Aug 27: 15lbs of hurt

Holy Cow! What a week! Two teeth, the zoo, cruising, blueberries, black eye, waving, kneeling, clapping, watermelon, first high chair, first shopping cart, swim lesson, 3rd foods, and I'm sure I'm leaving something out! You see how we finally had to slow her down :)

Scarlett has sure had an explosion of activity and growth this week--- she is really becoming a little girl.

It is amazing to see the increase in her curiosity and her exploring. And, it is incredible to see her motor and cognitive system developing together. She's pulling herself on tables because she can see what's on top (because she is so curious). Evolutionarily, curiosity is the major driver that pushes infants to become mobile and work on crawling and standing. Infants start developing attachments to items as their memory capacity improves, and that happens right around the time babies start walking, because as it happens, they wanting start carrying possesions with them, and crawling just gets in the way.

In all her adventures, she's taken a couple of hard spills, including catching the edge of the table under her eye, giving her her first pseudo-black eye... needlessly to say, we invested in baby proofing foam the next day--- good thing Frank Lloyd Wright can't see all our craftsman furnature covered in gray foam!

We added peach and pear yogurt to her diet this week along with blueberries which instantly became her favorite food, by far... eating dozens of halves per meal... that was until she tried watermelon... she went crazy... but we try to limit the watermelon because of the high sugar content (one of the highest sugar content of any fruit). But she has just become a solid-food machine, eating everything in sight--- she's even skipping bottles she's eating so much food. We're also transitioning her more and more to adult food; the end of a baggette, cheerios, a roll at dinner, water from our glasses, you name it, and it has really made going out and eating with her so much more fun and so much easier.

So with this big uptick in solid consumption, she's finally putting on a little weight. After gaining only four ounces the previous 2 months, she's gained 12 ounces in less than a month... putting her a blonde hair over 15lbs... that's only 5th percentile, but at least she's back on the chart for weight now. It is hard to measure a squirming girl, but she may have also gained at least 0.5", putting over 29".

Mom took Arlely to the zoo for a girls day out... it was a little cold (poor animals and babies) and she's a little young to understand the whole concept, but everyone seemed to have a great time.

Other fun things, she's started waving to new people (or to herself in the mirror), Mom's teaching Arley to clap (we have some great video, I'll get up soon), she's starting to take her first unassisted small steps side ways while holding onto the coffee table (called cruising), she's kneeling so she can play with (teethe) object (see left) and daringly, just today, she's start taking her hands off the coffee table while standing up, testing her balance.

Her second tooth is also coming in. It is funny, there is an old wives' tale about babies getting congested right before a tooth comes in. Twice, out of no where we thought she had gotten a cold but it seems like she was just getting her teeth in... chalk another one up for the old wives.


I'll work on getting the crawling and clapping videos up soon---