Officially a Crawler!!

It seems that Abby is much more mobile at school than at home. I guess it is to be expected as we don't have much easy-to-crawl space in our living room. We have a 5x7 carpet surrounded by hardwood all the way to the bedrooms. I guess that I have refused to acknowledge that she's been crawling because she has not been doing it at home.

That all changed yesterday before church. I could tell that Abby was getting hungry, so I put her bottle on one end of the carpet and her on the other. I tell you, hunger is the best motivator! She got there in a flash, even while stumbling over her toys to get there.

Once we got to church it was a sealed deal. The nursery is baby friendly, so there is carpet from wall to wall, and more toys than you can imagine. I plopped her on the floor so that she could sit and play. I pushed the toys way out of her reach, and she bolted for them! It was GREAT! By the time Anny came down from her meeting, Abby was all over the place.

(Side note: if you want to play with toys from YOUR childhood, go to a church nursery. They're all in good condition, but about 25 years old! I don't even mean toys like the ones you played with, these are definitely the originals!)

Guess it's time to finish baby proofing the living room and kitchen. The gate to the stairs is up, and that's where my biggest concern has been. Everything else would pale in comparison.

Any advice for a new-crawler?

Books for Bed Time

Dad Labs has been focusing on Children's Books this week. (Not sure if the link will load for you. Since they got picked up by a bigger company access is hit and miss. They're also on YouTube.)

Here is one of the videos about Bed Time Books:



We have taken to reading a couple of favorites already. Snuggle Puppy (Sandra Boynton) and The Napping House (Don and Audrey Wood) are two that we all seem to like. Anny and I each have other favorites, and some that drive us nuts. For example, I tend to go fairly quickly to Z is for Zamboni (Matt Napier), an alphabet book based in hockey.

We like Snuggle Puppy a lot since we were also able to download the song from iTunes! The same was true for Barnyard Dance (Sandra Boynton, too). I am a huge fan of things that are truly multi-media.

What are your favorite Bedtime Books (so far)? Do you find that one parent favors certain books over others? Do you rely on old reliables like Seuss, or is there something new that you could tell us all about?

Discuss, please!

Defining a Good Father?

Abby is home sick again today, so I'm home again today. Luckly we found a pharmacy that could order the prescription and it will be in later this morning.

She has made forward progress a few bits at a time, but we're not quite ready to call it crawling. I'll borrow the work video camera later this week when she'll hopefully be on the move.

Since I'm home, I'm watching some mindless TV in between other things. (Cleaning out the shop is high priority, but I can only do it for so long at a time before I go crazy. There is a lot of sorting to get done.

Scott Baio was just on Live with Regis and Kelly. (Okay, I'll admit that I like the show out of the other junk on morning TV. You caught me.) I don't remember Scott Baio from his days on TV, and that is okay with me. I know what he has done recently on VH1, though I will also admit to NOT having seen any of that.

Kelly asked Scott's wife if he was a good dad, and he immediately came out with what seems to be the deciding factor on daddy-hood:
"Yeah, I changed a diaper this morning."

Is that what fatherhood is about? Are we really so stuck in dad's are good at being dad's if they change poopy diapers? Am I some sort of super-dad because I do a lot more than that!

I wash the diapers, too. I don't just "changed one this morning" but rather am often the primary diaper changer. Anny will not dispute this. There was a ten day span in October that Anny did not see a poopy diaper!

To me there is a lot more to being a good dad, some of which I do and some I don't. That's okay, by the way.

I see these things as just as important:
Getting up in the night with your screaming baby.
Getting on the floor and encourage development.
Keeping your child at the center of every decision you make.

This is a very short list, and know that there are things that are more important. For me the standards will change as Abby continues to grow.

It really RE-HEALLY bothers me when the standard seems to be diapers. I hope for the sake of the Baio family he was just giving a standard answer and that behind the scenes he is better than that.

Why I am a Jealous Dad

Okay, it happened again yesterday. Abby was home sick (not homesick, very different issue) and I got to spend the day with her. I adore my time with my daughter, and enjoy spending as much of my day as possible with the both of them.

However, I am a jealous dad sometimes.

Anny is a teacher, so when Abby is out of school, Anny is. They spend the day playing, and sometimes visit me at the office. I am almost always at work. Abby is healthy and not fussy on those days.

I get the day alone with her only when she's sick and fussy. Not Fair.

I am at work and they are at home on a snow day again today.

Okay, no more griping.

Genius Baby!

Friday's UMD infant study was based on the premise that by 12 months, babies have learned to use tools (such as pulling on a towel to reach the toy on the other end).

As with the previous studies we have been involved with, the researcher explained what they would be doing: She would put a toy on the far end of a piece of cloth and watch whether Abby would pull it to reach the toy. Then, she would model the activity a couple times and give Abby the opportunity to try again. And finally, we would watch another researcher repeatedly choose one toy over another by pulling a cloth to reach it. (This part I didn't understand, but they videotaped Abby's responses and I couldn't see her face since she was sitting on my lap.)

Well, when the researcher put the first toy on the cloth, Abby looked at her, then at the toy and pulled it toward herself to grab the little green frog! She used several different textures of cloth and alternated between the little green frog and a little yellow duck. Each time Abby pulled the cloth and grabbed the toy! But I think she became suspicious after a while because the researcher kept taking the toy away to reset it. "Why should I grab the toy if you're just going to take it away?"

All babies learn to do this by the time they are a year old, but Abby did this last week! Our Genius Baby!

Our First Parent-Teacher Conference

Oh no! Was Abby a bad girl so we had to talk with the teacher about her behavior?

Nope. The daycare that Abby is in does three Parent-Teacher Conferences a year with each child and their parents. November got away from them, and from us for that matter, so we didn't do them at that time. The others are in February (last Thursday) and May (end of year).

We sat with the head teacher to talk about all of the things on the developmental checklist for her age that she has mastered, which is everything. We also talked about the things on the checklist for the next older group (8-12 months), and she has gotten some of those things down, but certainly not everything. We'll get there.

One weird thing was to hear that we would set goals for Abby for the coming months. I was relieved to hear we are setting goals for Abby's care, not for Abby.

Our goals are:

• Increase opportunities for fine and gross motor development
• Continue to nurture trusting relationships with caregivers
• Stimulate verbal and nonverbal language development (talking, reading, singing, signing)
• Provide ample time and opportunity to explore her environment in a safe manner
• Encourage self-regulation and self-soothing techniques
• Encourage independence and age-appropriate problem solving techniques
• Introduce sippy cup (bought this weekend) and encourage self-feeding; introduce finger foods (which we did this weekend!)

We started her on half-cheerios this weekend! She's still not completely sure about it, but we'll get there. She is not spitting them at us, so we call that the right path. She has tried to chew, but since she only has two teeth, it is a lot more gumming than biting. More than a few have ended up on her onesie or bib. (Should just be bib, but Daddy didn't know that Cheerios actually do have color in them - dark brown - when it lands on a white undershirt...)

Abby is also getting closer and closer to crawling. Last night at church she made about 9 inches of forward progress! She has mastered getting on her hands and knees, but has been pushing backwards across the carpet and hardwood floors. We have begun to close the baby gate already, just in case. We're going to see the family in St Louis this weekend. Hopefully Abby's cousin Ada, six months older, who has recently been moving toward walking from crawling, can be convinced to crawl a bit as a teaching tool for Abby! She learned a lot from a couple of hours with Chase, so four full days should get some good learning time!

Abby went Friday and participated in another study at UMD, but I will let Anny post about it.

Baby STUFF - Slings

(Continuing to share the THINGS that have made parenting easier in our household)

We began slinging Abby very early on.... probably two weeks old. I was very hesitant at first

Advantages of slings:

• Bonding - Abby is on one of us anytime we were out of the house. (we do use the shopping carts now, too. She had to get a lot better at balancing to get to that point!)
• Poeple think it's cute. Okay, maybe just when a daddy is doing it, but it made me feel like a hero.
• People don't touch your baby. We have had stangers get WAY too close to our baby when she's in her stroller. People seem to respect another adult's personal space than that of a baby. Yeah, she's the one that does not have a fully developed immune system yet!
• I'm sure there are others, and am confident that either Sarahlynn, Natalie or Steph will comment below!

There are many types of slings, but we really love the two we use.

We got a Ring Sling from Sarahlynn. When Abby was too little to hold her head up, we could hold her. When she could hold her head up, we could hold her. Now that she's gotten taller and heavier, we can still hold her! They say that you can use it for as long as you can hold them. I don't know that I'll have her on my hip at 40 pounds, though!

We also have a BabyBjörn . This has done us great service over the last few months. It has more limitations, but seems to be more prevalent. Abby could not be in it until she could hold her head up, and is now on the upper limit of the height and weight limits. Okay - I'm not sure that they have a height limit, but my brother put it best when he said "I will not carry a baby like that when they are learning to walk." I'll be a little more blunt, it's more of an issue for men than women.

I can not imagine that we would have done without our sling(s). One great thing about slingers is that they tend to be easy to talk to. If you have a question, you can always ask! (We know, because we stopped a woman in Babie R Us a couple of weeks back for a few pointers!)

Another UMD study

Last week, in the snow, Abby and I tromped out to the psychology department at UMD for another infant study. This is the third study we have participated in, the other two being in the speech and language department.

Studies have already shown that if a person chooses an object, the baby will prefer the same one given a choice. For this study, they showed her a lot of different toys one at a time. Then they showed her two toys and allowed her to choose one. A little yellow box that made a squeeky noise then came out from behind a screen and squeeked at the same toy Abby had chosen. The final part of the study showed Abby two toys and this time, the squeeky yellow box pointed at one of two toys and then Abby was allowed to choose one.

The researchers paid much closer attention to which one she was choosing (they had a list where they recorded her choices), but the interesting thing I noticed was that Abby seemed to choose the toy that was an animal: choosing between a horse and a ball, she chose the horse; between a crab and a truck, she chose the crab.

Someone asked why we had enrolled Abby in the Infant Studies. I guess I'll always be a scientist, wondering why and how. The more we understand about the development of our ability the learn, the better teachers and parents we can be to our children. It is fascinating to watch our daughter learn and grow; every developmental milestone is a small exciting miracle. For that matter, Abby is a small exciting miracle.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

On Saturday we went to a surprise birthday party for a friend. Good times, except that Abby was very startled when we finally got to the crecendo of noisemakers and yelling when Sarah arrived.

Also at the party was Chase, who has just turned a year old. A-freakin-dorable baby girl. She's just learing to walk and do stairs, and mastered crawling a while ago. She eats real food (loved thr crackers!) and communicates very well.

She has also mastered the waving at yourself thing. Babies begin waving by waving at themselves. They are copying what they see - your hand pointed at their face opening and closing. That's waving when you're learning. Chase does it, and is cute when she does. Abby does not do this...or did not until Sunday morning!

Anny took off for a meeting a church while Abby and I hung out and played on the floor. I noticed she was looking at her hand, which is not strange. Then she began to wave at herself! She learned more from Chase in one evening than I have been able to convince her of for weeks!

At school she is the oldest infant. There are kids that are a lot older, but she is the oldest infant. She is the trend setter, but does not have a role model for some things. The older kids have been waving so long that they wave facing out. They have crawled so long that they walk.

Smart little girl. She needs to spend more time with Luke so that she can copy crawling! Unfortunately their family has been under the weather, so we are not brave enough to head over there for the day on this bitter-cold holiday.

Snow Much Fun

From January 2008

Abby is a HUGE fan of the white stuff! As you can see, there was not enough on the ground to cover all of the grass, but more than an inch and we call that a snowfall!

I made a little snowman for her (click on the picture above to look at others) and she was amused by him. I broke his "head" off for her to play with inside. Mommies and daddies sometimes disagree on how much time little girls should be outside, so we compromise. Abby could go inside, but only if the snow came with.

Abby is still working on that second tooth, so she really liked chewing on the cold snow in the house. Her hands were turning orange because of how cold they were, but whenever I tried to take it from her she cried. Eventually she lost interest, thank goodness.

Yesterday she also went to the University of Maryland for another Infant Study. Anny took her, so I'll let Anny post about that over the weekend.