Beatrice, Month Nine

Congratulations, Beatrice - you're nine months old!

This month Beatrice has spent every spare moment pulling herself up to standing and then trying to walk. She is also crawling at an incredible pace, racing up and down the hallways chasing the dogs. She's very, very physically active, refusing to be held still for a moment - she's even taken to "swimming" in the bathtub.

To work through some of her excess energy we've been taking her to a lot of indoor playgrounds, children's museums, carousels, petting zoos, and science centers (it's hard to let B crawl freely at outdoor parks because the first thing she does when put down is to eat a large handful of the available ground cover: sand, woodchips, grass, or leaves).


Here she is having the time of her life on a carousel (click to enlarge and see the delirious look on B's face). I might add that she sat on a real horse that exhibited the full range of carousel motion, not one of those stationary benches for infants and cowards.

Dancing to Panjabi MC

This month Aunt Gillian came down to visit while Dev was out of town, then we took a road trip up to the Bay Area to visit her grandparents in Oakland. While we were there, we took Beatrice to the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito - by the far the nicest children's museum I have ever been to, and highly recommended if you are ever in the area.

When not catching fish at the museum, Beatrice spent her time chasing our cats Odin and Andromache back and forth across my parents' house.

Beatrice continues to love trying any and all new foods, and she's moving on to more "adult" foods (Dev and I typically refer to them as "human" foods) like hard-boiled eggs, cheese, rice, tofu, dhal, cooked vegetables, and soup. For a treat we took her to IKEA to play with all the toys and eat macaroni and cheese for dinner. It was a huge hit. She also tried her first pickle at Aunt Mina's house and loved it.

"I ruined brunch."

Eating her first pickle.

Beatrice has been teething for months now, but still does not have a single tooth. Every morning I peer into her mouth, waiting. Every morning there's nothing there.

And my proudest moment this month: Beatrice vs. the Roomba. Beatrice was crawling around when she accidentally started the Roomba, causing it to roll over her fingers and (painlessly) vacuum them. She reared back, let out a whimper, and for the first time I saw a look of real fear cross her face. She retreated. But then, moments later, she charged it, chasing it back and forth across the dining room. Fear = mastered!

As always, you can find many more photos on Facebook or Flickr.

Beatrice, Month Eight

The eighth month was a big one. Beatrice is now standing up (with the aid of a piece of furniture). She stood up for the first time at Summer St. Pierre's house and has been perfecting her stance since - though since Beatrice can't walk yet, she will instead stand still for five or ten minutes while looking around with a "what next?" look on her face.

Beatrice has been spending a lot of her time lately with Summer and Summer's adorable almost-two-year-old Jack - they've been entertaining Beatrice twice a week while I work on writing. And Jack adores Beatrice - he calls her "my baby" and runs to bring her her favorite toys when she comes over. Beatrice loves Jack, too, and she doesn't mind being occasionally bowled over by his affections - in fact, the other day she managed to catch him off balance and knock him over. She always leaves Summer's house in a great mood (even if she often has too much fun to nap while she's there).

Beatrice is also perfecting her sitting, including sitting in the bath - and especially her crawling. She is crawling basically every moment she's awake. Unfortunately, she refuses to stop moving for anything, including nursing and diaper changes -even at night, she crawls back and forth in her crib until finally exhaustion takes her.

This month we started B on more finger foods, including Cheerios, cereal puffs, crackers, and yogurt drops, as well as non-traditional finger foods like cottage cheese and egg yolks. Egg yolks make more mess than you can ever imagine. Still - nothing occupies a baby like finger food. Mina and I enjoyed a leisurely brunch with all three babies recently while Beatrice was perfectly engrossed in eating five Saltine crackers in slow succession.

Beatrice encounters a cracker for the first time.

Beatrice and cottage cheese.

This month B also discovered a newfound love of swings. As you can see, she's perfectly fearless (though I'm not - I made Dev stop pushing her so high, I was sure she was going to fall out).

And now that she's older, she's beginning to appreciate things like the Zimmer Children's Museum, where she explored the water table and the "toddler bounce room," or the Cabrillo Aquarium where she sat in a fish tube.

Fish tube.

Beatrice plays with the water table.

Beatrice poses with some kosher play food at the Zimmer Museum.

Find more month eight photos on Flickr or Facebook.

Beatrice, Month Seven

Beatrice's seventh month saw her still working on most of the same things she started last month, including crawling and sitting up. She spent most of the month in a great mood, however (barring episodes of teething), full of laughter and excitement. She is very sociable, loves parties and crowds, and gladly welcomes the attention of strangers.

Here she is crawling to get Dev's Leatherman:

She's taken to letting out a loud roar of enthusiasm or victory - she does this constantly, all day long, whether bathing, feeding the dogs Cheerios, or greeting a new friend.

She has now sampled a wide variety of foods, vegetables, fruits, grains, and meats, and loves them all - some of her favorites include yogurt, puffed cereals, beef, peas, and all fruits.

Every month she gets more and more interested in her toys, which is so gratifying since I bought them for her long before she was able to appreciate them (and in some cases, long before she was born). One of her favorites is the Swedish barnyard play set.

She also adores the Rody that Patricia, Lucas's mother, gave her.

This month Beatrice met James's sister Katy.

Beatrice loves playing very rough (or as rough as we'll allow) - she likes nothing more than to be knocked over by the dogs, to tumble upside down, fall over, get back up, be grabbed and tickled, or pushed very fast in the stroller. Here she is roughhousing with Shack:

She loves music and toys that make noise, including her xylophone and her giraffe shaker (both Christmas gifts from Mina).

She also loves books and listening to stories - Travis gave us several new favorites this year for Christmas, including stories about Babar, Eloise, and Madeline.

Beatrice is very independent and insists on doing everything herself, which is charming but also messy and time-consuming. She won't eat anymore unless you let her try to hold the spoon and feed herself, and she also wants to turn the pages of books on her own.

She is learning lots of skills out of order, the harder thing before the easier thing, so she can crawl and use a spoon quite well, but she can't properly sit or use a cup at all. It's pretty clear she has her own agenda.

By far what I'm proudest about, though, is that Beatrice is so brave. She is truly fearless. On New Year's day at the Waddingtons' annual party, we showed her a wooden mango. When you turn the mango upside down, a realistic-looking cobra pops out. You might have expected Beatrice to cry or at least recoil when the snake popped up in her face - instead she let out a roar, lunged for it with both hands, and tried to throttle it. That's totally Beatrice.

We didn't take that many photos this month other than Christmas ones, but you can catch a few on Facebook or Flickr.

Beatrice, Month Six

Today Beatrice is half a year old! This month she has hit a few developmental milestones here and there but the real change is just in her constantly evolving personhood. Compared to six months ago (or even one month ago) she is just so much more of an individual now, with the rudiments of a distinct personality. Whereas once her face mostly registered only happy/neutral or unhappy/crying, she now has a range of real, recognizable emotions, including boredom, amusement, frustration, delight, curiousity, and suspicion.

The highlight of the month was the baby's first Thanksgiving and her chance to finally meet her uncles Travis and Aubrey and many other friends. Beatrice and I also took a week-long vacation to the Bay Area to visit the Blocks while Dev was out of town on a business trip.




This month we also ventured out to a baby sensory learning group (don't ask) but Beatrice adored all the chaotic, noisy activity. At one point Beatrice was simultaneously bombarded with recorded music, live drumming, hand-held percussion instruments, and ribbon dancing, and she seemed to enjoy it all. The class leader declared she had never met a baby who was so hard to unnerve. That will come in handy.

Beatrice continues to add new foods every week - fruits, vegetables, and meats - and so far she loves them all uniformly. In fact, dinner time is now the highlight of her day.

Beatrice continues to try out new vocalizations - most of them sound like the typical consonant-vowel pairings of baby babble, but her neatest trick is the bird-like trilling she has taken to making.

She also loves petting (ie., grabbing) Shackelton, Cromwell, and Odin.

She is also working on crawling - she can scoot efficiently across the entire length of a room. But only backwards. If you place a desired toy in front of her, she will work with all her might to reach it while slowly receding from it. Like so many things involving babies, it's both sad and incredibly funny. (Video coming soon!)

Find more Beatrice month six photos on Flickr and Facebook.

Beatrice, Month Five

The big news this month (besides Halloween) is SOLID FOOD. That's right, we're into the big time with rice cereal and even the occasional dabble into oatmeal. Beatrice is surprisingly enthusiastic about what is, in essence, a flavorless gruel - she even insists on holding the spoon and trying to feed herself. A mess ensues.

Also - she's sitting! Sort of. She can sit on her own for a limited time when placed in that position, but her big break came the other day when for the first time she lifted herself from a reclining position to a sitting one on her own, held herself steady for about 20 seconds, and then tipped slowly forward until she wound up on her stomach.

She's also been enjoying some forays into object permanence - she likes to sit in her highchair and throw her plastic cups over the side, then peer after them and try to find where they've landed.

Beatrice is engaging more with the dogs this month, reaching out to pet them and following them with her eyes as they lope around the house causing trouble. The other day she was crying pretty hard until Shack came up and licked her face - she stopped crying in an instant. Good dog.

Most of her time, though, is spent grabbing her feet and stuffing them into her mouth. Accomplishments abound!

Beatrice with her cousins Rosemary and Louis:

And last but not least, Beatrice celebrating with Lucas and Veronika at a Russian Orthodox church festival featuring our favorite Russian folk band Limpopo:

(Beatrice is wearing a pumpkin hat from a previous engagement.)

As always, you can find many more photos on Flickr and Facebook.