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24th February, 2010 at 4:44 pm by Emily
Lately Morgan has been really into eating entire foods, as in the big versions instead of cut up or mashed up versions. Yes, I realize it may not be the wisest thing, but we are always right there with her while she’s doing it so I don’t really fear her choking or anything. If I see her get a too-large chunk I take the piece away. Anyway, if she sees something she’s interested in she’ll reach for it and shout for it, then hold it dearly when she gets it. And then scream when for whatever reason it needs to be taken away (like how yesterday as we drove home from the store she wailed the entire way because I wouldn’t let her keep eating a banana–the peels are really not for eating, and when she’s rear facing in the car I don’t feel comfortable with her gnawing on something like that). It’s neat to see her so interested in things, and as much as possible I say yes and give her the opportunity to explore. She’s learning texture, taste, and color, all things that make food so interesting to all of us.
(The above picture was a few days after we moved in, hence all the boxes and paper. She practically leaped out of my arms onto the counter and dove for the apple.)
She picked the cabbage at the store. I paused in front of the display and she most definitely wanted one. So we bought it and I reminded her how she picked it when we then made a slaw salad deal out of it. She wasn’t so sure about eating it, though. Greens are hard to chew without any molars.
She absolutely insisted that I share my celery and peanut butter with her. I think she liked the peanut butter more than the celery. Then again, let’s be honest here: so do I!
We made soup while I had her in the sling. She held the vegetables for me while I chopped, then later helped me stir. She very much liked this leek. Kind of an odd choice I felt, but again I do try and encourage her to try and explore. So I let her go to town…
…and of course had to take a picture of all her handiwork. I cut everything else up and only had the leek left, so I really needed to take it. She was not happy. I cut off the dark green tops and gave a few back to her and she was as happy as can be.
The kid will eat just about anything (though of course not dairy! and it seems maybe not eggs either–we’re still trying to figure that one out so being cautious in the meantime). We had Persian food for our anniversary and she at the hummus, koubideh, and of course the cherry rice. Oh, and nan. She enjoyed it just about as much as we did, I think. I love that she’ll join us in our eating adventures. Hopefully she’ll grow up used to different flavors. Spice doesn’t seem to bother her at all.
Similar to her fascination with food is her interest in everyday objects. She loves tubes of toothpaste, for example. The funny thing is that when she’ll settle in to nurse, she’ll often stop and sit up, find whatever interesting object she can, and then come back to nurse while clutching it. Some kids have blankies or stuffed animals, and Morgan has tubes of toothpaste and pens.
UPDATE: I actually wrote this post yesterday, and then today, just to prove everything I said above, she fell asleep for her nap nursing and clutching a lemon. I personally think she’s quite hilarious. 
22nd February, 2010 at 1:21 pm by Emily
Lately I’ve just been showering Morgan with me because it’s been easier, but I really wanted to give her a bath. So I finally cleaned the sink enough (and we bought a new stopper) and gave her a little bath in there. If you know how I feel about sinks, it should tell you something about how I feel about the bathtub that I’m actually bathing my baby in the kitchen sink. You do what you have to do.
She had lots of fun splashing around and playing with the water, as always. Then she tried to stick things down the garbage disposal on the other side of the sink and I had to (a) stop that one pretty quickly and (b) suppress my gag reflex.
This rubber ducky is her favorite. We got it randomly–it was the Westin Kid’s Club gift when we went to Washington D.C. for Diana’s wedding. But we kept it and she’s always liked it. I also always sing the rubber ducky song when she gets in the bath, and she usually grabs the rubber ducky first.
I try to sing certain songs to help give a rhythm to life–so I always sing the same songs at bath time and certain songs when it’s raining, as well as of course the same bedtime songs. I need to increase my repertoire of songs for normal daily stuff though. Is there such a thing as a song for cooking dinner or cleaning? Maybe I’ll have to start making up my own.
7th December, 2009 at 6:30 pm by Emily
Morgan is getting so big. She wants to explore everything and is always interested in whatever we’re doing. She crawls right over and pulls herself up or climbs all over us. It’s a lot of fun. I personally think she’s hilarious.
Look at that squished up nose! It’s been so dark (and cold!!) that I’ve taken to using the flash on my camera. I know–it’s so unlike me. But I’m so tired of having blurry pictures inside that I don’t even want to take them sometimes, which is even sadder than funky flash shadows and washed out everything. So there you have it.
Also, this picture was taken at the end of our week with intermittent hot water. The laundry situation was pretty bad. I feel like I have to put that disclaimer in because of the shorts and my pasty legs. Not that my legs are ever not pasty, nor do I care, but I’m just saying. Happily we have a new water heater and all is well. And I still get excited when I feel warm water coming out of the tap. 
I was chain piecing a giant string and of course Morgan was happy to play with it. She likes to sit and sew with me, which usually I like. Last week., though, I actually sewed THROUGH my finger. It was not my most brilliant moment. I was trying to nurse her at the same time (likely the problem) and just somehow got my finger in the wrong spot. Luckily it went through right next to my nail and not through it. I was half annoyed at my dumbness, half sad that I broke a needle. The damage wasn’t nearly as bad as I first thought. Had I not been so worried about getting it out–and listening to an unhappy baby who suddenly was plopped on the floor when she thought it was nursing time–it would have been a good picture. Hehe. It hasn’t stopped me from pushing forward on present-making, though, even though it’s going pretty slowly.
Playing with Daddy’s new golf club as he unpacked it. Of course as soon as she sensed his excitement she had to get right in there! I think she knows which things interest us, and she figures it has to be good. There’s no fooling kids.
She’s reached the “pull everything apart” stage, which includes books on the shelf or clothes I’ve just folded. It’s hard to mind, though, when she smiles like that. Plus I enjoy her exploring, which is all she’s doing. There’s very little that can’t be refolded or reshelved, so it doesn’t really bother me.
The big news of the week? Teeth! She’s had four for a while now, but it sort of stopped for a bit. There was one that has been visible but not through the gums for about two months. A couple days ago we noticed that it had finally broke through, and then last night I felt the one next to it also. Then today I poked at her bottom teeth and noticed another one that’s actually pretty far in already. We just hadn’t been watching for those yet. So that’s seven teeth! Crazy. That also explains, probably, why she’s been super clingy for the past week and hasn’t been sleeping well at night again. The teeth, the teeth… and three at once!
Going along with the teeth, she’s eating lots on her own, which is tons of fun. She makes a mess sometimes, but she actually does a very good job of it and clearly enjoys it. The biggest bonus is that I actually get to eat my dinner more or less like a normal person now, so I’m loving this new development.
29th October, 2009 at 4:42 pm by Emily
After the last post about Morgan, I thought of more things that are new lately. There are actually new things almost daily around here, really. I think she’s at such a fun age!
She wants to explore everything! I sometimes sew with her on my lap (since she’ll only let me put her down for about 30 seconds) and now she likes touching and exploring the machine. So one day I put the needle all the way down and let her touch and grab whatever she wanted. I think she had fun.
She has started using her fingers, not just her hands, which is so neat to watch. She has been on a big eating kick lately–she seems to go back and forth, interested or not interested in solid foods, but she’s definitely interested now. We’ve started giving her small things she can feed herself, and she loves it. Except now, of course, she doesn’t like being fed. She only wants to feed herself. It’s hard to feed yourself purees of food when you can’t quite do the spoon yourself, though. She winds up spreading it all over, which is okay too. A little bit probably does get into her mouth. Hehe. Now that she’ll sit and feed herself, I can actually set her down for a minute and eat my own food. Whoa. It feels revolutionary.
This face cracks me up. I know it’s blurry (moving target–she spied my camera and dove for it), but it’s too funny. Notice how Toby just watches us as though we’re crazy? Yeah.
So the other thing about using her hands and fingers: We’ve read Pat the Bunny for a long time, and usually I help her pat the bunny, play peek a boo with Paul, touch Daddy’s scratchy face, etc. If you haven’t read the book, that sentence probably didn’t make a lot of sense. Well, suddenly she does it herself. As I read the bunny page, she reached with her little pointer finger and pat the bunny all by herself, and she likes lifting the cloth to play peek a boo with Paul. Kills me. Too cute. I’ll try to get a picture of this sometime.
Toby is by far still her favorite. She shrieks with excitement when she sees him or gets close enough to touch him. Of course Toby has learned that she grabs and runs away still, generally just watching her wearily from a distance. Hopefully someday he’ll like her as much as she adores him.
Morgan is still very attached to me, but she’s started acting that way with Adrian more, too, which I think is so cute. When he leaves the room we’re in, she calls after him, watching the door, and then gets really excited when he comes back. It’s so sweet to see.
20th October, 2009 at 4:28 pm by Emily
Some random updates on Miss M…
–The teeth–
Her two bottom ones have been in now for two and a half months. One top came in about a month ago. The opposite one on top has been looking like it’s right there for about three weeks. I keep poking at her, thinking it’ll be through, but it’s not. This constant pressure might be what’s causing her to have a harder time sleeping lately? Who knows. It’s rough being a kid sometimes, I suspect.
–Um… mobile?–
Morgan has never really truly crawled. She’ll propel herself forward when she wants to, but mostly she just doesn’t bother. She will, however, grunt until we give her our hands and she can pull herself up, which she has been doing for about three months. She’s getting much better at walking while holding onto our hands, and she’ll transfer from one thing to another (the chair to something next to it, our hands to the couch, etc.). However, now that she has gotten better-at-but-not-perfected the concept of walking, she seems to have decided to move on… to climbing. It’s hilarious. She’s been doing it somewhat for a while, like scaling up my hip and side while I hold her (hence the nickname shoulder or back monkey, depending what we’re letting her climb on). But then this week she used the tin of blocks next to the couch to climb up onto the couch–while we were giving her some balance support, of course. She just constantly wants to do more, get more, see more. She still doesn’t like sitting much; she prefers to be up high where she can see more. Curious kid, I tell you. Her awareness since birth has shocked me.
Holding on to daddy’s hands by the couch. This was on Conference weekend, which was absolutely gorgeous weather wise and just so nice.
–Yogurt, or how we discovered her milk allergy–
Morgan was sitting on my lap as we finished up dinner and kept grabbing for my plate, which had tsaziki and hummus on it. I could understand how that would be fun to grab and play in, so we got her a plate with plain yogurt on it so she could eat it if she wanted to. She had a lot of fun. It was all over her, me, and the tablecloth. Luckily all those things are washable.
Well. Her face got a little red, and as soon as we took her clothes off so we could both shower off we saw that her whole chest, belly, and back were turning bright red. Then she started getting little white welt-y spots on her chest. And she was clawing at her chest and scratching it. Poor kid!
So the good news is that now we know what may have been causing the crazy excema and skin issues she’s been having. I have completely eliminated milk products from my diet–which made me cranky for a day because while we don’t drink milk anyway I do cook with milk and cream and really really like cheese. Plus it’s just a pain because milk is in so much. Even the bread we had has milk in it. But of course feeling sorry for myself made me feel worse because I realized how selfish I was being, feeling sorry for ME when she was so uncomfortable and there was a possible way I could help her.
So far she seems to be improving a little but still is not great. It’s been a week totally milk free (okay, except for the very small amount of parmesan in the pesto I had previously made and frozen). I’ve also switched laundry detergent and use a whole lot of Aquaphor all over her. A couple nights ago she was waking up a lot, grabbing at her chest and trying to scratch through her clothes. So I suspect something still isn’t right. There’s this old animated version of “Madeline” where Miss Clavel runs through the house and sings “Something is not right, something is quite wrong…” and I sometimes sing that to myself. The next step, however, would be to go on an elimination diet for wheat, soy, and eggs in addition to the milk, and then I would have a hard time knowing what to eat at all. We’ll see where all this gets us.
–Playing and exploring–
This is Morgan playing with Adrian’s old wooden blocks while sitting on a blanket my grandma made for me. Hehe. When I realized how funny and neat that is I had to take a picture. She ate them, knocked over my stacks, and banged them together. Normal kid.
The other day I bought some balloons for a Halloween thing I want to do and to entertain Morgan I blew one up and let out the air, let it fly around, etc. She was laughing so hard, possibly the most I’ve ever seen. She seemed to like watching it get bigger. I love how kids are entertained by such simple things. It’s so fun to watch and experience with them. It’s a reminder to focus on the little wondrous things all around us.
–Mama!!!!–
She’s back in a major “I need mommy!” mode. She has been in it before, certainly, but it seemed like she was starting to be more willing to let me out of her sight for a little bit or even be held by or play with someone else. Not so much anymore. Today I set her down to go wash my hands–in the bathroom that’s about ten feet away–and she was crying by the time I got to the sink. She does it even when she can see me, too. It’s cute, however also sometimes exhausting. Someday she won’t need me to hold her constantly. Happily that day won’t come too soon, and by then my back will be too weak to carry her around anyway. So it all works out.
And, just because: THIS is why I don’t use flash, even when it results in slightly blurry, yellow tinged pictures:
Haha! I know there’s a way to adjust the amount of flash on my camera, but I dislike it so much I’ve never figured it out. I will hopefully never use it again.
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