Geek Habitat

I can’t keep up — December’s always seem to pass at warp speed, and this year it seems doubly true. I just finished my Christmas shopping yesterday (all online again, this year — thank you, Amazon, ThinkGeek, Girls With Wings, Sporty’s Pilot Shop, GreenFeet, etc.) Now the waiting game begins, since most of the final orders aren’t arriving until December 22^nd. I haven’t done the birthday shopping that soon follows — mine’s first (so no shopping, there, thankfully!), three days after Christmas. Then Mom and Justin in early/mid January…

Anyway, so many things to update and/or do, so little time. I can’t even keep up with Flickr posts so all that’s getting on there are crappy (no post-processing to correct for poor exposure, color shift, etc.) cameraphone snapshots. I put our (pre-lit) artificial Christmas tree up on December 3, but we haven’t had time to decorate it as a family so undecorated, it remains. And Jim — my cats keep thinking the box of girly baby clothing destined for you to pick up is their winter bedding, so I need to rewash and fold everything before it’s ready for Lola.

Recent Major Milestones for Sara –

• Thursday, December 6: The day before Justin, Sara and I headed to the Texas coast to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary early and introduce Sara to the Gulf of Mexico, Sara suddenly decided to crawl forward. This was an out of the blue development — she’s always crawled backward, with no attempts to scoot forward at all. Suddenly, that Thursday as we stacked stuff on the bed to pack up, she scooted from the head of the King size bed at full speed all the way to the foot of the bed where a bright yellow box of Ziploc bags was sitting. Hello, crawling!
• At about the same time, she started spending more time trying to pull up to a standing position. Last week, she was an amateur at it. Now? She’s a pro. She’s also not intimidated when she does fall over–literally just a few seconds of tears and sniffles for a reassuring sympathy cuddle, and she’s back on the go.
• At her 9-month-checkup on the 13th (2 days before her actual nine month birthday), she was cleared to start eating pretty much anything we eat–within reason, of course. She loves little bits of roast beef (thinly sliced) — her first taste of meat, ever (we never did the baby meats from Gerber–I’d heard they smelled and tasted nasty, and just avoided them.) She isn’t necessarily self-weaning from the bottle, but she’s a lot more particular about it and takes fewer bottles. When she does drink, though, she’s taking good amounts. She’s also had a little bit of all natural juice, but she’s still deciding how she feels about that. She loves her oatmeal and bananas in any form remain a favorite. She is still nursed overnight and in the early morning before her first bottle. She’s clearly doing it for nutrition, not pacification/comfort, because when she’s already full she pushes away immediately.
• She’s so fearless! She likes throwing herself backwards when you hold her, like a dolphin throwing itself into a back flip. I’ve gently held her upside down and she loves it… giggles and waits for me to do it again. Do we have a future daredevil or gymnast? Eeek!
• We don’t have many furniture items, either at our house or grandparents’, that Sara can use to “cruise” around so she’s not doing much of that. She tries to, but I have to spot her since she’s doing it around a detailed wrought iron coffee table and such. Once she gets to open her Christmas presents, she’ll have some goodies both here at home and at the grandfolks’, to get some good cruising in.
• She continues to be such an easy-going, good-natured tot. Sure, she fights her naps because she doesn’t want to miss a thing, but she is so darned happy, intrigued by new people and things, observant and cuddly. She’s nearly impossible to startle, though she hates our SpotBot and isn’t so keen on vacuums in general.
• She’s too small to really engage in their play, but she did awesome last weekend when “Fireman Santa” arrived at Grandma and Grandpa M’s house along with all of her nieces, nephews and cousins. Kids ages 9 months (Sara) to 12 years, plus tons o’ adults and one strangely dressed dude with a huge white beard (Fireman Santa).
• She’s still never been sick, and we are so thankful for our luck and good fortune in that regard.
• Christmas is really coming too quickly for my liking, but I am looking forward to it for Sara’s sake. I think she’ll love the sounds (crinkling wrapping paper, etc.) and sights and new toys of Christmas morning.
• We love her SO DANG MUCH. Can you tell?