Daniel Martin

So as I sit here watching this nailbiter of an election (though I'm definitely heartened by what Zogby International had to say), I thought that I should try to catch up livejournal and at the very least update where Katherine is. So the only thing this has to do with November 2nd is that tomorrow Katherine will be ten months old.

So, on September 9th Katherine started doing pre-crawling which looked a little bit like swimming - she would reach one arm out, then the other, rocking slightly side-to-side as she did so and kicking her legs. This actually resulted in forward movement.

A week or two later, she started to crouch in a frog-like position, and rock on her knees.

Sometime in late September - I think the 26th (I know it was a Sunday) - she sat up by herself. She'd actually done this before, because Jennifer had discovered her sitting up in her crib when she'd gone in in the morning, but this was the first time we observed her doing it during the day.

During the first week of October, Katherine's crawl evolved into a standard army crawl style crawl, using her elbows and knees. That's pretty much where she's at now, though I've been noticing that her belly isn't dragging on the ground as much as it used to.

On October 24th, when we went to pick her up from the nursery the lady watching her there said that Katherine hadn't been her usual sweet self, and wondered what was wrong. We didn't know, but later that day when playing with Katherine I felt something sharp in her mouth. Indeed, she had a tooth. Overnight, she got a second one. (And yes, there was much fussing and crying that night, and Tylenol was involved)

Yesterday (November 1st), Katherine pulled herself into a tentative standing position against the love seats in the TV room - she really wants to get at Jennifer's crocheting. Today, she did that in the bathtub, though I may have been supporting her a bit (I was holding onto her to keep her from falling).

Katherine will have to find a faster mode of transportation than the army crawl if she's going to catch the cats, but they seem to be providing less motivation for her to move fast than they used to - that's probably because now they run when she heads towards them whereas before they used to let her get much closer before moving away.

She may at this point be toddling (at least with an adult to hold her hands and guide her) by the time we head to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, which as a person who hasn't installed all the necessary child locks yet freaks me out a bit.

So, this morning I saw evidence that, as Jennifer reported, squash is indeed very orange.

Oh, and twice this morning I've seen Katherine roll onto her front, get frustrated at where she is, (on her face without much recourse) and manage to roll back onto her back. She can't yet do it consistently, though.

That our daughter is darned cute. That's all.

It's been a little while, and there have been Katherine developments in the meantime.

Mostly, that she's now sucking her thumb herself on a regular basis, so has at least mastered enough hand coordination to reliably get her hands to her mouth. This means that we really need to stay on top of cutting her fingernails, or she'll scrape the inside of her mouth and get most upset.

She is sleeping mostly through the night (getting up only once, usually, and going back to sleep shortly after a bottle).

On Sunday we dressed her up in a dress, tights, and Mary Janes for the first time, and she was a hit. When I get a chance, I'll pull some of the pictures off Jennifer's computer and upload them somewhere. I also need to put some of the pictures that Jennifer's mother has taken of her up somewhere, though that requires either ripping the preview image off ophoto.com or getting the original picture files from Jennifer's mother's machine to here.

At her two-month chekup a few weeks ago, Jennifer was told that she's in the 75th percentile for her age in height, and between the 25th and 50th in weight. So we may have a beanpole if this trend continues, which would match well with what both my sisters and Jennifer's sister look like.

One three AM feeding down, N more to go, where N is sufficiently large.

So my wife asked me to find, from those people who might read my journal and who might feel like sharing, stories of giving birth.

So - how should we work this? Certainly, if you've got a story online already, on lj or elsewhere, I'd like a link. If it's something too private for a comment here, there's always email to m a r t i n AT s n o w p l o w DOT o r g.

Recently on TOOMush:
Henry says "Denmark, why do all your lj posts end with '| |'?"
Henry says "...in pink?"
Trip snerks.
You say "It's a subtle clue that I should really drop now that the family's been told and I can tell the world."
Henry blinks.
Henry is not particularly up on the details of home pregnancy tests, but he's somehow inferring?
You say "Yeah, that's it."
Denmark guesses Henry wasn't here when he was making people guess.
Henry says "When was that? I probably wasn't; I can be a little sporadic."
You say "About two weeks ago. Monday, May 12th."
Henry does not know where he was in particular, but no, he wasn't here for that. Congrats!
You say "Due in mid-January."

| |