Biter Biscuits and Mother's Day

So, Violet is probably one of the only babies ever to not instinctively put things in her mouth. She's never taken a pacifier, she only tried to suck her thumb like, twice. And she's never put her toys (or anything else) in her mouth to chew on or what-not.

While this sounds like a very good thing, and it is, in some cases...it also means she does not put food in her mouth. When she moves up into the next class at daycare, she has to be able to feed herself somewhat. Well, she doesn't.

We've been working with her on it...with Cheerios and Puffs and the like. She picks them up now, but they're usually just to hold on to. If you try to get her to put it in her mouth, she drops them...just opens her little hand and lets go.

Sidebar: She also does this when trying to get her to hold her own bottle, but that is not the point of this story.

So, I bought some biter biscuits for something for her to chew on a while back when she was teething. The first time I tried one she just played with it, as always. Well, two weeks ago, I whipped another one out hoping maybe, just maybe, she would eat it by herself.

We sat down on the living room floor, and I gave it to her. At first she just looked at it, and played with it...but then I moved her hand to her mouth and helped her and she caught on! She actually ate it by herself! YAY!!!!!

So, of course, I had to document it with the camera. I also took a picture with my phone and e-mailed it to John (who was in OKC for a race) b/c I was just so excited and proud and I wanted to show him the proof!

Here she is eating it!




Check out the mess she made!


After a while of eating it, she started to play with it. "Ooh, it's crumbly in my fingers. This is fun!"


And this one is right before I took her into the bathroom to clean up.


Now, had I actually thought she would eat the biscuit, I may have been a little smarter and done this in her high chair, with a bib on. (The next time I gave her one, that's what I did.) But, since it was an experiment and I didn't completely think it through, we did it in the living room, on the carpet.

By the time she was done actually eating it, I had to fight to keep her from putting her fingers (coated in biscuit) on the carpet or on me...I also had to keep her from leaning too far forward or else her biscuity drool would go on the carpet. That's when I decided biscuit time was over.

She wound up eating probably 1/3 of the whole biscuit, which I thought was really good!

The next day was Mother's day (my first!). John and Violet got me speakers for my iPods/iPhone. I got one speaker for at work and one for at home. Super exciting! We did dinner with my mom on Saturday night, and with John's mom on Sunday late afternoon. We got both of them little wallet sized digital photo displayers that you can upload pics onto and it's small enough to carry in their purses.

It was a great Mother's day weekend!

Play Time

Violet and I love to play together. She'll play with just about anything she finds. A few months ago, we went to the mall (to buy sunglasses) and the sunglass kiosk was right across from the Disney store. John got bored of me trying on fifteen thousand pairs of sunglasses, so he and Violet went shopping. So, after I found a pair I liked, I joined them. We bought V three things: a Minnie Mouse themed Razr phone, a princess baseball, and a fairy towel that you put in water and it grows. Her phone looks just like a real Razr, except it's covered in Minnie Mouse. Besides that, it could easily be confused for a real one!

Here she is playing with her baseball. She really likes to look at (and talk to) the pictures of the princesses on it.


And another one, although you can't see the baseball in this one. But you can see her two bottom teeth!


So, another thing she loves playing with is the phone book. I know I've blogged about that before on here, but I got some really good pictures of her playing with it again and they're just too cute not to share.

Here she is, post-destruction. My caption for this picture would be: "Well, that was fun. What now?"



"Yes mommy, I know I have a WHOLE bunch of toys behind me in my basket, but the phone book is just so much more fun!"

If you look at her hands and face, it's like she really is explaining it to me!

"Rwarrrr, I'm a monster! I'm coming to get you!"


Recently, our play time games have expanded to include dominoes. I build stacks of dominoes and she knocks them over. I am very upset and this and she thinks it's hilarious! I don't yet have any pictures of us playing dominoes yet, but I did try to take some video the other night. If it turned out good, I'll post it later.

Good Morning!

Most mornings, Violet wakes up in a really good mood. We know she's awake because we can hear her over the monitor talking in her crib. One such day, I went to get her out of bed and she was looking so darn cute I had to go grab my camera.

This is what I saw:

She was just standing there, looking around. Too cute.

So, by this point, Violet was probably thinking "Come on mom, pick me up already!" After all, I had opened her door to get her, then turned around to go get the camera, then came back and started taking pics. She decided to show me how ready she was to get out of bed:

"Let's go mom! I'm ready for breakfast!" Hehehe.

Oh, and as a side-note, you may have noticed that her bedroom walls are painted purple. This was not on purpose! Once we knew we were having a girl, we decided on the paint color for her room. We did not settle on a name for her until a few weeks later, after her room was already painted. Just wanted to clear that one up! =)

Raffle!

So this post is to tell you about a raffle that Rachel is doing...by going to her site, it tells you how to enter to win three (3!) double layered bows and a headband from her friend Sarah's Etsy shop, The Princess & Me Bowtique, which has a ton of really cute bows for little girls!

I'm trying to win some for Miss Violet!

Once I upload all my pics off my camera, I'll have a new post on here...promise! =)

Daddy's Little Girl

So, now that she can crawl, Violet is obsessed with following us around, trying to do what we do. She really likes things she can play with and push buttons on, such as the television remote. She also really likes our iPhones. So in tune with that, we gave her an x-box controller the other night. She originally was just sitting on Daddy's lap, playing with him but she kept trying to get the buttons so we gave her one of her own.

Here she is playing with her controller while John plays his video game.


And this picture I just love because they both look like they're concentrating really hard at playing their games.


Just couldn't resist the photo-op! They were too cute!

Video update: John uploaded all our videos off the camcorder (if that's what they're still called) and onto our computer. I've sifted through them and picked out the ones I want to post as a summary of her life so far. Now all I have to do is see if I can edit them to just post the pieces I want, instead of the 5 minute long video of which I only need 1 minute. So hopefully I'll get them up here soon!

Reality Check

Thursday night, April 30th, started out like any other night. I got home from work and started our evening routine, if you would call it that. Everything was normal until bedtime. Violet does not like bedtime and usually will not go to sleep without a fight. However, for some reason, she fell asleep eating her bedtime bottle. I considered this a blessing, as this is how I used to put her to sleep...so much easier! So then I went and laid her in her bed and thought I had the rest of the night free!

Well, probably an hour later, Violet woke up crying. I go into her room to see what the problem is and she's standing in the corner of her bed! Needless to say, I freaked out. I immediately grabbed her and called John into her room to lower her mattress to the lowest setting (it was still on the highest setting). We had never seen her pull herself up to standing before so it was a total shock!

That was my first reality check that we need to start baby-proofing the house.

You see, Violet started crawling (finally!) on April 22nd.

And then on Saturday, April 25th, she sat up in her crib. When I woke up, I heard her talking to herself and went to get her. This is what I found.




That's right, my little girl was looking out her crib like she was in a prison cell! She was just calmly sitting there, kicking her legs through the rails trying to look over the top to figure out her next move, I suppose.

But even with the crawling and the sitting up in her bed, reality hadn't quite sunk in.

The third sign it was time to baby-proof that I'd been ignoring for quite some time is the fact that Violet likes to stick her finger into little holes exploring. You see, she has this little xylophone toy that she likes to turn upside-down and poke her fingers into the screw holes.

While I knew this would one day present a problem, I wasn't too worried because she wasn't yet crawling. So therefore, she couldn't stick her tiny fingers into the outlet holes.

Now is obviously an entirely different story.

But no, this point was not driven into my head until we found her standing in her bed.

I now am printing out baby-proofing your house checklists to make sure I don't forget anything. The first priority (lowering her bed) is already done. Next is installing outlet covers on all the outlets in our house. Third priority, not quite sure yet. I'm guessing cabinet and drawer locks. For normal people with babies, it would be picking up all the little things babies can put into their mouths. But Violet doesn't put things into her mouth yet. She often will pick up a quarter or other coin and just play with it. One day this will probably change, but for now, we're safe in that context.

So there is the story of how I got a reality check the other day. While I'm sure I'll have many more, that one sure did freak me out!

9-Month Check-Up

Tuesday, April 21st was Violet's 9 month check-up...officially, she was 9 months and 2 days old.

John took her to the appointment b/c I had a chiropractor appointment to try to figure out what's been going on with my neck.

I had e-mailed John some questions for the doctor I wanted him to ask for me, and he actually e-mailed them out and the doctor wrote down the answers on the paper!

Here are her official stats:
- Weight: 18.36 pounds (42nd percentile)
- Length: 28.54 inches (82nd percentile)
- Head Circumference: 17.68 inches (77th percentile)

Some new things in Violet's life:
- She likes to clap her hands (a lot)
- She now has 3 teeth...two on bottom and one on top.
- She says 3 words: Dada, Mama, and uh-oh. She may have said "block", that's what we heard once but we haven't ever heard her say it again so it could have been coincidental.
- She waves bye, but only when she's in the mood. She doesn't like to wave bye when one of us is actually leaving, but when it's playtime, she'll do it!
- She throughly enjoys banging things together. We went out to eat the other day and she was sitting in the high chair...I gave her a toy to entertain herself and she starting pounding it on the table. Needless to say I then had to take it away because we don't want to ever be one of "those" families. We tried to find ways to entertain her without so much noise.

I think that's all for now!

Spring Fever

Sunday, April 19th was John's first triathlon of the season...the Spring Fever sprint triathlon. It was also my second triathlon with Violet...the first was Redman last September. Spectating and photo-taking was definitely a different experience with her! I shall tell the story through pictures.

Here's John jumping into the pool to start his swim. We only watched the first few laps because then it was time to head outside to try to catch him heading out of transition.


And here is Violet wondering what's going on and why we're out and about so early. You can almost see the look on her face saying "Mom, what are we doing now?". Priceless.


Here's John heading out of the bike transition. I was worried we wouldn't make it there in time to get a picture...but we did! Unfortunately, that was probably because he got a flat tire in the transition...he has pretty bad race-day luck!


Check out his sweet bike.


Here he is heading out on the run. I used the time on the bike as an opportunity to feed V before it was time for the second transition. After that, I pushed Violet's stroller back and forth, trying (unsuccessfully) to get her to take her morning nap.


And here he is approaching the finish line. Run daddy run!


Violet FINALLY fell asleep for her morning nap, just before daddy finished. She fought it really hard but tiredness took over.


However, the nap did not last too long and she woke up. Yay, daddy's back!


While I knew that meant she would be grumpy from such a short nap, how can you not love a face as ornery as this?!


So, since she was awake now, I had to get a picture of her and John. It took several tries because every time one of them was looking at me, the other wasn't. I gave up.


And here she is being loaded back into her carseat after the big race, happy as ever!


Our day of triathlon was now over...while it was more difficult spectating with her, we made it through the day and even got quite a few pictures of John so I considered it a success! =)