8 months (late)

I know, it's several days past her 8 month birthday, but oh well.

So, I think can rule out separation anxiety, as we were at a Halloween playdate and G was the only baby that didn't cry when all the moms (10+) wanted a group picture of the babies in costume and put them all down on the floor to take pictures. She just smiled at me and looked around wondering why everyone was crying (and all the mommies laughing). Too funny, it was the most chaotic few minutes I've experienced recently. However, G still tends to be more fussy when tired or hungry, but I guess that could be normal. She still could be teething or having a growth spurt. Also, within a few days after S's parents left, G was back to sleeping 11-12 hrs. She still woke up at 6am once, but I think she's back to a 10-12 hr schedule, plus her 2-3 naps during the day. And she isn't crying anymore during her bathtime.

Ok, so back to G and 8 months. She's crawling now, we realized that it's the hardwood surface in our house that's holding her back. She's been doing a hybrid crawl that looks like an inch worm where she comes up on hands and knees, then goes flat on belly, then back on hands and knees, etc, but she's still very reluctant to go from sitting to on the belly when on the floor (she'll do it on her bed, our bed, the couch, etc). However, on Saturday at our church's Harvest Festival, she crawled the entire length of the picnic blanket (maybe 6 feet) several times without going flat.

Stats at 8 months: 27 inches tall (I think we can say tall now, instead of long, since she's starting to stand), 14 pounds. For those tracking, yes, she lost some weight from last month. We think it is a combination of her getting sick last week and her becoming much more active.

Besides crawling, G loves to climb. I think she actually likes it more than crawling. She's also getting a little better at eating, and will actually open her mouth and lean her head forward for grapes and rice noodles. Her current list of foods: rice, oatmeal, zucchini, spaghetti squash, sweet potato, spinach, peas, avocado, grapes (once I let her suck on a piece of honeydew, so I'm not sure if that counts). Coming up of things to try: artichoke (I will steam whole ones and just mash up the hearts), apples, pears, butternut squash, broccoli, carrots.

We have also completed G's transition to cloth diapers. She just completed 24 hrs of all cloth. When we first started , it was only at home and during the day, then, last weekend, we tried overnight, and this week we have kept her in cloth going out on short trips where won't need a diaper change. We have not yet changed a cloth diaper outside of the house. G has been successful pooping on the toilet too, except for a tiny bit that got on her diaper once.

Here are some pictures of her Halloween costumes (yes, we borrowed a few):

This one was a bit small for her (and she didn't seem to like it), so we decided not to use it, but she still looks cute.

Here she was on her first Halloween playdate. There were two other ladybugs there but we think she was the cutest one! This is the one we will probably use for Halloween.

Here she is dressed up for our church's Harvest Fest & Pumpkin Patch! We took home the same pumpkin that we brought. What a bargain!

All good things must come to an end...

S's parents have been here all week, which could explain why there haven't been any updates since last week. Also, G's schedule has been changing, well, a lot of things have been changing. For a few weeks now, she's cut down her night time sleeping to 11-12 hours, which is fine with us, but I just have to be more disciplined about waking up earlier to do all the things I want to do before she wakes up. Lately, she has also become more fussy when away from mommy, this week, she began waking up at 6am, and yesterday afternoon started a runny nose that by the middle of the night, we realized was probably a cold. Today I found out that one of the babies in the church nursery (this was only her second time there, the first time was the week before where she was in for about 10-15 minutes only because of nursing and nap time) was sick. Live and learn, I guess - now we will ask if any of the babies are sick before leaving her there. So aside from her current cold, we don't know if she is 1) teething, 2) having a growth spurt, 3) developing separation anxiety, 4) adjusting to Wai Po and Wai Gong (grandparents) living with her this week.

Here are two of the pics we submitted to the Gap photo contest... the other two we picked were the one with the ball and the one from Gap that they took.
Here she is hard at work. We love this toy because it helps keep her occupied when in her high chair and the suctions on it are GREAT! She can grab the wires and pull herself, high chair included, towards the table. So far she only spins the beads, she hasn't gotten the concept of sliding the wooden beads along the wire yet, but we're confident she'll figure it out soon. Seems a lot of our pictures these days are of her eating. Maybe because they are so funny. I think this was zucchini.

E took this picture one early morning, it's my new desktop picture.

World Blog Action Day

It's supposed to be about poverty, but I want to address a related, but what I consider to be, bigger, issue of human trafficking. I just saw Call & Response today. Please check out the trailer, if you can't go see the movie. As a nursing mom, I'm glad I made the HUGE effort (keeping her up so that she will be tired enough to have a longer nap while E watches her, coordinating with E to time G's feeding to the last 30 minutes before the movie started and having him meet me near the movie theater to pick her up and swap cars/keys) to go see this movie. I'm proud to say that this was the first movie I went out to see in the theaters since G was born. E will be going with some friends tomorrow to see it. When I got home, E asked me if it changed my life, and I said to him, "I hope so."

I want to respond. I'm still processing how, but blogging this to you is a first step. While I watched the movie, I thought about G, not only about the world I want to leave for her (I want a world that has ended human slavery, not a world where there are more human slaves than ever in our history), but about how some of these children could be her friends if we lived in a different part of the world or society. It puts into perspective things like the presidential election, the economy and our finances, even being green.

I buy local and organic, but am just getting into buying "fair trade" (to ensure that the people who helped bring those products to me were given fair wages and treated fairly). We sponsor a child (we're on our second) through World Vision. But there is so much more that needs to be done.

We are supporting some friends who will be going on a trip to Thailand to help victims of human trafficking. We can't wait to hear their stories and see not only how they have changed lives but how their lives have been changed. I hope we can partner with more efforts like these, both locally and globally, and as a supporter and doer.

A quote (as well as I can remember) from the movie, "I don't want my clothes to be someone else's despair, or my food to be someone else's tragedy."

gDiaper update

I flushed one insert a few days ago, but just the insides, and threw away the liner, but the toilet sounded funny after flushing (not the normal smooth flush, but kind of burped air up which is not usually a good sign). It made me nervous, so after that, we are back on gDiaper hiatus.

However, gDiapers is paying for our plumbing bill, which is very nice of them. I was talking and emailing back and forth with one of the founders. 

I am in the process of cutting up her pei-peis (flat cloth diapers) to use as cloth inserts for the gDiapers (and putting her on the toilet or 7th Gen for poops). Seems like we are back to doing laundry almost daily anyways because of her messy eating.

Avocado Toes or Spinach Toes?

Apparently, food tastes better when sucked off toes than from the spoon. Last week's new foods were avocado and spinach (making up for the week before).

I used to like avocadoes, now, I'm not so sure...

Here she is discovering spinach...

I could almost stamp her footprint...

We've learned a few things from these early feeding experiences: 

-Don't have your baby wear white, unless your food is white. 

-Feeding G in a short-sleeve onesie is least messy (or roll up sleeves and legs as much as possible).

-Holding G's hands down helps contain the mess, even though she doesn't like having her hands contained.

-Use big bibs.

Her next spinach tasting went much better following these rules (see how clean her toes are, not to mention her bib and face?): 

And in case you think she doesn't ever enjoy any of her food, she does have her good moments:

Busy Week

But not in a good way...

Monday: S notices the master bathroom shower is draining slowly.

Tuesday: S buys natural drain cleaner (uses enzymes or something) but drain seems ok so we don't use it.

Wednesday: Master bathroom shower drains slowly again.

Thursday: Master bathroom toilet clogs, S plunges it. Hall bathroom toilet not filling up with water, after a few flushes, water starts backing up into the tub. Check back to the master bathroom to find water backing up into tub as well. Luckily, E was working from home that morning, so he helped mix the natural drain cleaner stuff (activates by mixing with warm water, has to let stand for the day). S scrambles to find somewhere to go after G wakes up from her nap since we have no working toilets. That evening, flush toilets to find problem still there. E buys regular drain cleaner and borrows a drain snake and attempts to snake drains. Still clogged and backing up.

Friday: E calls our homeowner insurance (free for our first year) and plumber comes. We have no outtake pipe so he has to snake through the roof, which isn't covered by insurance. S spends the rest of the day cleaning the floors (since the plumber wore his shoes all through the house and bathrooms), and triple cleaning/disinfecting the bathrooms (toilets, sinks, tubs). S also calls gDiapers to find out what can be done about the flushable inserts (we have returned to 7th Gen for now, but are considering several alternatives which include cloth inserts into gDiaper covers, only flushing the pulp part of the gDiaper and trashing the liner, try to start composting to compost the inserts). We are waiting to hear back from gDiapers, but so far they seem very nice.

Here's E's pic of what got snaked out of the drains: several weeks' worth of gDiaper inserts (maybe abou 25):

First Outside Photo Shoot

Since E's hobby is photography, we do our own photoshoots and haven't done any professional ones yet. My philosophy is that most of the people working at those kiddie photo places in the mall or department stores probably have no training in photography or creative arts, all they do is point and shoot with nice backgrounds and props, but limited time. On the other hand, G is familiar with us, familiar with our house/setting, we know how to make her laugh better than anyone else, and we have time on our hands to capture just that perfect look or moment. And we also would like to think we have a good eye as well.

But Gap is apparently having a casting call for new baby/kid models, so we decided to try out luck since everyone tells us how cute she is (and we think she's the cutest baby ever). Here are two of the four photos they took last Friday (notice that her head is cropped off, yet another data point supporting my theory that these guys aren't even photographers anyways):

Here are some other photos we dug up that we are considering using. We welcome your opinions so please vote for your favorite pic by leaving a comment.

We will also try to do another photoshoot with her to get some more pics to choose from, so stay tuned.