Just turned 10 months old! Can you believe it? One year ago this month I was put on bed rest. It's a lot of work making something this adorable!
Every morning Mia wakes up with more teeth, I swear. I'm losing count. She has 6 with a few more cutting through.
Chili also has lots of teeth.
She wasn't a big fan of the swing that day. Thought it was super scary.
My beautiful girl.
Reading her favorite book, Mille Moo.
This is what happens when we try and get ready for bath/bedtime.
She slips out of my hands and tries to run away. Monkeys don't need to take baths!
Someone I know is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Her first time on a plane. (She thought turbulence was HILARIOUS!)
Umm, where the heck am I?
Our little explorer.
Look, we have matching double chins!
Nuffer Country.
Chillin.
Grandma and Baby Cohen. (... or is it Conan? ;) )
Zion National Park.
Nature Baby.
The prettiest girl in the park.
Going to be as tall as her Aunt Jess soon.
Good times.
A Nufferific Day.
Mia on one of her many adventures.
With Mommy in the middle of nowhere.
Yesterday was somebody's very first trip to la playa! We went down to the Higgins' condo on Indian Rocks Beach and had a BLAST.
Mia was a little unsure of the sand at first.
Umm, it kind of gets EVERYWHERE....
But I kinda like it! Being messy is fun.
She'll be building sandcastles in no time.
Not a big fan of dipping her toes in the cold water though. After the beach we got in the condo pool - boy was that a big hit or what! Mia was half asleep but still splashing around and just loving being in the water. I think the pool may be her favorite place ever.On the eve of Mia's 9-month birthday, I found a wonderful article online that made me all teary. And now I want to run into her bedroom, wake her from her nap (that I could not wait for her to take) and get this fun day going.
I really can't believe her first birthday is just a blink away.
Her 9-month stats - 18lbs, 4 oz (42%) and 29"L (92%). Perfect health and hitting her milestones like a champ! Her nickname at the pediatrician's office is Spicey.
By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author:
All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow, but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing infast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.
Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education - all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations - what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, faralong, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent, this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow.
I remember 15years ago pouring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to place country-region China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.
Every part of raising children is humbling. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the 'Remember-When- Mom-Did' Hall of Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language - mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summercamp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, 'What did you getwrong?' (She insisted I include that here.)
The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking? But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs.
There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on asummer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I backoff and let them be.
The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.
It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.
We met up with the playgroup again on Wednesday at a place called the Playpatch in Oldsmar. Mia had a blast. She was unsure at first, but after a little time and encouragement from Mommy, she became her usual social butterfly self.
Here's our little crawler in action.
Concentrating with her tongue sticking out.
Now this looks like my idea of fun.
Mia and her buddy Ella. Ella is 7 months old and barely squeezing into 12 month old clothes! Mia is onto 12 month old sizes, mainly for the length and of course, her chubby little thighs. We were having a hard time getting anything up over them!
One of these days Mom is going to cut my bangs. They are starting to fall in my eyes.Apparently here in Tampa there are a couple monkeys on the loose. They escaped from a wildlife safari just outside the city. Anyway, that's the first thing I thought of walking into Mia's room this morning. She was sitting up straight on her knees with both hands on the crib slats, trying to pull herself up to a standing position. Our little monkey was trying to break free, silly girl.
So much has happened in the last week milestone-wise. She's crawling like a pro, waving, saying mama, dada, baba and starting on her ch- and k- consonants, pushing into a sitting position from the ground, trying to crawl up the stairs already and pulling herself up on the coffee table, exersaucer, etc. I just had a little talk with her and told her to slow down and take it easy - no need to do everything all at once and be Miss Overachiever. I'm still trying to get use to this crawling thing. She's getting faster everyday. It's so funny to watch the dogs and cats watch her, like what the -? She chases them now on all fours and pulls their tails.
Yep, things are getting interesting for everyone. Parenthood is pretty darn cool. It's something else, I tell ya.
Am I allowed to eat this Spanish moss?
Mia's tee is all wrong. It should read more sugar than spice.
Hey..... I know you!
Chili was annoyed that we had to stop and take pictures.
Mia can crawl! The two things that get her to cross a room are Chili and Dad's Blackberry.
Here's another shot. The white thing up front is padding from her diaper bag. I put it there in case she tumbled forward. She pulled it out within 2 minutes of getting inside and told me to stop being so neurotic.
On Monday we met Brandi and Miss Lexi up at the park.
Here is Mia and not-so-little Lexi. She turned 3 last week on April 1.
Brandi and Lexi are here doing one of Lexi's favortie things in the whole wide world. She didn't want to leave - and she made sure we (and everyone around) knew it!
