Embracing a Baby Doll

First time ever!  Ruby has never been one for "transitional objects" or sucking her thumb, or pacifiers, and never really showed affection toward a baby doll before today.  But today, she did!

K

one day until Ruby's birthday!  Did we mention that she's walking?

Talking a Blue Streak

At about 9 1/2 months, Ruby began saying "cat" all the time. At first it meant "non-human animal" and could also be applied to inanimate objects. She would wake up at 5 AM, sit bolt upright and declaim: "Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat. Cat-cat." This last we came to understand meant "That's the cat," which mama has been saying to her since birth. We have four of them, so there were evidently plenty of occasions for drumming home this lesson. Now the word seems to have become specified and Ruby has moved on, trying to suss out the difference between "cat" and "hat" and experimenting with the referent of "mama" (can mean "dad," "breasts," "I'm tired," and of course "Mama") and saying a lot of "Dae-woo" and "ba-be-buh" and suchlike. She also has the signs for "nurse" and "more," both of which mean a range of things having to do with food and desire. As her vocabulary gets more specific, so do her desires: not just any food, but a cracker; not just any book, but "Wheels on the Bus." She has begun bossing us around for real.

Walking??!!

Why walk when crawling is so much faster--and safer? Ruby takes a few steps at a time, sometimes launching herself into mama's arms, other times staggering stiff-legged across a cavernous space by herself. Her preferred method for walking is holding onto our fingers, but we're living in fear: soon, she'll be walking around bonking herself constantly, rummaging through dangerous drawers, flinging herself into harm's way in the blink of an eye....

Summer 2008 Slideshow

Slideshow of Ruby Days One and Two

Barker Dam, Explained

I just wanted to show that I'm still capable of appreciating beauty in the world that isn't Ruby. From an el Nino year, at J-Tree.

Barker Dam Joshua Treee National Park

Ruby Stands on her own two feet!

She's done this before, but today has been a big practice standing up day. Before she would be standing next to a couch with one hand on the couch, and a set of spoons in her hand. Then she'd take one hand off, and almost absent-mindedly, shake the spoons in the air -- and voila! No hands! But today, she's been doing it over and over again, like she's practicing.

Ruby Waves!

Yesterday, Ruby waved to her Grandma!

Ruby Walks!

Okay, not really, but for about two weeks now, if you hold her hands and walk her toward and interesting goal (viz, Elizabeth or me), she will stride right along. Sometimes a little drunkenly, but mostly quite purposefully. I was saying at the beginning of the month that she would walk by the end of the month, but unless she has a burst today, that clearly isn't going to happen. Clearly, though, by the time of the "gathering of the Carries" (our simultaneously pregnant friends) are here in mid-October, Ruby will be toddling around, and we'll be running after her.

And the living is easy . . .

With my Mom in Sunny Glasgow

Jet Lag

Humans are not meant to hurtle through the air at 500 miles an hour, and a few weeks ago we certainly found that to be the case. Returning from Glasgow, we all had a tough time with the nine hour time change. Ruby woke up at 4 a.m. one morning (for the day), 3:45 the next, and then at one hour intervals all night long the night after that.

I want banana!

Ruby in Swansea 8 months old

Wow!

Scottish Children's Rhymes

Straight from Glasgow, one from Liz, and one from Gordon's mum, Nancy.

Chick chick chick chicken - Lay a little egg for me.
Chick chick chick chicken - I want one for my tea.
I haven't had an egg since Easter - and now it's half past three.
So! Chick chick chick chicken - Lay a little egg for me.

(Liz)

Clap clap handies, Daddy's comin hame
Penny's in his pocket for his ain wee wean.

(Nancy)

Cheerios and Avocado

Part of any balanced diet. We were at the Danner/Gerdsen (my mom's maiden name) clan gathering yesterday, and I gave Ruby some sliced up avocado and some cheerios. She always likes the cheerios, and has been mastering the "pincer grip" for a while now (setting a world record of getting five individual cheerios in a row into her mouth just a few days ago), but she really went after the avocado this time, with much mess and gusto. The main thing is still breast milk from mama, (kudos to her), but solids have been irregularly making their way to her for a few weeks now.
In attendance yesterday: Grammy, Poppy, Christie, Bob, Stephanie (Alexis in Venice, a no-show), Rod, Cassie, Kate, Jack, Gary and Ann Neeta.
Stephanie voiced a number of complaints about the sparseness of the entries in her baby book, and some concern was raised that Ruby doesn't have a baby book at all. Christie's response to her daughter: "Everyone needs something to talk about in therapy -- you have your bare-bones baby book, and Ruby won't have had one at all."
I felt a bit guilty about Ruby not having a baby book, though only guilty enough to add an entry to the blog (this one), not guilty enough to go out and buy an actual baby book.
One last thing: Ruby made her way up the stairs! With grammy's close supervision, but up the stairs to the first landing she went. Amazing.
kdd

Nectarine Spasm

Two or three days ago, I was trying to feed Ruby some solid foods (it's really just for practice, not so much for calories at this point), and the food of the day was nectarine.
Not a hit. One spoonful, and she stuck out her tongue, arched her back, and raised her little fists over her head in a nectarine spasm.

Ruby learning to crawl

Sleep

Ah sleep. We are learning that parenting involves teaching your child how to get & stay asleep.
For a while Ruby took 4 naps a day. We had that down: an hour of play time, an hour in the sling, then carry, walk, or nurse her to sleep, nap 20 to 40 minutes, repeat. Now at six months she takes two big naps a day and has a lot more stamina, and we're a little confused: she can play, nurse, play some more, spend time in the sling, nurse again, play some more and only then go to sleep.....
At night, she's on what Keith terms the Breast Verification Program. We try to assure her the breast will be there in the morning, but so far she checks in four or five times a night.

Crawling Obsession

Ruby wants to crawl. She gets up on her hands and arches herself upward, brings her belly off the floor in a yoga plank pose, and yells. Then she bunches her belly, buries her nose in the rug and creeps herself forward a tiny bit. She can go backward and she can go in a circle but really what she wants is to go forward on command, get every toy available, cover a lot of ground, pull down the curtains, eat the plants, grab the cat's tail. She's pursuing this goal with her usual incredible vigor.

Ruby Rolls!

Today, we were in Riverside at Jennifer's house, and Ruby rolled from her back to her front, and then from her front to her back. Wow! "How did I do that?" She started rolling over from her back about March 18th, and has lately been a fiend in that area.

more photos soon.

Keith

Ruby Laughs

Today Ruby laughed. We were in the kitchen, and I don't even remember what we were talking about, but I was holding her, and Elizabeth and I laughed at something, and in the pause that followed, she just joined right in. It made me cry.

Ruby Foie Gras

Now that Ruby is a healthy 3 months old, we can look back and reflect on the first few weeks.... The pediatrician worried from Day 5 about Ruby's weight gain, which was a little slow at first but then picked up to about half an ounce a day--a rate commensurate with La Leche League and American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, but Not Enough according to our rather alarmist doctors. Plural: I argued with the first doctor, whereupon she heard a dangerously high heartbeat and sent us by ambulance to the pediatric intensive care unit for a night, to monitor the baby, who turned out to be fine. Perhaps she was a little worked up by the tense environment?? So the next doctor came on the scene.... and recommended supplementing breastfeeding by 2-2 1/2 ounces per feeding. Well that meant feeding her approximately Twice As Much as normal per feeding. He threatened metabolic and brain development problems, so we complied for a couple of days, during which we fed her pumped breast milk and formula until she spit up and slept for hours on end, skipping feedings, and I developed a plugged milk duct. I got so angry I couldn't sleep. Here we were settling into breast-feeding (no easy task!) and developing a supply of milk based on Ruby's demand, and at 4 weeks old we were turning all that on its head in order to measure up to a doctor's numbers. When Keith found out that the charts our doctor was using to plot weight gain are based on formula-fed babies who tend to be overfed more often, he too was furious. So we went back to breast milk only. We had to take her in to be weighed every 5 days or so but eventually, doctor #3 declared her healthy. She also admitted that the reason for so much worry expended on weight gain is that it's the only numerical way for doctors to assess progress--nevermind the smiling, object-tracking, sleeping, contented baby herself. It was a little rough refusing to make Ruby foie gras, but in the end we feel pretty sure that breast-feeding is worth all the anxiety expended along the way. She loves breast-feeding; her mom is even liking it, these days, and Ruby still takes the bottle too, so Keith can feed her pumped breast milk when needed or desired. There is plenty: she's got chunky little thighs and a layer of lovely baby fat all over her body.