to our current place. Improvements: our very own dishwasher and washer/drier; nicer/newer building; pool & fitness room on premises; bigger kitchen. Un-provements: more expensive, smaller bedrooms, our stuff is not there yet.

The management of our new place let us walk around the apartment to measure and figure out if our furniture will fit. As we walked from room to room with our measuring tape and notepad, Sylvia happily crawled along behind us. We were really proud of the amount of crawling she did, and I wanted to get a video of her crossing the livingroom. I set her in one corner and ran over to the other corner. It wasn't until she had made it the whole way at high speed that I finally realized that I had taken a picture rather than a video. When I tried again, she had obviously been tired out:

...I was looking for pictures to tag onto the end of this post, and I noticed a theme emerging. You can consider these pictures to be a separate post titled: My baby can do stuff...

Sylvia has found eccentric ways of doing everyday things. See for yourself...

Sylvia can use a spoon:

Sylvia can sit in her swing:

Sylvia can hold her own bottle:

Sylvia can use a pacifier:

Sylvia can sit in a chair:

And Sylvia can drink out of a sippy cup:

babies

Readers of the blog have been introduced to Kurt. Well, Kurt is going to have a baby sister soon! We're anxiously waiting for news, and I can't help but think over the past 9 months with Sylvia and the past 28 months with Kurt. In that time, I have taken an absolutely disgusting number of photographs of these kids. Sometimes I like to find pictures from different time points that let you see how much they've grown and changed. Check out these kids:

I can't wait to meet Kurt's baby sister so I can take way too many photos of her, too. And I am hoping so so so much for the smoothest possible entry into the world!

Sylvia is 9 months old! (That's 0.75!)

It's really strange to realize that we've spent (more or less) as much time caring for her and playing with her out in the world as we had spent preparing for her and waiting for her to be born. I guess it goes without saying that it's been a crazy, life-changing 18 months!

At home today, we estimated that she weighs 18 pounds, 6.5 ounces; she is 27" long; and her head circumference is 18". According to the internets, that puts her in the 43rd percentile for weight, 31st for length, and 91st for head circumference. We'll get the official stats from the pediatrician next month.

Since the last post, Sylvia went seamlessly from pseudo-crawling to full-fledged, needs-a-gate-for-her-own-safety mobility. She's also effortlessly pulling herself to standing and cruising around, and trying to crawl up on stuff. She still eats solid foods pretty well except that she's starting to really want to hold the spoon herself, which is often quite messy. She's gotten REALLY good at picking up and feeding herself finger foods for babies, and she's drinking competently out of a sippy cup. She babbles "mamamama" and "dadadadada" as well as other things that for some reason don't catch our attention quite as much. She also clicks and blows raspberries. She also seems to be babbling the ASL signs for "more" and "milk", which we have been using when we talk to her. She's now getting to be too big for her infant car seat and is using one for bigger babies & toddlers, and she's wearing clothes sized for 6-9/6-12 month-olds.

Max & I are both planning to walk at graduation this June and finish up by the end of summer. By the end of September, we should both have our PhDs. We're still planning to spend another year or two in Santa Barbara, unless some other opportunity presents itself.

We owe you some additional pictures and at least one video of her crawling. I'll try to get around to that soon. Max & I are both quite busy these days. Sylvia will play with her toys for a while each day while we both work, but we never seem to have gotten enough done when she decides that it's time to stop and play with her.