Hands up!

Sunday, at Leah's 2nd birthday party, Angela had a blast watching the other kids, and in some cases "kissing them" (aka kind of biting them -eeks). When Missy was leaving for work and saying goodbye to Phin, Angela heard Missy say "bye-bye" so Angela waved and said "bye-bye"! Yesterday, while at home I was with Angela and raised my arms up and said, "Hands up! Hands up!" - and she did it! After a little bit, she would even do it without me putting my hands up.

Scary Things

Scary for us: the second bottom tooth is starting to come in and keep the other tooth company. Which means biting is going to be that much more fun. (The first tooth is about 1/10th of the way out if you can see it)

Scary for Angela - the sound of the front door opening (or even the sound of the wind causing the door to make the slightest creak). The sound of someone walking up/down the stairs or around the house - if she can't see them. The sound of me shouting to John. Any of these will put Angela into a tizzy where she jumps/climbs onto the person nearest her and looks around the room with rapid eyes anticipating the unknown.

I can do what you can do. Well, I can atleast try.

I'm noticing that the communication barrier is beginning to dissolve. I say, "Angela, where's dada?" and she turns and looks at dada.  We play music or sing and she bops her head or, if she's standing, she bops her little bum in the air.  The other day I was cleaning the cabinets with a cloth and I could see Angela watching me so I gave her a cloth and showed her how to clean the cabinets, and there you have it, she did a wee bit of dusting. This method of imitation is very specific to what I'm drinking. If it's in a glass and I put it to my mouth, the girl wants her share and watch out if I don't let her. Diaper changes are another story. She does not like lying down and regardless of how quick we are at completing the task, she's generally screaming the whole time, unless we're lucky enough to find an object that can grasp her attention long enough to not care what we're doing with the lower half of her body. On the sleep front we have decided to do everything we can before calling a sleep consultant or letting her cry it out. After her first tooth was followed by her first infection & fever and consequently no sleep, we've actually rebounded and done better than we were before. Still atleast two wakeups per night during the hours of 12-5 and I'd like to get it down to one if not none. So the past 3 days now we've initiated a more structured bedtime routine starting at 7:30: bath, nursing, playtime on the bed, reading books, singing songs and finally rocking to sleep by around 8:30/8:45. I want to give this new schedule 2 weeks to assess our success and then figure out how to get her to start falling asleep on her own. I've finally broken down and ordered a baby sleep book to get some ideas. I can't work on baby #2 until I know that I have a shot at getting some rest before dealing with 2 children under the age of (potentially) 2.