A Conversation With a 21 Month Old...

This afternoon I was laying around in our bedroom doing a sudoku puzzle while I waited for Y to wake from her nap. She had already slept 2 hours and the painters outside were making a lot of noise (they're painting all the trim around the building) so I knew she would wake fairly soon. Literally, as soon as she woke up her first 2 words were "outside" and "swimming." I had been debating all morning (without mentioning it to her of course) whether I should take her to the pool after her nap or not. During the morning the sun was really bright and strong so I wasn't really sure if I should or not but when she woke from her nap it was pretty much overcast so I just decided to go for it. Now when I walked into her room I never actually told her that I was going to take her to the pool but the following two videos will show you that I apparently didn't need to say anything because she already had her mind made up on the issue. These videos were taken RIGHT after I took her out of her crib (well after I ran to get the camera) but this is the first thing that she did and the conversation that followed. It shows where her priorities are and makes me wonder what are we going to do once fall and winter come...

The Attempt:

The Conversation:

Kiddie Pool

On Thursday we were in Canada for the funeral of B's grandpa. After the service, lunch and watching the Mexico vs. France World Cup match we decided it was finally time to put that kiddie pool, which was purchased last fall, to use. Her Nana B. bought it for her at the end of the season last year and you may remember this post where Y was able to "use it" indoors.

Well it was filled with water early in the morning so that the water would be the perfect temperature by the time we were ready to use it. Y had a blast playing and splashing in it and we could tell she really enjoyed not having to be held while in the water. She apparently likes to do her own thing, here are some pictures and videos.

Videos:

Finally, A Walking Video

As I posted previously, Y took her first steps on Monday. Since then we have been trying hard to get it on video but whenever she sees a camera (digital or camcorder) she stops whatever she is doing and begins to say "cheese" as you will see in this video.

But finally, last night we were able to take a video of her walking and then she wanted to continue doing it so I continued recording. She did fall once and hit her head pretty hard but after a lot of snuggling and kisses from Mommy she was ready to try it again. We didn't get a video that time around but it was pretty fun to see her excitement. I was sitting on our couch and B was sitting in our arm chair and she would walk back and forth from one to another. Each time she would reach us she would give us a big hug and say "YAY!!!" She is truly the most adorable and lovable baby ever, we are so richly blessed! So here is the video before she fell and got upset...we're just happy that she was so excited and willing to get right back up and try it again.

Translation Please!?!?!

This video is a few weeks old but Y gets a kick out of watching it! It was taken a day or two before Christmas while I was in the kitchen making some goodies. I am not sure what she is saying so I'm posting this here to get your help. I'm pretty sure it's a Scandinavian Language so Aunt C & Uncle Å feel free to jump in and start translating at any time!!!

Here you see Y standing in front of the screen - unassisted - watching the Miis hula hoop.

Last night while B was doing a little Wii Fit, Y decided to give it a shot too. Watch the beginning segments of each video closely and you'll see her trying to hula hoop along with B and the Mii's on the screen.

Cheese

Today while I was snapping a few pictures of Y (see previous post), I would say "say cheese" before I would take a picture. Well I noticed that after I would say that she would reply with "cheese." So her newest word is cheese. Not sure if I've ever posted her words (and sounds) before but she can say: uh-uh, mmm (when she sees something she wants to eat and she even does the fluctuation in the sound so it's more like "mMMm"), dada & mama (and she does know that they refer to us), baby, bye-bye and a few others that have slipped my mind. But anyway, here's the video.

Words I forgot about when I initially posted this: Yay, hey, & uh-oh.

Like Taking Candy from a Baby???

About a month and a half ago while we were at Y's final dermatologist appointment they had a huge jar of DumDums sitting on the counter, so I grabbed one and stuffed it into the diaper bag. Well tonight I discovered that Sour Apple flavored DumDum and began to eat it as I sat on the floor playing with Y. She was, naturally, intrigued by the white stick hanging out of my mouth and below is a video of Y's first candy experience (and the last for a very long time).

Last Lesson

I had my last swim lesson tonight and I am actually quite sad to say that I'm finished. I am extremely proud of my progress and being able to now say that I can swim. There are still some aspects that I want to continue working on, mostly improving my stroke and also my breathing technique (which as of right now is pretty lame). So I had B film a little video of me swimming for you guys to see. I'm still not as good as I one day hope to be but it's a lot better than I was 30 days ago. You'll notice in the video that I stopped fairly quickly and that is because I ended up getting a cramp in my foot (ouch). But not including the time I took to massage the cramp out of my foot, it took me slightly over a minute to finish one lap in the pool!

Livin La Vida Loca...

I meant to post this video last week but totally forgot about it. While in Canada celebrating Y's birthday, she discovered the old Ricky Martin song "Livin' La Vida Loca." She instantly loved it and now, she starts dancing whenever she hears its opening beat. What you cannot see in this clip is her Nana B. who is dancing with Y, but you can see Y keep looking in her direction for encouragement. Here is a sample of some of Y's moves! I apologize that it seems dark, grainy and sometimes blurry - we should have had more lights on in the room. Enjoy!

Karaoke Anyone?

B's dad has always been a huge fan of Selena, in fact, that's probably an understatement. Well obviously his love for Selena rubbed off on his youngest son because while in Utah they brought out the karaoke machine and, well, see for yourself!

Water Ballet

While we were in Vegas we shot a video of the water fountain in front of the Bellagio. It's a pretty popular attraction and I personally love to just stand there and watch it. It's like watching water do ballet. If you've never seen it, here's a video. They do it every half hour and each time it's different. Enjoy!

For Uncle Elder Lance

Hey Lance, here's a little video so you can see how much Yanna has grown!!

New Videos

Here are a couple new videos of Y! In this one we missed the part where she was laughing hysterically but you can still see how she entertains herself with inanimate objects, in this video it was the changing pad!

This is a video of her the game she loves to play now. She crawls between your legs and then grabs hold of them and uses them to help her stand. She fully expects you to hold her like that until she says you can stop. She doesn't quite understand the amount of endurance and stamina it takes to hold your legs up for that long and if you drop them she expects you to lift her right back up or she will cry. I sure hope she tires of this quickly but B, of course, says "it's good exercise." I, of course, say "screw that."

A Visit to the Detroit Zoo

On Monday we took Y to the zoo for the very first time. As it turns out we could not have picked a better day! The weather was absolutely beautiful and even though there was rain expected (and the clouds started to look pretty ominous) we made it around the entire zoo and were gone before any rain arrived (if it ever actually arrived). Y pretty much treated the whole day as an extended trip at a park, we're not really sure if she even really paid attention to the animals very much but anytime she is being pushed around outside in her stroller is a happy time for her. We'll take her again next year when she will hopefully enjoy seeing all the different types of animals a lot more. There was one part of the trip that she showed extreme interest in, that was the Arctic Ring of Life where you go underwater and see the seals and polar bear swimming around. She noticed that there were animals swimming above her (as well as some pretty interesting people around her). I posted a video below that shows this part of the trip. It's about 2 minutes long, I tried to edit out more of the part where it looks like she's just staring into space (she's really observing the people around her) but alas I could not get it to work the way I wanted, so if you want you can skip that 10-20 second time frame, but don't skip all the way to the end or you'll miss the polar bear! We had a great time and can't wait to go again next year!

The Video...Finally

I promised to post a video of Y crawling...a week ago. Sorry for the delay and I really have no excuse aside from sheer laziness! In the video, you'll notice that she does a little crawling and a lot of contemplating crawling. Here goes:

Laugh Out Loud!

As I've said before, Y brings so much joy into our lives. Today, we were getting ready to take a quick trip to Wal-Mart and I was in the bathroom getting ready and all of a sudden I just hear this hysterical laugh coming from Y. So I peek my head out of the bathroom and see B holding a plastic bag and Y laughing at it. You know how when you want to open a plastic bag you will shake it until it kinda separates and fully opens, well apparently Y finds that hilarious. Before we left for the store we reenacted it so that we could get a video of it and of course share it with all of you!

She truly can find laughter in absolutely anything! She also finds it hysterical when I wiggle my toes back and forth or mimic something that she does. How did we get so lucky?!?!

Where Has the Time Gone?!?

As of today, Y has been on the outside world for as long as she was inside me; she's 9 months old!! Time has really flown and I must say that we won the baby lottery! She's always happy, laughing and playing and she loves spending time with mommy and daddy. We go to the doctor on Monday so I'll have to update you on all of her stats then. But as for what I can tell you, Y still has no teeth, though I think this may be the month that they finally break through. She still loves to eat and loves exploring new things. If there is a mirror in the room she will find it and occupy herself for several minutes while she laughs and giggles. She enjoys bath time and splashing mommy, although daddy always instigates that! She also prefers to have her bath with both of us present. She loves to watch videos of herself as well; we showed her the video that is posted below and she started laughing and grinning. Her favorite toy is paper and I'll let her have it until she puts it in her mouth. Once I take it from her she throws a little tantrum until I give her something else to occupy her at which time she completely forgets about the paper.

As I said before, she's a great baby and we are so very grateful for her and the joy she brings into our lives. As I look back over the last 9 months I can't help but ask myself did I take the time to enjoy it? And for the most part I can say yes but there are times that I think I focused a little bit too much on some issues and trying to "fix" them. Breastfeeding stressed me out in the beginning but as I look back I am so very grateful that I stuck it out, I love that time we have together not to mention the bond that has formed. However, the strong focus I put on trying to get her to soothe herself to sleep without me and letting her cry-it-out (CIO), I probably wouldn't have focused so much on that. The CIO method never worked for her and she just ended up crying for hours on end and every time I got near her crib she would just cling to me. I have been trying another, gentler method and it seems to be working for us. Sometimes it involves my rocking her to sleep and other times I can just put her in her crib and stand near her as she puts herself to sleep. I think she is just one of those babies that needs her mommy a little more than others. And the biggest lesson that I've come to learn is that I'm perfectly okay with that!

Anyway, that's enough from me and it's time to move on to what you're all here for anyway - seeing pictures and video of Y. Enjoy!

I'll put the video first this time! This is one of her favorite things to do - she randomly screams for absolutely no reason at all!

Y learning to stand on her own 2 feet

Playing with her cookie jar of shapes

"Reading" her favorite book

Y's best effort to crawl the correct way

The end result of the crawl attempt

Preparing to go on a Rainforest safari.

Traipsing through the Rainforest

Exhausted...it's nap time!

The Upside-down, Reverse Crawl?!?!

Just thought I'd post a little video here of Y and her new found mobility...it's interesting to say the least! Enjoy!

6 Months Old

Yep, our baby is 6 months old already, time has really flown by! This has without a doubt been the most stressful event of my life but that should really be no surprise. Given it all I will say that this has also been the greatest experience of our lives (I think it's safe for me to speak for Brandon on that too). I am enjoying every moment and have a lot to look forward to. Anyway, as for Yanna's rash she's doing a lot better now. The rash on her body is leaving now and the place on her scalp is healing and the old dead skin has shed to reveal new healthy skin - so we're making a lot of progress. I could definitely tell it was healing over the past several days because it had been itching her really badly to the point that she would awake in the middle of the night crying while moving her head from side-to-side trying to scratch it. She ended up sleeping in bed with us for a couple of nights which meant that I got very little sleep. I'm am happy to announce that last night she did sleep the full night in her crib again, whew!!!

She is 16 pounds now and around 27 inches long. She's not yet rolling over or sitting up completely on her own but it's something we're working on. It's probably at least partially our fault since we haven't been very persistent with tummy time and letting her sit up on her own. Most times we would either have her in our laps, on the floor on her gym on the her back, in her exersaucer, in her jumperoo or in her swing. So now we've been throwing tummy time into the mix and she doesn't mind it as much as she used to. She has rolled over a few times but not enough to really have figured out how to do it. Either that or she just doesn't want to do it. Anyway here are some tummy time pictures as well as some pictures that I took today on her 6 month-day!

Tummy-Time:

Happy Month-day:

Video: