Pasta, a Pool, and a Play yard.

Since we got home from the beach I've decided to take the next step in solid food since Drea has gotten better at the pincer grasp and has started chewing efficiently. She's already started insisting that she will only eat what she can feed herself and wanting to eat any time she sees us eating, so I assume that she will start refusing food that looks different from what we're eating any day now any way. I've been giving Drea the same food each night that we eat. I cut it up into much smaller pieces to lessen the risk of choking, and I also mash it up with a fork. Drea has a taste of the food we're having for dinner, and so far she's loved most of it. Especially pasta.

She's had spaghetti with meat sauce (heavy on the spaghetti, light on the meat), a chicken, zuccini, bell pepper, and mushroom stir fry in teryaki sauce, a chicken stir fry in sweet and sour sauce, angel hair pasta with marinara sauce, and at John and Susan's she had another spaghetti dish topped with a sort of zuccini, sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese casserole. She LOVED it. I hope to introduce her to a large variety of flavors now while she's still figuring out what she likes. It makes a HUGE mess most nights, but I love that she's feeding herself. I think it's good for her. She decides how much she wants to eat, and this means that no one is stuffing food down her when she's not hungry. She's also learning all sorts of textures and generally having a fantastic time at the dinner table. I hope that she will always be this enthusiastic about dinner time.

We bought Drea a little pool. It folds up and fits in a small bag and pops up ready to go when you un fold it. It also has a little sun shade that attaches to it. I took Drea outside to play in it for the first time today.

She took her hat off and decided to wet it and chew on it like she tries to do with the washcloth at bath time every night. I decided to just let her do it since we were in the shade.

She loves water, but she honestly seemed to enjoy playing with the grass and leaves more than the pool. She had a fun time outside. After I brought her in, dried her off, and gave her a bottle she took a brief nap curled up on my chest. When she woke up about 1/2 an hour later she looked up at my face with a sleepy smile and very softly said "Mama". She's said it before, but this was a particularly sweet moment. She seemed happy to wake up with me already there.

I also recently purchased an indoor/outdoor play yard. Drea has been getting into so much I felt it was necassary for those times when I need to run to the restroom or cook dinner. I bought several extensions so that it takes up most of the living room. I guess I wanted her to have plenty of room in it. I was worried she might not really like it much, and I was sort of right. She is fine playing in it in the late afternoons/early evenings if Brian plays in it with her, but she gets really upset if we leave her in it alone. Brian usually sits in it and plays his x-box games while she crawls all over it playing with toys. I get tickled when I walk by the living room after she's already went to bed for the night and see him still sitting in it playing a video game. He looks like he's been incarcerated in baby jail.

Family Visits

The day after we got back home from Myrtle Beach Ken, Wilma, Vivian, and the boys all stopped by the house for a couple of hours. I think Drea entertained everyone. She always enjoys checking out visitors even if she isn't so sure about them. I'm glad they stopped by for a while. I think she really wanted to take away the x-box controller from Conrad. She thinks they are teethers. Everything in the house is a teether.....except for actual teethers. Those don't get the job done apparently.
On August 4th I took Drea to Piedmont to visit Nannie (my paternal grandmother). Nannie hadn't seen her since around Mother's Day and had told me to come by again any time. We had a nice visit with her, and the three of us went out to grab some lunch. Drea enjoyed eating green beans. Lucky for us she didn't make as big a mess with those as she does with sweet potatoes. Nannie showed her a dancing turtle (it dances to the song Can't Hurry Love). At first she was interested, but afraid at the same time. She sort of reached out from afar like she wanted to touch it, but wasn't quite sure it was safe.
It took her a while to finally get up the nerve to grab it. It's so cute to see her curiosity and interest in everything. She is scared of new things and people sometimes, but she never lets that stop her. She keeps trying until she finally works up the nerve to examine them.

With these two family visits she was sort of nervous about letting unfamiliar people hold her at first, and she kept wanting to come back to me for reassurance, but I was so happy to see that she did eventually let them hold her a bit without any tears and eventually warmed up enough to have some fun with them.

Drea's first beach trip

Drea's First Vacation

We rented a house in Surfside (just south of Myrtle Beach) from July 24-31. My parents, my brother Jeremy and his girlfriend Heather, Austin, Trinity, and Lydia were able to join us. We were hoping Daniel and Melissa could make it, but were glad the kids got to come with us at least.


We were staying pretty close to the beach. Here's a view from our porch.



Drea loves water, so she had a great time in the ocean and at the pool.



We spent most of our time on the beach playing in the water and sand, but we also went to the Dixie Stampede, had our photos taken with a tiger cub and monkey at the T.I.G.E.R.S. preservation station at Barefoot Landing (I'll be showing some of those off as soon as I get upstairs and use the scanner), and went to the Ripley's Aquarium on our way out of town.




It was a great trip, and I was sorry to see the week end so quickly. Drea had a wonderful time playing with her cousins and exploring. She's gotten more physically active and talks more since we took our trip. I think it was good for her. It means we really need to get out of the house more often.

Just When I Thought It Was Safe To Relax And Go To Sleep..

I love the message board at WTE. I've gotten a lot of great advice and learned some really neat stuff from the other mommies there. It's also nice to just be able to interact with mommies that have babies Drea's age.

But for the second time we've had a baby on our board die while sleeping. The verdict of whether this was actual SIDS or not is still out, because the medical exam and autopsy hasn't happened yet. The last time it happened I felt weirded out by the mother (I found out for sure she wasn't faking, but she still weirds me out even though I feel sorry for her), but this time I don't have the same feelings and doubts.

Averie's parents were really young, and they struggled to provide for their little boy. They weren't perfect parents (who is?), but they were trying their best to do the right things to support their son. He was eight months old - born just a little less than a week after Drea - and I'm sure his mom had been thinking (as I have been) that the risk of SIDS is decreased so much by this age that it's not something you should worry so much about.

I don't know details - I've heard that he was taking a nap and crawled underneath his blanket and they think he suffocated, but that's not SIDS technically. I have no idea how thick the blanket was or if he just happened to be under one and that makes them think he might have smothered. I have no idea. In the end the details never help me feel less nervous when I hear of something like this. You always hope though that there will be some sort of explanation so you can avoid the same thing happening to you.

I think about it every night. I have to sleep in a different room from Drea to sleep at all, because I constantly worry if she is still breathing. I've done everything I can do to prevent it; my baby is probably cold every night because I'm scared to even put so much as a receiving blanket in her crib. She rolls over on her tummy and scrunches up in a ball every night, and it makes me a nervous wreck. When I hear stories of all the myriad things that can suddenly take a child away I am consumed with fear for Drea. During the day I'm OK, but at night I have a hard time staying calm. I can't imagine how little Averie's mom feels; I hope and pray that I never find out.

Glimpses of every day life

Next Thing You Know She'll Be Driving

We bought Drea a walker that looks like a pink and white Mustang GT. It has a steering wheel that has lights and plays music. She loves the steering wheel, but she hasn't figured out that she can walk in the walker yet, so she isn't too excited about it at this point.

She's growing so quickly it makes my head spin. Instead of short spurts in the living room, she's now crawling all over the house. She's also gotten really good at pulling up on furniture, and has even started "cruising" - hanging on to things and taking side steps. She likes to pull on my fingers and stand up, and has started trying to take steps with us holding her hands. The evening of Brian's birthday party (July 11) she let go and stood up all alone for a couple of seconds. She's in a hurry to be on the move. I can hardly get a picture of her these days that isn't blurry. She's not a fan of sitting still.

Drea and I have been to a couple of local babywearing meetings with Brian's cousin Katie this month (we're going to miss seeing her and the boys now that they've gone back to Germany), and I'm planning to go back to one of the groups in the future. I haven't decided whether to go to the Clemson or Greenville meeting next month. I think Brian might want to go to the Greenville meeting - there was actually a babywearing father there.

Katie made Brian a mei tai wrap conversion to make it easier to carry Drea on his back. We also bought an Ergo and got a short homemade wrap and sling rings from Katie. So three new options for babywearing in addition to the two wraps we already had. But I still want more.....

Drea has been eating a lot more solid food now that she's gotten much better at feeding herself with her fingers. She refuses to be fed purees from a spoon. She wants things she can pick up and feed herself. She's been eating mashed up bananas, watermelon, cauliflower (steamed), apples (steamed), grapes (sliced into tiny pieces), sweet potatoes, and squash (steamed). For snacks she loves the Gerber graduates snacks for crawlers. Just in the last few days I've noticed that she seems to understand what the sign for "milk" means when I'm getting her bottle. She gets excited when I do the sign and looks at the fridge (we get the bottle from the fridge a lot). I can't wait for her to start doing signs herself, but that's a way off I think. It's possible that she also understands the sign for eat now, but I'm not sure about that one yet.

She's been saying Ma-Ma occasionally when she wants me to get her. Tonight she spent some time at Mama's house while Brian and I went out for our anniversary. Mama attempted to hand her over to Daniel, and she leaned back to Mama and said "Nana!". It's amazing to see the things she seems to learn over night.

She's got three teeth coming in now, and she's been a little clingy and fussy this last week or so. She wants to get down and play, but she keeps coming back to be held every few seconds. She wants two things at once, which is sometimes frustrating for both of us.

In the last two weeks she's started throwing her arms up in the air when she wants me to pick her up. I always pick her up when she does it too - even if I was planning to walk away for something. I can't turn down that sweet little face when she looks me in the eye with a hopeful expression and throws her little hands up. I don't care if people think I'm spoiling her; there will come a day when she no longer wants to be picked up, and I'm pretty sure I won't regret one single time I've done it when that day arrives.

It's all going by so fast. I keep thinking if I blink too slow my baby is going to be replaced by a teenager begging for car keys and heading off to college!