With all of the changes and advancements Sequoia has been making lately, there is one area that has not shown any improvement whatsoever - our ability to get more than half of her food in her mouth. This cracks me up for a few reasons - one reason of course is that it is just too funny seeing her when she is covered in food, but the other is that I am very aware that some of our friends have mastered the art of clean and presentable feedings ... all I can say is it ain't happening around here...but I can live with that.
Sequoia's personality was in full swing today from the early hours right through to bedtime, filling the hours with laughter and our hearts with that flavor of love that continues to amaze me every day.
This morning she woke us up to gentle giggles and sounds that said she was awake but not upset ... sort of unusual for her at 5 am. When we checked up on her she was wide awake on her belly practicing her crawling and greeted us with a happy little smile. It was a wonderful surprise for Colleen when she walked in the door of the nursery. It is fun to wake up smiling. It was especially nice for me since most days I do not get to say goodbye to my little girl when I leave for work since she is normally snoozing.
During the day she remained in a good mood and has become somewhat proficient at driving her walker around the house, which requires tremendous patience and skill on her part since the floor space is small and full of obstacles, but she gets where she wants to with it - well as much as is possible since it is sort of ungainly. Yesterday while Colleen was emptying the dishwasher, Sequoia did a sneaky drive-by spoon nabbing, casually driving up to the open dishwasher and making off with a spoon ... there is a BIG lesson in that ... hopefully we learned it.
Tonight we went out to dinner to a nice Thai restaurant with Sequoia when I got home from work. Sequoia was in a good mood and was having a ball sitting in my lap and practicing her newly discovered consonant sounds to go with her long standing vowels. Tonight I was really enjoying the fact that her vocal exercise of choice was the very new and classic "dadadadadadadadadadada" - that's right, not "mamamamamamama" which we have not heard yet. I'm not saying that she has actually said "dad" or "dada" intentionally yet, but it is still fun hearing her vocalizations starting to get closer to real words. At one point tonight both Colleen and I heard Sequoia distinctly say "I love dada" ... but as they say give enough monkeys type-writers and one of them will write Goodnight Moon. Anyway, during dinner I had to take Sequoia to the bathroom to change her diaper. Surprisingly the place did not have a changing station in the men's room (or the ladie's room either as it turns out) so I decided to use the small area between the two sinks to set up my own changing station. Well it was a complicated maneuver since Sequoia's feet hung into one sink and her head would have been in the other if not for my constant support...but still things were going OK. It was a messy diaper requiring a new outfit and extra cleaning turning an already complicated maneaver into an almost untenable one and right in the middle of it all Sequoia noticed both the faucet and the mirror. The faucet required an additional hand on my part to prevent her turning it on ... not too bad I guess - one hand to support her head, one to clean and change her diaper and one to keep the faucet off. That's only three hands - pretty basic stuff for a guy who's been doing this for 6 months now. But the mirror ... Sequoia thought getting to see herself and daddy in the mirror was almost the funniest thing ever. The only thing funnier than that evidently was when she discovered that her hysterical shrieks of laughter echoed like church bells in a canyon. She was in giggly girl heaven. I've mentioned it before but getting her changed was like trying to put pants on a river otter that just came from Starbucks. Colleen assures me that you could only barely hear Sequoia's antics in the restaurant's dining room, but I half expected someone to break in to see what I was doing...what I was doing was laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face. Somehow I got her all put back together and made it back to the table to finish dinner. Ahhh, the fun stuff you never hear about in the parenting classes.
Anyway, that is how our days go lately. I guess it could drive you batty if it didn't actually make you happy.
Sequoia's personality was in full swing today from the early hours right through to bedtime, filling the hours with laughter and our hearts with that flavor of love that continues to amaze me every day.This morning she woke us up to gentle giggles and sounds that said she was awake but not upset ... sort of unusual for her at 5 am. When we checked up on her she was wide awake on her belly practicing her crawling and greeted us with a happy little smile. It was a wonderful surprise for Colleen when she walked in the door of the nursery. It is fun to wake up smiling. It was especially nice for me since most days I do not get to say goodbye to my little girl when I leave for work since she is normally snoozing.
During the day she remained in a good mood and has become somewhat proficient at driving her walker around the house, which requires tremendous patience and skill on her part since the floor space is small and full of obstacles, but she gets where she wants to with it - well as much as is possible since it is sort of ungainly. Yesterday while Colleen was emptying the dishwasher, Sequoia did a sneaky drive-by spoon nabbing, casually driving up to the open dishwasher and making off with a spoon ... there is a BIG lesson in that ... hopefully we learned it.
Tonight we went out to dinner to a nice Thai restaurant with Sequoia when I got home from work. Sequoia was in a good mood and was having a ball sitting in my lap and practicing her newly discovered consonant sounds to go with her long standing vowels. Tonight I was really enjoying the fact that her vocal exercise of choice was the very new and classic "dadadadadadadadadadada" - that's right, not "mamamamamamama" which we have not heard yet. I'm not saying that she has actually said "dad" or "dada" intentionally yet, but it is still fun hearing her vocalizations starting to get closer to real words. At one point tonight both Colleen and I heard Sequoia distinctly say "I love dada" ... but as they say give enough monkeys type-writers and one of them will write Goodnight Moon. Anyway, during dinner I had to take Sequoia to the bathroom to change her diaper. Surprisingly the place did not have a changing station in the men's room (or the ladie's room either as it turns out) so I decided to use the small area between the two sinks to set up my own changing station. Well it was a complicated maneuver since Sequoia's feet hung into one sink and her head would have been in the other if not for my constant support...but still things were going OK. It was a messy diaper requiring a new outfit and extra cleaning turning an already complicated maneaver into an almost untenable one and right in the middle of it all Sequoia noticed both the faucet and the mirror. The faucet required an additional hand on my part to prevent her turning it on ... not too bad I guess - one hand to support her head, one to clean and change her diaper and one to keep the faucet off. That's only three hands - pretty basic stuff for a guy who's been doing this for 6 months now. But the mirror ... Sequoia thought getting to see herself and daddy in the mirror was almost the funniest thing ever. The only thing funnier than that evidently was when she discovered that her hysterical shrieks of laughter echoed like church bells in a canyon. She was in giggly girl heaven. I've mentioned it before but getting her changed was like trying to put pants on a river otter that just came from Starbucks. Colleen assures me that you could only barely hear Sequoia's antics in the restaurant's dining room, but I half expected someone to break in to see what I was doing...what I was doing was laughing so hard I had tears rolling down my face. Somehow I got her all put back together and made it back to the table to finish dinner. Ahhh, the fun stuff you never hear about in the parenting classes.
Anyway, that is how our days go lately. I guess it could drive you batty if it didn't actually make you happy.
2 comments:
So delightful to hear of Sequoia's expanding vocabulary AND the fun she can have while getting a messy diaper changed in the men's room, yet! What a happy little spoon-nabbin little glory-girl we've got!
Neat that she can smile and "coo" when waking up rather than screaming a demand to be picked up RIGHT NOW and not later, by golly! She's so neat.......you two parents are right to enjoy these times, they will not last forever except in your memories! Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. I was just writing your cousin, Kat in Colorado, that I still experience the Empty Nest around here....those years when everyone was still home were so FULL and so FUN! and, of course, I'm conveniently forgetting any grief experienced by anyone back then. But kids make a house a home, for sure...I'm so glad you're getting (and enjoying) the chance to see this for yourselves.
Love you guys! Grandmom
I mastered clean feeding with my first two, but it was hopeless with the third:)
Post a Comment