Mira's First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is definitely an awesome holiday. I love spending time with my family and taking the time to visit and relax, and of course eat. I love food - I just don't understand how anorexics do it. Which is why I'm not an anorexic. But I really enjoy Thanksgiving because it's a nondenominational holiday with the purpose of taking time to reflect on your life and how much we have to be thankful for. Our society is a lot about finding what you don't have and then trying to go out and get the newest and coolest - but when you slow down and really take a look at your life, it's amazing how much you actually do have. At the very least, I am SO thankful that my whole family and I are healthy (courtesy of the PICU).

I took Mira to my mom's for dinner with my family on Thanksgiving. Mira loved the food - this was a really good age for her to have a first Thanksgiving because she's old enough to sample most of the food. Sadly she didn't get to try out the turkey this year as I felt she needs more than 2 bottom teeth to attempt chewing meat. But she got to try some homemade bread, squash, roasted potatoes, stuffing, cooked apples, cranberry sauce, and of course pumpkin pie. She wasn't a huge fan of the squash, even when we put salt and butter in it, but she enjoyed everything else and just LOVED the cranberry sauce - and it was the homemade kind so it was pretty tart too. I was surprised by that. And she ate about half a slice of pumpkin pie just by herself. She was having a grand old time, grabbing handfuls of food with both hands and cramming everything in her mouth as fast as she could. I'm learning I need to space out the food I give her because she's made herself gag a few times by putting too much in her mouth if she's eating something she really loves.

Here are a couple of videos from Thanksgiving. The first one is my dad having some fun with Mira, and the second one is how she reacted when trying out cranberry sauce.

I wasn't able to capture this on camera, but when we got started with dinner I put a burp cloth on Mira's lap to try to protect her dress, and she grabbed it and started playing Peek-A-Boo with it! She held it up over her face and waited for me to say, "Where's Mira??" She lowered the cloth and laughed and laughed. And she did it over and over again and got so excited she sped it up so eventually she didn't wait long enough for us to say, "Where's Mira?" but she had the right concept. She's quiet when her face is behind the cloth and after she lowers it she laughs. She started doing it a few days ago - add that to the list of cute things she does that I need to attempt to catch on camera.

And of course we have some more picture overload. I've decided she's a very photogenic baby and she just can't take a bad picture, therefore it's impossible to narrow down the number of pictures I post on here because they're all just so adorable!

With Grandpa

Playing with Auntie Sara's necklace. I love this picture.

With Mommy

That food didn't stand a chance...

Apples are yummy!

I love this expression. I think she's really taking the time to savor the flavor.

It was a great holiday, especially since my little sister Penny was able to be with us! Penny is going to school in L.A. and originally we were thinking she wouldn't be able to come down for the holiday but at the last minute my dad was able to get plane tickets for her. So that was very nice.

Here are some more random pictures of Mira - again in her high chair, I don't know why some of her best moments are when she's eating but there you go.

Attempting to feed herself some yogurt. She wants to try to spoon-feed herself but it doesn't usually end well for the high chair. But she does have this cute habit of holding stuff just with her mouth.

Her chipmunk cheeks after stuffing her mouth full of watermelon.

Interestingly, she does chew with her mouth closed... for now.

I should mention that watermelon is one of her new very favorite foods. This is definitely one of those foods that I have to space out or else she'd cram her mouth so full she'd gag herself. So far there are only a few foods that she doesn't like, so I consider myself lucky! It probably won't last (I understand little children tend to be picky eaters) but it sure is nice to know I can just toss some cut up food on her tray and she'll love it.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I suppose now I need to stop being in denial and just accept the fact that Christmas is the next holiday...

Big Steps

How is it that my baby is 9 months old already?? Crazy! It occurred to me that Mira has now been out in the world for about the same amount of time she spent growing inside me. As far as a fetus/baby is concerned, 9 months involves so much change! Nine months ago Mira couldn't even turn her head the way she wanted to, now she can do stuff like this:

I'm still trying to get a good video of her dancing. She'll be jamming it up and as soon as I get the camera going she stops and gets distracted with something else. Don't worry, I'll get a video! It's so cute to watch her bounce up and down (if she's standing she'll go up on her tip-toes) and she'll even put her hand up in the air and do a "raise the roof" type move. And she dances to pretty much any type of music she hears - whether it's on TV, while we're walking through a grocery store, one of her musical toys, from my iPod - she loves dancing! I think we've got a little dancer on our hands.

Yummy

Cutest little penguin butt ever

She pulls herself to a standing position like it's no big deal now and cruises around. She can even stand unsupported! That really freaks me out - it doesn't seem like babies should be allowed to stand on their own before they turn 9 months old. She could do it for 5-10 seconds at a time but then she fell forward onto her face on the hardwood floor and ever since then she hasn't wanted to do it as much. But she's definitely capable! She can crawl super fast too - and navigate around the barricades we have set up in front of the stairs in an attempt to keep her from climbing them. I suspect she does it just to get attention from us because she'll only get up on the first step and then turn and grin at us.

Why can't grown ups have car seats like this?

After months of procrastinating, we finally moved her to the big girl car seat! I kept putting it off because I didn't want to admit my little baby was big enough to outgrow anything but considering her feet were dangling off the edge of the infant car seat and her head was at the top of the head rest... it had to happen. Her new car seat seems so nice too. Plus it has a cup holder. :)

For the most part we've had a really mellow season so far (highs in the 50s some days, the grass in our yard is still alive and there are still lots of trees with leaves on them) but we did have one day with a few inches of snow. I put her in a snowsuit and set her down in the yard to see what she thought. She was not very impressed.

Seriously, why couldn't we have stayed inside where it's warm?

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow! Thanksgiving is probably in my top 3 favorite holidays. Mira's diet has expanded enough I think she'll be able to try most food at dinner. She still only has her 2 bottom teeth so I'm not sure if turkey will be on her menu but she'll be able to eat plenty of veggies and, most importantly, dessert. I can't wait to see what she does with some pumpkin pie.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Halloween!

Halloween is such an awesome holiday! As I said before, we go all out with our yard for Halloween. It's better than Christmas (frankly, Christmas is not a highly anticipated holiday for Mark or me because of the stress involved - it's become way too commercialized). But Halloween is awesome because you can dress up in crazy costumes and scare the pants off people - and it's socially acceptable!

I had the hardest time figuring out how to dress up Mira for Halloween. I think it was hard because she doesn't care - she's too young for trick-or-treating, so there wasn't a lot of incentive to get her all fixed up. I finally just accepted a hand-me-down costume from a friend and called it good. Plus, I remembered at the last moment that my mom gave me a cute little "scrubs" set at a baby shower so I stuck Mira in that one too. So we got some cute pictures:

Cute little ladybug!

I don't know why my parents set me up here, but whatever...

The zombie isn't nearly as fun as this bone.

Maybe this is what she'll be when she grows up...?

We can totally reattach this hand...

Of course who cares about a hand when there are leaves?

I didn't get a video of our yard this year but I took one last year and everything is pretty similar this year so here they are. It's hard to see what's going on with the nighttime one on the video (it's more obvious in person) but if you watch the daylight one first you can kinda get an idea of what's there.

And yes, Mark did all of this himself. He missed his calling.

Well, now for some more Mira picture overload:

Napping on the couch

Gotta love that smile!

She just keeps learning and learning! It's amazing to watch the lights go on in her head as she figures stuff out - and then she's so proud of herself! She crawls really fast now, but every few paces she'll stop and sit, survey her surroundings as if making sure she doesn't have a more interesting place to go explore, crawl a few more paces, stop and sit and look around, and so on. She's always on the go, until The Simpsons comes on TV and then she comes to a complete standstill and stares at the screen. That just proves she's our daughter. (In hindsight, a really cute Halloween costume for her would have been Maggie Simpson... oh well, maybe next year.) She is really good at pulling herself to a standing position and a lot of the time she'll only hold on with one hand (and then grin really big at you to make sure you've noticed how grown up she is). And she's starting to balance so well that sometimes she forgets to hold onto anything at all and she'll stand on her own, completely unsupported, for a few seconds! (Someone please tell me an 8 month old will normally do that!) She's starting to "dance" to music - she just bobs herself up and down but it's about the cutest thing I've ever seen! I'll try to get a video for my next post. Oh yeah, did I mention that she discovered the stairs and actually climbed them???????? First time she'd ever noticed the stairs goes completely not the way I pictured. I saw her pull herself up to standing using the top step and then stop, and I figured that would be it - I mean, those stairs look really daunting when you're little! She stood there for a second, moved her hands to the next step up, got her knees on the first step... moved her hands up a step... got her knees on the next step... It looked like she'd climbed those stairs a dozen times already! She got a little over halfway up and then got distracted looking over the banister at something and started to slip - luckily I was right behind her. But she wasn't scared at all, she wanted to go right back and try it again. Later on that night when I was at work she apparently zipped all the way up to the top of the stairs (and was halfway up by the time Mark could get over to her) and then figured out how to push open the door to the bathroom! Unbelievable what this girl does, I swear. Mark and I have called her a determined over-achiever (and one of us always adds in, "Just like her mom," because if you want 2 words to describe me, there they are).

I've put off writing about this because I wanted to make sure, but I'm pleased to announce (drumroll please) that Mira is sleeping through the night again! Yay!! That was a rough few months there. But her sleep schedule is different now. Before, I would keep her up until 10 or 11 at night, she'd sleep 8 or 9 hours, nap in the morning (pretty much right after she woke up so she really wasn't up for the day until 10 AM or so), then nap in the afternoon. Now she's asleep before 9 PM usually, and with very few exceptions doesn't wake up until 8 AM. Which is great, but she will not nap in the morning anymore (so it's going to be rough after night shifts now unless I have someone to watch her for a couple more hours), and she will have a 1-2 hour early afternoon nap. Well, I'll take it. She still has a few days here and there where she'll wake up around the time I go to bed (midnight-ish) but it's better than waking up every couple hours at night!

Her babbling has really taken off too. So many cute noises and sounds to figure out! I just love this babbling stage. She still says "mamamamama" but doesn't associate it with me yet. But she is saying "dadadada" now! So that's nice for Mark but he still feels left out because she cries when I leave the room but not when he leaves the room. I still say she'll be a daddy's girl before too long, and then I'll be able to get some stuff done! :) Here's a video of her babbling - for some reason she's the most talkative during mealtime.