Obama, fruit, and Christmas list

Anja is very happy. I'll leave the politics out, since this is Anja's blog, but Americans did something right this week:


I'm way behind on fruit comparisons for Laura's baby. Here are the week before last (cantaloupe) and this past week (honeydew melon):



Laura is doing a great job, and she's almost there!

Anja has also been doing well lately. Her evening schedule is really regular now, she goes to bed at 8:00. If we try to keep her up later so she'll sleep until morning it doesn't work, she still wakes up at the same time regardless, so 8:00 it is.

Her little tooth (bottom middle, right side) has really come through quite far. You can see it sometimes when she smiles, although I don't have a picture yet. She has been pulling on her left ear the last few days, so I think the second tooth will come through shortly (the pain of teething radiates up the jaw near the ear, so babies pull on their ears when it hurts).

She is so good at standing now. She almost never falls. Almost never, so you still have to stay near.


I've taken advantage of the unseasonably good weather to take the jogger out several times lately. I'm finally really starting to train again now. It took longer than I'd expected to get back into it, my stomach muscles were really weak for a long time, and the recommendation is to let them recover properly before hard exercise. Unfortunately this is the time of year I least like to run, but on the bright side there's very little competition at races, only the hardcore runners race in the yucky weather. The stroller we use has been great. I try to mainly run on the paved river trail, which is a mile from our house, and I have to run through construction and some bumpy sidewalk to get there, but she doesn't seem to mind. Here's Anja after a run to campus and back Thursday, over some pretty bumpy sidewalk. She fell asleep anyway. We'll use the stroller a lot next summer, but now that it's cold again I think we'll have to put it away for the winter.


I've been thinking about what Anja wants most for Christmas. Based on her current interests, this is what I've come up with:
-a set of remote controls
-Jay's cell phone
-dog toys
-a shoe rack, complete with dirty running shoes
-a wristwatch
-anything with tags

But what does it taste like?

Anja is very interested in exploring and touching everything now. But she can't properly assess something without putting it in her mouth. Aunt Heather sent her a fun soft bug book with a crinkly page and textured bugs with wings that you can grab. She really likes it. And likes eating it.

Here she is, SOOO tired but still playing with her book:




And also finding other uses for her mouth:


And wishing she could try more interesting food:

Wanting to walk

Anja is pretty good at standing now. When she uses something to help her stand, she hardly uses it for balance once she's up. And now she's started to let go of her support once she's standing. She can stand alone for a second or two before falling into a sitting position. Her progress seems to come in bursts, so it's hard to say whether she will just do this for a while or whether she will start to take steps soon. My mom says when I was little, one day I sat up for the first time. That same day I stood up. Three weeks later I was walking (I was older than Anja is now, though), so she could try to walk soon. I'm excited for her to learn to walk, but I would also be pretty glad if we didn't have to deal with walking-related issues yet.

We've been on an okay schedule lately. She reliably goes down for the night at 8:00. She is then usually up to eat 5 or 6 hours later. Then she's up a 6:00am for good. It's not perfect, but we can live with it. Often there are a few other times throughout the night when we have to get up and settle her back down, but she doesn't need to be fed then. Of course after the time change she will be getting up at 5am!



Anja has begun making more consonant sounds. She likes to say Da-da-da. It seems like she says it preferentially to Jay, but we're probably imagining that. She is having some teething pain again today, so we wonder if her second tooth is coming through.

!!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!