Inflection Points

I always assumed there'd be a clear line between stages of childhood development: one day she wouldn't be grabbing, one day she would; one day she wouldn't be crawling, one day she would; one day she wouldn't be babbling, one day she would. I'm beginning to realize these things come on so gradually it's possible to miss them. She got more and more grabby, little by little, and one day we realize she's grabbing all the time...when did that happen.
And on the crawling front, she doesn't crawl exactly, but she makes forward progress by wriggling, like a soldier with his kneecaps shot off crawling up the beach. Sometimes she even gets a leg under her and gets that extra boost, or does a push up. Cathy claims it is crawling, and wrote it down in her journal. "First crawl." I don't know, myself. One day I'll notice that she really is crawling for sure, but I won't be able to pinpoint the exact day it started.
I imagine speech will be the same: did she just say "Hi"? Or was it just a random sound?

Bedtime Ritual

The parenting book I'm reading now is pretty anti-Ferber, and it's guilted me out, so I try to put Sofi to bed easy at night, rather than just dump her in crib and walk away and let her wail.

I've got a whole system - I rock her in the glider chair in the dark while a wind-up Eeyore plays Brahms lullaby. Usually, she nods off before the lullaby is even over, or soon after. Holding her arms still against her body helps. Then it's a process of ever-so-slowly getting her from chair to crib. I let go of her arms. I wait 30 seconds. I adjust my grip so I can carry her. I wait 30 seconds. I stop rocking. I wait 30 seconds. I slowly stand up - she's very sensitive to vertical changes. I take her to the crib and slowly lower her - the hard part. I leave the gate open for this part, so I don't have to lower her too far. Lowering her is much more likely to wake her than the click of raising the gate. Usually she wakes up in the process of trying to lay her down and get my hands out from under her, but usually she nods right off again. Then I slowly raise the gate--the click usually makes her twitch, but she doesn't wake--and make my escape.

Tonight didn't go so easy.

If she wakes up on the dismount, I can usually rock her body, holding her arms against her stomach with one hand and her head with the other hand, and she nods back off again, and I can let go. Not tonight. She woke up and stayed awake. All right, back to the rocking process. This time, after more rocking and final nodding off, as I was lowering into the crib, her pacifier came out, and fell on the floor. Do I find the pacifier or just raise the gate? She didn't wake up, so I go for the gate. Bad idea. The click wakes her, and she notices the missing pacifier. I find it for her but now she's wide awake. She's not crying though. Sometimes we can just leave her in the crib awake and she doesn't complain, so I give that a shot and go for the door. Nope. Cry. So I come back and resume the rocking process again. This time I'm extra-careful, introducing a new step in the process, the "Get a good carrying grip that you can also easily extricate yourself from once she's down" step. The step doesn't wake her. Good. Once she's in the crib, she does wake, but only for a second. I win.

All told, it took from 8:30 to 9:30.

Hope it's not going to be like that every night...

Awww...

Cathy put up more photos.

And the official new food of the week is Trader Joe's Organic Applesauce.

Or do kids need the pesticides?