Tags

, , , , , , , ,

We had such a lovely day with Emmie today. We can now make her laugh with games, songs and actions (as opposed to her laughing at very random things), so Peter and I spent a lot of today looking like total fools and it was worth every second.

She’s changing SO fast; she’s literally doing something new every day. She’s reaching for toys, and getting a lot better about actually getting them, and then once they are in her hands, getting them to her mouth. She spends a good portion of her days squealing and screaming at her toys, especially if they don’t cooperate and won’t go in her mouth.

Last week, if she dropped her pacifier or a toy while sitting (in a chair), she might have looked at it, reached for it and MAYBE been able to grab it (basically on accident). Today, I watched her drop her pacifier, see it fall, reach for it, grab it and stick it back in her mouth (backwards, but still!). Several times I’ve felt the pacifier fall while holding her, and by the time I turn to look and help her, it’s already back in.

She now actively turns to look at people, animals, and anything else that catches her attention and will track them as long as she can (and swivel her neck crazily to do so). If I am nursing her and she hears a new voice, she’ll pull off, look at me like “Who is that?” or if it’s Peter, try her darndest to see them, then turn back a smile a heart-melting smile like, “Ah! There’s my Daddy!” She also LOVES watching Jasper. Peter tried to help her “ride” him tonight, and neither of them liked it very much. It was pretty funny to see poor Jasper try to run away, while Peter demonstrated his cowboy skills to keep Emmie on. Yeah, don’t think we’ll be doing that again! I’d like Jasper to still like us (and Emmie).

We take pictures of her every week, sitting in the same chair, next to the same stuffed bunny her Fairy Grandmother (my Fairy Godmother) made for her, so that we can have a reference point for comparison. We are by no means the first people to do something like this, and no doubt we won’t be the last, but it has been an *incredibly* rewarding thing to do. We’ve only missed one week, Week 3, when I started interferon and was too tired to do much of anything, but besides that, we have one for each of her 19 weeks.

The photo shoots are getting more and more fun because she actually DOES stuff now. Today, we added one of the toys she’d been chewing on all day to help us remember that this was the week she really discovered toys. I even found myself wishing I had packed one once when we were out of the house! That had never happened before (and so I made sure to toss one in the diaper bag when we got home!).

She is just so stinking much fun and we just love her to pieces.