revjim.net

June 27th, 2008:

6 months old!

what do I do with these?Celeste’s pediatrician (and my sister as well, who is an Occupational Therapist working with children) is constantly saying things like “your daughter should be doing blah blah by the time she is blah blah months old”. It’s kind of annoying. If there’s a manual that came with her, I’d like to read it. Otherwise, really, how do you know.

I think Celeste, who turned 6 months old yesterday, agrees with me. In an act of pure defiance instead of slowly achieving each goal, one by one as the unseen manual dictates she should, she just decided to do them all with amazing proficiency within the course of 2 weeks.

In fact, here are the things she did in the past two weeks that she couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) do before.

Eat Solid Food
With Nic and Emily as our witnesses, and the video camera rolling, her first adventure into solid foods was a solid one. She didn’t gum the food a bunch and then spit it out. She didn’t decide she didn’t like it and stop bothering to eat. She didn’t flat out refuse to eat at all. She didn’t play that fun spitting game she likes to play while eating her food. She just opened her mouth greedily and took spoonful after spoonful of Avocado until I was afraid to upset her stomach by giving her any more. She loved it.

The Fun Spitting Game
Constantly. It never ends. The more spit, the better. And don’t laugh while she does it. If you open your mouth too wide, you’ll end up with spit in there too.

Sitting Up
She sits on her own. Every now and then she’ll topple if I’m not near by to steady her. Other than that, there’s really no limit to how long she’ll sit. She actually enjoys sitting.

Her First Words
Write it down in the record book: her first words were “Da Da”. Well, actually it was more like “Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da”. In fact, she pretty much doesn’t stop saying “Da Da” now. I don’t think it means what she thinks it means. We’re working on that part.

Fake Cry
Yup, she’s one of those. She knows if she cries she gets attention. So, when she wants attention but she’s not actually upset she fakes it. Thankfully, she’s not a very good faker, so the difference between the two is quite obvious. Her cry is a blood curdling, hair raising, heart pumping scream. Her fake cry sounds like a cat that is puking up and trying to meow at the exact same time.

Toes in her Mouth
She found her toes. She likes her toes. She’s just not quite sure what they’re good for yet. So, like everything else that doesn’t have a clearly defined purpose (and even most of those that do) they go in her mouth.

the trouble with being home

I decided that every weekday morning where I didn’t have to leave the house prior to 7am, I would write here and that would be enough. Flipping back through these virtual pages I see that has not been happening. Not even close. When I’m out of town on business, the time at which I arrive at work is rarely a set thing. Additionally, traffic is usually not something I have to contend with. So, if I intend to be at work at 9am, and I leave my hotel at 9am, that’s not really a problem.

At home, however, this is a different story. If I intend to be at work at 9am, I have to leave the house at 7:30am. And, while being slightly late to my job here isn’t a big deal, coming home late is, because the traffic only gets worse and worse. Additionally, getting in to work at 9am is rarely an acceptable thing unless I was working from home before hand. So, really I’m aiming to get to work at 8:30am, which means I have to leave at 7am and the deadline that I set for myself is begging to be missed.

On top of all that, I do work from home. When I’m out on business I only have my laptop. Because of certain limitations, I can either do work stuff or my stuff, but not both at the same time. At home, however, my work is sitting right next to me, constantly begging for more of my attention.

In summary, 7am is a terrible deadline to set and only results in me not writing at all. So, I’ve got to work out something else.