My baby is growing

I can't believe my baby is growing. She's transitioning into 24 month size clothes now! It's been cold here lately. Last week I noticed that her 18 month size shirt was too short for her. When she raised her arms and stretched, her shirt would become untucked and more than her belly would show. This is not a good thing in winter. So I washed all her 24 month shirts/bodysuits last week, and put away her 18 month shirts. Most of her 18 month pants still fit her, so I'm taking my time washing all the 24 month pants. It's always sad when I have to put away her outgrown clothes. Don't ask me how many boxes of outgrown clothes/stuff in the garage...

M had her 21 month appt last week. She weighed in at 22 lbs 4 oz, and over 32 inches (32.25"? 32.5"? I'm not very good at remembering numbers). Her memory is definitely getting better. She seemed to remember the place, and started wailing as we walked into the exam room. In past visits, she would let us undress her, maybe get her weighed on the scale, and only start crying when the doctor got close to examine her. And she used to cry when she got her shots. Well she threw us a curve ball during this last visit. Besides crying upfront, she did not cry at all when the nurse gave her a shot. We were really surprised!



My MIL made this cross stitch stocking for M. Working on black must be more challenging than on white, I can imagine how hard it is on the eyes. I dabbled in cross stitch back when I was in college, but the hobby didn't stick with me. I much prefer knitting, it's easier on the eyes... (except when I knit with very dark yarn)



Here's M opening one of her presents. She is enjoying Christmas this year more than last year. She didn't know what to do with the presents last year (when she was 9 mos old). This year she knows that there's stuff inside that you can pull out. :-)

My MIL & SIL like to carefully unwrap their gifts, so that they can save the gift wrapping paper and reuse it when wrapping gifts in the future. Yes, I've even received gifts with the same gift wrap I used for one of their previous gifts. Knowing her predilection for saving gift wrap, this year I managed to use a total of 4 cm of tape to secure my MIL's present, a medium size box of about 15" x 10" x 7", at 3 points (main section, and each end). I prefer to gently rip the giftwrap, it's more fun that way. I don't save gift wrap, but I may save a few now that M is around. She can play with the wrapping paper, and even draw on it if she pleases. In fact, I'd love for her to draw on the gift wrap ... that would sure beat her drawing on the coffee table (which happened 2 days ago while DH was watching her). How do you remove crayon from a wooden table? Our poor coffee table is showing signs of wear. When M was younger, she would stab at it with pens, rattles, blocks. There are scratches and pock marks. We are definitely not getting any new furniture until she grows up...

M is becoming such a chatterbox, and she is quickly learning how to speak. She is learning sequences (ABCs, 123s, books/songs). She knows what comes next in Moo Baa La La La and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. She has learned a handful of colors. It helps when we have a night lite that changes colors. :-) She likes books we can sing to her like The Itsy Bitsy Spider by Iza Trapani, and Wheels on the Bus by Raffi and Sylvie Wickstrom. She loves Mother Goose rhymes.

Teatime... today we are drinking Lupicia Lichee Oolong. It's good. DH prefers the Lichee Black more.

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It's such a small world ...

... in the tv/movie world...

I recently saw Inside Man, loved the movie. Then I noticed that Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Detective Bill Mitchell, is the same guy who plays the Operative in Serenity, and Peter in Love Actually. BTW, I just can't see Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister, no way.

While watching Love Actually, I noticed that the Annie looked familiar. She turned out to be Nina Sosanya who plays Bellino in Cassanova. David Tennant, who plays Cassonova, is also the current Doctor Who, and Barty Crouch Jr in Harry Potter 4. Zoe Wanamaker, who has starred in a couple episodes of Dr Who, is also in Miss Marple: A Murder is Announced, Harry Potter 1, and David Copperfield.

I remember seeing David Copperfield, and thinking, that little boy looks vaguely familiar. It turned out to be David Radcliffe, who is Harry Potter. He was in David Copperfield a couple years before the first Harry Potter movie. It's amazing how he has changed over the years. And Maggie Smith, also starred with him in David Copperfield & the Harry Potter movies. Small world.

Emilia Fox... I've seen her in a number of movies, including David Copperfield, Pride & Prejudice, The Virgin Queen, Henry VIII, and Miss Marple: The Moving Finger.

Alun Armstrong is another actor I've seen in a number of things ... Bleak House, Carrie's War, David Copperfield, Aristocrats.

Charles Dance in Henry VIII, Bleak House, To the Ends of the Earth, Miss Marple: By the Pricking of my Thumbs, Gosford Park.

Mark Strong ... Emma, Henry VIII, Syriana...

Other actors I see around: Geraldine McEwan, Anne-Marie Duff, Ian Hart, Richard McCabe, Helen Mirren... it's just funny how you run into the same actors in various tv shows & movies.

Well there you have it .... a sampling of the crap I watch.

I get Tivo to record stuff for me. Not much coming down the pike. I think I have 2 episodes of Rosemary & Thyme & 1 episode of Inspector Lynley, and that's about it.

Ok, have I bored you yet? I guess that's enough babbling for now... :-)

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We're still having challenging naptimes. Today we went for a nap/drive at 1pm, I went to pick up gas in San Bruno figuring she would fall asleep during the drive... but no, she was wide awake and babbling. Drove back to Stonestown in SF. After a comfort stop at Nordstrom (she needed her diaper changed), we picked up a Strawberries & Creme from Starbucks (she loves that!), walked around, drove home. Guess what is the first thing she does when I open the car door... she asks for The Wiggles. She has a certain way of saying "uh uh uh" while waving her hands a certain way. That's what she does when she wants The Wiggles. So we go upstairs, watch the Wiggles, then have an afternoon snack. Still not sleepy. It wasn't until 4:50pm when I had to drive my mom somewhere that she decided to nap ... for 1.5 hrs, only because I woke her up cuz I didn't want her sleeping that long so late in the day.

As for walking around at the mall ... well this is getting more challenging for us. She is in a walk/run transitional period. She can't walk at a steady pace. It's more like bursts of speed. It can be hard to keep up with her! Then I look at the other kids, who look slightly older than her, who walk at a slow steady pace alongside their adult person ... and I wonder when M will do the same.



Although M is doing well in the eating solids dept, she still likes to munch on these veggie puffs. I think she can get the lid off, but she usually asks me to help her with it.

I was playing around with these two pics, trying to do something, but all I ended up doing was coloring the background. That's what usually happens when I'm trying to tweak photos ... I spend lots of time getting absolutely nothing done. I'm just not very good at this sort of thing...

I can't believe Christmas is coming up, soon! I've already received Christmas cards in the mail! Eeks! And I haven't even begun to think about doing that. :-( I am still knitting up a few things. There's always a lot more things I want to knit than I have time for. I will only manage to knit 3 more things for this Christmas, well, that's the goal anyways. And I'll just have to start my Christmas knitting for next year in January. I'm still working on T's Cable Scarf, which I hope to get done by Christmas or January.



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Ok, where did I hide it?

This is M with her great grandma, who is 90 years old. I think it is way cool that they can get to know each other. M has met her great grandpa, but I don't think she remembers him since she was under 3 months back then. Unfortunately he passed away in June 2005.

Went searching for the little instruction manual for M's Britax Marathon car seat, briefly yesterday morning as we were trying to gather the traveling circus and run out the door to go to visit the inlaws. Omigosh, I think I lost the manual, I have no idea where it is. It was strapped to the car seat when we first got it, and I know I snipped the string and put the manual in a "safe" place. I just have no idea where that might be. :-( Where would you go look? It's not in the storage box labeled "product manuals" (which even has a file folder for "baby" stuff). Sigh....

Well, would you believe it took us 40 minutes to remove the car seat from the car, and figure out how to remove the cover, and then replace it with the spare we got? It's tricky getting the straps off. Omigosh, what a mess there was in the car ... crumbs and other crud on the seat. Had to dustbuster it, and wipe the seat.

We thought we'd turn the seat around to forward facing when we put it back in, but we couldn't get the latch thing hooked up right, I think more "surgery" is needed to get it in perfectly. So we'll have to find the manual to make sure we're doing it right. So we put the car seat back in rear facing, although it looks a little different from how we had it before. Well, at least it is secure and not shifting around much.

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I think M is pointing at the Christmas tree or the Christmas tree lights.

M is learning her colors. She knows pink, red, blue, white, green, purple, yellow. She learned most of these from a color changing night lite we have in the kitchen.

She has added "how" to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Christmas is coming up. DH & I are thinking of a combined Christmas gift for ourselves. Ideas we're floating around include His & Hers Macs (he keeps telling me I should upgrade/convert to a MacBook Pro) and a 3 day babysitter so we can have a weekend getaway (Carmel? Healdsburg?). I'm leaning towards the latter... :-)

I have finally gotten around to reinstalling The Sims and all 7 expansion packs on my "new" Sony PCG-GRV680 laptop. (I've mentioned the laptop upgrade here, and here.) AND I have actually launched the game and played it a bit. This is definitely going to interfere with my knitting....

Teatime ... today we are drinking Yamamotoyama Genmai Cha. M likes to drink tea. I pour some into her sippy and then add water to cool it down for her. She especially likes tea on cold days.








This is M sleeping on her grandparents' bed. She will plop her head down on her dad's & grandpa's shoulder for naptime, but she rarely does it for me. When I try to get her to do that, she whines & resists, twisting out of my arms to get down. Yes, I'm still using the car to get her to nap. However they can get her to fall asleep on their shoulder and then later put her down for the rest of her nap.

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Learning manners

Wow... yesterday, M said "please" for the first time on her own. She wanted something out of her reach. She reached out in the direction of that object (the dvd remote), and said please in her own way, a combination of "pea" and "pay".

She already knows how to say "thank you", which comes out as, "da doon," with the correct inflection. She also says that for "you're welcome" too.

We created new words on the fridge today (with her alphabet fridge magnets): voracious, hungry, famished, & temp. Then we stopped there since we used up all the vowels.

M is getting better at recognizing letters. We can write "A", and she'll tell us what it is. Works with "B" and "C" too. :-) Sometimes she'll point to a letter on something and say, "A!"

She's adding to new words when singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Gogo = twinkle; tar/ar = star; wuhwuh = wonder; ar = are; aba = up above; hi = high; dido = diamond; ky = sky.

It had gotten really cold here a week or so ago, so we started to turn on the heater in the evenings to warm up the house. We also use an electric throw to warm up M's crib (we remove the electric throw when we put her in the crib to sleep). We put her sleep sack in the crib underneath the electric throw so that it's nice & warm when we put her in it. We also started to put socks on her feet too.

Now that it doesn't feel as cold at night, or maybe we have acclimated to the cold change, she still wants socks on her feet at night. When we lay her onto her sleepsack, she will remind us about the socks -- by saying & signing socks -- before we zip her up.

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