Lazy Sunday

Hey family and friends! Although we've been playing with the new camera quite a bit, we don't have any new photos to add today because our basement server is "hosed," as Brian puts it. Now, thank goodness we do a double back-up of all of our photo data (soon to be a triple, thanks to a fancy "external back-up" that Brian's working on) or else we might have lost all of our photos. One of the perils of digital, yes? But, on the other hand, it's pretty easy to have three or four copies of digital photo data in several different places, so the ease of data storage is also a benefit (even though that means it also can be easily lost).

Blahdy blah blah. Anyway, because of this little hiccup in the server (which might be fixed already, says Brian), we can't post any photos to the web. So there we are.

We're doing well on this rainy Sunday morning. We went to crowded-as-always Zingerman's for coffee and a bagel at about 8:30 this morning, and Maia is now fully into her first nap of the day. We have friends coming over (classmates from our Lamaze class way back in the day!) anytime now, and then we're going to go shopping for new clothes for Brian this afternoon.

Maia was talking up a storm this morning; she was such a big mouth, in fact, that I could hear her talking with Brian while I was 1) taking a shower, 2) with the bathroom fan on, and 3) in a different room. She was really working on her /m/ and /n/ sounds and syllables. She's doing this wacky thing where she juts out her bottom jaw as she makes her syllables, so she looks a little Don Corleone-ish if she's in the right mood. Hilarious indeed. :)

She's probably mere days away from crawling, which I know will mean a drastic change in the tenor and nature of our days home together. It also means that we have to get serious about some aspects of babyproofing the house. We've had plugs in the sockets downstairs for weeks, but now I think we need to check out the status of cords and sharp-edged objects near the floor. We also have to work on safety latches for the cabinets that contain the household cleaners and such.

Maia's solid food menu is ever-expanding. Here's what she's eaten so far: avocados, bananas, peaches, apricots, pluots, sweet potatoes, green peas, barley cereal, and millet cereal. This week we're really excited to try tofu for the first time to introduce some protein into that list. Next week, maybe turkey or chicken?? It's also gotten to the point now where she can eat a couple servings of solids per meal if she hasn't filled up her tank on milk beforehand, so we're starting to switch around the order of meals somewhat: now we're trying solids first and then nursing, rather than the other way around. She has a couple meals of solids per day, but she's still getting the vast majority of her calories from milk, which is just the way we want to keep it until she's over a year old.

So, all in all, things are going well. We're learning that one of the most remarkable things about Maia is how thoroughly content she is while we take her here and there and everywhere. Now that she can sit up in her little Bumbo seat or on someone's lap (as long as we bring some toys along!), she can go to a restaurant, a coffee shop, a bookstore, or even a work meeting. She looks at the world around her, talks to herself and to us, plays with her toys and only starts to express frustration if she's sleepy or gets bored with her current toy. The cool part about this is that she's coming to learn what we enjoy doing on a relaxing day; she's getting to know who Brian and I are and what we care about aside from being "just" her parents. (I don't use that "just" to minimize the role of being a parent, but rather to signify it's one aspect of our identities, along with many other things.) I like that she's able to be engaged with the world in this way.

In final baby news, we're thinking we're going to make the switch to cloth diapers to reduce our so-called "environmental footprint." Now that she's not making a poopy diaper eight times a day, it might be a little easier. Wish us luck!! :)