We’re in the process of moving our blog over to the WordPress blog engine and Dreamhost hosting. We hope to bring the old content over and add new content soon..
Last week, we started Virginia on solids, with a taste of applesauce. We moved onto carrots, which she loved, then a bit of banana for lunch, and the next night, sweet potato. We are going to try to skip the jarred stuff entirely and just feed her pureed versions of what we eat. Well, except for the cooked carrots, which you all know I don’t eat! That will be specially made just for her, since she seems to like them the best!
*we’re using the swing as a highchair until she starts finger foods.
The very first time I put Virginia in the swing in an effort to soothe her and she completely passes out! We found out a few days later why the crankers…. a new tooth!
Virginia got a book that is essentially fabric pages filled with crinkly stuff from our friend Dana and she really likes it. Lately, she’s been doing this thing with it (and some of her other toys), where she lifts it up and brings it back down really quickly, essentially slamming it into herself. It’s quite amusing.
Virginia just started making a growling noise that is really strange. She doesn’t do it because she’s mad, she’s just playing around with making different sounds. She’s also started making a funny smushy face along with huffy sounds. I caught both on tape while she was playing in her excersaucer (aka neglectotron).
I’m woefully behind on updates.. i have pics from thanksgiving and christmas to share, plus hazel’s 10th birthday (when did she get to be 10?!?). Hopefully, i’ll get them up before miss v’s 6 month update, which will NOT be a month late, i promise!
Right now, Miss Virginia is growing and learning things at a very rapid rate. She recently had her 4 month check up and measured an amazing 27″ long .. that’s 7 inches since birth and it puts her above the 100th percentile for her age. She weighs almost 17 lbs (above 90th percentile). All of that growth has been fueled by breastmilk (some have suggested Wendy spikes it with Miracle Grow). Auntie Dawn tried to tempt her with punkin pie and whipped cream during the Thanksgiving Holiday, but she’s gonna stick with the high octane fuel for now.
When she was younger, a few months ago, her best friends were lights. She’d stare up at the ceiling, cooing and smiling, flirting away at the light fixture. Since then Virginia’s discovered that people are also fun to flirt with, she’s learned to smile and laugh and get excited to match the mood of those she’s with.
Over the last few weeks, she’s learned that her hands can do more than just flail around randomly. At first she needed to use both hands in order to get one of them into her mouth. She’s now a pro at one-handed, unassisted finger sucking. Not content to rest on her laurels, she quickly progressed in the Grabbing Things category, discovering that she can get her hands to bring other things to her mouth for analysis. This has opened up a whole new world for her and we’re introducing toys little by little.
Speaking of flailing, Virginia used to practice her swimming strokes — with one hand — while nursing. when on her left side, would breast stroke with her right arm, when on the other side she was doing freestyle. That progressed to doing freestyle with both arms and now she just pets Wendy or holds onto her shirt.
She’s also very close to being able to sit up on her own, so we’re giving her time in the boppy. That allows her to work on it without completely falling over everytime. Her core body strength is impressive and she’s able to pull herself from an incline into a full sitting position or from a seated forward fold. Her legs are also very strong, with a little balancing help, she can stand for a long time and really enjoys showing what a big girl she is.
We’re having so much fun watching her discover more and more of the world around her. For a while, her very best friends were her feet, watching her ‘discover’ her feet and play with them. She smiles and giggles and looks around to see if we’ve noticed how clever she is. At about the same time she figured out she could use her hands to grab things.
Along with objects that can be grabbed, she’s paying more and more attention to what we’re doing, especially when we’re eating and drinking. The look of intense curiosity on her face as she tracks each bite and drink is hilarious and endearing. The soda cans are always mesmerizing, however, whether we’re drinking or not. Sometimes she’ll just be staring, transfixed, at a shiny, shiny Diet Coke as if waiting for it to move on its own, or start talking to her.
We don’t know how much time we have until Virginia can roll/crawl across the floor , but she’s beginning to figure out some of the basics. She rolls from side to side with her feet in her hands (classic happy baby pose) and does a reverse inch worm – arching her back and moving slowly away from her original position. We’ve watched her do a combination of those motions and go in a complete circle, with her head as the center point.
This morning the time had come for our grand ol’ dame, our one-eyed wonder. She had been getting more and more senile over the last year and her hips were all kinds of wobbly and her kidneys were starting to go. It was a very difficult decision, as she was still very alert and seemingly happy. She spent most of her days curling up with Libby (with lots of ‘spa time’) and purring whenever anyone in the house got near her. Her wobbliness was at times funny, at times distressing, and sometimes not present at all… her leaps from couch to ottoman continually amazed us.
She will be dearly missed… she’s the last of an era. I got her and Jordan within a two-week period when they were around 8 weeks old, way back in 1991. With her passing, I no longer have a cat who’s “mine.” Libby isn’t really attached to any single one of us and Walter is definitely Hazel’s cat.
We’ll be burying the old girl in our designated pet cemetery in our backyard, right next to her best-buddy-in-life, Jordan.
