The Adventures of Jim and Kate

Ellie walks

Just before Christmas I lost my check card and had to have it replaced (I found it weeks later in the bottom of a pile of laundry).  The replacement card had a different number, so all of the automatic billing I had set up for that card had to be redone.  I was really lazy about taking care of the non-essential stuff, hence the lack of a typepad blog for a while there.  But it's all resolved now.

So, in other news, Ellie walks!    She started taking her first few tentative steps about two weeks ago, when she was about 10 months and a week old.  Now she's walking all over the place.  She falls a lot, but almost always on to her bottom, so no damage done.  She just figured out yesterday how to stand up from the floor without anything to pull up on.  She's obviously brilliant.

She also claps:

And she can climb the entire staircase going up to the bonus room (always with one of us right behind of course).

We still nurse 4-6 times a day, but she eats lot of different foods, and is especially fond of anything she can feed herself.  She loves green beans (I just open up a can of the no-salt-added kind and she chows down) and she also really likes macaroni and cheese.  Fig Newtons are great too, but man can she make a mess with them.

I was starting to get a bit lazy about taking photos for a while there.  Then we went to Huntsville three weekends ago and I took over 200 photos in one weekend.  So Ellie's tenth month will eb well documented, even if months 6-9 are a bit scant.  Jim's been pretty good with the video camera, though.  Unfortunately I dropped our still camera yesterday, and it appears to be quite broken.  Lame.

Ellie's doing very well at daycare.  There are four women who look after the babies in her room, and Ellie does very well with them.  She especially likes two of them, but even the other two are acceptable.  They say Ellie is a very happy baby, which certainly matches my experience with her.

After Ellie go those first two teeth so early on, we went months and months with no more progress on the teeth front.  Finally a top tooth poked through around 8.5 months, and then the second top one looked imminent.  For weeks I thought, "any day now!" and finally the other top tooth poked through.  Then I noticed that a third bottom tooth broke through the skin while I had been waiting for toppy.  I hadn't even noticed.  So far Ellie seems to be a pretty good sport about teething.  Lots of extra drool, but not to much crankiness.  We'll see if that remains true for the molars.

The Brackett Family Votes!

We went to the polls as a family this morning.  Ellie voted Green Party.  I tried to tell here she was wasting her vote, but she insisted.  Then she celebrated by eating Jim's sample ballot.

 

I'm so behind in posting.  I need to record all sorts of stuff, such as Ellie sitting up on her own, and how she now rolls around all over the place.  Also she's been eating real food for about a week now.  I also need to post photos from Halloween.  Ellie and I were octopuses, while Jim was something completely unrelated.

I'll find time one of these days...

(Ellie writes a blog post)

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Smart Cookie

DSC03317, originally uploaded by kate_of_jimandkate.

More photos up at Flickr.

Ellie rolls over for the first time today

Ellie update

I took Ellie to daycare for the first time two days ago.  I don't start back to work for three more weeks, but we hadto start paying for the spot or loose it, so I figured I'd ease us into it gently.  She went for about an hour a half yesterday and the day before.  Both times I've picked her up she's seemed a bit shell-shocked, but she wasn't crying.  I'm glad I have this opportunity to start slow.  On the one hand, it breaks my heart a little bit to think of my three-month-old being sad without me being there to comfort her.  On the other hand, I know she's in good hands even if they aren't mine, and it was awfuly nice to get to the gym and run to the grocery store by myself.  Typical mom ambivalance I guess.

Ellie's figuring out her hands, which is pretty cool.  She's learned to grab her pacifer, and she can pull it out of her mouth and sometimes put it back in.  Occasionally she'll get stymied because the nipple part it a great handle, but if that's the part that's in her hand, then that part can't go in her mouth.  Very cute to watch her try to figure this all out.

Must go.  She was asleep in my lap, but now she's awake and demanding attention!

Professional photos of Ellie

Last week we had professional photos of Ellie taken, and I'm terrifically pleased with the results.

They'll be viewable online for the next month or so.  To view them, go here: http://studiocloud.net/clp?a=3935&e=1218736800000  The password is Ellie's full first name.

Chip Lloyd is the local photographer we used.  Very happy with the photo session and the results.

Ellie says...

DSC03159, originally uploaded by kate_of_jimandkate.

"More pictures up at Flickr!"

Three months old

Ellie was three months old yesterday.  Some recent noteworthy happenings:

• She slept through the night for the first time a little over a week ago, and then repeated that accomplishment the next four nights in a row.  She'll sleep about eight hours straight, from about 9:30ish to about 5:30ish.  She hasn't done it every night since, but more nights than not.
• She also started sitting up in her Bumbo seat (pictured with the kitties) about the same time she started sleeping through the night.
• A couple of nights ago we were playing and she made some sound that sounded very close to laughing.  I think she'll be giggling for real soon.
• The baby books say she'll start reaching for things soon.  I haven't really seen her reach for anything yet, but she did pick up a rattle yesterday (I think her hand fell on it by coincidence) and start staring at it and shaking it.
• She's making more and more fun noises every day.  We've tried to get some of them on video, but she's pretty fascinated by the video camera itself and will stop and stare at he camera when we turn it on.

I think I'll be starting back to work Sept. 8th.  She'll be four months old then, so I'm hoping I'll feel a little better about leaving her in someone else's care.  The place we're using is really great and I'm only going to be working halftme so hopefully it won't be too traumatic for either of us.

I do miss my job some.  I've always found it a lot more stressful than I think I should, but I'm really going to enjoy getting out of the house and being around gownups again.  I love Ellie of course, but I'm getting a bit stir crazy at home.  I thought I had reasonably low expectation about how much I would be able to get done during the day, but I still overestimated it.  Ellie is a very interactive baby.  If she's not napping, she wants to be entertained.  Fortunately, riding around on my front in a carrier while I do housework is entertaining for a while, but it's not a cure-all.

My favorite thing, though is when she naps on my lap.  She takes her longest and best naps on my lap.  I don't get anything "productive" done of course, but it sure is lovely to sit in the glider and read for three hours with a sleeping baby on my lap.  In fact, she's sleeping in my lap right now.

Ellie video

Just experimenting with some video stuff...