weeks 40-41 ++

All of a sudden, I appear to have fallen behind in life. I don't think time is passing faster, so I can only assume that the problem is me. Week 40 wasn't so bad. PJ had her 9 month appointment which went well. She's still in the 95%+ percentiles and only got a flu shot. There was the fantastic election results with that lovely Democratic sweep. PJ's thrush abated and the colds cleared up. I even had a great lunch with an older coworker and we had a leisurely weekend. We even got together with Matt for pizza. PJ's upper left tooth poked through and the time changed according to daylight savings but there wasn't much schedule disruption. I mean I thought I was handling it all fairly well.

But then the snot reappeared in PJ and myself and Shannon felt even more rundown and exhausted. PJ's sleep is degrading into a horrible routine of wake up every 30 minutes and/or nurse constantly. Is it the upper teeth? Was it the time change? Is it because she now must pull up and stand whenever she can? Probably it's all three conspiring against us. Regardless of the reason, last week was a blur. But I'll try to get down the highlights.

PJ is eating mostly finger foods now, all sorts of items like bacon and tuna noodle casserole and canned pears with gusto. She will eat cherry tomatoes for example by taking a bite, cringing from the strong taste and then repeating the procedure over and over. Food is a hilarious adventure. She is also starting to use a sippy cup with water in it. Sometimes she just chews on it, sometimes she uses the cup to grind the dry cereal on her tray to a powder, but she's learning. We made slow cooker pork for burritos twice over the past two weeks (due to a sale on pork country ribs at the grocery store) and PJ loved the tender pork. She's also a big fan of crusty bread and pizza crusts.

She's also doing more than just crawling now. Due to the cold weather, she spends more time in the gym at daycare with the push and ride toys. Last week when I picked her up, I found a baby girl with a huge grin on her face scooting across the gym like a maniac right at me. Steering it not her forte yet, but luckily her teachers follow behind and turn her when she scoots into a wall. Plus, she's got to pull up on everything now. Bath time has turned into an exercise in slippery danger because all PJ wants to do it stand naked in the tub. That and reach out and touch the spigot. While she looks at me seriously when I tell her no, she then does it again and again until we can no longer take it and bath time is over.

I haven't talked as much about the babbling as the fine and gross motor skills in past weeks, but she is babbling up a storm. There's full on waving now too, which I think I forgot to mention. She's waves the most reliably for us, but sometimes for her daycare teachers. But now she waves with an almost discernible bye-bye sound people. She's got the intonation right as well as the B sound. It's just about as cute as her almost correct use of Uh-Oh. As is she throws her sippy cup off her high chair and then lets out an adorable Uh-Oh again with the proper intonation and everything.

The funniest part about the waving is when she appears to be trying to control her environment via waving. As in when she starts waving randomly at Target or when she waves at me while I'm trying to get her to sleep. Has she decided that she's had enough Target and now wants to leave? Is it her way of letting us know that she's done or that we're dismissed? Or is she just randomly trying out her new skill to see if it's an appropriate time for it? Will Shannon and I cheer and smile like we do other times. It's so interesting watching language develop.

Other things I didn't write about over the past two weeks:
> Max went in for oral surgery to remove the dead nub of a tooth while Shannon was doing small animal elective surgery. I didn't think it was the best idea for her to operate on her own dog, but luckily it all went fine.

> Since it's so cold now, PJ is wearing her pink snowsuit from Grandma Marlys. Shannon's not a fan since it shows polar bears and penguins frolicking together when clearly one of these groups would consider the other a snack. It just makes me laugh.

> PJ will now fall asleep almost instantly in the car for a nap on the weekend, usually right after refusing one at home. This isn't such a big deal except it means that Shannon and I are frequenting drive thrus much more often than before. Not that we have this extra money in our budget, just that we are hungry and thankful that she's finally napping. Also see above sleep issues.

> We did our first ever portrait studio session with PJ just yesterday at Sears for our holiday cards. All in all the process was painless and the card we made it very nice. We would have gotten a cd with the raw images but they charge $120 for it. I was a bit more choked up than I would have expected when I saw our first family photo that we didn't set our camera timer for. I may have to order an 8x10 and hang it in my hallway.


> We also took PJ to a mall play area this past Saturday to give her something new to do since she's used to jet scooting all over a gym every day at daycare. It was freaking adorable to watch her crawl under the plastic tree or whatever it was. She is also so fascinated by other kids. She stares and smiles and can't wait to be mobile. Some of the kids were running around very fast, but most were nice and didn't run over my child or step on her fingers. We had grandiose plans to go the Children's museum, but we didn't quite make it yet.