Major Milestone Reached: She's a Crawler!

So it's been ages and rather than go into detail about all the stuff that Marlena has accomplished I'll list them in briefly:

• she can roll over and back again
• she can reach forward and pull toys towards her without falling over
• she can sit herself up
• she can crawl

The last two happened pretty close together. Within the last week. She actually really started to crawl Thursday morning, and is pretty happy about it. I think what it means to her is that she can get to the toys that are out of reach. No more frustration. It also means she can head directly for my Japanese chest of drawers to play with the metal handles, because they bang so nicely!

She's also eating "solids", so to speak. We started off really well arounds 5 1/2 months with applesauce and cereal. Then we went to chicken. She was not impressed and refused to open her mouth for the next several weeks. She's gotten over that and we continue to eat applesauce and cereal in the morning, but have been working our way through green veggies. So far she's eaten:

• sugar snap peas
• green beans
• zucchini
• avocado

She's also eaten banana (constipates her a bit) and sucked on bread - she enjoyed that, but the piece of bread was gross when I took it away from her...

The picture here shows her enjoying green bean and avocado facial... And I feel like such a great mom because I've cooked and pureed all the food myself. No processed food, except for the cereal and the first month of applesauce which was left-over from my earlier days of pregnancy. I still want to introduce her to broccoli , asparagus and some green leafy stuff, much to Don's dismay. Many of these foods he does not like at all. Too bad. Also ready and waiting for her are beets and carrots that I bought the other day from a local farmer's market. The carrots are an amazing orange color! And the beets are this deep purple. Don is all excited about her eating the beets. He can't wait to see what color she'll poop and pee! I think it has something to do with his fraternity initiation ritual... Maybe she'll be an honorary FIJI (Phi Gamma Delta)...

Her 6 month appointment went pretty well. She got a couple of shots again. She's no longer in the 95% range for her height, instead she's now in the 75% range. So, she may not be a basketball player. Still she's healthy and continuing to progress normally. She didn't grow so much between 4 and 6 months, nor gain a whole lot of weight. I think all her focus now is on developmental stuff. In the week before she started to sit up by herself and crawl, she regressed in her night-time sleeping habits. She had been waking up only once, but she started waking up every 3 hours or so. I heard that when babies are about to make a big developmental leap, it affects their sleeping because they're trying to figure it out. Well, now that we have the sitting up and crawling behind, I'm hoping the sleeping will improve, and it definitely did last night. Of course, now we can tire her out by getting her to crawl all over the place, and I'm sure that'll improve the sleeping situation.

Other things that have happened to us, my mom who came to look after Marlena, has returned to Vancouver, and I decided to stop working. Just wasn't worth it. So I'm able to see all the firsts, I get to help her eat and I get to meet lots of other mommies in the mommy groups I've joined. We've also taken Marlena up to Santa Barbara for Isabella's first birthday and introduced her to the swimming pool. Daddy's really good at that. And we have a bunch of pictures that we've put up on the web, but haven't linked to from this blog, so I'll do that now.

Click on this picture to see other pictures of Marlena in hats and other head gear... This picture, by the way, was taken on Mother's day. My mom and I dressed Marlena up to get nice pictures of the three of us down at the beach, and Marlena fell asleep on the walk down and slept all afternoon. We didn't get very many pictures...

This picture was taken at Isabella's birthday party at the Santa Barbara zoo. Here Marlena and Don are having fun lying on the grass. It was a great afternoon! Did you know a giraffe's tongue can reach out and grab stuff?!? We saw it when we were watching kids feed the giraffe's. Looking forward to taking Marlena to the zoo when she's older and really gets it. We took her to the San Diego Zoo with Desiree and Craig a few weeks ago. She had a lot to look at, but I'm not sure she really got it. And most of the pictures that were taken were taken by Don of the chimps and apes...

This group of pictures was taken the day before father's day. We went to some botanical gardens close by and got some great pictures of Don and Marlena, and of my mom with Marlena.

And here are some pictures of Don and Marlena enjoying the pool in our complex. Don is a little more daring with Marlena in the pool... and when he bathes her. It's turned out to be a good thing because now she doesn't mind water streaming down her face. If I had been the only one bathing her, well, she wouldn't be as tough. We went to a play date yesterday to a pool in another complex. Marlena seems to really enjoy the water now. She certainly loves the floaty thing we put her in.

The pictures at the beginning of the blog were taken on Wednesday, August 9th, the day before she started to crawl. Click on them to see the most recent pictures.

Enjoy!