15 week update

Thanks for your patience everybody! We've been doing some renos at our house - painting the kitchen, entryway and hall - so I haven't been posting much. To make up for it, this one will be a photo-heavy post.

Not much is really new. Mostly, Rowan just keeps getting MORE of everything: more coordinated, more vocal, more variation in her sounds, more interested in what we're doing. She's also more cranky, more squirmy, and requires more stimulation. :-)

Rowan continues to be an excellent sleeper, usually going to bed around 8pm, sleeping until somewhere between 4:30 and 6am, eating and then going back to sleep for another 3 hours. We're so lucky! However, all this night-time sleeping comes at a daytime price. Rowan is awake most of the day and hardly naps, so she needs a lot of stimulation. She gets crankier as the day goes on, usually reaching her zenith when Nigel gets home. Poor Daddy!


Such a sweet sleeper.


And cute when she wakes up, too.


And quite a monkey once she is fully awake.


I usually try to read to Rowan in the morning.

Rowan is especially interested in watching Nigel and me eat these days. I suspect she will be one of those kids who will hijack the spoon as soon as you start trying to introduce solids.

She is getting really good at grasping things with two hands and getting them into her mouth. Her teething rattle and Bop the octopus' feet are both munched fairly regularly.


Chomp.


Mmmm. Fuzzy calamari.

3-month update

Rowan is now 3 months old. She is doing a few new neat things these days:

Growing teeth
Oh my. It appears that Rowan sort of has a tooth showing. It's not where I would expect it to be coming out, but it is definitely hard, white and tooth-like. That might explain why she's been a bit crankier and droolier than usual. It doesn't look irritated though. Maybe it's been there for awhile? Until yesterday, I hadn't thought to look at that part of her gums.

Pearly white

Well, she's too cute to only post one photo.

Reading!
Well, not quite. Rowan and I have made book-time part of our morning ritual. We're continuing with My Many Colored Days, since she really seems to like the pictures and sound effects that I make. Plus, I like it. :-) Rowan actually seems to want to flip the pages! I hold the board book so she can reach an edge with each hand. When Rowan touches a book edge or gestures, I flip to the next page. If she touches with the right, I flip right; with her left, I flip back. This makes her very excited and she makes a lot of vocalisations while I read to her. Rowan actually uses her fingers to grab the page edge and sort of flip/push it to see the next or previous page. Too cute!

The little frog princess is awake, so I must attend to her. More later!

sleeping and visits

Sleeping beauty
For the last two nights, Rowan has slept 10 consecutive hours! I didn't know that was possible! I mean, I figured that "sleeping through the night" was 6-8 hours, which she's been doing pretty consistently for the last few weeks. I was pretty happy with that, but TEN is fantastic.

Our baby is a sucky-monster


Rowan continues to be obsessed with sucking her thumb. It is great right now because it helps her calm down, but I hope it doesn't become a long-term problem. :-)



Once in a blue moon, Rowan will actually take her soother. Usually she prefers her hand (or somebody else's hand).

Family visit
We had a nice visit from Nigel's parents last night. Rowan was her usual charming self and got carried around and dandled by both proud grandparents, who she threw up on. Meanwhile, I made complicated but very tasty Korean bibimbop for dinner. I'll definitely make it again, but I'll simplify a few things.

Nigel and his dad jammed a bit down in the living room while Val and I played some French Scrabble; to clarify, we played in English, but with my second-hand French Scrabble set. There are WAY more vowels and some consonants are worth radically different amounts - J is worth 10, for example, and there are 15 Es but only one Y. Fun anyways. I would like to play more often 'cause I like words.

Chatty baby
Rowan has become a lot more vocal over the last few days. This morning she was chatting with her grandparents and her dangly toys. I love watching the ways Rowan finds to express herself. I know that eventually these sounds will become words, but I'm in no hurry. Sometimes non-word sounds can tell you more.

twelve weeks old - bring on the books!

Today Rowan and I spent a lovely hour lying on our bed. First we played sit-up - she is getting SO strong and holds her head up unaided a lot of the time now. Then, I decided to try reading her a book. It was my first time really reading to Rowan and she loved it. She did a lot of "talking" to me when I paused in the reading and reached out to touch the board book edges. She was SO excited at one point that she squealed again!

The last few days, she's been trying out new sounds, especially squealing when she is excited. The spinning sheep rattle on her rocking chair, Nigel's electric toothbrush, tickling, and now reading, have all managed to get this reaction.

The board book I read to her is called My Many Colored Days, written by Dr. Seuss, and it is all about how people can feel different on different days and ties these emotions to different colours and animal shapes. I love the way the text is written "Then comes a yellow day/and Wheeeee! I am a busy, buzzy bee" and "Green days/Deep deep in the sea/cool and quiet fish. That's me." The words make it really easy to do different voices and sound effects and physical actions to go with it, so it would be fun to read to kids of a variety of ages. And it has really cool illustrations that make me want to paint.

Highly recommended to anybody buying a gift for a young child; this book could help kids learn to articulate how they feel and understand that it is normal to have days where you feel different.

Poor tuckered out monkey! Too much stimulation.

11-week development update

Well, before I get to posting all of the holiday stuff, I'm going to write about the changes in Rowan's development. Over the past two weeks, there have been quite a few exciting changes.

Sit-up game
For the past few weeks, I've been playing a sit-up game with Rowan. Basically, I take both of her little hands in mine and pull her into a sitting position (with lots of support, of course). She seems to really like this game. Once I have her hands in mine, she has some body language cues that indicate that she is ready to sit-up - she lifts both of her legs and makes sparkling eye contact, sometimes grinning at me as well. But, just in the last two days, she has taken to *offering* me her hands and lifting her legs to indicate that she wants to play before I take her hands.

This is a big thing because it means that not only does she understand what she wants, but she knows how to communicate her desire to me using clear body language cues. Very exciting! I think that I should try to do some baby sign stuff with her, since she is clearly interested in communicating.

Vocalising
Rowan's range of sounds has been quickly increasing - today she squealed! A happy noise, but much louder than most of her vocalisations. And of course, lots of cooing and more complex sounds as she uses her tongue. There are a wide range of happy noises, some sounds that seem to indicate that she is concerned or not completely satisfied with the state of things, and of course the I'm-not-happy sounds which is about the only time she full-out cries.

Grabbing and mouth-feel
Rowan is getting more coordinated at grabbing things, especially things that are offered to her, like the handle of her musical bugs mobile and her squeeky monkey's arms. She now has her hands open almost all the time - rather than just making fists - and she tries to grab our clothes and fingers and toys when we play with her. And she is definitely trying to get anything she touches into her mouth.

She has also taken to licking anything that gets close to her mouth. Clothes, bibs, toys, my hand, washclothes. She is learning about her environment in so many ways!

Fist sucking
Rowan has taken to sucking her hand for comfort and this seems to allow her to sleep for longer stretches. Unfortunately, sometimes she shoves her fingers in a bit too far and sort of gags herself.

Our little fist-sucker

Teething?
We are a bit concerned that Rowan might teethe early because she has taken to chewing and sucking on her hand. Very frequently. And drooling, although Greg & Madeleine claim that there will be much more copious drool when she actually teethes. She was also pulling on her ears yesterday, which is apparently a sign too. *eek* She is WAY too young to be teething.

G&M gave us Rebecca's vibrating star teething toy and Rowan just LOVES it even though she can't bite down hard enough to make it vibrate on her own. We press on one of the star's other points while she chews to make it vibrate for her.

New toys
After using G&M's rocking vibro-chair at Rebecca's birthday, we decided to pick one up for Rowan so she would have a sitting-up alternative to the play mat. It has an arch with hanging toys much like the play mat and the toys can be swapped. She LOVES the seat and is particularly interested in the sheep rattle, which has a spinning red-and-white ball part that she can hit and watch. She doesn't seem to notice the vibrating chair part yet.

eight week update

Just in the last week or so, Rowan has become a lot more communicative - a lot more body language, more variation in her vocalisations, and, most exciting of all, smiling! Her whole face just lights up when she's in a good mood and she definitely is smiling. It's amazing to see.

It's a bit tricky to photograph the smiling because Rowan moves around a lot when she's happy. Lots of fist shaking and wriggling makes non-flash photos harder. Here are some cute Rowan photos I took today.

Wriggly monkey!

A happy grin

Kind of goofy

My, what big eyes you have!

Baby vocalisations
Rowan is making a much wider range of sounds and it is clearer (to me at least) what she is trying to communicate. When she is happy, her sounds are very cheery and cute, cooing and squeaking.

When she has a lot of gas or is having a big poop, she makes loud grunting noises, makes funny faces and turns red in the face (kind of hilarious actually, and helpful when we're in town because then we know it is time to find somewhere decent to change her - like Chapters or Bridgehead).

When she wants to be fed, but isn't really all that hungry, she does this little plaintive cry (a short wah sound) that you can tell is just half-hearted.

Let's play Bop the octopus!
Rowan is definitely getting more coordinated about batting her dangling play mat toys and gripping the handle of her musical bugs mobile. The orange squeaky monkey still seems to be the reigning king of her menagerie; she loves it when it pops out from behind other toys and hangs out on top of her play mat structure.