Music

We’ve been delinquent on music class for a while. So far, we’ve managed to go every other week instead of every week. The good news is that they allow make up classes, so we’re not really missing out on anything. But today we went to class, and Milo loved it. Highlights:

• Another little girl liked Milo a lot and kept trying to give her kisses and grab on to her. It was very sweet.

• While we were singing in a circle, Milo peered behind me and made smiley faces at a grandma who was seated on a bench. That lady seemed tickled by it.

• Milo attacked the musical instruments when the teacher dumped them on the floor. She wanted ALL of them! Usually she kind of sits back and lets me pick something, but today she went wild grabbing the hand drums and tambourines! Also, she didn’t stick any of the instruments in her mouth! Win.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Chase got home early so that we could make a trip to the grocery store together. I wanted to stock up on stuff so that I’d have lots of food this weekend while Chase is gone to Ohio (visiting friends). Then it was an easy dinner of veggie burgers and corn on the cob.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy-One

Carrot

Quick note:

I peeled a whole carrot and gave it to Milo to chew on tonight while I prepared dinner. She gnawed and gnawed on that thing, and every time I glanced at her, I noticed that she looked like she was eating something. Turns out, with those tiny little razor blade teeth, she shaved some carrot off! She was having a grand old time eating that raw carrot!

Milo has also been very reluctant (read: absolutely refuses) to eat pureed baby food these days. Basically, she won’t accept anything on a spoon. She prefers to feed herself - or try to. Her motor skills and hand-eye coordination isn’t great yet, so she doesn’t get too much food when she feeds herself. But I digress. Tonight, she let me feed her baby food - as long as I put it on the carrot and fed it to her that way. Such a little wierdo.

Day Two Hundred and Seventy

Pivot

Milo pivoted on one foot several times today. She’s so close to walking! Her pivot consists of her standing in one place and moving one foot ever so slightly forward while the other stays in place. So she does a kind of half turn. The exciting thing is that she does this completely unassisted! So I think she’ll be walking at around the 9mo mark or a bit later.

Notes:

• Milo babbles all the time now. She says something that sounds like “dadadadada” but we’re not convinced that she’s saying Dada. She also likes to make lots of nasal sounds, especially while keeping her mouth closed. So lots of g and ng. It’s weird.

• The other day, we bought Milo her own water bottle that is just like ours, a Camelbak with the bite-and-suck valve. She knew how to use it immediately and absolutely loves it. I don’t want her to guzzle water all day, so I’ve been limiting the amount of water we keep in it and the amount of time we keep the valve open. But she’s a pro, and when the valve is open, she just sits and drinks and drinks!

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Nine

First Mother's Day

Mother’s Day started off well with a trip to Brenda’s for breakfast. I had the fried chicken benedict (my favorite), and as an added bonus, Milo didn’t fuss about food! She started fussing, but then a couple sat next to us with a 7-month old and Milo forgot all her worries. The babies kept looking at each other, and Chase and I got to eat in peace!

At breakfast, we did get Milo to drink water from a straw. She’s done this in the past, but she hasn’t wanted to lately. Mostly she just likes drinking from my water bottle (which is more complicated because you have to bite and suck at the same time, but whatever). Anyway, we always carry silicone straws for her to play with, and today she learned that you can suck liquid through them, too!

In the afternoon, after a couple of naps, we took Milo out to the playground in Panhandle park. The swings were occupied, so Chase let her grab the pull up bars and we walked around the playground for a bit. Then we got a call from JP and Puja inviting us to dinner at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack.

Dinner was great! Avani and Milo looked at each other a lot, and Milo reached out for Avani a lot. We all ate our dinners and talked about the house a bit. Milo and Avani shared some avocado, and after a while we all went home because it was late. But it is always great to see JP and Puja and Avani. They set a great parenting example and have given me so much advice over the past nearly 9 months. I’m grateful.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Eight

Quiet Morning

Chase got home in time for bed time last night, so he bathed our girl and helped me put her in bed. Then, I convinced him to give me my Mother’s Day gift a couple of days early. A travel tea thermos in bright yellow. I’ve looked at that probably a dozen times online trying to convince myself to buy it. Perfect. It was a great end to a difficult day.

Today, he let me sleep a little bit in the morning. He went out to get a bagel from Wise Sons on Fillmore, and on the way home, he stopped by Alamo Square park and let Milo play a bit. As usual, I was nervous about him taking her without me, but I did get back to sleep and woke up when they were on their way home. It was a nice, quiet morning for me.

We also took a trip to Rainbow Grocery so that I could get some bulk tea. While there, we bought Milo a rubber duck, and she just loves it! She even started playing a little game in the car where she pushed the duck toward her feet, and then she reached under the seat belt to grab it. She did this a lot, but every time i tried to catch a video, she stopped. Tricky girl.

Later in the day, we let Milo bite off of a banana (instead of giving her little pieces like we normally do), and she was so excited about it. She doesn’t really know how to bite off of something, so it was difficult for her. At one point, she bit a HUGE piece off and gagged a bit. That was the end of the banana biting.

Recent notes:

• Milo learned how to put things inside of other things. We have a wooden box that holds her alphabet blocks. She regularly dumps it out, and I regularly sit next to her and fill it back up. Milo recently started putting blocks back into the box.

• Milo also has a thing about towers. I always make towers of blocks, and she just stares at them but never knocks them over. She’ll even crawl around them. Sometimes she knocks her walkers over, but she always manages to leave the towers standing. Yesterday, she made a move like she wanted to put a block on top of the tower, but it was too tall.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven

Very Bad Day

So, I had the worst day ever. Very brief highlights:

• I’m hormonal. Chase is still in Texas and is unable to offer much assistance except comforting words over the phone.

• Milo now has two teeth, and they’re like little razor blades in her mouth. She decided to bite my very sensitive nipples today and then screamed when I screamed. This happened quite a bit.

• Milo did not want to nap today. Instead, she wanted to hang out with Mom and fuss.

In good news, we successfully closed on the house today! Chase and the home owner signed all of the necessary papers, so we’re now the proud owners of our first home! Now if we could only get there…

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Six

Thursday

I was supposed to have a Skype interview with a potential employer in Austin this morning, but I got stood up. Chase even stayed home a while so that he could watch Milo during my interview. After about 15 minutes of waiting, I called and left a message. Eventually, she contacted me to say that she’d missed my confirmation email and we rescheduled. Still, kind of a wasted morning.

While Milo napped this morning, I decided to paint my fingernails a bright red. I bought some toxin-free nail polish from Whole Foods the other day, and I thought it might be interesting to see Milo’s reaction to red nails. She liked them but forgot about them after about 2 minutes.

Milo spent a good portion of the day terrorizing Sophie. She regularly flips Sophie’s stool over, and then once Sophie jumps off the bed, she has no way of getting back on the bed. So Milo follows her around the living room and Sophie tries to find places to hide. Today, Sophie stayed on the bed for much of the day while Milo tried to remember how to climb up on the stool. Some of the time, Milo just walked around the bed, got up on her tip toes and screamed at Sophie. Sophie’s a good sport.

Notes:

• In house-buying news, things are rolling swiftly and it looks like we’ll be able to close tomorrow as planned. Chase flies out tonight and flies home tomorrow night. We’re pretty excited about signing those papers!

• My computer keeps running out of storage space. I think I’m going to try to buy a new one soon.

• Celebrated Cinco de Mayo by going to Street Taco this evening.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Five

Tiny Step

Notes:

• I was grumpy, grumpy, grumpy this morning. I don’t know how this happens. I should really work harder to become a morning person.

• We didn’t go to music class today because Milo was napping. For some reason, she went down for a nap really late (around 10:30), so I didn’t want to cut that short for class. We’ll have to make it up another day.

• Milo took the tiniest step today! She was holding on to the sofa and took one tiny, little bitty step toward me! I was super excited! Chase and I have decided not to encourage walking for the next few days because he’s leaving and we don’t want her to start walking when he’s gone. But HOLY COW!

• In addition to that tiny little step, Milo did a lot more standing unassisted. She even played while standing unassisted! She’s also very controlled when kneeling down from standing while unassisted. She’s a regular renaissance woman!

• Also, Milo decided it was time for her to finally master climbing up on the stool that Sophie uses for jumping on the bed. She did it, grabbed Sophie, and Sophie was never safe again.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Four

More Exploring

Notes:

• Today Milo ventured under the side table. She didn’t just stick her hand under there or look, but she slithered her whole body under there, and not just once. She did this several times. A couple of times, she was folded in half like a little sandwich. I honestly don’t know how she fit like that. But she managed to wiggle herself out every time. She also found all sorts of treasures: the bath tub spout protector, a blue Nalgene water bottle, a little tub of diaper cream. She’s such an explorer!

• Also today, I got rid of some of the stuff Milo doesn’t play with anymore, including the exersaucer. We got it from JP and Puja, so I got their approval to give it away. It’s so nice to have more floor space in the living room. The bad news is that the exersaucer’s absence opens up the book shelf even more, so I’m sure Milo will be pulling stuff off of it in no time.

• Bad news on the home-buying front: the loan company needs a last minute document from Chase’s employer (which they really should have requested weeks ago), so he’s scrambling to get that taken care of. Closing is supposed to be Friday, so we’ve got our fingers crossed that it all gets taken care of in time.

• I’m not looking forward to Chase being gone for closing. But it’s only Thursday to Friday, so that’s not too bad.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Three

Party Planning

Notes:

• We booked a place for Milo’s birthday party! It’s a bit early, I know, but we wanted to start planning since we’ll need some lead time to get things ordered and delivered. If we’re moving in August (which we might be), the schedule is going to be cramped, so it’s good to get a jump on it. Anyway, the party is going to be in Rockport at the park there, which is going to be ungodly hot, but that was the best place we could think of. So far in our planning, I’m counting at least 50 people. Maybe it won’t be that many, though.

• Lazy day for Milo and me. She spent a lot of time rolling around on her new sheep, and I spent time picking up toys and putting them in the bin so that she could take them right back out. It’s a fun game we play. I think we’re going to be playing that game for a very long time.

• Milo played herself right out of her socks again today. I got a photo of it this time! One sock on, one sock off. Eventually she played herself out of the second sock, too.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-Two

No Hands

Quick Notes:

• Trip to the park today. We went to the playground and laid out a blanket and sat in the shade for a while. Chase ate a Vietnamese bowl of some sort and I had a slice of pizza. Milo didn’t clamor for our food because we brought her some crackers, so she munched on those. It was nice to sit around watch all the kids play and have fun. Milo will get there soon enough. We got her on the swing again and she seemed to enjoy it. Of course, I think Chase and I enjoyed it more.

• Tonight Milo stood unassisted for a good little while - no hands! She just stood playing with a toy. There was no forward movement, but we were very impressed. We even snapped a little video of it!

Day Two Hundred and Sixty-One

Baby Bike Seat

Milo was up at 5:45 for some reason; I tried to feed her and get her back to sleep, but no dice. Chase got up with her and kept her busy while I slept a bit longer, which was nice. One reason I think she has trouble getting back to sleep when she wakes so early is that it’s light out so she thinks “Play time!” So, in our house, I’m really going to try and make her room nice and dark. Maybe that will help her sleep a bit longer?

We went out to the bike shop after Milo’s first nap because Chase’s bike needs some tuning up. While there, we bought a baby seat to put on my bike; we’ve been considering doing this for a while, but we just hadn’t gotten around to it. After that, we went to REI to buy a baby helmet. Milo was good while we were out, but got super tired in the car on the way home.

When we got home, we realized that we didn’t know exactly how to install the bike seat, so we took it back to the bike shop for some help. The guy there put it on with not too much trouble, and then Chase took Milo for a short ride down the street. He didn’t have his helmet, so they went slow and not too far. Milo clung to the handle and had a pretty serious look, but it was the same look she had on her face when we put her on the swing for the first time. So, I think she liked it but was a bit nervous because it was so new.

I will have to adjust my bike seat so that I can ride it now that the baby seat is on there, as the baby seat pushes up against my chest a lot. But hopefully soon I’ll be able to get out there with Milo for Sunday bike rides in the park.

Day Two Hundred and Sixty

Early Friday

Notes:

• Milo was awake at 6:30 this morning. Then she took a 30m nap, so she was up again at 9:20. It’s always kind of frustrating when this happens because I don’t know why she’s sleeping so little and whether she’s going to be fussed.

• One good part about Milo getting up early is that we went out to get breakfast sandwiches! I love going to Devil’s Teeth for their breakfast biscuit sandwiches, and I just know it’s going to be something I miss dearly when we move away. We’ll have to find a suitable substitute in Austin.

• I went downtown to take Chase lunch because he forgot it when he left this morning. Since I was in the area, I stopped by ILSC, but I didn’t stay because Jeannie was out. I should try again soon.

• Milo was very curious on the bus and got tired on the way home, went down for a nap immediately upon returning to the apartment. She was all smiles on the bus, and she got a lot of smiles in return.

• We bought a couple of large sheep pillows for Milo to roll around on when she’s on the floor. She took to them immediately. One is really huge - way bigger than her, so it’s perfect for her to lay on for a while. Recently she has been pulling the pillow off the couch and rolling on it, so when I saw these sheep on CL, I knew they’d be good for her. They’re very comfortable!