catching up

Long time no write. We have been pretty overwhelmed as of late. Aria is much more active now - rolling around all over the place, pulling herself up to standing anywhere and everywhere, laughing into the kazoo, and always giggling her little head off. It's infinitely more entertaining than just a few weeks ago, and of course a little harder to keep up.

She said her first word last week, not counting "mama" and "dada" which she's been saying for a few weeks now. It was "book." Hosanna and I are not good with routines by nature, but we have at least managed to consistently read two or three books with her every night before bedtime. One night last week we kept pointing to it and saying "book" over and over again, and she was experimenting with consonants like b, g, and a soft k. Then one of us said "book" again, and she said it back. It was very cool. She hasn't repeated it since, though. It was a one time only performance.

Her tooth is almost all the way in now, and a few others are coming in. She hasn't started to drool like a waterfall yet, but there's definitely more than there was. Mostly the teething is interfering with sleep. Whatever routine we had worked up before pretty much went out the window. Now she's having trouble taking naps in the afternoon, and often falls asleep at six or seven only to wake up shortly afterwards and then be awake until 10:30, 11, even midnight. She's also started to let me rock her to sleep more often, and sometimes Hosanna can't get her to sleep by nursing her (shocker! the boob doesn't work?!?!?!?).

She's eating solid food twice a day now - usually rice cereal in the morning and some kind of fruit or vegetable in the afternoon. A couple days ago we actually used up an entire jar of baby food for the first time. (Not all in one sitting, but still - it felt big.) Feeding her solid food is still something we're trying to work into our "routine" around eating... of course calling it a routine is really stretching, since we eat at seemingly random times without much pattern. We're trying to change that, but habits die hard.

What else... Um... did I mention she's crawling all over the place? We took the coffee table out of our living room, set up a fence, and now she spends a lot of time on the living room floor. She enjoys rolling around out there, playing with toys, climbing all over people, pulling herself up onto the couch or fence... but most of all she loves chasing Charlie. She likes to grab his fur (he meows) or ram him with her head (he purrs). She has a hard head. She falls down and hits it seemingly constantly but it doesn't seem to bother her. She has also occasionally rammed it into a wall, fence, cabinet, whatever, and not been hurt. I guess she's just testing things out.