Sewing

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately sewing baby carriers. I am currently working on my 6th home-made carrier, and my 8th carrier in total. It’s very addicting, because each carrier has advantages and disadvantages, so it’s a never-ending quest for the perfect collection. Also, when I find a carrier that’s great, being a woman I inevitably think, “Wouldn’t this look great in some different colours?”

The problem is that this gets both expensive and time-consuming. By itself that’s not so bad, but consider also that I don’t really like sewing. I always have at least one melt-down per project involving bad words and crying. The overall result is a husband who is not particularly happy about my obsessive quest, because it doesn’t make me that much fun to live with. The upside, though, is that I really do have a lot of great options for carting my growing kid around.

In other news, I’ve posted some photos of our latest adventures here.

Playing Games

Hannah has learned how to play games. She plays peek-a-boo, ducking down and then standing up to show her face, over and over. She also plays chase, when she knows that you’re on her tail and starts crawling faster. I really see her personality emerging, as she’s able to engage in give-and-take activities with her parents.

Other new skills? Jumping on her crib mattress, pounding on objects to make rhythmic sounds, and dancing.

Free-Standing

Hannah can stand on her own now, although she doesn’t really like to do it. If you distract her by handing her a toy, she will remain upright for 20-30 seconds before realizing that she’s been tricked, and dropping to the ground. You can see the distraction technique in action here.

11 Months

Hannah is 11 months old today. She has 7 teeth, her scar is healing nicely, and her stork bite is starting to lighten considerably.

Hannah’s physical skills continue to expand dramatically. In the past month Hannah has become an expert at pulling up and cruising around. She also walks by pushing objects around, or holding on to her parent’s hands. On a couple of occasions, Hannah has stood unsupported for 5-10 seconds, but no unsupported steps yet. Our little adventurer is also learning how to crawl backwards down stairs, which is great because it’s an important safety skill for a little person.

In the past month we signed up for daycare, had our railings replaced, and started making plans for my return to work. Lots of big things are happening at our house, for sure. The biggest, of course, is Hannah’s birthday, a scant 31 days away. Our baby is almost a toddler!

You can check out the traditional monthly photo here.

Aftermath

The railings are finished. The last person left our house at about 9:00pm Friday night. Jon and I have some touch-up work to do, but at this point the heavy lifting is over. I spent much of the day on Friday cleaning, and on Saturday I re-installed the baby gate, so the house is finally safe for Hannah once again. Renovating when you have a baby to chase around is definitely much more work!

Speaking of which, I posted a couple new photos of Hannah here.

Hannah Walks (with Help)

Hannah has been steadily improving her ability to get around. It’s something she would like to practice day and night if we’d just let her stay up long enough.

Here’s some video of her walking with the help of her Hungry Hippo. Uncle Aidan chose a very good present indeed

New Railings

After a week of sawdust and ‘baby who was mad because we wouldn’t let her touch power tools’, we have railings. Here are some pics.

Renovations

Almost immediately after signing on the dotted line of home ownership, it became apparent to Jon and I that we were living in a new world. In this world, nobody periodically replaces your bathtub for you. In this world, every little ignored problem can mushroom into a bill for $25,000 a little ways down the line. In this world, the home improvement is never-ending.

In that spirit, we are re-doing our railings. The new railings are going to look great, I know that much for sure. While the work is in progress, our house is a disaster area, which is completely unsafe for a crawling baby. I know that much for sure, too. For the next few days, though, we are enduring. Our hope is that by the time that this weekend rolls around, the whole thing will be nothing more than a (not so) fond memory. I know that Hannah can hardly wait, either.

Hippo Walking

As Jon mentioned, Hannah got a great push/ride hippo toy for Christmas from Auntie Gretchen and Uncle Aidan. Over the past couple of days, she’s learned how to use it to walk. So far, she can only push it in a straight line, but she’s definitely got the basic technique mastered. Can it be long before she’s walking on her own?

You can see a couple of photos of Hannah’s adventures with the hippo here.

Destructo-Baby

Hannah’s physical and cognitive skills are just exploding. Every day she does something new. At the heart of it seem to be two main building blocks. The first is that she is physically adept enough that she can manage to do what she wants to do a lot of the time. The second is that her memory seems to be much longer now. When she was a baby, if something wasn’t in her view, she didn’t show any awareness of it. Now, she will bang on a closed door because two days ago there was something fun in that room.

The result of Hannah’s amazing new skills is that she is an increasing danger to herself and the world around her. Whether it’s pulling toilet paper off of the roll, getting water to come out of the water cooler, or pulling the top off her garbage can, it’s one mess after another. Thank goodness for my new baby carrier, so that I can strap her to my back when I can’t take any more destruction. Or, when I just need to clean up after all of the baby mayhem.