Orange Crushed

Squeaker and I have been waiting to wear our new t-shirts until today.  We probably should have found a better occasion given the way things turned out.   We didn't go to the big game today but squeaker did go to her first NCAA sporting event on Sunday. We watched the UVa women beat UR at JPJ.  Squeaker enjoyed everything but the buzzer.  We started off in the second row, but after a substitution and some tears we decided to move up away from the action some.  Her favorite part of the experience was watching the blimp fly around at half-time.  My favorite part of the game was during the second half when she turned around and gave me a big hug and a kiss.  We're planning on going to lots of afternoon games this season.  I have started explaining the rules to her, but I suspect she has only a cursory understanding of the game at this point.  I thought I was pretty special getting a hug and a kiss at the game, but she does a lot of hugging and kissing now, usually when she comes across favorite creatures in her books.   Speaking of books, Aunt Brite gave Squeaker a couple of new board books on Monday. She has been asked to read each of them about seven times a day since then. Aunt Brite would like to request lots of new board books for Christmas. I am happy to relay this plea to the wider community. Don't tell Aunt Brite I said this, but I think she may not have fully considered the consequences of Squeaker having more new books, i.e. reading each of these new books seven times a day until they both have every word memorized.  One of the new signs that Squeaker has learned is "please". Unfortunately, I think she learned it not as "please", but as "PLEASE READ ME THIS BOOK AGAIN, I HAVEN'T MEMORIZED IT YET AND IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT I DO!" "Please" is starting to get used other contexts, but never with less emphasis.  If you look closely at the picture, you will notice that Squeaker's hair parted in the wrong direction today.  Unfortunately it is covering her first bruise.  Squeaker is far too confident in her walking ability now and it caught up with her.  She tumbled into a door-jam around bedtime last night.  She's fine as you can see.  I think the drool has more to do with a new tooth than the knock on her head, but I could be wrong...  Blogger now has a button to post video so next week I will put up some footage of Squeaker walking.

Not now Dad. I'm Thinking....

Over the last year many things have confirmed for me the power of genetics. Squeaker is tall. Squeaker has brown eyes like her father.  Squeaker doesn't seem that coordinated when she walks.  Squeaker isn't a morning person.  Squeaker has a prodigious appetite.  Squeaker likes the outdoors, even when it is cold.  Squeaker loves books.  Squeaker takes reading material with her to the bathroom, well the changing pad anyway.  In this last case, it isn't that she takes after her parents.  However, certain of her other relatives, not to name names, but her paternal grandfather does come to mind, have been known to take reading material with them, indeed to have many years worth of the Atlantic, pre-positioned, at their disposal, as they say.  Hopefully when she's old enough to read these posts, she'll forgive me for the second picture, but when we go in to take care of a diaper, she grabs her book, I'm sorry, her libro, and tries to be helpful.  We almost made the "man bites dog" segment of the evening news today.  Since she learned to crawl, Squeaker has enjoyed shutting doors.  She was playing on the floor after breakfast this morning when our dog wanted out.  I went to the door and slipped outside to put the dog on its leash so it could do its business outside.  Squeaker crawled over with me and when I was just outside the door, she tried to shut it.  I managed to stop her just before she locked me out of the house.  I noticed this evening that she's now just tall enough to reach the door knob.  She seems to know what to do with it, but she's tall enough to get a grip yet.  I we can put off her locking me out a few more weeks, she'll be able to let me back in herself.  See you next week Squeaker fans.  

Pictures as Promised

Here are the pictures I promised yesterday. I did actually take a couple of photos of her this week. Squeaker voted and somehow ended up with her stickers on her backside. As you might guess, the other picture is from this morning. Squeaker is working on her game face. We've discussed the Cav's last game and she knows that while orange and blue go together, orange and maroon look kind of tacky together. She did have an orange and green mess in her diaper this morning in honor of the 'OB'. It didn't stink half as bad as Miami did last night.

I realized taking these pictures that she understands something about the camera now. Her demeanor changed when I took it down off the shelf and pointed it at her. I guess it is going to be hard to get those candid shots now. Remember that you can click on the pictures to see them full sized. The 'game face' shot is a full 6 MP image in case anyone wants to print it. One other interesting note. Squeaker and I had almost the same breakfast this morning. She had half a cup of oatmeal, made with whole milk, and flavored with applesauce. I had a cup of oatmeal, made with water, and flavored likewise with applesauce. I think her breakfast probably had as many calories as mine did. It looked much creamier and probably tasted a little better than mine too. She finished almost all of it. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

All Quiet on the Squeaker Front

Squeaker and I are enjoying a quiet weekend at home. I haven't gotten any new pictures of her this week so I don't have one to post. If I get a good shot of her tomorrow I will put it up on the blog. It is a little late to take any pictures because as of 7:45 pm she's been asleep for half and hour. To say that she's been having trouble adjusting to daylight savings time would imply that she has made some sort of attempt to adjust. She just does everything an hour earlier now. This means that among other things she's ready to go down for her first nap of the day shortly after 9 am. I guess she's an afternoon person. She's clearly not a morning or night person.

Squeaker has been walking more and more this week. She's gotten to the point where she can walk all the way across her play area. The big difference isn't so much her success in walking, but that she considers it her primary mode of transportation now. Her desire to learn what everything is called hasn't abated yet either. The only downside of this new confidence is that she's starting to be really stubborn about her eating. The bannana and apple pancakes were great for breakfast, but she found them wanting at lunch. Too bad for her because there are more left for breakfast tomorrow. We worry some that she's not getting quite enough to eat, but the bigger worry is that she's really started testing her limits. My hope is that if the terrible twos start at 14 months that they willl end early too. Twenty-two months of terrible twos would not be fair.

We did have a little trouble at bath time tonight. The end of bath routine involves my shooting baskets with her bath toys. I bricked Mrs. Pufferfish off the rim and kinda sorta hit Squeaker in the head. She didn't cry, Squeaker that is, not Mrs. Pufferfish. Mrs. Pufferfish seemed fine with a few more moments in the bath. Squeaker on the other hand was ready to be out of the bath.

Well Squeaker fans, that's all the news that's fit to print.

Squeaker "5"

Squeaker of course can't or maybe won't say much more than a few words, but that short list of words has been getting longer. She hasn't yet learned to say "Need Input! Input!" at least not verbally, but she has run her Aunt Brite ragged this week trying to learn everything she can. She's realized that we grown-ups have words for just about everything and she wants to know what they are, all of them. Squeaker has focused on on three of her books that clearly must be the source of all knowledge, or at the very least an abridged version. She has had Aunt Brite tell her the words that go with each picture over and over and over.

We had pancakes this morning, as scheduled, with bits of apple for flavor.

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.