Hark, there's a personality in there

It seems there's actually a little person starting to emerge from that baby that's been hanging around for the last nine months. All of a sudden she's become a social creature, capable of interacting, remembering, understanding, and of course just being plain cute!

One of the first things Amelia learned to do was give Mom and Dad a kiss on the cheek. Well, kiss might be an exaggeration...let's go with a wet slobbery lip pressure. Now, kissing is a favorite pastime (better to get that phase over with). She'll kiss anybody and everybody...but her favorite partner seems to be herself. For a while we thought her self kissing was limited to the mirror, but the other day she even started kissing pictures of herself!

At about six months, Amelia started to shake her head back and forth. She wasn't doing anything other than just stretching her neck, but it looked like she was nodding "no". Of course, every adult that ever saw it would repeat back "no no no no no" whenever she did it. It was a great big game. Now that we actually need to start telling her "no" on occasion, she just thinks its a big game. Every time she hears the word "no", she gets a big smile on her face and shakes her head back and forth. She recognizes the word for sure, now we just need to work on the meaning.

Lately she's learned to clap and the neat part is she can sense excitement and clap when appropriate. Whenever we get excited, laugh, or just say "yeah", she'll just start clapping and smiling. As Nette Nette says "she's going to be brilliant". She's also starting to figure out that if she claps, others will clap for her. In CT, she spent 20 minutes, pulling herself up on the chair, slowly lowering herself down and then expecting (and getting) rousing applause from her audience.

The first time Amelia slept through the night, she had a bath right before bed. She's had a bath every night since and we've had "lots" of sleep. It's a great arrangement for all parties. Amelia has grown to love her bath, she splashes around, plays with her toys and just has a great time. Now that she can crawl, you can't keep her away from the bath tub. Every time she hears running water in the tub, she has to crawl over to it and pull herself up on the side. We love to get her naked at night and just let her go...usually with a blanket in tow. The other day, I even found her standing inside the shower curtain while I was trying to take a shower.

Just recently, she's started to wave bye bye. And now it's time for me to say bye bye and get some shut eye.....forgive the cheesy rhyme, it's late.

A Post

Okay, Okay, Okay. I get it. People actually read this blog and some apparently start to suffer physical symptoms of withdrawal if I go too long without making a post. To all of you, I apologize, a post is long overdue and alas finally here.

So, what's new with Amelia? A singing pig, a limp duck and lots of food. Throw in a toilet paper fetish and a disabled crab and you've pretty much got it all.

It all started with a trip to Connecticut (or for all you Humphrey junkies, "A long long time ago, in a far away land"). It was an eventful trip, captured in a short montage of one thousand two hundred and ninety-five pictures. That's not an exaggeration. It's taken me most of this month just to sort through them.

Grandma Rustici bought this little stuffed pig called Percy. Percy has some special talents. He can sing "My Girl". And, he can dance. Then, he can repeat. And repeat. And repeat. Percy can also hypnotise babies. After a glorious month, Percy is now in a lovely retirement home in our basement, his legs are worn out, he can barely keep his balance and the high notes sound like the early auditions on American Idol.

Amelia is not completely attached to her blankets and "lovies" (the limp duck in particular). She won't go anywhere without them. She even tries to take them into the bath with her. She's also getting terrible stranger anxiety. I think it's do to the teething....she'd had 5 new teeth pop through in the last month. The seem to come in spurts, the top two came in together while we were in CT, then one on the bottom left and just today two more on the top...and it looks like the other bottom tooth is in hot pursuit.

So on to the food. A month ago, Amelia was eating jarred baby food and we were proud of her progress. Today she will barely touch the stuff. She prefers turkey, chicken, ham, roast beef, meat loaf, yogurt, bread, green beans, carrots, pasta, mexican beans (I wouldn't advise trying that at home)...and really whatever else she sees on our plates. The girl has turned into a little eating machine. She literally eats some meals that would fill me up, I kid you not. I don't know where it all goes. We've checked the floor, it's not there. The girl just loves to eat...but by herself, don't you dare try to feed her, she just grabs a handful and shoves it in. She's even starting to master the sippy cup.

After eating, crawling and exploring has got to been Amelia's next favorite activity. She's still waddling around like a crab with a bum knee...we just hope she walks a little better. She just wants to get into everything, especially the toilet paper roll. And to think, I laughed at the toilet roll protector in the child proofing aisle. And speaking of child proofing, what a blanketly blank blank blankety blank pain in the blankety blank blank that is.

And, just in case you need proof that we didn't fall off the face of the Earth, we have some pictures....

Swimming with Grandma Nette Nette and Grandpa Skip on a perfect Sunday afternoon.

A proud new bicycle owner

A few play dates with the crew.