Locomotion!

G is officially on the move! Today, after her Little Gym class, we went grocery shopping (well, I shopped while she napped). When we got home, I turned on the front sprinklers, took out the groceries from the car, took G out of the car and put her on her playmat, put away the groceries, went out to turn off the sprinklers, came back to get G on the playmat only to find her totally NOT on the playmat. She was about 6 feet away from where I had placed her, off the mat by several feet, next to the sofa. Does she look happy to see me or surprised that I "caught" her? Yes, we will be baby-proofing and keeping a closer eye on her.

You may be wondering how exactly is she moving? She's rolling, which is old news. She's also scooting or creeping, which is the new news. Picture a soldier creeping around flat on the ground using his arms, and that's what G is doing. She uses her hands and arms to pull her body along. Her legs are trying to help, but it's mostly the arms at this point. We always knew her legs were strong from all her jumping and standing, but we never realized how strong her arms were!

Yosemite update: We stayed 2 night in a tent cabin in Curry Village. Our cabin was in a different area from everyone else's, which turned out to be a good thing. We hiked with G in her backpack carrier along the bottom of the Half Dome trail, to the second bridge. E was disappointed that we didn't go up the Mist Trail, but it was hot, he looked tired, I was tired, and I just felt that we weren't really prepared. Later that night, I woke up to rangers outside our cabin with flashlights. I didn't see or hear any bears, but I can only assume that was the reason. Apparently it was enough to wake up G and she was really upset. It took a long time to stop her crying, and after one failed attempt to put her back down in her mini-tent, I realized that I had to just hold her all night long rather than risk keeping everyone else in the camp awake, so E helped me put her in the carrier and I sat on a chair with her sleeping on me like that the rest of the night. Later, I heard what sounded like two gunshots, which we found out later were air rifles that the rangers used to scare away bears. I was so tired from sitting in the chair (that wasn't very comfortable) with her all night long, that I sent E with G to breakfast with the others while I stayed behind to sleep.
And as promised (only 3 weeks later), the pics from her first Little Gym class:

2024 Olympics, here we come...

Stay tuned for her feeding update...

Photo Update

Here's E playing "airplane" with G (one of the activities suggested in our book). She loves being really high up in the air. The double bonus is that it's a good workout for the arms (E needs that "weight-bearing exercise")! We've also tried "throwing" her up in the air a few times, but we're not sure she knows what to make of that yet. We're also "supposed to" say "up" in a higher pitch and "down" in a lower pitch to teach her that voice can have different pitches. (If we spoke more to her in Chinese, she'd be able to learn that way as well.) She's already figuring that out, though, because she can make her voice go high and low.

We still have not pushed her bedtime as early as we would like. It seems that if we start feeding G earlier, she just nurses longer.

Here are some photos from our hike over the weekend. We ran into some friends from church, with their baby, which was kind of fun. I had to feed her in the car before we started out, and then again when we got back. We hiked to the waterfall (which was piddly) and then to the actual Castle Rock.

Here we are at the trailhead. Several pics were taken, this was the only one where G didn't have her fingers in her mouth!

This is how she spent much of her hike, looking up and all around, she loved looking at the trees and sky. Yes, it's a much better view than looking up at our ceiling at home.

Here is G asleep during the middle part of the
hike on the way to the Castle Rock.

Here we are at the Castle Rock, or one of them, at least...

Putting Pants on an Octopus

G loves to kick her legs, she does it all the time, in her crib, on her changing table, holding her, on her playmat (both tummy-side and back-side), in her carseat, etc. It's great exercise for her, but makes getting her dressed a challenge. This is what happens: Insert one leg into pantleg, insert other leg into pantleg, insert first leg back into pantleg, insert second leg back into pantleg, re-insert first leg back into pantleg, re-insert second leg back into pantleg, and so on. You don't realize until trying to put pants on a baby, that they actually have many more legs than you think.

She is still sleeping and we are waiting for her to wake up so we can take her hiking. Every week we try to do something intentional with her, take her somewhere different, let her experience something new.

We also gave her different things to smell this week, according to our cool new book (the activities really work, I tried an activity on a friend's 2 year old and he loved it). We think she liked the fruity lotions and the cinnamon and cloves.

3 months (13 weeks)

I feel like a broken record every week I'm so surprised by how time flies! In case you were wondering, her bib says, "Daddy's Girl".

This past week was rough, with G's growth spurt. Everything we knew was out the window and backwards. She slept best and longest in her carseat, even when stationary! She reverted to sleeping 3-4 hours only at night (I think she only did that like the first week or two she was born!) and hardly napping at all during the day. She was also feeding like there was no tomorrow. But I'm very happy to say that I think her growth spurt is over, as she is getting back to her 6+ hrs at night.

Friday, she had a "play date" with some other kids at a local park. She slept the entire time.

This week, we also tried to do some Elimination Communication with her. I had one friend successfully do this with her daughter and another one who is currently in the process of doing this. It's not like I have a huge desire to have G trained this way, but it seemed like an interesting experiement that might work, given G's habits of being very vocal and almost always doing her business while I'm feeding her. So, one morning when I thought she sounded like she might be trying to poop, I rushed her over to the toilet and took off her diaper. I quickly realized that she didn't like the cold toilet seat on her legs and she didn't want to be dangled over it either (her feet sometimes went into the toilet and I was so afraid she was going to step in the water, gross!) so E came to help hold her feet. We waited for a while, and some pee came out, but nothing else. I think G was too startled by the whole thing and just kept looking around and smiling. So we gave up and cleaned her up and put a diaper on her. Don't know when we'll try again. But it also seems like a good way to help with the whole diaper/landfill problem.

Today is Memorial Day too, and E had the day off. After a nice relaxing morning and breakfast, we did a family trip out to Rancho San Antonio for a picnic and light walk/hike to the farm (FYI, apparently the farm is closed on Mondays so we only got to see the goats up close and the pigs from far away). We guess that G enjoyed it, despite the farm being closed. She slept thru pretty much the entire trip. I could barely wake her in the beginning in the car to nurse, then she slept the whole hike and picnic and the hike back. I woke her again in the car to nurse her. The hike was tiring for both S and E (E took a nap in the car while G was eating). That night, G slept long enough that we also got to watch a movie during dinner (recorded on the DVR, with one break when she woke up to eat).