Sunday, July 25, 2010

9 in, 9 out: an update

Juniper has now been alive and breathing in this here wonderful world longer than she was alive (and not yet breathing) in my belly.  9 months in, 9 months out.  All that worldly experience and she is truly becoming her own little person.


On her nine month birthday, J bug fed herself for the first time.  To recap J bug's short history with foods other than breastmilk, she has been--ahem--rather finicky.  (This is where I can hear my parents laughing giddily and yelling, Payback!)  In Appalachia she ate like a champ, polishing off small containers of sweet potato puree as though she'd been doing it all along.  Then, as soon as we returned home--nada.  We tried avocado, sweet peas, peaches and even her favorites--carrot and apple--but to no avail.  She learned to clamp her mouth shut, purse her lips and turn her head away from the spoon.


I try not to get *too* frustrated because, after all, breastmilk is best for at least the first year and everybody says kids will eat when they're ready to eat.  Then, at nine months, she did this:

Oh.  That's what Opera would call an "Aha Moment."  She wants to feed herself.  I knew that would happen eventually, I just didn't think it would be right after she finally started taking purees from a spoon.  So we hung up the spoon, and have graduated to steaming and dicing sweet potatoes, carrots, slicing blueberries, chopping avocado (then--because it is too slick for her to grasp--breading it in crushed rice puffs), and still we often get this face:

And in the end, in a nutshell, this is what we've learned: Osa loves cooked sweet potato, is so-so about carrot and wants nothing to do with blueberries.  (But Juniper will toss them all on the floor in equal measure.)

:: Weights & Measures:  We've always known J bug is a healthy, chunky, babe; but at her 9 month appointment we learned something new: she's tall.  At 29 1/2" she was in the 95th percentile for height and 75th for weight (20 lbs, 3 oz).  Sucking on the chi-chi is serving her well.

:: I am in love with my standing, pre-crawling little monkey.  She is so squirmy and fun and with her newfound mobility (within a four foot radius), she'll make a bee-line for the one thing we don't want her to suck on.   
        

Something I adore that J bug's been doing for months is what we call "the hook and look."  It's such a wonderful feeling when your baby starts holding on to you, your shirt, your hair, whatever.  It's one of those small things that is totally cool.  That little arm hooked around your arm, that little hand clutching your shirt.    

:: My man brought me home this bouquet of wildflowers: lupine, mariposa lily, sticky geranium, paintbrush, columbine, scarlet gilia...our familiars...


...to celebrate seven years of love and life together.


:: Ah, summer.



The dog days of summer.

^That's me, dog-tired and sweating my ass off after hiking up the local ski "hill" in the dead of afternoon.  I swear, that trail is steeper now than it was a few years ago. ^


If it's hot where you are, enjoy it.  Bottle it.  Open your windows and let it in.  Then, come January, remember it.  

2 comments:

  1. It is currently very, very, very, very, very VERY hot where I am. You'r right about one thing: I want to bottle it--but then I want to shove that bottle up God's ass. Deep Thoughts, by Rebecca Schuman.

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  2. Okay, if you do, could you ask him to poop that out over here? With global warming and all, June would be a better time than January. Thanks Bek. Knew I could count on you!

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