Walkin', Talkin', and Brushin'

Sqeaker has made a lot of progress this week with walking and talking. The last few days she has done a lot more of both. About midweek it was more confident than it should have been. She would start to walk a couple of steps by leaning forward. Much of the time her legs wouldn't end up getting out ahead of her enough and she would end up falling into a crawl. Since last night her walking has been stronger and confident. She does better now as she toddles across the play area, though her range is still isn't much better than a couple of steps. Her new skills are really obvious when she stands to play with a toy or bends down to pick them up.

Squeaker's vocabulary, signed and verbal has expanded too. This week she has answered the question "Does your diaper need to be changed?" with a "yus". Not a nod mind you, a "yus". Being a scientist I have been testing her skills in answering this question. So far she has given only one false positive. Stricly speaking the true positives are pretty negative and stinky so I wasn't upset. Unfortunately she's only answered with a "yus" that once. On the subject, "daper" is another word that's come out once. As you can see by this picture, there's another new activity that Squeaker is undertaken, brushing her teeth at night before bed. She attacked the activity with such gusto, such apalom that its obvious that she takes after her mother's side of the family in this regard. She did a pretty good job of brushing in the right place too. If you think about it her teeth are a pretty small target. You can't just stick the brush in and expect to make contact with teeth. Her teeth are neither big nor numerous at this point.

We'll that's all for now. Squeaker and I are hoping that y'all are enjoying all this rain.

Pancakes and Hiking

Squeaker and I had pancakes this morning for breakfast. They were cooked for us by a visiting Chef, the famous Dr. Z (not to be confused with Dr. J, better cutting skills, not as good on the jumpshot. After breakfast we went for a hike at the reservoir. Squeaker enjoyed the hike because Dr. Z came along. Not that having Dr. Z along wasn't a special treat, but she enjoys hiking, iff someone other than just her dad is along on the trip. She gets bored when all she has to look at is the trees and the back of my head. She is sleeping away the afternoon (I feel a nap coming on myself) after a busy morning.

Squeaker is still walking occasionally, rarely more than a few steps at a time, never when her dad is in the room either. We are more and more interested in what the grown ups are eating and less and less interested in Gerber products. We've said goodbye to dad's bannana milkshakes for breakfast and moved on to organic Quaker oatmeal. She's still eating jar food most meals, but the as our supply dwindles, I don't think I am going to replace it. There remains and ample supply of pears as a topping for pancakes.

She's gotten interested in building her vocabulary up again. For a while everything has either been 'aba" or 'dah'. 'kat', 'dug', 'uh-oh' and 'ishhh' (things that live in the water) are words that she's starting to use again. We have been using some baby sign language too. Most of her signing is pretty good, although 'finished' looks more like 'Stop the train the bridge is out!".

That's all for now, enjoy your week.

Old Yell for the Class of '97!

Not that it has anything to do with Squeaker directly, but the Class of 1997 had it's 10th reunion this weekend. Attendence was far beyond what any of us expected. We donated more money back to the "I" than any class since the 1980's. Most importantly we beat 93+3. We didn't quite give until it hurt, but Squeaker seems to be happy with her new slogan, "Two Meals a Day!"
She's still been very coy about walking. Maybe Aunt Brite and I got too excited and Squeaker's afraid we might hurt ourselves is she walks again. If you haven't read it yet, there was a special post on Thursday about her first steps. These are some pictures up from this morning. As you can see, we put the legs on her music table. She stands up to play with it now. Most of the time she can't resist the beat of the drums and she ends up dancing, but she seemed more interested in using it as part of an obstacle course today. She's been trying lots of new foods this week. Thursday night she even fed herself some mashed potatoes with a spoon. I figured they would be an easy first step since they stuck to the spoon. That's all for now. Sorry for the late post. No pancakes yesterday, instead continental breakfast...

One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Squeaker Kind!

We interupt your regulary scheduled weekly schedule for an important announcement: Squeaker has joined the bipeds! I got her up this morning and changed her diaper. Drier and free of the changing pad, she crawled off towards her bed and stood up next to the crib. I asked her if she wanted to get back in and she nodded yes. I was surprised by this because it had been more than half a day since she had gone to bed. I thought she wanted to get her blanket or Hope bunny, so I held out my hands and she took four big steps into my arms.

What followed can be best summed up as #4 from Daddy Hugs, the first steps hug and the Mypos "Dance of Joy" (think Perfect Strangers). Squeaker seemed a little weirded out by the Mypos "Dance of Joy". She hasn't walked since. It could be because she's been asleep more than of the five hours since she "woke up" this morning, but I think maybe its because she's afraid I will do the Mypos "Dance of Joy" again.

That's all for now. I am going to go tell Squeaker's mom.

Back on the Coast

Squeaker and I are spending a long weekend with her maternal grandparents on the coast. We had pancakes on the schedule today however I was unable to make them. As many of you know Squeaker is strong willed, some might even say stubborn, stubborn like a mule. We haven't gotten along very well the last couple of days. I spent most of this morning trying to get her to take a nap. She's spent most of this morning crying and trying to convince me not to make her take a nap. Her grandmother succeeded in getting her to sleep though, and sleep she did. She took a three-hour nap, yes a three-hour nap. The first hour of the nap we sat on the porch and tried to get the dogs to be quiet, but the Squeaker slept on. The next hour of the nap we sat on the front lawn and watched the small town's fall parade, but the Squeaker slept on.

I waved the baby monitor at every fire truck, ambulance, and tractor so as to indicate that a baby was sleeping, so please don’t blast the horn in front of this house. They responded with repeated blasts of their sirens and horns, but the Squeaker slept on.

I suspect it was a pepper fleck that finally woke Squeaker up. Once awake she didn't really want to hang out with me, because the daddy person keeps trying to put her to sleep. So the daddy person went kayaking on the river and saw a pair of bald eagles. I might have seen a juvenile too, the body was clearly that of a large bird of prey, but the color was wrong. Squeaker had a good afternoon with her family and yet again now, Squeaker sleeps on.