Zoralee on the move

Okay, this is a long post. I am sorry if it sounds like a Christmas letter in which I make my child out to be a superstar. She is, but I'm sorry if it's too obvious. Ha ha. Anyway, if you make it to the end of this post, you'll be rewarded with a booby photo...of sorts.

Just over 7 months ago now, I birthed my little Pumpin Buns. Before getting to know her, I would've guessed our offspring would be pretty chilled, of average energy levels, happy-go-lucky. I placed a whole lot more faith in general baby timetables. If you'd have said my baby might only quasi-laugh a handful of times in her first seven months of life, I'd have thought you were crazy. "But we love to laugh!" I'd have said, "And so will our baby!" Now timetables can eat my shorts. Zoralee smiles just fine, and she'll squeal and shriek with enough encouragement, but some babies have been laughing for months by now. Not Zoralee. She has other things to focus on than cheerfulness and merry-making. Namely, exercise and mobility. (?!)

From the very start (and I mean, on literal Day 1), she wanted to hold her head up. And she did it too, by George, for several seconds at a whack. We still held her head whenever she was against us, 'cuz that's what you're supposed to do with babies, but she never had that noodle neck flopping thing. I've no idea why, but I sometimes wonder if it was the way she was situated in the womb. At a couple weeks old, if you held her hands, she would try to pull herself up to a stand. I am not foolin' around.

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As soon as Zoralee was happy to lay on her stomach, say, around three months, she started maintaining the superman position for long stretches of time. Abdomen to the floor, arms and legs held outstretched and off the ground. This is hard to do as an adult! Of course, sucking one's toes is too. Zoralee didn't spend a whole lot of time rolling over. Some time, yes. But once she'd get onto her belly, she would push her arms down in a half push-up and hold. Downward dog, I think it is, in yoga terms.

Around six months, she started crawling and experimenting with standing pretty much within the same few days. My first indication that the crawling stage was going to pass quickly was when she crawled off our bed at nap time, waaay before I knew she could make that kind of forward progress. I had gone in to check on her and found an empty bed. I let loose with an explicative, and my eyes scoured the dimness to find her laying on the floor, chewing on the bassinet leg. You can bet I kicked myself good over that one. "Anticipate the next stage, oh Mother Of A Learning Baby!" My heart was pounding and hands shaking for 1/2 hour.

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Within a day or two of that, I watched her pull herself up inside the bassinet. Alrighty then! There went the bassinet, because I was paranoid she could somehow lift a leg up and whip herself over the edge. So, over the last few weeks as she has been coordinating opposite legs and arms (rather than scooching or haphazardly going forward), in the standing arena, she is letting go of the table edge with one hand. She also uses vertical edges to get herself up, like a door. I'm seeing rock-climbing in her future.

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Now her bed is a Thermarest camping mat on the floor. This works great, because I can co-sleep to get her down for naps and night time. Then I get into our bed, which we're fixing to take off the box and just have as a plain mattress on the floor for even better transitioning. When Zoralee wakes from a nap, she crawls off her mat and around the room looking for something to play with. We bought a baby monitor a few weeks ago, and it's handy.

Other fun Zoralee factoids:

• She bounces to music, and if there is no music, plain old rhythm'll do. Like, if you hit a pot with a spoon, because you're honestly trying to get food off the spoon, that's rhythm, and bouncing will ensue.

• She still fights sleep like the dickens, but three times now she has been content to lay down beside me without nursing and fall asleep. I nearly woke her back up to bestow upon her high praises and show her that this is exactly how she can love to mommy every day. She hates to lay still for a diaper change. Hates getting dressed or undressed.

• Z doesn't particularly love getting into her ergo-carrier, but once she's in, she is quite content and comfortable. I use it daily for outside chores around the place, inside while I'm cooking or cleaning, and whenever we go on walks or to public places, so pretty much all the time. She falls asleep in that a lot.

• Just today I discovered that she likes yerba mate tea. Can you beleive that? Jason says yerba mate tastes like it was made by letting water steep in a concoction of barnyard substances - hay, animal excrement, etc. I admit it's an acquired taste, and I wouldn't have imagined a baby who has tried such sweet delectables as strawberries (wee bits at a time to make sure of no allergies), pineapple, and chocolate to be okay with such a flavor. But she got really excited and kept wanting more tastes. As though this child needs any additional sources of energy. Jimminies.

Perhaps I'll end there for now. Anybody still reading this, besides our mothers and Rachel? Okay then, here is your reward:

a footstool booby