On Friday when we got home from work, Jayne was sitting outside the front door with Allie on her lap, and greeted us with, “Uh, I think you guys should lower her crib mattress all the way.” She told us about how Allie had awoken from a nap when Jayne was watching on the iPad’s monitor in the kitchen, and Jayne didn’t go up to get her right away, but a few seconds later, she looked back at the monitor and saw Allie standing at the foot of her crib looking toward the window. A flip flop halfway across the kitchen was proof of how fast Jayne went running upstairs to grab Allie before Allie decided to try vaulting next. Also on Friday, Allie started saying…THAT’S RIGHT, “mama.” Not “dada,” not “papa,” but “mama.” Mr. W says it’s her first word, but I wasn’t sure, since we didn’t hear her say “hi” again (which we had thought was her first word), so who knows, maybe she wouldn’t say “mama” again, either. I was wrong on that. “Mama” has become her new favorite sound. I don’t think it means “mother” to her, because based on the times she says it, it seemed at first to refer to food. Then through the weekend, it was just something she’d say at any time she wanted to say something. I took advantage. See this video of the first time she tried carrots on Saturday morning:


Mr. W complains that he’s unable to view my blog videos through his iPad. Anyone else have that problem? What about through a computer?

Allie now easily sits herself up on her own, and she also started crawling a little. She doesn’t crawl much, because her preference is just to get herself to the object on the ground she wants to reach better, or to get to some leverage so she could pull herself up. She still prefers standing and walking to laying and crawling. When she has contact with someone while she’s sitting or laying, she’ll use that contact to pull herself up and walk. All these new skills unfortunately cut into her sleep, as she’ll just sit up and play or mosey on to a different corner of her crib to chew on the bumper ties instead of going back to sleep when she wakes during naptime. She’s been getting an average of 13-ish hours of sleep per 24-hour period as opposed the old 14-15 hours. (I’d expected this, though.) Changing her diapers and clothes have become a 20-minute task sometimes because she keeps rolling onto her tummy so she could do the downward-dog pose, getting on her feet, but unsure of how to get her hands to leave the floor so that she could stand. She also managed to figure out how to walk in her Pooh activity walker this weekend. They’re small hesitant steps and are more circumstantial than deliberate, but she’s going through the motions.

Food is going really well. I have been adding a new food to her daily intake every 4 days, and she hasn’t had any negative reactions beyond harder clay-like poops, which I think we’ve resolved by working prunes into her diet. So this weekend, in a solid meal, she had an ice cube square of pureed peas (thawed, of course) thinned a little with prune juice, and an ice cube square of pureed pears thickened with some iron-fortified organic baby rice cereal. Since she also gets regular feedings of breast milk, that’s milk, vegetable, fruit, and grain. Once I have enough fruits and veggies introduced, I’m going to try white meats, i.e. chicken and turkey. Allie doesn’t seem to care much for sweet stuff; she doesn’t take juice well from a bottle when we tried to help her constipation by offering diluted prune and pear juices, and last night, Mr. W put a piece of watermelon in a mesh teether thing, which also didn’t go well. She chewed on it and sucked, and as soon as juice flowed into her mouth, she made the most awful face and shuddered, pulling it out. She tried chewing again, the face was made again, and she refused the object after that. I’m just happy she will eat prunes and pear at this point, even tho I have to “hide” it in other foods, such as rice cereal and peas.