OK, maybe that’s pushing it.  Mia Lynn is now entering 10 months and 3 weeks.  So much has been happening lately it is hard to capture it in words, but hopefully the regular photo posting give y’all some inkling of her progress.

Last week we had another doc visit and vaccine.  Our petite one weighs in at 16 pounds, 12 ounces – still much less than Zoe, our large-boned cat.  (I can hear you snickering).  Mia is about 28 inches.  I say “about” because she’s somewhat like trying to measure an octopus.  Small but growing and is exactly on target with her development. 

And speaking of development…wow!  Since our last post Mia has sprouted 6 teeth, eats just about anything we put in front of her (including pickles and lemon wedges) and can easily walk along furniture barely holding on.  She is THIS close to walking and has even taken a few steps alone!  While in Florida recently she mastered climbing up a stair or two, although coming back down may take a while.

Beyond “dog” and “duck” she now can say “ball”  “hi” and “cat.”  She will wave after much pondering, and has learned to sign to us when she is “all done” eating (very exciting to see the sign language coming into play!)  She also meows at the cats, carries her toys around in her mouth and pants when she gets excited (thanks dogs.)  She says “Dixie” although it comes out as “ixcthie” with a lot of spit involved and only her parents would recognize it as an actual word.

Mia surprised us one night as she was toying with an electrical outlet.  We did our usual “uh-uh!” and “no!”  She then repeated the “uh-uh” and shook her head!  So now everything that she isn’t supposed to touch or do she mimics us!  Smart little bugger, she is.

The lessons learned over the past few weeks are many, but some standouts are:

1. Baby socks, pacifiers and spoons evaporate into thin air after some unknown expiration date, never to be seen again.
2. It’s ok to buy your child new toys, books and DVDs if you have to keep her quietly entertained for 12 hours of travel.  The other passengers on the flight will thank you.
3. After months of thinking we really have to watch what we say in front of our baby, now that she mimics us we REALLY have to watch what we say (Mama B!).

That’s it, people. It’s time for Jillian to clean up that gutter mouth of hers (like a longshoreman, that one!) because – DRUMROLL – we have our first word! Well, Mia does. We assumed it would be ‘mama’ or ‘bottle/baba/variation that sounds close to bottle’ or one of MY choice expletives that just shoot right out mid-sentence but no. None of that sillyness for the Mighty Morphin Power Mia. Instead, we got “DOG.”

She started saying it while playing Peek-a-Boo Barn on the iPhone (go ahead and roll your eyes but that thing keeps her entertained for a good 20 minutes.) If you ask her to say ‘dog’ she looks at Dixie or LadyBear and repeats it. Pretty clear too although she exagerates the “G” into “gha-a” which means my southern accent is contagious and she’s catching it. That or she’s actually saying ‘dogma’ and maybe we have a mini-philosopher on our hands… Please LORD don’t make me pay $50k to get this child a degree in Philosphy. That’s MY dogma.

Anywho, this first word has been certified by Shaunna which means it’s gold. I’ll try to get a video of her saying it but so far she’s remained verbally elusive.

p.s. She also will sometimes say “duck”  – again thanks to Peek-a-Boo Barn. Trust me, the work is “D-U-C-K” so don’t give me that look the first time you hear her say it.

You might recall that at my last post we were celebrating Mia sleeping through the night 5 times in a row. Yes, well. So much for that! What we didn’t know was that under her tiny pink gums were two sharp little white teeth that were about to make night time a whole lot more entertaining! March was a big month for Miss Mia ~ not only did her two first bottom teeth pop through, but she also finally mastered coordination of her hands, legs and torso enough to start crawling FORWARD. FAST.

The last few weeks have focused on the long-dreaded baby-proofing. No more procrastinating.  We finally realized that creating a safe zone for a mobile baby is actually easier than following her around all day redirecting her from all the safety hazards. And now I get it. For some unknown reason babies DO find light sockets, shoes and lamp cords much more exciting than all of those beautiful, colorful, designed-specifically-for-her-age-group toys we put on the floor. She was drawn like a determined moth to a flame to the pet food bowls and made a beeline for Bonnie’s guitars. Any sharp furniture corner was an irresistable invitation to try and pull herself up, and she instinctively knew in which lower drawer she could find our poison stash.

The good news is that this has forced us to re-think our square footage and actually make better use of our home. The carpeted living room is now the pet-free Mia Zone (see photos for the unhappy pet reaction). She has her Jumparoo, toy box, play pen and books all available and seems to appreciate a bit more cushion under her knees for all of the active crawling. And frankly it is a relief not to have everything crammed into the den off the kitchen. We still have some work to do, but baby girl may actually survive at least until the walking stage.

Oh, and speaking of which, she also learned to pull herself up to standing (which required lowering her crib) and now holds her own bottle. You will see from the “Mia meets avacado” video that she wasn’t nearly as excited about eating people food as our pediatrician thought she would be, but she has taken to crackers, small bits of cheese and the ocassional glass of wine. [Just kidding on that last one, Nana.]

A select few new lessons learned from the 7-8.5 month period:

• Wearing hoop earrings is a bad idea. REALLY bad idea.
• Don’t bother getting dressed until after feeding and bath time.
• It is not wise to try giving a taste of a new food after her regular feeding, when her tummy is full. 
• Don’t panic when you look down and notice your entire arm is covered in bruises – it might just be dried prunes.
• Its probably best not to put her up on your shoulders for a ride until after she learns the command “please let go of my hair!”
• Just when you think you have parenthood figured out, everything changes.

Until the next report,
J.

February has come and gone and with it, hopefully, the annual Portland crud that infected everyone in our home.  Many people warned us that having a child means that we will get sick more often, yet it was all the adults that were first to succumb to the cold.  First Shaunna the Amazing Nanny got it and then Bonnie got sick.  I though I had managed to outwit the little flubugs with high doses of Zicam and orange juice, but after attending an art show (ack! public contact) I too got hit.  And then wee little Miss Mia got her first cold. 

What a sad state of affairs it was for several weeks!  Mia had to sleep propped up in her swing and still woke herself up frequently with coughing fits.  Bonnie and I took turns taking care of her and each other, all of us tired and cranky.  One night after a particularly stressful day at work Bonnie stopped on the way home to pick up our ‘medicine’ – tequila and limes for the Mamas and Pedialyte for baby.  For what it’s worth, tequila does a far better number of burning through your system than Mucinex can ever claim.

Although Mia has actually fared better than the rest of us tired old souls for several days we had to call her “Bud the Pug” – a tribute to the pug Aunt Marci used to have that rasped and wheezed all day long.    Mia’s spirits stayed high even when her energy was low, and the good news is that she is now back to normal.  The rest of us are still hacking up hairballs, but our baby girl has one kick-ass immune system.

Yesterday we had her latest doctor visit and immunizations.  At 7 months she is right on track both developmentally and physically.  Mia is still a bit of a pixie at just under 15 pounds and 27 inches.  In the last month she has really improved on her ability to sit up by herself for long periods.  She absolutely loves her Jumparoo, and will eat just about any baby food we try.  In the next week or so we’ll start giving her “real” food – mashed bananas and veggies, even though there is no sign of her teeth coming in yet.  Given that I was eating ground up moose meat at 6 weeks I think she can handle a bit more texture!

Oh, and…this is big…for the last F-I-V-E (yes, 5!) nights in a row Mia Lynn has slept through the night!  This is a first since that sunny Sunday in August when we brought her home.  Dare we hope this could last?  Yeah for 7 months!  Yeah for sleep!

Finally, a few random things I’ve learned in the past month:

1. You can’t hum lullabies with a stuffed up nose.
2. “Chicken Pastina” baby food doesn’t mean it has any pasta in it
3. When you hold your baby and look in the mirror, you see her face first, not yours
4. No matter how tired, grumpy and stressed you might be, the first time your baby girl sees you walk in the door and holds her arms out to you, everything else melts away

— All for now,  J.

Note:

You may notice that we are posting photos more frequently – thanks to both Bonnie and I getting iPhones (LOVE IT).   We can snap a photo and immediately email it directly to Flickr.   We’ll do our best to post a “Daily Mia” photo instead of waiting three months and posting them all at once.

Last Sunday Mia Lynn turned 6 months old.

It is hard to believe she has grown and changed so much in the past 6 months, from when we brought home this tiny fragile little being and introduced her to the zoo.  Other days it seems we have been parents for at least 6 YEARS – the days of being just a couple have long faded.   Still, we’ve managed to keep up our every-other-week date nights while acclimating to the fact that it now takes us two hours to get ready to run to the store for another can of formula.

Every week seems to bring tiny new development that have added up so fast we now have a strong little girl who loves to grab handfuls of Dixie, eats baby food apples with gusto and can hold a book and flip the pages all by herself.  As I write this Mia is watching her baby Spanish lesson (actually this just gives me an excuse to learn it myself), yelling out her enthusiasm for las bebe’s while chewing on the corner of her “Mommy Loves” book.   She is so close to crawling (forward!) that Bonnie finally broke down and made a run to Home Depot for baby-proofing supplies.  A friend and neighbor with a little girl a few months older advised us that we only need to baby-proof in 6 inch increments from the floor up as they progress, so we’ll start with everything Dixie height or less.

Two weekends ago I took Mia to visit her Gramma and Grandpa and Uncle Mark in Bend.  She also met our friend Tamra for the first time, and got lots of cuddles from Uncles Norman and Dave.  The big event though was stopping by Gramma’s quilting group (BJ’s Quilting Store’s “Basket Cases.”)  Imagine being cooed and fussed over by a dozen professional grandmothers!  Their nickname for Mia from seeing her pictures is “The Hair” – so we walked into the room to shouts of “The Hair is here!  The Hair is here!”  I can visualize the therapy bill now. 

Speaking of The Hair, Bonnie’s new nickname for our beautiful baby girl is “Mia-Chia.” Aka Mia the Chia Pet.  Yes, her hair continues to grow.  And grow.  At least it has made the curve up and over her head, past the pompadour stage and now lays in ruffs and ringlets in various directions, with a few select natty spots in the back.  I took her to my own hair stylist for a consultation who assured me that “everyone has cowlicks.”  Really?  But one GIANT cowlick?