little hostess

Grandpa Bruce came to visit us again!

Things have definitely changed since he last saw Miss M at Christmastime. M really drilled that point home on the morning of Grandpa Bruce's arrival by learning how to climb the coffee table. You know, the one we've been using to prevent her from opening and closing the glass cabinet doors? Sigh.

After giving him a day to rest up and adjust to the time change, we took Grandpa to South Lake Union to see the new MOHAI location, which Grandpa and I thought was pretty amazing. It is not an incredibly baby-friendly museum, but M made do.

One of M's favorite things about visitors right now is having new shoes to investigate. She especially enjoys untying shoe laces.

About two days into Grandpa's visit, M came down with a serious tummy bug. Of course, this wasn't how any of us imagined spending the week, but boy howdy is our little muffin full of surprises...

As it turns out, pukey babies are frequently in need of baths. M had actually never had a bath. We'd just been dunking her in the shower every once in awhile, but what with all the grossness, it seemed like a good time to change tactics. Once she got over some initial concerns, M was all for bath time. It's now part of our regular routine. The cats are also big fans.

Being a little sicky for a few days meant that M spent some quality time hanging out with Grandpa on the couch. They checked out her new sippy cup--which M has since decided to abhor.

They Skyped with Grandma--who was at home in Ohio battling possums, snowstorms, and mice.

They talked to Grandma on the phone. Or tried to.

And they spent loads of time cuddling.

On the second-to-last day of Grandpa's visit, we actually managed to make it out of the house again and took the bus to the Children's Museum. Again, most of the museum was for bigger people, but there was an aquarium...

and squishy blocks...

And Duplos!

There was also a room full of percussion instruments, which seemed pretty perfect for Miss M. And for Grandpa, too...

The next day we rode the bus downtown to say goodbye to Grandpa at the light rail station. We were sad to see him go, and I felt bad that he'd come all this way to hang out with a sick baby and her slightly cranky parents.

When we got home, though, M made it clear that she was feeling much better by figuring out how to climb the other coffee table.

super scary

The scariest things at our house:

1. the vacuum

2. the Rody

3. the coffee grinder

4. the red rubber playground ball

The vacuum has always been an issue. M starts crying when we take it out of the closet. She doesn't even wait for us to turn it on.

She's starting to get over the coffee grinder, especially because she associates it with the Daddy person.

The Rody is actually kind of scary. It stares at you in an expectant way. Plus, when M sits on it, it bounces, which is incredibly suspicious.

The ball, though? Not that scary, in my book. I made the mistake of thinking it would be fun to roll the ball across the floor, which resulted in several fits of crying, shaking limbs, and attempts to climb Mama's leg. Rather than putting it away--because that would have been waaay too easy--I decided to just leave the ball lying around the living room so that everyone could get used to seeing it.

A few days later, M and Finch came across the ball and spent the next ten or fifteen minutes trying to decide what to do about it.

They finally got up the nerve to approach the ball.

M summoned all her courage and actually touched the ball. Very slowly. With one finger.

Still not entirely sure what to think of the thing, she tried smacking it a little harder.

When the ball started moving, the baby and the cat both decided to give it some space...

...and then ultimately chose to ignore it for the rest of the afternoon.

a very good place to start

About a million years ago--or back in October, maybe--I meant to post these photos of M enjoying her first tastes of solid food. Avocado pureed with milk, delicately sipped one little mouthful at a time. It all looks so sweet and innocent now...

At the time, my partner-in-crime and I hatched this great idea to give M new foods in alphabetical order, taking pictures all along, so that, in the end, we'd have this awesome alphabet sequence and we'd make a whole book out of it and give it to her later.

We have lots of great ideas.

What happened instead was that we just started giving M lots of new things to taste, in no particular order at all. We started with purees, but moved on pretty quickly to "real" food.

What she likes: acorn squash, apple, apricot, avocado, beef, beets, blueberries, broccoli, brown rice, capers, carrots, chicken, chickpeas, chocolate*, clementines, cottage cheese, corn, cornbread, delicata squash, egg yolks, garlic, grapefruit, hummus, kalamata olives, kale, lemon, lentils, mango, oatmeal, onion, orange, parmesan, pasta, peas, pear, pineapple, polenta, pork, prunes, provolone, pumpkin, rabbit**, raisins, salmon, sardines, shrimp, spinach, sweet potato, tomato, tuna, turkey, and yogurt.

What she doesn't: bananas, cucumber, green beans, and wasabi.

We figure there's still time to change her mind. About the wasabi, at least.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to her first taste of french fry and candy corn and whipped cream, but we've got a little while before she realizes that there are more exciting things than peas and carrots. I don't have to share my cupcakes with her just yet, and that's fine by me...

*70% Cacao, so it's totally not junk food, right? Right?
**We're going to wait until she's eight to tell her, so she'll be appropriately traumatized...