!!Warning!! extreme cute below

Of course we have a costume.

We Have Tooth!

Anja was pretty fussy most of yesterday, and I finally felt the edge of a tooth on the bottom that has broken through her gum. She was pretty happy for most of today though, so it must not hurt as much now.

We haven't carved our pumpkin yet:



Anja likes looking out her window. We aren't sure how cold it will get near the window in winter, so hopefully we won't have to move her crib away from it. She would be sad.



Here she is performing her new favorite trick:

Pumpkin time

We took Anja today to a local cider mill/pumpkin patch to pick out a Halloween pumpkin. She fell asleep on the way there and was a little sad to be woken up. It was in the 40's and windy on the farm, with some spitting rain. I'm not sure she was too impressed.


She was however very impressed with the pumpkin itself (pictures later) and will be REALLY impressed when she feels how squishy they are inside.

She sure loves standing up and trying to reach things. Here she is trying to grab things off the third shelf of our bookcase.


She is beginning to play with toys while sitting for short periods of time, instead of just plowing through them and gumming them.


She crawled into her bouncy seat again today and stood up in it. She is really good at climbing. But sometimes she stops moving for just a moment:

Standing standing standing

All Anja wants to do now is stand. She can get toys from the third shelf in the bookcase now. You really have to watch her though, because she still falls a lot.

A friend of mine with small children referenced the "Golden Time" when babies can sit up and play with toys, but haven't yet learned to crawl. Since Anja learned to crawl first, we completely skipped that stage! She very rarely just sits to play with toys. And now she crawls straight toward the closest big object in the room so she can stand up. Usually through all of her other toys. She's like a 4X4 tonka truck - straight through everything. I think she crawls really fast because she knows I'm going to catch her before she gets there. Remember those little toy cars with the wheels you can "rev up"? You put the cars on the ground, wheels spinning, and they take off really fast in one direction. You get the idea.

When she gets really close to something she can pull up on, she gets really excited. She makes a funny repetitive noise, like a baby hyperventilating. It's the best thing ever. Today she crawled to her bouncy seat and stood up. Then she crawled completely into it. And then she stood up inside it! You should have seen the look on her face when she turned around to see me. You'd have thought she was at the top of the monkey bars.

In my personal news, I finally turned in the final copy of my thesis to both the graduate school and the bindery today. I am completely done now. It's a little anticlimactic since I defended last March, and it's taken this long to finish the required edits. But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel REEEEAL good!

Stats

For her official 6 month birthday, Anja is 27.25" and 16lbs, 3oz. That's 57th percentile for weight again, but now 95th percentile for height! She must be going through a growth spurt. We have to get the next type of car seat soon, because while her current seat is good to 23lbs, the height limit is 29". She will need a new one before Thanksgiving.

I find the percentile rankings a really funny way to look at height and weight. They foster an atmosphere of competition among parents, hoping that their child "wins" by getting as high a number as possible. I'm not sure why this happens.

Now I can't decide whether to make jicama slaw, jicama chili sticks, or crab jicama pate.

6 months old today!

It's hard to believe Anja is halfway to one year already! Later I will measure and weigh her so we can have official numbers. Right now she is actually taking a nap, and as everybody knows, you do not wake a sleeping baby.

She has been really tired today. She slept in the carrier at Fenner Nature Center today. Then she played with her friends Toby and Scott:


And after they left she actually took a 30 minute nap. Then she woke up and ate a huge amount of avocado (three ice cube squares) and drank an entire 8oz bottle (which is rare for her) and fell asleep again! She's been sleeping for 1.5 hours so far. I'm hoping that helps for tonight, because generally the more she sleeps, the more she sleeps.

In between naps, I managed to take a picture of her with Laura's baby fruit this week:


>>>
I'm back. I had to leave to go get her because she woke up. Only two hours after her huge meal, and she drank another 5oz, she was starving! Now she's sleeping again!

Meep Meep!

Never fear, I did manage to find a jicama, which represents Laura's baby this week. Jay wonders how one eats a jicama.


In local news, this kid is fast! In just the last week she's really improved in her crawling skills (crawling skills?). And she can pull herself up on almost anything now. Even things way above her head. When I picked her up from daycare today, Brenda's husband said, "I can't believe she's pulling herself up at 6 months. I've never seen anything like it!" And he's seen a lot of kids. She is getting better at falling, too, which is arguably more important. She usually falls onto her bum from a standing position, which she doesn't mind (thank you bulky cloth diapers!).

She is also suddenly really good at sitting this week. All day Monday she insisted on sitting straight up, then falling over and bumping her head. It was really hard to catch her every time. But she figured it out and now she doesn't fall anymore. Again I am amazed at how quickly babies learn.


Anja discovered her tongue this week. And that moving her tongue will make different noises. This is her at bedtime a couple of days ago: