Alice at 11 months

Well, we’re a big girl now and can do all sorts of big girl things. Alice can stand on her own for a few seconds, but dosen’t try to walk away. She mostly still likes to stand and hold onto the coffee table or other furniture. She knows how to bounce a ball, wave “hello” and “good-bye” (if she feels like it), and plays shy around new people by laying her head on our shoulders. She’s still really good around people though, she won’t cry unless she’s suddenly in a big group of people she’s not familiar with. She spends most of her time trying to get Mommy’s attention, so Mommy can’t get anything done unless Alice is sleeping… Alice still has 2 naps a day, and is down to one bottle – the night time one with Daddy. She lost her morning bottle and afternoon bottle around 10 months as she didn’t seem interested in them anymore, and certainly didn’t seem to care she didn’t get them anymore. She still likes her soothers though, and has 5 in her crib. She’s also moved to the bath tub in her bathroom; we used to bathe her in the baby tub that we had in our bathroom. The first bath she cried, and she’s been okay with it ever since; she likes to move and splash around in it, and we’ve also started blowing bubbles in the bath, which is so nice, we try to eat them… She likes looking at the picture of her cousins, Jack and Connor, and has pretty much destroyed the photo as she gets soooooo excited! She does indeed love babies and children and gets excited when ever we see them. She also loves, loves puppies! Still no teeth, and not walking yet. These are for “bigger” girls, we’re not there yet.

The Big Murray

Corinna took Alice to the free baby-weigh-in at the South Calgary Health Centre. Alice is now 20lbs 14 ozs and 28" long. Soon she’ll be taller than her dad!

Pepperoni Pizza

For supper tonight Alice started with her usual pureed orange goop from a jar. We have to start with the goop because Alice is starting to prefer just about anything else. Corinna and I were having salad and pepperoni pizza. Once Alice was finished the orange goop Corinna began sharing her supper. Alice loves eating whatever mommy is eating. We received our Hotchkiss order today, so Alice had some delicious organic heirloom tomatoes. She loves tomatoes. Corinna also gave Alice some tiny little pieces of pizza, including the pepperoni. She loved it! There you have it: Alice first had pizza at 10 months 8 days old.

Alice at 10 months

Alice can do more and more every day, including being more independant. She dosen’t really like her cereals anymore, or anything mashed or pureed. Sometimes she will let me feed her a few spoonfulls of baby food, but then waves her arms around and starts whining. She likes to feed herself, and her favorite thing right now is cream cheese (imagine how much mess that makes!) She now has taken to sharing- when we come in to get her from sleeping, she often offers us one of her soothers- she dosen’t realize that we don’t love them the same way she does… She also shares her toys and likes it when you take the toy from her in your mouth and growl- it’s one of her favorite games! She also crawls mostly on her knees now (as daddy calls it version 2.0), she’s such a big girl! She also likes it when you go into a different room and ask out loud, “where is Alice?”, she crawls into the room with a big smile on her face “here I am!”. She likes to climb up to stand on furniture- mostly the coffee table and the chair where Chase sleeps; also she likes standing at the gate; she can now go from standing and holding onto the baby gate to standing on her toy box which is right next to the gate, but it’s still a notable transition (and daddy got to see it before mommy!)

Crawling v2.0

Alice has been crawling for some time now, but it’s mostly been on her belly. She looks like a commando trying to sneak behind enemy lines – pulling with her forearms and pushing with her toes. Occasionally we see her get up on her hands and knees. That takes more core strength and more coordination, so it’s been easier on her belly. But now we’re starting to see more of the new, improved v2.0 crawling. She’s still a little unstable on her hands and knees, but there’s way less drag.

Upgraded Hardware at dmurray.ca

Finally had a chance to upgrade my web/mail server. I had purchased a newer used machine for this purpose, but it was merely collecting dust in the basement. Since I was merely moving the drive from the old to the new machine it was a pretty easy process. First, I made sure Kudzu was enabled, so it would do hardware detection once the drive was in the new machine. Then I halted the box and opened the case. Once I had the drive in the new machine, I powered it up to ensure everything was running correctly. Kudzu ran on boot and removed some old config/added some new. I had to revert the changes it made to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0, but other than that everything went fine. This is why I keep /etc/ locked down under RCS control. The old server:

Read more

Things Alice can do

Alice is 38 1/2 weeks old now- that’s almost as long as she was in my tummy. Pretty hard to believe! Anyway, there are many things she can do now, some of which we’ve already blogged about. Here’s the list:

Read more

Alice Turns the Page

I was just reading a story to Alice, “There’s a Wocket in my Pocket!” When we were half finished, I said to Alice, “Turn the page.” With her left hand she reached out to grab the next page. It was pretty cute. Like all good parents, I’m convinced this is a sign of her above-average intelligence. She turned the pages for the rest of the story. How do we stand the cuteness?

Alice waves good-bye!

We were at IKEA today, and Alice waved good-bye to a woman as we were walking past her. The woman had commented on how cute Alice is and smiled at her, then Alice waved! I’ve been teaching her this in the mirror for a couple of weeks now, so I guess she decided to test it out. It’s quite adorable! On other fronts, Alice is keeping busy by trying to climb on everything- including mommy! She can get into a standing position with most of the furniture, and tries to climb up but of course can’t. She’s very good at climbing the stairs now as well. She’s a wonderful little girl!

Alice's First Father's Day

Today is Alice’s first Father’s Day. It’s my first as well. Because it was Father’s Day, Alice decided to sleep in until 8AM. She went to sleep at 7PM. After sleeping for a solid thirteen hours, Alice is a very cheerful little girl. For a week now, we’ve known that Alice can go from a crawling to a sitting position on her own. But we’ve never actually seen this happen. She’ll be merrily crawling across the floor, you look away, and then she’s sitting upright. I finally got to see this happen yesterday – an early Father’s Day present. Alice turned 9 months old yesterday – now she can have cow’s milk. Corinna put some in a sippy cup, and Alice thought it was pretty darned tasty. We went out for supper last night. Alice was wearing her pink wool dress and matching beret. She was the star of the whole restaurant, smiling and laughing at everyone. I’m the luckiest father in the world.