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Today we went for Gwen’s 12 month appointment.

Little MIss sitting on her ‘car’.

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I read about kids starting to use items for their intended use around Gwen’s age and thought “Aw, how cute!”

Awwww, how cute!

Um yeah. Ridiculously cute! This is Gwen yesterday using the TV remote as a phone. We gave her the real cordless phone and she threw it on the ground. Apparently she doesn’t think it’s a real phone like the remote is!

Gwen started grabbing the comb out of my hand and rubbing it on her own head a couple of weeks ago and I realized just how crazy important that milestone really is. My kid now understands that a comb is for brushing hair! Wow! That’s a pretty big leap from the ‘what’s that spiky black thing and why are you rubbing it on my head?’ look she’s been giving me since birth …

The cutest yet? This morning while I was brushing my teeth, Gwen was holding her foot in one hand and a shoe in the other, trying to get her foot in the shoe.

(Is it bad that the thought after ‘Heehee - she’s trying to put her shoe on!’ was ‘oh crap, now she’s going to want to do it herself and the TANTRUMS, OH THE TANTRUMS!’)

I can’t believe my baby girl is only one short month away from turning one.

When did this happen?

I love paper! from Kim Schell on Vimeo.

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My laptop is … not cooperating? That’s my polite way of saying that the darn thing won’t turn on.

Yeah, I know. That’s what I think of it, too.

So anyways, I had some cute videos I was planning to upload and share today but here we are, without cute photos OR videos, but text’ll just have to do!

Gwen has started a very cute cruising behaviour - pacing back and forth along the couch, end table, exersaucer, chairs, etc. Go to one end … stop … go to other end … repeat. I love it!

Gwen can now “climb” the stairs. She can’t do it on her own (yet), but she rather enjoys climbing up the stairs while you hold her hands. She uses her right knee to get up the stair - it’s rather entertaining to watch!

Gwen wants to walk EVERYWHERE now. She will grab my fingers and then hurl herself off my lap and expect that I will indulge her and help her walk around the house. If I refuse or if I stop at any point, a full on screaming, head-thrown-back, gasping-for-air temper tantrum ensues. Charming.

I’ve been wondering why Gwen’s so … fussy … lately, as I hadn’t been able to see anything going on in her mouth. I snuck a look in there today and sure enough, her right eye tooth (which had been looking white but then gone away) is now white and a bit bulgy. Poor girl’s going to have completely lopsided teeth! She’s got the two middle bottoms, the right middle top, and the one to the right of that poked through late last week. If she gets her eye tooth it’ll be completely unbalanced. But cute

We ordered some more board books for little miss so that we don’t go crazy reading the same ones again and again. We got Yes Yes (includes No No Yes Yes, Big Little, and Yummy Yucky), Pat the Bunny, Eco Babies Wear Green, and Urban Babies Wear Black. They’re all great books - the only thing I don’t like about any of them is that in Urban Babies Wear Black there’s a lot of pacifiers and bottles - no slings, no breastfeeding … but that’s the lactivist in me coming out!

Both of these videos were taken on Tuesday night. I have a million and a half that I need to upload, but these are killer cute and they’re actually current, so I thought I’d upload them first

Gwen Enjoys Blueberries! from Kim Schell on Vimeo

Stacking Fun! from Kim Schell on Vimeo

I had to get these things into the blog for record purposes, but I’ve been busy and haven’t been able to.

On April 4, Gwen’s top right front tooth popped through the gums! Surprisingly, that tooth came with very little sleep disturbance. The one beside it though? It’s really close to coming through now and is giving her lots of troubles. She’s still sleeping better than she was a month ago though!!

On Friday night at our weekly potluck, Gwen ate spaghetti! You have no idea how amazing that is, since Gwen hasn’t really even eaten whatever we eat for dinner. She loved picking up pieces of spaghetti and enjoyed quite a few bites off my fork with sauce and meat on it. Yay, Gwen!!

Yesterday, she ate wild blueberries (loved them!! What a fun, messy finger food!) and some grapes. I love having more fruits that I can give her, especially due to her low veggie consumption … I’m hoping to rectify that by buying some frozen peas … I think she might eat those. She’s been eating more and more at mealtimes … now we just have to get a good mix of food in those meals instead of the exact same things every day ro every meal

Oh my goodness. Her eyes. Sigh.

Today, I think Gwen made her first attempt at saying “Hi”. We always say Hi/Bye (depending on which is more appropriate) when she waves and today when we were saying Hi to daddy, she actually made a noise that sounded like the cutest “H-iiiiii”. A couple minutes later, when we were saying Bye to daddy, she kinda made a “buh” sound. I’m wondering if this is the beginning of first words! Such a cute little voice. Oh. And those giggles we’ve been waiting so long for? Very worth the wait I’m trying to get a video with her giggling on it.

Alright, I’m off to Goodness Me! to pick up the avocados I forget to get yesterday … it wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t have them, ya know, if Gwen ate a different veggie, but I don’t like to skip the avocados because it’s the only one she gets!

Gwen has become so fun lately! Not that she wasn’t fun before, but now she’s really interactive. We can chase her around on our knees. I can hide behind the couch and she’ll come find me. If I walk to the kitchen, she’ll follow me. She has learned to pull up using my legs, so now she crawls over to me, pulls up and hugs my legs.

She loves to point and wants a label for EVERYTHING. She spends most of the day either crawling, pulling up, or pointing. Generally it’s a mixture of two of these things. POINT “that’s outside” POINT “mommy’s knitting” POINT “couch” POINT “train” POINT “Daddy!” So fun.

She LOVES to walk while you hold her hands, or rather, while she grips your fingers. I love that pic because she so often looks like a little grown-up but in that picture, she definitely looks like a baby! Gwen also loves holding onto things and motoring. She’ll lug around that green cup everywhere she goes - dragging it while she crawls or scoots, and gripping it white-knuckled while she pulls up.

My little girl still loves to read, thank goodness! Brad and I both enjoy our books, so I’m glad that she’s inherited an interest in books. Plus, it’s one of the only times the child is still!

Gwen is the apple of my eye and even though I don’t always find it easy to be a mommy, or even to like being a mommy, when I look at this little girl, my heart swells and I feel like I can’t possibly contain the amount of love that I have for her. Things aren’t always easy, and they’re promising to get more difficult as time goes on. But when it comes down to it, we’re having fun, aren’t we, Gwen?

I’ll try

So, last week, Gwen turned 9 months old! 9 months!! That means she has been outside of me for longer than she was in my womb. That’s just craziness.

Our little miss is pulling up on everything in sight and trying to climb.

She has become a VERY proficient crawler and frequently finds the grossest things on the floor to put in her mouth!

She’s been babbling a tonne in the past week and has also learned to sign ‘milk’!

She’s into EVERYTHING in a flash - learning about gravity, how things feel, taste, sound …

… and leaving NOTHING IN HER PATH UNTURNED! One of our nicknames for her is ‘Gwenzilla’.

This stage of development is so fun! She’s a treat to watch and play with as she babbles away (”ba-ba-ba-da-da-da-pth”) and climbs all over you. Gwen LOVES books. She loves being read to, just looking at the pictures, and playing with books on the ground. If you put her down, she beelines for any book that might be sitting out. We need MORE BOARD BOOKS, PEOPLE!

Sleeping has been … difficult lately, although the past few nights have been wonderful and we’re hoping that we’re over the hump. For the past month, Gwen had been resisting bedtime (we’d lay her down and she’d push up to a sit and then pull up in her crib) and waking VERY frequently (on the order of 8-10 times a night). She wasn’t waking due to hunger, but she was waking nonetheless. Then, she stopped waking as much, but then was waking up for hours at night wanting to play. Either variation is not pleasant! For the past two nights, though, she has gone down between 8-9 (we’ve been trying to keep her awake a bit longer to get her practicing in BEFORE bed time!) and gone 7 hours without eating and only waking 1-2 times to be resettled before that one feed. Then she’s been going back to sleep and sleeping until she’s ready to be up for the day - around 7:15. It’s been a lovely few nights, and we’re hoping that maybe she’s through her need-to-wake-up-and-practice-all-my-mad-skillz stage.

I have totally been slacking at taking the pictures off my camera and updating le blog and le Facebook with pictures of my beautiful little girl. Maybe it’s because every moment she’s awake I’m ripping my laptop cord out of her mouth if I dare to open it up regardless of HOW FAR AWAY FROM IT I put her, or maybe it’s that I’ve been really tired lately and I just haven’t wanted to take the effort.

Either option is sad. Read the rest of this entry »

That’s right. It happened.

Gwen Can Crawl!!! from Kim Schell on Vimeo.