Yes. This is an ode to my parents.

Hooray. I spent lunch with the Animalia again. She got happy to see me and very very chatty. She was hilarious but still a little congested. Poor manzana. I fed myself, fed her, suctioned her teeny little nose, and fed her a few more minutes before running back to work. Not bad.

I'm very fortunate that my parents live close to where I work. I live just a few blocks away from work. Travel time is nothing. I'm also very lucky that they're willing to spend most of their daytimes during the week taking care of her. They love it of course. She's as much a joy to them as she is to me. Good thing too. Infant daycare is a little scary to me.

She spends her days eating, napping, playing and being carried around. They spend time outside and take her on short errands. They show her the kitty that comes to the yard to visit (only not lately because she's started to sneeze when it's around). They read to her and play music all day long. They chat with her, in English and in Spanish. No wonder the Animalia is so bright and aware.

Sometimes when I'm having a rough morning, my dad will come pick her up, instead of me going to them, to give me just that few extra minutes at home before I have to rush to work. And lately, especially since I've been sick, they've been dropping her off at the house with her Da before I get there, so that I don't have to make the extra trip after a long day at work.

One day she's going to realize how good she has it there and won't want to come home at all.

Locomotion, another part

So she's "creeping" for real now. She can really move. I don't dare leave her in our bed alone anymore. She can sit up on her own for longer periods of time. She'll be crawling soon. She already puts everything in her mouth so we're really going to have to keep a close eye on her. She's like a puppy. A not-yet-housebroken puppy.

In a few months she'll be talking for real.

The last few days the Animalia has been saying DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH. She says it when she's hungry, when she drops a toy and wants it back, when she wants attention. Just all the time. This concerns me. She hasn't even made anything close to the MA sound. Just saying.

The other day, in a fit of DAHS, she sounded like she was complaining. So her nana started talking to her, asking if she was complaining, why was she complaining, what she had to complain about. And the Animalia just got louder, keeping up with her nana, actually seeming like she was talking OVER her nana. It was hilarious.

In other Animalia news, she has another cold. I'm surprised it took this long since I've been sick for over two weeks. She started to get congested a couple of days ago and now when I suction her... well, yuck. Just yuck. Poor baby. She seems to be in a relatively good mood though, as usual. She's almost always smiling when she wakes up. We both need a good long rest though. I can't wait til Sunday.

And then she pooped some more.

That's right. She pooped last night right before bed. The third time in like a week. She's really on a roll.

First food.

Animalia ate with a spoon yesterday!!! We mixed rice cereal with breastmilk and she loved it!!! I am very surprised and happy, can you tell?!!!

Anyhow, we were at my parents' for dinner and we decided it was time. She's been staring and grabbing at our food for a few weeks now and she seems hungry more than she used to. She's almost 24 weeks old too and has MORE than doubled her birthweight. All the indicators.

She ate Earth's Best whole grain organic rice cereal. She actually ate more of it than got on her face, hands and bib. She kept grabbing the spoon. And when she was done she kind of made a frustrated scream. She wanted MORE!

Cleanup wasn't as awful as I expected and it was just so CUTE. Yay. Now we're making plans for her first non-rice cereal in a couple of days... bananas or avocado or applesauce. The options are endless. We're cooking a huge batch of the need to be cooked stuff on Monday to stick in the freezer. In the meantime, more rice cereal, increasing quantities and some things that only need to be mashed. Some genuis gave us an immersion blender as a shower gift too so we're ready.

A little Irish

So I'm Mexican. Mexican-American. Whatever. And Jimmy is Irish. Irish-American. Again, whatever. That makes Animalia half Mexican, half Irish. I've been thinking about this.

It's going to be very easy for Animalia to know she's Mexican. We live in Tucson, AZ. An hour away from the border with Mexico. We speak Spanish to her. Well, everyone minus her Da does. Etc, etc. But how will she know she's Irish? Her Da grew up on the south side of Chicago, surrounded by Irish-Americans and ACTUAL PEOPLE FROM IRELAND, imagine that. He knew girls who took Irish dance classes after school. Etc, etc.

So we took the Animalia to her first St. Patrick's Day parade. She wore a white tshirt with a glittery green shamrock on the front, green longsleeve onesie, denim shorts, black and white striped legwarmers, and socks with shamrocks. She looked pretty hilarious. It was great until it got cold and rainy. Next year we'll take her to St. Patrick's Mass too. I think we'll sign her up for Irish dance when she's old enough too. Cultural identity made easy.

Little movers and shakers

Animalia went to her very first baby gym class yesterday. It didn't occur to me to take pictures until we were on the way there without the camera. So no pictures.

It was hilarious. I thought she'd be in a MOOD because she hadn't napped but once we got there she was more interested in looking around at all the babies and the bouncy blue gym floor. We did activities in a circle, sang itsy bitsy spider, bounced the babies around on our knees, learned how to make the babies tumble, and made them do exercises on big bouncy balls. There was also a crawling race (most babies are a little older than Animalia). We stayed at the starting line while she tried to eat a beanbag in the shape of a turtle. We also did ring around the rosy (love that song for dark reasons) and we put the babies in the middle of a parachute and kind of walked them in a circle, back and forth. Most babies freaked but Animalia didn't. She kind of tipped over, rolled onto her tummy, laughed and stared. She also knocked over another baby in a quest to eat the back of his shirt. She was great.

It was pretty fun. The other moms were interesting, some more likeable than others.

Next order of business: Animalia's first "real" food. Rice cereal. This evening.

Poop.

Yeah. That's right. Poop.

The first time the Animalia pooped in the hospital it coincided with Grandma Lori's visit. Da was supposed to change the first poop as I would have just given birth. Fair trade, right? But Grandma Lori was there and took care of it. We had heard and read about the first poops, meconium, black tarry sticky badness. We were still unprepared. First of all, everything we'd read said "the first couple of times or so." So when she was still pooping like that for a couple of days it was horrible (and slightly alarming). Hey, we'd never done this before. So when she'd poop it was a THING. One time she even kept pooping as we were changing the diaper. In our exhaustion we just laughed in complete horror. I think that was her second day of life. We were at my parents' house. Me, Jimmy and my mom were ALL changing her diaper. And she just kept pooping a black tarry fountain of poop. Poor Animalia, two days old and everyone's just standing there laughing at her.

So what got me reminiscing about poop? Well... The Animalia doesn't poop that frequently anymore. Apparently breastfed babies sometimes just don't. But she doesn't poop so much that a couple of months ago we had to introduce small amounts of watered down juice just to help things along. Now we're getting ready to introduce food. She's ready. She's more than doubled her birthweight 16lbs 1oz a couple of weeks ago when she had a cold and we took her to the doctor. She keeps trying to grab our food and seems a little more hungry now. She's almost 24 weeks old. I'm looking forward to it in some ways because I love to see her grow and change but in other ways I'm not. Nursing her, though sometimes inconvenient, is nice. I realize that she'll still be nursing with the first foods but this time, her first six months, has just passed so quickly.

What will she do next?!

I wrote about the Animalia's many skills in a post a couple of months ago. She's grown so much since then. I find myself amazed at how much she's grown and changed.

She sits on her own a bit now. It's something she was building up to, kind of slumping a little but the last few days she can pull herself up and sit upright and only tumbles to one side or the other after a few minutes.

She's so wiggly. She reaches her arms out when she wants to go with a new person. Her sense of stranger danger comes and goes but she typically doesn't tolerate unknown people for very long. She tap dances when she sees someone she knows.

Little kids fascinate her. Her eyes get wide when she sees someone small.

She likes to stretch out in her sleep. She starts out curled in a little ball. By the morning she's on her back, her arms and legs splayed out.

She takes her medicine like a big girl. She makes a face but she still drinks it right down.

She and her Da make funny faces at each other. When he's not looking at her she stares til he does, then sticks her tongue out.

We've gone through 3 little colds. She doesn't mind suctioning her nose so much anymore.

She's discovered walls. She lays in our bed and touches the wall. She was touching the wall in her Nana and Tata's hallway between the dining room and the kitchen when I left for work this morning.

She's slightly concerned that her Tio is visiting.

She's interested in food now. She tries to grab whatever we're eating or stares at it intently. She's only had watered down juice and breastmilk so far. We're starting rice cereal in a couple of weeks-- soon!!!

She plays "Kaboom!" now. Her Nana and Tata taught her to pound her feet on the ground when they say "Kaboom!"

She's starting to use consonants.

She chats with the dog. She also chats with a cat that visits my parents' yard.

She loves books and newspapers and magazines. Anything with words. She turns pages then tries to eat whatever it is. She likes to rip paper.

She laughs a big laugh now, especially when someone's blowing on her stomach or her neck. She laughed like that when we were changing her into her baptism gown.

She takes some naps in her crib. We find her awake, on her tummy, trying to escape.

She touches the faces of people she likes.

She wakes up smiling most mornings. Sometimes it's a tired smile. She likes to sleep in sometimes.

¿que dice?

"¿Que dice el perro? Bow wow wow."

"¿Que dice el pato? Quack quack quack."

"¿Que dicen los pollitos? Pío pío pío."

"¿Que dice el elefante?" Hmmm... I have no idea how to make an elephant noise. "Muah ha ha ha ha."

And that's how parents screw up their children.