october

I updated my phone and found some previously unshared photos... so a brief recap - in June, Fiona found her toes.


By August, she was sitting up by herself.




In September, she mastered the downward dog position, and started to do a hop/crawl.





By the end of September, she had her first tooth. And now it's October, and she is crawling and pulling herself up on the furniture. Outrageous.

Back in August, we went on a plane to visit Tia M.




I found more photos from that trip, and wanted to share:








And just for comparison, in case any of you were wondering... here are Fi's red socks, when she was two weeks old.


And very soon you will see how her red socks look today....

fall is here

And the little bean grows and grows... I just had to post, last weekend at R & K's wedding, Fiona cut her first tooth on a nice hunk of crust from the delicious bread at the reception. As the bread disappeared, I reached in to do a safety swipe and low and behold! Ouch! Tooth! Bottom right for those of you who keep track of this sort of thing...

And then, this evening - she crawled across the kitchen floor. Granted, not on both knees. She crawled, two hands down, one knee down, one foot down. Always the right knee, the left foot. For the last week or so she has been doing a downward dog action, both hands and both feet flat on the floor, rear up in the air, and then... sitting back down... G pointed out that she wasn't really wanting to crawl, she was just trying to turn herself around. She would go up, pivot and sit down. Or she would go from lying on the floor to sitting up in that same motion. So amazing to watch her making connections.....

six moths of fiona marella!!

((Fiona turned 6 months old on September 3rd! We celebrated by eating rice cereal with peaches. Yum. I promise you, sweetest one, that some day soon we will celebrate with cake! But you need teeth first, and you don't have any, yet.))

I guess I shouldn't expect to post more than once a month... we're just so darn busy around here... I can hope that someday I will be able to share more of what's going on around here, but I fear time will only start moving faster, especially when Fi figures out how to crawl.....

Luckily, we're not there yet. She is on the verge, last night she almost moved forward of her own volition... she has already accomplished moving backward. But backward isn't near as much fun as forward.

Recently her grandma and great-grandma came for a visit. The ever so talented J came over to shoot some photos. Here are a few:




















Yeah, she's a cutie alright! Photos above with all four generations, some with dad too... and Fiona all wrapped up in the blanket I knit for her. Back when I had free time, to do things like knit. And she's in the dress I made for her, again, when I could do things like that. (I know, M - I have to carve out those 10 hours a week for "me" things. It will come, it will come... Fi is going to outgrow that dress soon...)

Sorry Grandma...

Okay, time slipped by again. Working, wifeing, mothering, cooking, cleaning, organizing, etc, etc, etc... I'm exhausted. You'll notice that sleeping is not on the list. That's because F has moved into a new pattern of only two (and at most three) hours of sleep at a time. It is making me a little bit crazy.

Also, I recently had to travel to Burbank, CA for work. Three days down, two days home, three days down again. Then, the following week, I went to SF to visit my bestest friend, M. At least for the SF trip I took F with me...

So here are some pics from SF.

Oh, before photos... let me just mention...

F is sitting up. By herself. And holding a bottle. By herself. She's actually been holding that bottle for weeks, but the sitting up completely by herself is a new thing. (She was a little wobbly for the last couple weeks, but not anymore!) She also has a notion about that whole object permanence thing... she was playing with a toy, it fell out of her hand, she looked under her chair for the toy, looked under her chair from the other direction - she most certainly grokked that she had a toy, now she didn't, and where the heck was it now?!? - and was happy once said toy was returned to her. She is the most awesomest baby ever.

We started her on some cereal, since she was seeming to be so darn hungry, was reaching for our food, has tremendous interest in our chewing. She gobbles it up. Here she is, enjoying her first cereal experience:



Oh, and then G gave her a piece of cantaloupe last night in a little mesh holder thing- I think it was one of these. She enjoyed it tremendously.

It's true. My sweet baby is growing up, fast! Already we are into the foods, and she's only five and a half months old. It's too bad that I can't tell her to just relax, chill out, enjoy the babyness... she is already in a hurry to learn and focus and taste and touch and move and... and... and...

Enough talk, photos already!!

Here she is balancing on Tia's knee, looking out at the amazing city view...

And then looking at mom:

The light was so awesome we did a photo shoot in M's living room:

Should a five month old be making these eyes?

She should definitely be making this face:

And this one:

Just a generally happy baby:

Especially when she can munch on her cat, her favorite toy:

Okay, seriously, how cute is this? She gets so excited that she scrunches up:

Delectable cat...

Helping Tia do the dishes...

This is what M and I had for lunch at Bakesale Betty's. If you are in the Oakland area, you absolutely must eat this lunch, it was amazing (coming from a psuedo-vegetarian!) Note the fried chicken sandwich, served with a jalapeno coleslaw... and a strawberry shortcake and lemon ice to finish it with. Absolutely delicious! (Yes, that is a giant scoop of whipped cream!)

We also stopped by Dynamo to try their homemade donuts... on the left, Lemon Pistachio, on the right, Glazed Maple Apple Bacon. Yeah, you read that right!
So this concludes the mid-August installment of what the heck is going on in the land of Fi. Busy, busy, busy! Hope your summers are going well, drop us a line, say hi!

july, july, july

Hi there. We're cooking quite well in this lovely July heat. Rare for the Pacific Northwest, to have temperatures consistently in the 90's... I know, all you guys down in the California heat wave are cursing me, but seriously... us pale white girls in the PNW are melting. Fi is proving that she is a true PNW baby... she does not like the heat so much. I can't blame her.

So one morning we took a bunch of photos. The end of her fourth month. Here it is:

She's about to sneeze...

Sneeze complete...



Highly skilled at finding her toes...


Blurry shot of our most common nursing grip, the double fist. I took this knowing that some day, my hand won't cover her forearm. In fact, it already doesn't! She grows so fast...

(did I mention that she is in the 90th percentile for height, weight and head size? not that any of us are surprised... but at her 4 month check-up she was 27 inches, 15 and some pounds. Almost double of her birth weight! And six inches of height! yep, growing fast...)


This is my second favorite nursing position, the wringing of hands. She is trying to figure out how to nurse from both at once...


As G says, she is exploring the world through her tongue... everything goes in that mouth of hers!


She is the happiest baby...

I made some flags to decorate her room... here is the beginning of her name flags...


Then I got distracted and made her a dress...


It's lined!
And bloomers to match:

Back to the name flags...

Close-up...
Especially of the star, because I love it...

And pink flags for the girl...

And finally, a shot of Fi and our friend D having a deep moment of communication...


I should also mention that last week she creeped, for the first time. She flipped over to her tummy, and made her way across the floor. Not crawling, specifically, but "creeping" as our PEPS leader identified it... it was shocking. Then M (our childcare superstar) told me that "she's going to be a six-month crawler!" which flips me out. I thought she would be a baby for a bit longer... but no. She's outgrown her infant car seat, she's wearing 9-month clothing... she is going for broke. And she is a true W - as our family motto around here is, "Go big or go home!"