melted smoosh

' dearest sweetpea, you are such a little person now! walking and talking are the only things holding you back from full toddlerhood, and it's amazing (and a little bit terrifying) to watch how quickly you're developing beyond the tabula rasa of babyhood. you're now crawling all over the house, pulling up to your knees, cruising along the furniture if we help you stand up, and somehow, consistently intrigued by the most dangerous or messy things you can find (Kaiser's water dish, the grate under the refrigerator, cupboard doors and the contents therein). you're still rocking the two-tooth grin, but your mealtimes are beginning to follow a more grown-up routine. you drink a 5 oz bottle as soon as you wake up, followed by a breakfast of pureed fruit or oatmeal, then an hour later or so you'll feed yourself scrambled eggs or more fruit. you get another bottle around 10 or 11 am, then blended veggies, our leftovers, or a jar of a Gerber meat dinner....

i want to remember always the weight of your head in my palm, the trusting fullness of your tummy tucked in the crook of my arm; your little murmurs of satisfaction and your butterfly hands flittering up to my shoulder, then weightlessly floating back down, your exquisite earlobe moving back and forth with every swallow. i want to remember always the way your chest rises and falls like a little bird and how, when you fall asleep, you turn your head and purse your perfect lips and stop breathing for an endless moment and then sigh, and i curl you up to me, cradling all of you, all you are now and all you are going to be, and then softly lay you down in your little bed. you stretch into a snow angel. 

it's a quarter past ten on Monday morning, and instead of reviewing lab results, palpating an abdomen, filling out medical necessity forms for diabetic supplies, or anesthetizing an abscess before performing an I&D, i'm home. greta just finished an entire trayful of scrambled egg bits and i took her upstairs to read Guess How Much I Love You  (a baby shower gift from Jon's mom!), laid her in her crib in her t-shirt and FuzziBunz diaper, and tiptoed out of the room with her laundry basket. but instead of throwing her clothes in the wash, i'm writing. the breeze is barely rustling the leaves on the big tree by the garage and a mourning dove is cooing, a sound that always makes me think of Camano. bertram is perched on the counter like a little orange owl, blinking slowly at the quiet kitchen. kaiser has squashed himself into the corner between the back door and the closet so he can take a snooze, assured that no intruders can sneak up behind him. and a few halfheart...

dear Sweetpea, i think August may have been our most exciting month yet! technically speaking, the action started the last few days of July when your great-grandparents Wayne and Janeen came to visit on their way back to Massachusetts. they brought you a bear that plays peek-a-boo and you were enthralled with Gramps' Donald Duck voice and Janeen's nursery rhymes. you are so lucky to have three sets of great-grandparents still living!  on the last night of their visit, we discovered that your first tooth had popped through -- at age 8 months and 3 days, to be exact! you celebrated by devouring a few rice rusks ("mum-mums"). your second tooth made its appearance two weeks later. you've had a few fussy days and some night-wakings, and if you're really miserable, some Tylenol calms you down, but you're still generally your happy little self! you love to feed yourself peaches, bananas, cucumbers and plain pasta, and we puree our dinner leftovers...

dearest Sweetpea, this month you've really started to have a lot of fun playing with us -- and we have fun playing with you ! you like to pull your blanket over your head to play peek-a-boo, and you wave "hi" and "goodbye", sometimes with your whole arm, other times with the cutest little flutter of your hand. if you're in your exersaucer, you'll push the buttons to play music, then wiggle and bounce with a huge smile on your face. and you love to clap, although you probably think your parents are cah-RAZY for how much we "ooh" and "aah" over your new tricks! such is the fate of the first born. :) you also take great delight in tapping your hand over your mouth to make an "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" sound, especially in church or any other time you're supposed to be quiet. i'm pretty sure that your favourite skill is ... starting to crawl! you started off at the beginning of the month by pulling your knees into ...

dearest Sweetpea, life with you just keeps getting better and better! you are thrilled with your new skills that help you play and explore your toys in new ways -- sitting up, twisting around without falling over, easily transferring toys between hands and working on that pincer grasp. there are some days that you don't cry at all which is just insane. even when you are upset (for example, when we went out to dinner this week during the USA vs. Portugal World Cup game and you cried every time the crowd cheered), you calm down easily with some snuggles and distraction.  you have definitely found your voice this month. you especially like to talk and sing during the homily at church! your favourite syllable to repeat is "da-da-da-da-da", although we don't think you know what you're saying at this point. squealing, cooing, grunting, and whispering -- you love to experiment with your voice.  we are so lucky to have your Grammy Sabrina come o...

oh, baby girl. how can it possibly have been half a YEAR already since we first snuggled you? somehow, in the last few weeks, you seem to be growing up right in front of my eyes. your facial features are becoming more defined, you have favourite toys and books, you're sitting up by yourself (for up to ten seconds before you lose your balance!) and you're eating solid foods. your personality is becoming more apparent, too. you are the personification of chill ... generally relaxed, not necessarily smiling all the time, but not bothered by changes in your routine.  thanks to your easy-going disposition, you were a champion traveler on your first set of flights to visit the Geiger Gang in Redmond. this was the first time you had met your Uncle John and Uncle James, and we were so lucky to spend time with the whole family (Auntie Kelli and Uncle Colin drove in from Spokane, Uncle John flew from Boulder, CO and his girlfriend Genesis traveled from Ellensburg, an...