Okay, I've put this off for waaaay too long, and I apologize to those of you who haven't seen pics of Meridian since Christmas... And I'll try to fill in the details of all her new developments the best I can, although she's growing way too fast for me to keep up!

She started walking in January at 10 months and has been unstoppable since. It didn’t take too long for that to bore her, and now she’s on to running, climbing, and jumping. A couple weeks ago she was dancing around and accidentally learned how to walk backwards/moonwalk; now she'll do it as a way to ham it up---hamming it up is a favorite pastime of hers (she couldn't possibly have gotten that from her papa :p). She also loves to dance, and she will do it spontaneously or by request. Her favorite song to dance to is "I Like to Dance" by Yo Gabba Gabba.


She has also had a talking/understanding explosion. Around the time she started to walk, she began to talk. Her first word--after mama and papa--was ball (she is obsessed with balls, especially soccer balls; she is actually pretty skilled at kicking a soccer ball around, and she tries to join in any time she sees anyone playing soccer at the park). Other favorite words to say are dog, cat (accompanied by squeals if she sees one), hi and bye (while waving to everyone we pass on the street, and every time papa leaves for work or comes home)...there are several words she has only said once, like "up" and "bonjour" and "jacket." It's kind of scary how extensive her comprehension is--Ian and I were just Talking to each other one day and mentioned a jacket, and the next thing we knew, Meri was trudging in with her jacket in tow (this was a couple months ago, before she said the word jacket). Stuff like that has happened numerous times since, and each time it reminds us that we better watch what we say!

She's really good at sign language, too-- it's weird how she will only sign certain words, and other words she'll only say--there aren't any words that she'll both speak and sign. She signs for: milk, shoes, more, and possibly others (we probably miss a lot). She tried to sign, "I Love You," but it's a pretty difficult sign. Her absolute favorite sign is "hat," though--she loves Cat in the Hat, and she figured out that she can use the hat sign to ask for that book, and she also does the sign whenever she sees his picture. By the way, she loooves Dr. Seuss books; they're the only ones she will sit all the way through, and interact with. Some favorites are: Cat in the Hat, Gren Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, One Fish Two Fish, Red fish Blue Fish, Marvin K Mooney Will You Please Go Now, and Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? (her current favorite)

On addition to words, she learned how to do an elephant's trumpet, and she will do it any time she sees an elephant or when anyone saus the word (and also apropos of nothing). She was in heaven watching a youtube clip of an elephant playing soccer--two of her favorite things!

Meridian has also fallen in love with babies. She squeals whenever we pass by a baby, or she even sees a picture of one. She'll wave and smile and say, "Baby!" She's also interested in dolls, and she will hug them and carry them around. She loves giving hugs in general, too.

Another love of hers is music.She started out with a tonette, and progressed to a harmonica, which she is a prodigy at :p See?

I'll write more as I think of things, but I’ve just about used up the time Meri has allotted me :p
So on to the pics! (The most recent ones are the sunny/grassy ones--sorry, they didn't upload chronologically!)

The following few pics are from her birthday:

Birthday cake!

Doing the "more" sign

 Can you touch your eye?

Can you touch your ear?

Clap for yourself! :)

 Dance!

Meridian got a present on Mother's Day:

Meri updates--8.5 months

Happy December! :) Ian started the second round of his paternity leave on Friday, and after a brief bout of stomach illness, we're back in business and are settling into a nice new routine of both of us being home. This is a big relief, because a month or so ago, it started hitting Meri that her Papa was leaving for the day, and she would scream and run (crawl-run) to the door every time he left. Too heartbreaking. It's very nice knowing that he'll be home from now until her birthday--provided we don't move, which is always on the table...


Meri is now 8.5 months old, and is getting more and more interactive, so I wanted to share her developments and personality with everyone, and keep a record of it for her later. 


On November 18 (her 8-month birthday), she perfected the art of standing on her own without any support, from a squatting position. Now she loves doing this, and will do it whenever she gets the chance. At first she was so excited, she even woke up at night to do it. Waking up to see a baby wobbly looming over you like a bear is kind of terrifying :p
Here's the girl in action:

Around the same time, or maybe a little before, she started walking by holding onto furniture or our hands. And just recently, she's gotten to where she'll walk by pushing toys around. Today, she was walking around by pushing her little potty across the floor. I wish I had a video... :)


Speaking of her potty, our elimination communication is still improving by the day :) She's getting all her poos in the potty, and a lot of pees (She's still too busy to interrupt her playtime to pee, but since I don't have to clean up poopy diapers, I'm not complaining :p) 


We're still trying to teach her some signs, but it's even more interesting and exciting seeing her initiate her own language with us. When she needs to potty, she'll go up to the potty, pick up the bowl, and bang it on the ground. She also loves playing in the bath, so when she wants to do that, she'll throw a toy into the tub and look up at me. Likewise, when she wants out of the tub, she'll throw a toy overboard and look from it to me expectantly. 


On November 23, she got her first haircut. Her bangs had been getting in her eyes, so we wanted to trim them. We were so worried about not cutting her, though, that we didn't even think about cutting them evenly until after the fact, so she now has a very...avant-garde haircut:        :p

On Thanksgiving, she even got her first boyfriend! :-0 At our Mother Goose library time, a new little boy, almost 2 years old, showed up. Overlooking everyone else in the room,, he made a bee-line for Meri, embraced her, and planted a big kiss on her cheek. He continued to stay near her, and a couple minutes later, he came and picked her up and said, "she's mine" in Spanish (at first I thought it was French, until I realized his mom was speaking Spanish). For the rest of the hour, he couldn't take his eyes off of her. He squeezed her and kissed her several more times; it was pretty amazing, like he had known her from another life or something. For her part, Meri was demure about the whole thing :p

Then the next week, he did the same thing, but maybe 10 times rowdier. He walked up to her immediately, grabbed her, and leaned in for a kiss on the mouth! All the moms' mouths were gaping--it was kind of embarrassing! He kept coming up to her and hugging her, and whenever I was holding her, he would slap my hands away so he could hold her. I'm not really sure what to make of all this, but he seemed so earnestly in love with her that it was too sweet to stop him.


Some other new stuff: She's learning to give high fives, which is super cute. She won't settle for just one, though. After the first one, she wants to keep slapping my hand :) She's been high-fiving, among other tasks, with her left hand, so it's likely she's a southpaw like her Gigi.


I can't pinpoint when this started ,but she's started saying Mama. She often adds several more "ma's" to the end to make it even more legit.  (She says Papa, or Baba, too sometimes, but seemingly at random :p). 


She loooooooves sharing, especially food. Her one condition, though, is that you put whatever she gives you into your mouth; otherwise she demands it back. She'll hand her blocks or food to me and wait for me to put it into my mouth, and then she'll giggle and try to dig it out. :p Digging it out is less successful when she gives something to Scout to eat, but she still thinks it's hilarious :p


Light switches: they make the lights turn on and off! This was a very exciting discovery, and she loves wielding the power to summon or banish light :D


She's also starting to like playing with her toys more (instead of just chewing on them, which is how she used to play with toys). She'll stack blocks, put things into other things, take things out of things, rummage around with various toys, press buttons, and interact with these sensory blocks that we have, especially the ones with colored lenses that make the room look blue or red. She also gets the biggest thrill out of climbing. She can climb on our couch by herself, and she frequently does. She's even learning to climb down feet-first, thank God :p Boxes are also really fun to climb around in. 


She still kind of likes peek-a-boo, but not as much. It used to be that she would crawl out into the hallway, and we could get her to come back by calling out, "Where's Meridian?!" and then yelling "Peek-a-boo!" when she came back, to her giggling delight....but she caught on that that was our lazy way of not having to chase her, so that no longer works :p


We don't have a high chair for her, so we all eat together. A free-range baby during mealtime means that she grabs whatever she wants from us, so she generally shares whatever we're eating. We try to eat low-salt, healthy foods because of this, so it's making us a lot healthier. :)


Besides mama milk, it seems like her current favorite food is apple. She just holds a whole apple and bites out chunks with her two little teeth; I think it feels good on her teething gums. She also really seems to like tofu, rice, beans, any kind of soup, kombucha, lentils.....I'll probably think of more later--like I said, she eats whatever we eat, so it's hard to narrow down favorites :p


Here's her eating an apple and being adorable: 

I'll end with a few pics from our photo shoot with my friend, Lili. We didn't get any posed shots, really--Lili instead followed Meri wherever she wanted to go, hence the toilet shots--because Meridian wasn't in a mood to be photographed, but I kind of like that that way the photos captured her independent spirit and strong will :) 

 Oh yeah, she also thinks it's hilarious when I put that sock on my nose--shrug :p Other things she finds hilarious: Papa making monkey noises, Papa counting like Count Dracula, Scout doing anything...:p

Until next time!

Explosion of development!

 

Meridian turned 7 months old last week, and oh man, the past month has just been one milestone right after another--I can barely keep up with this baby! :p

At about 6.5 months, she learned this adorable game:

And she still loves to play peek-a-boo, with anything she can cover her face with.  Some variations: if we put something over our faces, and ask, "Where's Mama/Papa?", she'll tear off the cover and giggle. She also loves to cover and uncover Scout's face. I don't think you can tell in the video, but she gets so excited waiting to reveal herself, she'll jerk her legs around in anticipation :3

On September 21, she got in her first teeth. After months of painful gums, this little lady now has two adorable bottom front teeth to flash endearingly at everyone :) There are several more about to erupt, too!

On September 24, Meridian met her first baby, cousin Avery, and it was so sweet watching them clasping hands and exploring each other :) Here's a pic with her, Avery, and Aunt Kathy:

 That got me excited to have her meet other babies, so on September 29, we started going to a weekly Mother Goose Rhyme Time meeting at the library, and it's been a relief getting her out of the house--she gets soooo bored. There are 2 or 3 babies her age, and about 15 older or younger babies, so it's a nice mix. Of course, I've enjoyed having adult company, especially other moms to talk to. I'm still looking for other activities to get her involved in (I had planned on swimming lessons, but those were filled up within the first hour of registration, so maybe next session). I was getting worried that she'd learn all her social skills from playing with Scout, which probably wouldn't be ideal :p But, they are pretty cute together: 

On October 11, she took the leap from scooting around the floor to unmistakable crawling! She now crawls eeeeeverywhere, faster and faster every day! However, almost immediately after mastering crawling, she decided that wasn't good enough, so she has started trying to master walking. Even in my last post, in September, she was trying to walk, but now she's getting sturdier and steadier. It's really amazing to watch her go! Although I'm having to chase her around all the time, I'm so glad she's self-mobile (automobile? :p) now because she hated being carried around or stuck in one place all the time. 

There's more to say, but I'll just wrap up by saying we're loving our super-intelligent, smiling, laughing bug! Miss M is needing me, and I must go....

Meri can stand now!

She is *all* about standing up! We give her our hands for balance, but all the work of standing is done by her.  She'll use anything to pull herself up (including my hair and Tooters's tail...)
Once she's up, she loves bending down to pick things up, and then standing back up again :) She's even started taking steps while balancing on our hands, or whatever she happens to be grabbing.

I haven't gotten this on video very much, because I'm trying to take fewer pics and vids (I know, you don't hear new mothers saying that very often :p), because I don't want to live these moments behind the camera! So I just have this one video (I can't quit completely ;)) of her standing up and being busy.

Why I won't be able to sit still ever again

Meri has started doing this:

Is it just me, or does her back look super muscular? Must be all the yard work we make her do.


And in case anyone's wondering, we do dress her sometimes, and she does look adorable :p For example, today:

And here's a picture of her with Mr. Tooters. True to cat form, he has ulterior motives for befriending her--she's started using teething drops with catnip in them. I don't think she's offended, though :)

Addendum to 5-month post

Here's a view of Ian's office from our front porch! Sometimes Meri and I sit on the porch and wait for him, and we can see him leave the building and walk up :)

I think I forgot to mention earlier that he still has 12 weeks of paternity leave left, and 3 weeks of vacation, so he'll be taking off from late December through her birthday on March 18, and maybe even longer if he uses vacation time. So we plan on traveling to Texas and Tennessee, working on our game, and just hanging out as a family! 

And here are some videos. We've shown them to some people, but if you haven't seen them yet, the first is of her laughing while we sing, and the second is the first time she tried drinking water in her sippy cup.