fun on the floor...

annabel has mastered a new skill! well... maybe not quite mastered, but pretty close :) she can now sit on her own (with an occasional fall) and is so proud of herself - and of course we couldn't be happier.

tonight i was able able to draw out the rare and elusive annabel giggle while she was enjoying her new found vertical positioning. don't get me wrong, she is a very, very happy baby. she just prefers to show her excitement with a squeal instead of laughter. but tonight i was victorious.

(after watching the video back i realize how annoying my noises are to anyone but a 6 month old baby - i apologize)



or click here to view the video on youtube

sixth month slideshow

annabel has been a part of this world for half of a year! we can not believe how quickly the past 6 months have gone by and how big she has gotten. she is changing every day, learning new tricks constantly and is certainly developing her own personality...



or click here to view the video on youtube

learning the basics

i remember back when i was gearing up to take the graduate record examination, or the gre, and ordered the "gre for dummies" book online. as i was going through it i realized that i have learned a lot of stuff in my life that i successfully managed to purge from all but the deepest crevasses of my mind. the pythagorean theorum sounded familiar but for all i knew it could have been a recipe for hummus. prefixes, suffixes and roots seemed like hazy word bubbles flitting here and here as if in a dream. and don't even try to remind me how to calculate the total volume of a heptahedron. my point is that i have learned many things in my life that haven't really stuck with me through thick and thin. compare this with my six-month-old who is learning lessons hand over foot (and sometimes foot in mouth) every waking moment. and almost every one of these concepts are permanently forming her into a real live person. sure, i know that annabel is a person. she has been since her mother and i split a bottle of wine and...nevermind. i know that she's a person. but there is a far cry from an infant with the mental capacity to choose between screaming or smiling and a rhodes scholar calculating how many organic compounds and cellular organelles are involved in protein synthesis. one of the key differences is that most rhode scholars don't need a boppy pillow to help them sit up. but as i watch our daughter learn and develop every day i am constantly amazed by a very simple concept, what she just learned she will never unlearn. think about it. currently she's working really hard to sit up by herself. once she masters that she will ALWAYS be able to sit up. she learned how to roll over a few months ago. she now rolls all the time. she finally figured out how to get the food from the spoon into her mouth (okay sure, she still manages to get half of it on her pants) and i am fairly confident that that's a lesson that will stick. now, i know that there are many things that she won't remember learning yet and quite frankly that's not always a bad thing. she still constantly reaches too far for a toy when she's sitting on the floor and inevitably face plants. and then she does it again. but its all part of the process. one day it will click in her head and years from now when she's reaching for the grape that rolled behind the couch, she will be fully aware that if she crosses a point in the lean-over she will instantly be reminded of what floor tastes like. i am amazed when i think about all of this. the amount of learning that she is experiencing every minute is so much more than her mother and i are undergoing, and it is very fun to watch.

http://aggiesinohio.blogspot.com

to swaddle or not to swaddle...

our little angel is getting so big! she is almost 6 months old - where has the time gone? we decided last week that it was time to stop swaddling her when we put her to bed at night so she could have a little more freedom. we were nervous that she may not sleep through the night without her "straight jacket" but she did fine. what we severely underestimated was her ability and desire to move about the crib. we put her in her crib on her back with her lower half tucked under the quilt...

(you may need to turn up your volume - we had to whisper)


click here to watch on youtube

ps - i realize the last 3 post have been about annabel sleeping... what can i say... the girl loves her sleep :)