IT REALLY IS JULY IS ISN'T IT

 Let’s play catch-up, shall we?

This was what I wrote on Friday, thinking I was going to be able to post some photos:

I feel like my hair looks like Kelly Kapowski's hair today. Where are my sisters when I need them to confirm whether this is true?! Because it’s either that, or I have the hair of one of the monsters from Where the Wild Things Are. It’s a thin line.

I bristle when people overuse the word, ‘literally’, incorrectly or unnecessarily. I suppose I need to let this go because it has become a free-for-all, and who am I to be judgy about grammar (see? judgy!) but… “She literally yelled at me”….??? “He is literally who I see myself with”….??

On the positive side, I love it when people use the word, ‘incredible’ to describe something that is actually incredible.

I didn’t get to see fireworks yesterday, a decision which I now regret, but we did have some friends over to stuff giant delicious burgers into our faces and that is good enough. I have not seen these high school friends of mine altogether in a while, and it felt good and right to have a quick shindig with all of them yesterday. This blog is being overrun with babies and I DON’T MIND ONE BIT.

Later that Friday afternoon and into Saturday, we had some more visitors and another baby visitor over, and these busy but fun hours whipped by soo fast. (More on this later!)

On Sunday, I woke up with a terrible stomach pain and (unrelated) we came to the inevitable conclusion that we probably had fleas. This was not a fun day.   Also, Sloane didn’t seem sick but she wanted to be held constantly and nursed about twice as much as normal. I couldn’t eat anything because of my stomach so I was drained, in pain, exhausted and stressed about fleas.  We are spraying down and vaccumming every surface area and no surface is safe from the wrath that comes from two paranoid parents. We are pretty sure we came under invasion around Saturday afternoon and WE ARE AT WAR.

I’m going to go back to washing every single item in the house, but will leave you with some photos from the fourth of July, also known in my mind as, I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S ALREADY JULY day.

 this here is harrison, son of my dear friend emily from high school 

- it kind of blows my mind seeing these two together

harrison was grabbing sloane's shirt, and sloane was all, 'yes?? what is it?' 

that expression! (and then note sloane's expression in the background. both pouty faces) 

harrison with the soon-to-be new mama! 

and blurry but i love it anyways: incoming water balloon!

THAT TIME I HAD A HOLE IN MY TOOTH

this post doesn't really have anything to do with fourth of july, but HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! the more i think about it, the more i like this holiday.  i love how it's celebrated - grilled foods, outdoor eating, summertime, american history lessons on the public radio, firecrackers. i'm a fan of them all.

we had a lovely holiday today, but this post is about the day before fourth of july. i scurried over here to tell you about that afternoon, which was glee-sucking. backstory: i grind my teeth, this has caused tiny holes in the wells of two of my teeth, a few days ago i got a tiny piece of peach pit wedged inside one of these holes. now you're all caught up and will understand why i ended up at the dentist today. in my mind, it was going to be the shortest dentist visit ever, in and out. just nudge the peach pit out and i would be on my way.  spoiler alert: two hours later, i walked out of the office with three fillings.

 sometimes those in the medical profession are good about explaining themselves as they go, sometimes, they are not. the lady who came and got me from the waiting room led me into what looked like a closet, handed me an apron that felt like it was filled with led and mumbled something about an x-ray before shutting me inside.   i had all sorts of preconceptions already because the office was in a building that i would have bypassed as a warehouse or a really old nursing home and the elevator smelled like claustrophobia and mothballs. i also should tell you that when i visit any sort of doctor's office or hospital, i am basically going in kicking and screaming, every time. EVERY time. i always have to constantly talk myself down from skipping the whole thing altogether and give myself pep talks about how this is better in the long run, how lucky I am to have health insurance, and how there are so many people in this world that would kill to have access to things like x-rays and experts rummaging around in their mouths. but still, how many things do they need to poke in my there?  at one point, the dental hygienist told me to "stay put, i'll do it."because i was asking too many questions about what each thing was.

the dentist turned out to be very nice, and explained kindly, clearly and casually that i had two cavities and that i would need to get those fixed and get three fillings.  in my head, i was mind yelling, MY FIRST CAVITY! to be exact, my FIRST TWO CAVITIES!   luckily, i decided that i liked the dentist immediately when she saw the panicky look in my eyes as she held up the GIANT needle up in order to numb my gums (the first of two) and immediately did all sorts of reassuring and explaining to put me at ease. she called me "baby' and "babe" the whole time, which i found strangely comforting.

 the cleaning went on and on and on, and then my mouth was numb and there was whirling and drilling and filling, and then more cleaning.  as i rose up from the chair, the relief was immense.  relief that it was over because i felt a little traumatized, but also relief that i didn't run out of the office and stuck around long enough to get my teeth did.  cavities are gone, holes are gone, the piece of peach pit is gone and my teeth feel brilliantly clean.

plus, while i was sitting there getting worked on, there was a TV in my line of vision that was playing all sorts of cooking shows, and i learned a thing or two, one of them being, poke holes in your potato while you bake it if you don't want it to crack.

i ran so many errands that evening, my eyes were bloodshot, but my teeth were clean.  and then, THIS happened.  the video doesn't aptly capture the dance steps, bounces, bumps and sways that was going on when the music started. i was pretty much dying from the overload of pure joy from watching her. i'm sure i'll attempt another capture, but for now, some photos of sloane according to my phone:

she's trying to see what he's doing over there by looking through his legs

she loves pushing buttons

                  Sloane's peekaboos

 the first time she saw a cello

baby,cello//bringing me her shoes

Church

Lalalaaaa

My wild child!

EUNICE AND VAL

i took some engagement photos for my sister and her fiance this past weekend. we had planned out locations for the shoot, but at the last minute we decided to stay near the house and ended up taking these photos our backyard and in the football field nearby. 

sloane made a guest appearance!

SLOANE AT 11 MONTHS

I’m already starting to catch myself taking things for granted about how fast she is developing. Maybe I’ll look back at these posts I’m writing and think that it was quaint that I was floored when she first handed me something or put a blueberry in my mouth for me to eat, but a big part of why I record these exclamations is because I don’t ever want to lose that sense of wonder. I hope that when I do look back and read these posts that I’m reminded of what it felt like to be in awe and marvel at a baby’s first steps and the joy I felt introducing new foods and smells and sights to her.

The other day, I was marking up tags on her clothes with a laundry marker. She saw what I was doing, toddled over, took the marker from my hand, picked up a piece of clothing and started tapping the marker on the pants. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that she was imitating what I was doing! My eyeballs almost popped out, I was so surprised. She had observed and processed enough to a point where she followed suit. There was evidence of her doing this much earlier on with simple things – when I clap, she claps, when I make a face, she makes a face– but this was several things that she had to link together in order to imitate and it was amazing to me. My first reaction was amazement, the second was joy and pride, the third was of being a little freaked out, as in, ‘she’s watching us!!’ And that’s what I told K. later when I was telling him about this. This little one is taking in everything we do.

She also does this thing where she puts her hand, remote, book, crepe paper – whatever she happens to have in her hand – up to her ear.  At first, I didn’t make the connection. Then one day, my phone made a beeping sound and she immediately looked at me, opened her eyes wide, put her hand up to her ear and said, ‘wa wa ya!’ as if she was answering the phone. In her mind, she has made the notation that this is a thing that we grownups do - put things to our ears and talk to them.

She scampers/crawls/climbs up the stairs now. She is fiercely determined as she does it, breathing hard, and undeterred.

How she loves to wander about! She clutches a book, or a card, or a paper flower, and walks about the room, back and forth, surveying the land, enjoying her freedom. 

She spot a crumb on the floor underneath the sink, gets in squatting position to reach it and gingerly 
hands it to me, with an earnest, ‘ba!”  'Ba' seems to be her favorite syllable right now, she just puts different intonations on it to express different things. In the mornings, when I get her to nurse, instead of crying to tell me that she's hungry, she clutches me and lets out the most earnest and pitiful and expressive 'Ba!' to let me know that she wants to nurse.

On another occasion, I was lying down on the couch, exhausted and doing my very best fainted lady impression. Sloane was wandering about the living room in front of me and then all of a sudden she went over to the bookshelf where all of her shoes were lined up and proceeded to bring me her shoes, one by one, and place them in my lap, until there were 4 pairs (8 shoes) filling my lap. She looked at me with great satisfaction, and then proceeded to take them all of my lap, put them on the floor, and then hand them to me all over again. She’s been doing things like this more often where she hands me pieces of paper that she picks up from the ground, proudly displays something that she has discovered, or wants to feed me while she is eating her food.

She is engaging with people around her and it makes me feel all of happy and excited and a little nervous as well to realize the endless bounds of possibilities that are in this tiny human. It has been making me realize how important it is and will be increasingly so to pray for smarts and wisdom when parenting this child.

Yesterday when I dropped her off at daycare, she lifted up both her hands and shouted ‘yabababa’ in joy when she saw the other daycare babies playing on the mat and my heart just about burst

When I came to pick her up, she spotted me from her place on the mat, went into this squatting position, opened her mouth and screeched with joy before toddling over and raising her arms up to me.  More heart bursts.