Action packed week and month!

Last week was a BIG week for Syd.  She started doing three new things: waving, clapping, and crawling!!!  It was almost too much for my heart to take!  The crawl happened after weeks of the "worm" or flopping forward on her belly then getting up and doing it all over again.  Now, after the crawl preview, she's back to the flop for now.  It gets her from point A to point B- that's for sure!  She continues to experiment with her voice and has a new sound that reminds us of a pterodactyl (Hey, thanks, spell check!  I had no idea it was spelled that way!).

What motivated Syd the Kid to show us so many tricks in one week?  Maybe it was the visit from Bubbie, Poppe, and Gma Jean!!  She had a house full of cheerleaders and she was motivated alright!

May was the month of visitors!  We were so lucky to spend QT with: Buddy, Fay, Molly, Lucy, Len, Gma Jean, my mom and my dad!!  Now the house is just ours again and it feels very quiet.  Usually, I get very emotional saying goodbyes to family, but this time I just feel incredibly grateful.  Could this be a break through??  We'll see.  But, it does feel good to focus on the positive and there are So. Many. Positives.

The working three days a week thing is still going really well.  I just signed Syd up for "swim" classes or water play so we'll add that to our Rhyme Time at the library, play group and park going.  Fun times!  Work is keeping me busy and- while I'm not as challenged as I was when I worked full time and had the capacity to take on more- I still love my job and my colleagues. 

You Know You're a Parent When...

Hello friends.  Have you ever read those email forwards titled "You Know You Were a Child in the 70s or 80s When..."?  They then proceed to list things like:
    1. You had a collection of t-shirt ties decorated in puffy paint.
    2.  You had a gigantic crush on Scott Baio.
    3.  Your hair had "wings" that stayed in place with copius amounts of Aqua-Net hairspray.

Well, I've been annotating a similar list titled "You Know You're a Parent When" in my head and I thought I'd put it down in words.  Here goes.  You Know You're a Parent of a Baby When...
     1. Someone asks to scroll through your cell phone pictures and you worry not about risqué pictures but about someone seeing pictures of your baby's stool meant for the pediatrician. Ew.
     2.  You can't remember the last time you went to your close friends' houses unless it was on a weekend day.  Thankfully we have friends who are willing to come to us at nights while Sydney is sleeping.  You guys rock!
     3.  You think your 8 month old has so much personality when the personality traits are actually quite subtle (read: she smiles, she cries). 
     4.  You have Disney and Jack Johnson children's music on your Pandora list of stations.
     5.  You have tried baby food.  Recently. 
     6.  One of your top three favorite things to do is to sneak into your baby's room and watch them sleep peacefully.

Ahh, how life has changed this year!  I'm happy to say I've loved these last several months so much.  It's amazing how many firsts are experienced even in a week!  This week Sydney went to the beach for the first time (and screeched and kicked in excitement) and sampled real foods for the first time (mangos, cheerios).  As she ate those new foods, she made faces like she thought they were the grossest things in the world then swallowed them and opened her mouth for more.  I'm also laughing many times a day which was one of my goals pre-Sydney and now it happens naturally!

Sydney is spending a lot of time attempting to crawl these days.  She is moving very rapidly towards people and toys by lunging herself forward, getting up, and doing it again!  We think she'll be crawling in no time.  She often says "da da da" and only says "mama" when she's crying.  We're working on that.  Todd has been trying to teach her how to give kisses and how to hold her own bottle- though she prefers when we hold it.  That's all for the update for now!