Katherine’s friend Audrey got a Rainbow System last month, and Audrey was nice enough to share it with Katherine earlier this week. As you can see from the pictures, Steve (and Katherine) had a wonderful time, going down the slide and swinging. Katherine also tried out Audrey’s plastic car. She wasn’t really sure what to make of it, but she gripped on tightly!
Feeding Bisco
It was inevitable. Katherine has started to feed Bisco from her high chair. In the past, she would hold her hand out and drop Cheerios or biscuits to the floor. Tonight, she leaned down towards her foot ledge and seemed to deliberately offer her whole wheat bread to Bisco. She did this repeatedly, despite our explaining that Bisco didn’t need any more food.
Katherine is also really enjoying finger food. Tonight, she munged up banana, cantaloupe, and boiled carrot pieces. We also gave her roasted asparagus stems thinking she wouldn’t eat it – since she refuses to eat pureed steamed asparagus. Instead, she stuck one end in her mouth and sucked out the asparagus from the stem. When she finished one end, she then flipped the asparagus to the other end and went to work on it. This continued until dinner was over, at which point she dropped it on the floor for Bisco. ๐
Other favorites: peas and rice, apricots, Zwieback toast (dry wheat toast), and any sort of wheat bread. She managed to tolerate a bit of cottage cheese this morning. She still loves Veggie Booty, but we’ve decided not to give her anymore since it isn’t very healthy for her (or us for that matter).
More Teething, Crankiness and Napping
We read in a book that babies “as they approach a year” try to go from two to one naps. Katherine a couple days this past week decided that she doesn’t need two full naps. She slept as little as 75 to 90 minutes – unlike her full 3 hours a day. Unfortunately, she’s demonstrated through some serious crankiness that she really needs 2.5-3 hours still a day. So, we’ve used all sorts of techniques to get her to nap, from driving her around to walking her in her jogger. I hope this phase doesn’t last too long, as it’s also resulted in her waking up a couple times during the night.
Katherine’s three top teeth are now descending, giving her more of a toddler look. And, we also found that a fourth top tooth will be coming in soon! That makes a total soon of 6 teeth!
Training Mom and Dad
Katherine has really learned how to train us. When she screams bloody murder in her high chair, it means that she wants to sip water from a straw or that she has a dirty diaper. When she squirms off our laps, it means she wants to walk. Most notably, she’s learned how to sleep with Mom and Dad; namely by getting up and screaming every two hours in the middle of the night. This really has a way of wearing down defenses. This also has resulted in Dad escorting Katherine to Mom who feeds Katherine and places her in between the parents.
Generally speaking, we haven’t had any major issues – until last weekend when Katherine fell off the bed!! According to Steve, Katherine and I were snoring and edged him out of bed. He put his pillow to one side of the bed to serve as a bumper and went to the other room. This solution apparently didn’t work. At 4AM, I woke up to the sound of something hitting the floor (THUMP!). I walked around the bed, and lo and behold Katherine was lying on top of the pillow on the floor. She didn’t seem too upset until I picked her up. Interestingly enough, Steve heard the thump from the other room, came running in, grabbed Katherine from me and gave her the once-over to make sure she was OK.
As a result, we’ve decided that its time to start the Farber-izing again and to make sure that Katherine stays in her crib. She cried 30 minutes tonight and made every effort to stay up. As I walked her in the upper hallway towards the family room she peered over the wall, and gave Steve who was on the downstairs couch the biggest smile. Once she realized that it was time for bed, she howled all the way back to her crib.
Gross Motor Skills & Mobility
Katherine is getting faster and faster. We can put her down in the family room, turn around and find her in the kitchen just a few seconds later. Typically, she wanders off the carpet onto the hardwoods, climbs up her highchair, or crawls under the kitchen table. I found her standing next to different kitchen chairs this afternoon.
She can also easily walk along an object like the coffee table. She uses the coffee table cushion to stand up, then walks along the table holding onto the cushion. Everything from laptop power cords to drinks to the remote is fair game for her. Steve claims that she pulled his power cord out of his laptop several times.
She also stands up in her tub when we bathe her and squirms all over trying to get at the toy most out of reach.
