Aggie Days
Yesterday we took Alice to Aggie Days at the Calgary Stampede grounds. This is a family event designed to increase children’s understanding and appreciation of agriculture. Here are some of the highlights. Alice didn’t really appreciate sitting in a saddle. Alice liked the baby goats. There was a nice cowboy with a nice puppy (all dogs are puppies, by the way). The dog was able to herd some ducks through some well-behaved children. Notice how our extroverted little girl is closest to the centre of the stage. She just kept moving closer and closer, with Mommy in tow! The best part of Aggie days, by far, was the sandbox! It had farm equipment and everything. And sand! Alice sure loved the sand – she even put some in her own hair. At the end of our stay we got to see Blue from Blue’s Clues. It was exciting to see Blue, but Alice was getting pretty tired and hungry. Farming is exhausting, don’t you know. We hurried home for Alice’s afternoon nap. When Alice woke up from her two-hour nap, her crib was covered in sand. I guess she had some in her pockets and her cuffs.
Week of firsts: sentence, zoo visit, face-plant
This was a big week of firsts for Alice. On Sunday Cassandra and Chrissy came over to visit. At one point Alice went over to Cassandra and said, “Hi baby.” This was the first time Alice has combined two of her words into a sentence. On Monday, I took a vacation day. The three of us went to the Calgary Zoo for the first time as a whole family. Mommy and I bought annual passes so we can go back again and again. We met Cassandra, Chrissy, and Norm there too. Alice’s favourite parts of the zoo visit were all the other children. Cassandra slept almost the whole time – ah, to be that young and carefree again. Early in our zoo visit Alice was walking along the paved pathway. She got excited and started to walk quickly down a slight incline. Much to our horror, she fell face first; her mouth hit the pavement pretty hard. Corinna quickly scooped Alice up but the tears were already flowing. Her upper lip was cut and bleeding, so I scrambled to get the ice pack out of Alice’s cooler. The bleeding didn’t last very long, but her lip was already twice it’s normal size. After a few minutes she stopped crying, brave little girl. It helped that Chrissy and Norm were there to distract her. For the rest of the visit, Alice stayed pretty close to Mommy. About 45 minutes after the fall we went to the hippo building. There was an enormous tank of water with three hippos, including one baby. And hundreds of tilapia. From Alice’s perspective, the hippos were not visible but she thought the tilapia were pretty neat. Before we left the zoo we stopped off at the cafeteria for ice cream. Alice was such a good little girl that she got a Bernard Callebaut ice cream bar. It was nice and cold on her poor upper lip. Today while I was at work, Alice and Mommy were looking at photos of our honeymoon. When they looked at one of the photos of me, Alice said, “Hi Daddy.” A second sentence! What a wonderful little girl.
Get Down, Chase!
Whenever Chase gets up on the counter – a frequent occurence – we tell him to get down. He’s surprisingly obedient for a cat. The trick is to say, “Get down, Chase,” while making a downward gesture with your arm. After saying, “Get down” a few times, he finally jumps down. This morning when I was telling Chase to get down, Alice tried to help from her high chair. She said “Dow!” while waving her arms. Once Chase finally jumped down to the floor, Alice clapped for him.
18-month Vaccinations
Today Alice went for her 18-month vaccinations. Once again, our nurse was Karen – she’s very friendly, and does a great job with our little girl. Karen has only seen one other baby as often as Alice. Alice was a really good girl. She’s old enough that she knew what was coming, and started to cry before the first needle. There was one needle for each shoulder. Alice recovered quickly though, and soon was walking around and looking at everything in the room. Alice now weighs 25lb 10oz and is 31 3/4 inches tall. Her weight is around the 75th percentile; height is around 50th percentile. As with all little children, accurate height measurements are pretty difficult. Having said that, 50th percentile is pretty good for a Murray.
Counting With Frosty
Alice’s favourite movie these days is not one of her Baby Einstein DVD’s, but Frosty the Snowman on VHS. She can’t seem to get enough of this cartoon. She loves watching it while sitting in her pink chair. At one point in the movie, Frosty has just come to life. He’s surprised at all the things he can do, like count on his fingers. “I can count to ten. One, two, three, four, five, nine, six, eight… Well, I can count to five. " Tonight, as Frosty was trying to count on his fingers, Alice tried to count along! It was adorable to watch as she touched each finger and said a little word. It never ceases to amaze me how much she absorbs from the world around her.
Alice at 18 months
Alice is sure a wonderful girl, she can do so many things! Her new words are: puppy (instead of sounding like “baby”), yeah,no (for “snow”)- the word no is used profusely by Alice and she means “NO!”, daddy, mommy (sometimes sounds like mimi), pop (like a cork), more and ball. She also can make the sounds of a cow, dog, cat and pig. She has 8 teeth now, including one molar, 3 bottom front teeth and 4 upper front teeth. When she’s teething she gets a runny nose – that’s how we know! Otherwise she is an angel as always. She is wearing size 18 month up to size 2 clothing, depending on the brand. She almost fits into size 5 shoes. Still in size 4 diapers as well. We did a memory mold of her right foot today, although she was so squirmy I’m not confident it will turn out… Alice still loves watching her Baby Einstein movies; she doesn’t so much watch them as likes to have them on while she’s busy doing other things, such as coloring- her favorite activity! She likes to stuff crayons down her shirt- a behavior we try to discourage- once when I got her up from a “non-nap” a couple weeks ago, I discovered she must have had a crayon down her diaper shirt, as her crib and the wall were covered in black (yes, of course it had to be a black crayon of all colors!). At this point I can say, thank goodness for the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (I can attest to it’s wonderful cleaning abilities). We sure love our little girl!
On the phone
This past Christmas, Alice received a toy cellphone. She liked it very much, and carried it around with her often. She’s still learning how to talk on the real phone. I think we’re getting closer now. As Alice approaches 18 months of age, she’s started to pretend she’s talking on her toy phone. She walks around, phone to her ear, pretending to have a conversation. It’s pretty adorable to watch, and pretty amazing too. Sometimes she even pretends she’s talking on an imaginary phone. She’ll put her right hand to her right ear and begin chattering away. She’s got quite an imagination already. How long before we’ll need to get a second line specifically for her?
Photo Friday - Red
Alice in her little red spacesuit, in our back yard.
Firsts (and seconds) for Alice
Today Alice walked to the park for the first time! We just came home from shopping/lunch, and she didn’t want to go in the house, so I set her on the ground and she started walking, we went to the end of the street where the park is; we;ve been there several times, Alice likes the swing and playing in the pea gravel. After a few minutes we walked home (it was cold out!), she was very good at holding my hand while we were walking.Daddy took lots of photos and it was very precious. This week Alice has also learned 3 new words: more (“mo”), two, and three! She’s also very good at 2 stage commands, and has even done some simple three stage commands. Alice is also very good at using her spoon now – so much so that we even allow her to eat blueberries by herself (she loves her bluebellies!). Yesterday was Alice’s second professional hair cut, it was a little more difficult to do than the first (more squirmy, and didn’t like the hair dresser holding her cheeks to cut her bangs). We got it cut shorter than the first time, and a little more layered. After the hair cut we played in the ball room, Alice cried when we had to leave she liked it so much!
Photo Friday - Baby
This Photo Friday category was a little too easy for me, though I did have thousands of photos from which to choose. This photo was taken September 21st, 2004. Alice was only three days old. What a precious little bundle! I’m just starting to look really exhausted at this point.