Catching Up with Fiona - January

I know, I know, it's been a LOOOONNNNGGG time since I've updated this here blog, but I tell no lie when I say work is CRAZY busy and I haven't had the time.

Fiona is growing and changing every day. She started taking her first steps in November, but did more crawling and surfing than anything else. Then we drove to Colorado for Christmas (found out that Fiona hates being in the back of the truck in the dark - didn't realize that she could scream at the top of her lungs for two hours straight until that trip) and one day shortly after Christmas, she walked across the room at Grandma's house like she'd been doing it all her life. Since then, there's been more walking than crawling. You can hold her hand and she'll walk just about anywhere.

She says "Hi" to everyone and "Bye" whenever she notices someone leaving (but if you try to prompt her to say "Bye" or "Hi" for that matter, she will look at you like you're an alien). She is babbling more and more, mostly just noise, but she is experimenting with some new consonants lately and loves to repeat "I, I, I, I, I". And she will make these noises, finishing by raising her voice in a question and look at you like she expects you to respond. Disconcerting. Wish I knew what she was asking.

She is eating more, thank goodness. Turns out that she just doesn't really like baby food. She will eat almost anything that comes off of mom or dad's plate. She loves meat! She'll eat chicken and steak and pork chops, she likes rice and noodles, she likes to suck the salad dressing off of lettuce (only Aunt Ginny was able to actually feed her lettuce during Christmas - never saw the girl eat so many green things as she did that night in Ginny's lap). She also eats some of mommy's ice cream or cookies or whatever for dessert. She's not a glutton though, when she's had enough, doesn't matter how yummy it is, she has had enough and will stop eating. Seems like I lost that ability during my pregnancy.

Lately we've been playing ball with Fiona. She has learned to throw a ball. She still has some trouble tracking it as it is rolled back to her, but she thinks it's great fun to try to catch a ball. Last night, she was throwing the ball (which is actually a little globe that she ripped off it's base) to me and I was rolling it back to her. Then she started throwing the ball to Daddy and he was kicking it back to her - she thought that was GREAT fun. But when the dog kicked the ball back to her (yes, we have a very talented soccer doggie), she about bust her sides laughing. It was awesome.

She got some cool things for her birthday and Christmas. Her favorites are the Learning Puppy that flower and ashlyn sent (she loves to hug it and groove along as it sings ABC's and stuff to her), the Dress Me Elmo that my dad sent (anything that sings is great and of course there's the zipper and velcro shoe strap that provide endless hours of entertainment), the Dora the Explorer stuff (the kitchen set, which we thought she was too young for, but she plays with that thing every day, and the push rider thing - she rides it, she gives Elmo and her favorite baby doll rides on it, she pushes the buttons and laughs as it sings and talks to her, oh boy) and this nifty learning chair toy that her cousin Carly picked out for her. She loves to sit on it and make all kinds of cacophonous noise with the chair and the learning centipede that Aunt Ginny gave her - holy moly, I think she might grow up to be a DJ. Also, Dani got her a big picture dictionary book that she loves, she drags it around the house with her and has her favorite pages (the kids and animals are the best) and she'll open it up and point out her favorite pictures - the black and white dog, the baby and the boy with the colorful shirt...

For the record, the ECing is coming along. During our trip to Colorado, Fiona started being dry every night. We picked up extra diapers to bring on our trip and didn't even need them. We were gone from December 22nd - January 2nd and only used about 30 diapers...that's less than 3 diapers/day - and it wasn't cuz we were just letting her sit in it, she was pottying a lot. Once we got back to Washington, she slipped back into her old patterns, but we were pretty excited seeing that brief glimpse into the future of our potty journey.

Fiona's feet have grown, so she had to go get new shoes at Nordstrom. Auntie Gae took her to find some good walking shoes, but Fiona picked out a pair of black Vans with flames on the side and a dragon on the toe. She loves to wear them. Sometimes I can't even get them off her - she'll fall asleep at night wearing them. This is big news for the kid who hates having anything on her feet. It's the best way we've found yet for keeping her socks on.

There's a ton of other stuff, but I have to get back to work. I wanted to post something though before I get so far behind that this blog becomes a thing of the past.