2. The tiny tot has friends at school! Babymama is exceptionally happy about this, and especially about how she smiles at them when she arrives at school and waves to them when she leaves. She and 'A' have been good friends since their last classroom, and are back to chasing each other around the room. She still loves her 'boyfriends' 'L' and 'G', but was recently bitten by another playmate. She's a-o-kay, and thankfully has not picked up that bad habit herself.
3. Knock-on-virtual-wood, baby-so-sleepy has been on a schedule again for a week. This is a huge accomplishment for the entire family, since it's taken us months to recover from the last time her schedule was disrupted.
4. Food is good, and this baby definitely has an already well-developed palette, which both babydaddy and mama are working to train. She loves peas and cantaloupe, (two of the world's wonder-foods) and also eats cucumber, tomatoes, corn, lettuce and a large variety of other fruits and veggies. Like her daddy, that thirsty babe loves water and milk. Like her mama, she loves sweet tea (decaff of course).
5. Le bebe is tall, a full thirty and one half inches tall. This puts her somewhere around the 80th percentile, nearly ready for the haute runways of Paris.
6. Baby-athletic is not quite walking yet. However, she is a super-speedy knee-walker, and her tiny baby pants have the dirty worn spots to prove it. Although she refuses to walk on her own, she does regularly use her accomplished standing powers to boost her over our improvised baby-gate and into the kitchen, where those aforementioned 30.5 inches put her at the perfect height to examine the cabinet knobs. (Note to selves: must invest in handy cabinet locks as well as a proper safety gate.)
7. The super-spring-time-baby has her first pair of flip-flops - something every girl needs at least fifteen pair of. (Yes, babydaddy, let me explain again. See, you need the black ones with the cushion-y heels, the regular flat black ones, the neutral colored ones, the dressy ones, the beach-only ones, the pink ones for being super girly, a pair to keep in both cars - just in case, the sporty-ones, etc. . . .)
8. In addition to her first flip-flops, baby-beachy also has a new swimsuit. Polka-dots make it sweet, but the ruffles make it extra-adorable.
9. Baby-sweetheart has mastered the art of blowing kisses. Her missiles are delivered with a sweet smile and a loud 'mmmmpwaah', and never fail to send both of us doting parents into that happy, melty-heart place.
10. She is very helpful, and likes to give us things over and over again. Each morning, when she tosses her cheerios on the floor, she helps us pick up each and every 'O', one at a time, of course. She will help us pick up things like our shoes, slippers, and the remote, but not necessarily her toys.
11. She also likes to share, and is very good at sharing her food with everyone around her, including her beloved 'Dar'. One cheerio for you, oh, have another . . . ok, now one for me, well, no, it's only a little wet - you can still have it. Babymama distinctly remembers being grossed out watching other parents swallow the food offerings from their little ones . . . but she now realizes that the wounded look on the face of baby-adorable when someone refuses her gift is much worse than a little soggy food in the mouth for a second. Babymama does, however, draw the line at sharing peas.
12. The stickiness that once lingered in her teeny little hands has transferred itself to her teeny little feet. Somehow, those little toes are always sticky . . . we don't have any ideas why.
13. More evidence that baby-graceful is bound for ballerina stardom - she dances! Truthfully, at this point it's a bit more in the line of bouncing than twirling, but those bounces are helping her get ready for her first grand jeté.
14. That grown-up-baby is beginning the journey away from bottles and into sippy-cup land. These are arriving in a few days time, and soon, babymama and daddy will no longer be washing bottles every single night. Baby-adorable also drinks well from straws, although she occasionally decides not to swallow and instead, allows the drippy beverage to run slowly out of her mouth and down her chin. It's somewhat reminiscent of her milky-face days of yore.
15. Our tiny baby is now 36, 806,400,000 milliseconds old. That seems like a lot, but it's also only 613,440 minutes or 10, 224 hours, or a mere 426 days. Not very many at all when you think of it, but on the other hand, it's so very, very many seconds of adorable-ness.
16. One of baby-techie's earliest toys was an old computer mouse (optical, not ball), and she has since moved up to the laptop. She enjoys 'typing', scrolling and watching videos of herself. She even claps at the appropriate parts of these videos, applauding herself for good behavior, standing 'so0-tall' and taking a 'big-bite'.
17. While she'd mastered 'beep-beep' very quickly on her little red riding car, she was slightly directionally challenged and could only move backwards. Recently, however, that smart baby figured out how to drive forwards, and she's using this skill and her own wheels to get around 'town' much more quickly.
*A select few of you will be familiar with the title of this post. Babymama gives a shout out to y'all, and does apologize for borrowing part of the secret slang of the Minneapolis crew. But, it must be said that even before we were married, some of that Minnesota-cool rubbed off on her
. . . and, respect or not, babymama beat that super-hip daddy every game of crib during the first 6 months of our courting.*
