Swing, Swing, Swing

Last summer, when Lexie spent most of her time lying around like a (tiny, adorable) bump on a log, I used to walk with her by the park multiple times a day and see all the mommies (and sometimes daddies) and their kids playing on the slides and swings. I’d always think, “I can’t wait until next year when we can do all that fun stuff with Lexie.”

Well, in the immortal words of Cubs fans everywhere, next year is here. Today, we took Lexie to the park (sneaking in the trip before the snow hits again this weekend) and for the first time, she took a ride on the swings.

I wasn’t sure whether she’d enjoy it initially – she always had a rather uneasy look the few times I put her in the baby swing when she was younger – but she took to it right away. Soon she was squealing and laughing, which Andy and I have quickly learned in our short time as parents is the absolute best sound a person could ever possibly hear.

Of course, since Andy was there, the camera was on hand to capture the immortal moment in pictures and video. I’m sure her fans will react with resounding joy once we post it on our Flickr site.

But meanwhile, we weren’t done with young Lexie. Since we were already at the park, we figured it was time to take her down the slide. She’d actually already been down a slide once before (months ago with Jennifer when she’d taken the girls to a McDonald’s with one of those Playlands, if I remember correctly), but she since was so young then, I’m sure she will remember this day as her true introduction to playground fun instead.

Andy took her first, then I did. She seemed to like it well enough, and I have to say that given the fact that I probably haven’t been down a slide in at least 10 years and probably a whole lot more, I had a pretty good time, too. We’re definitely looking forward to a lot of fun times in the park in the future, and it’s fun to have one more activity we can enjoy with her.

On a side note, after we got home, Andy and I agreed that we really need to start bundling up Lexie in her jacket more often, if not to actually keep her from getting cold (she rarely does) then to keep all the people we see when we’re out and about from thinking we’re terrible parents. It’s not that we’re getting dirty looks or anything, but when the 10-month-old next to Lexie on the swings is bundled up like the little brother from “A Christmas Story” and Lexie is just wearing a long-sleeved shirt and jeans,  you know the other mother had to be questioning our smarts.

(In our defense, it was like 60 degrees and sunny, and at any rate, she never seems bothered by the cold. Plus, in my opinion, other parents often overdress their kids in cool weather – all the books say they don’t really need more layers than you’d wear yourself.)

Anyway, before wrapping up, I also wanted to provide an update on some of the other things she’s been doing lately – not really milestones so much as cute little things she does that I want to record here so I don’t forget these kinds of details:

• Have I mentioned Lexie’s great aversion to socks? She pulls them off regularly and (of course) often stuffs them into her mouth (which isn’t really as nasty as it could be since it’s not like the bottom of her socks are touching the ground a whole lot yet). The thing is that she often does it in the car and sometimes in public places, too. That’s one of the reasons why we recently put her in shoes for the very first time. They’re tiny, white and very flexible, and judging by the fact that they’re covered in dirt after three days, I should probably rethink my earlier statement about it not being so bad for her to eat her socks.
• Lexie just can’t be torn away from the window these days. She loves to sit on the bed in front of the one in her room and stare at the world like she’s watching TV. The cutest part is when she pushes up onto her knees and puts her hands on the pane … or when a car or person passes by and she cranes her little neck to get a better look … or when you walk into the room and see the silhouette of her miniature body outlined from the light outside.
• Lexie is generally a pretty good eater (knock on wood) when it comes to her jarred baby foods (we’re working our way up to “real” food), and Jennifer’s been trying to teach her to use the spoon herself. Last Friday she actually had some success and even sent us a video that showed our little girl lifting up a spoonful of food and putting it in her own mouth. So Andy and I decided to try it ourselves the other night and gave Lexie a spoon with a bit of pureed chicken (ugh) on it. Her first move? Jerking her arm backward and splattering the food all over her forehead, of course. Needless to say we didn’t try again that night – or since. Seems like a good thing for Jennifer to work on during the day, we agreed.

A Busy Month

I’m happy to report that Lexie seems to be finished with her recent bout of fussiness. It probably helps that she’s on a bit of a teething break – no swollen gums or sharp little white lines poking through in the past week or so. Phew!

One thing that hasn’t slowed down, though, is her rapid run through the list of baby milestones. Last time I wrote she had learned to sit up from a lying-down position and had started to stand using our hands and arms to pull up. She also was working hard on crawling and could generally get where she wanted to go, though not in a particularly fast or efficient fashion.

Now, two weeks later, she’s crawling like a pro, zipping around to whatever she sets her sights on. Often that’s a favorite toy – maybe her stackable cups or her blue rattle or her rubber teething shapes – but if you really want to get her going, the trick is to tempt her with something forbidden.

It’s amazing how early babies learn what objects are their toys and what objects – cell phones, cameras, the remote – are Mommy and Daddy’s toys. She’s also particularly entranced by glasses, laptops and, oddly, plastic bags of baby carrots. Yes, she’s quite the little imp!

Besides crawling, she’s also moved on to really starting to pull up, not just when she’s holding our hands but using whatever’s around – tables, lamps, her exersaucer (or as we jokingly refer to it, her “Lex-ersaucer”). I just know that soon she’ll be “cruising,” as they call it – using the furniture or whatever else she can get her (often grubby) little hands on to practice actually walking.

Walking!

One of the cutest things she’s learned lately is waving hello and goodbye. Of course, it’s not a delicate little Miss America wave – the movement of her hands (and often her arms) is quick and amusingly frenzied. She’s quite pleased with herself for doing it, too, giving that big, open-mouthed smile we love so much, which makes it all the better to watch.

But Andy was the one who really hit on why her waving has really struck as so amazing: besides crying, it’s one of her first forms of really communicating. For us, it’s not just the wonder of realizing that when you say to her, “Lexie, wave bye-bye to grandma” and do it yourself that she understands that we want her to do it. What’s even more amazing is when she does it unbidden, like when I come to pick her up after work or we go to get her from her crib after naptime.

I guess we’re pretty easily impressed, but then, that’s what parenthood is all about, isn’t it? And if we’re this bowled over by waving, just imagine how we’ll react when she actually says her first word (as good as she is with her ma-mas and da-das, I have to admit she probably still isn’t actually referring to us).

I can’t wait!

The Amazing Lexie

So here it is, Monday night, and Andy and I are relaxing on the couch, reading (me) and Internet surfing (him). Then, in the silence, comes a tiny squawk through the monitor – little Lexie, waking briefly and then quickly falling back asleep.

The sound is so adorable I can hardly stand it. Every time it happens, I picture her tiny little form tucked into her little sleep sack and curled up against the side of the crib on her tummy, and I’m just filled with this sense of love and adoration. It never fails, even on nights – like tonight – when she’s been fussy and irritable and we put her to bed, frustrated, after an hour or more of crying bouts and rocky feedings.

Though her moodiness can be hard to take, we know she has good reasons. Not only is she still teething, but she’s literally doing brand-new things every single day lately, and that can sure take a lot out of a girl. In the last week alone, her crawling has advanced by leaps and bounds – she’s really starting to scoot around now. Then on Friday, she started sitting up on her own from a full lying-down position (leading to some rough afternoon naps when she won’t lay down for 30 or 40 minutes, but also to some adorable wake-up times as we walk into her room to find her sitting up, happily and expectantly peeking through the bars of her crib). And today, before all the fussiness started, was amazing, too.

I got home after picking her up around 5, as usual, and we settled down to play on the living room floor. She was making her way around the room, going from toy to toy (as Jennifer says, she sometimes has a bit of toy-related A.D.D., switching from one to the next just about every few seconds), and I was goofily applauding her every move like the typical fawning mother. Then she sat down in front of me and started flapping her arms somewhat wildly (and amusingly) around as she tends to do, so I put my hands in front of her, palms up, thinking that she might have fun slapping them. But what did she do instead?

She grabbed each of my hands with one of hers and, easy as pie, pulled herself up to the standing position! Just like that!

She’s been working on pulling herself up for the last several days, but she hadn’t quite found the right vehicle yet. I only wished Andy had been there to see it, but he ran into traffic and was later than usual getting home. Luckily she was able to do it again for him a little later. Unbelievable! It’s just so thrilling to see as each new skill clicks in her mind and she just gets it.

I can’t wait to see what she does next. It’s like Andy said to me the other day – you know that each milestone is coming, but that doesn’t make witnessing each one any less amazing.

I just realized something else, too. I was feeling pretty grumpy after Lexie’s bumpy feedings and bedtime tonight, along with the general work-related stress that I’ve had lately, and even a nice dinner and some relaxing time reading weren’t shaking me out of my doldrums. But now, I feel a whole lot lighter after just taking a few minutes to re-live the excitement of her latest advances.

Who’d have thought?