Fifteen Months!

This past weekend, we celebrated Adelaida's fifteen-month birthday. I thought I'd take this opportunity to reflect on how much she has grown -- both physically and developmentally -- in the past fifteen months.

This is the first picture taken of Adelaida, just a few hours after she was born. She was stressed during the birth and hadn't had much oxygen, so was sent to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) immediately after she was born. We were told that she'd probably be in the NICU for five to seven days, with a ventilator to help her breathe because she couldn't breathe on her own. Just six hours after she was born, she pulled the ventilator tubes out of her throat and began breathing on her own! I never saw her on the ventilator, but Dale did and it was a pretty scary time. Fortunately, Adelaida's condition improved rapidly and within two days she was released from the NICU and got to go home with us.


When she was five days old, Adelaida celebrated her first Christmas. She was so little! We had so much to celebrate and to be thankful for that Christmas.


For the first month, we rarely let go of Adelaida. We just couldn't believe that this beautiful, special, sweet, loving baby was ours! Adelaida adjusted well by sleeping wherever she could, which was usually in our arms or on our laps.


When she was two months old, we began taking pictures of Adelaida next to Pink Panther. I love the expression on her face in this picture!


By three months, Adelaida was so aware of the world around her. She actually put Snuffles Jr on her chest by herself and was just looking at him, as if she were waiting for him to respond to her.


Adelaida started eating solids at four months old. Here she is eating with the spoon by herself! She has since progressed to the point where she gets a lot more food when she eats, but the process is still pretty messy :)


At five months old, Adelaida started swimming lessons, started school, and became a pro at sitting up.


While taking the six-month picture of Adelaida with Pink Panther, Dale and Grant wondered if she looked shorter than Pink Panther only because she wasn't fully extended. So, they (very carefully) fully extended her and we confirmed: she really was shorter than Pink Panther!


Adelaida spent her seventh months standing up almost all the time -- while holding on to something, of course.


Eight-month-old Adelaida was doing more of everything -- eating more, standing more (and pulling herself up), smiling and laughing more. She also started signing her first "word" -- nurse! What a great time we had with our little girl.


Adelaida's nine-month picture with Pink Panther is one of my favorites: she is smiling and just about to roll away, and doing what she did so much at this age -- sticking her tongue out!


This is our little flower at ten months old, with her proud Daddy in the reflection in the mirror. Aren't they so cute!


By eleven months, Adelaida really learned to love the independence she gained by self-propelled movement. She had been crawling for almost two months by then, but really preferred standing and walking to crawling. This picture is the first time Adelaida learned to walk around the wall (rather than furniture). She also started "performing" on demand: she could clap, wave, sign "nurse," and "be sweet" (lay her head down on something) whenever we asked her to. We really enjoyed showing her off!


After so many wonderful months with Adelaida, we suddenly realized that an entire year had passed -- she was one year old!! She was as beautiful as ever and (incredibly) becoming more fun every day. Our first year with her had flown by so quickly; she had somehow been transformed from a tiny little baby whose weak little finger grasp was so special, into a beautiful, smart, loving, kind, happy little girl.


By thirteen months, Adelaida was walking -- and she got so much enjoyment out of it! For the first month, she walked around with her arms up in the air, toward either Dale or me so that she could fall into us. It was adorable.


Fourteen-month-old Adelaida could sign several words (nurse, eat, more, all done, up) and was learning body parts, like head, ear, eyes, nose, mouth, and (her favorite) tongue.


Adelaida is now fifteen months old -- a whole one-and-a-quarter years! The time has flown by and we are reminded every day how lucky we are to have our precious little girl. Although she is small for her age, she has finally outgrown Pink Panther! (And as you can see, she still enjoys tags.)

Parkes family Christmas fun

A long, long time ago (I'm finally getting caught up on three-month-old posts!), we visited Dale's brother and his family in Oklahoma for Christmas. It was a shorter-than-planned trip, marred by bronchitis and emergency room visits, but we still managed to have a lot of fun and take a lot of pictures.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from that trip:

Adelaida was just learning to walk and enjoyed pushing the toy cart across the living room.


Elizabeth is a natural "mom" and Adelaida has the disposition of a perfect younger sibling! When Elizabeth saw that Adelaida was standing near the toy cart, she wanted to push her. Like a trooper, Adelaida smiled when I sat her in the cart and enjoyed being pushed around by Elizabeth.


Elizabeth, Sarah, and Adelaida play at the music table together.


We didn't bring a highchair for Adelaida, so Laura generously let us use their highchair, which was at the time between children. Adelaida was so small that she could barely get her elbows above the height of the tray to feed herself!


Elizabeth and Laura at the table.


Happy Sarah!


We had some problems with Adelaida's diapers just before Christmas and had sent them back to the manufacturer, so Adelaida was in disposable diapers for this trip. I had optimistically packed mostly 9-month clothes for her (she was, after all, already 12 months old!), and the combination of the smaller disposable diapers and the too-large clothes resulted in several "wardrobe malfunctions." The first occurred on our first day with Richard and Laura, when Adelaida was playing in the living room and I looked over at her and realized her pants were around her ankles! I didn't have smaller clothes with me, so rigged a belt out of ribbon and used large safety pins to take in the sides of her jeans. It helped tremendously, but when we returned to Albuquerque I had to return her 6-to-9-month clothes to the "don't fit yet" bag and put her back into her 3-to-6-month clothes, which I was really getting tired of! (Note: she has since grown quite a bit, and all of the 3-to-6-month clothes are now packed away! She is wearing mostly 6-to-9-month clothes now, but we also have her 12-month clothes mixed in and some of them fit her pretty well.)


All three girls took a bath together that included "bubble machine." Adelaida ended up with some bubbles on her face, which Elizabeth thought was really funny.


Mamaw with Sarah and Elizabeth.


Adelaida, Laura, Elizabeth, Sarah, and Richard on "Christmas" day.


Dale and Sarah read a book together.


Dale and Adelaida admire the fish at the aquarium.


We had a great visit with Adelaida's Aunt, Uncle, cousins, and Mamaw, and hope to continue the semi-annual trips so that Adelaida gets to spend a lot of time with her cousins!

Adventures in Eating

In the past month or so, we've been transitioning Adelaida from eating finger foods (like carrot sticks or bread with butter or pasta) to more complex dishes, like a sandwich or a casserole. Casseroles are often substantially more messy than individual finger foods, and I've taken a lot of pictures :)

Ravioli in tomato sauce:


Yogurt, with the yogurt on Adelaida's tray so she could do everything from dipping the spoon to putting it in her mouth:


More yogurt:


Cottage cheese, with two spoons:


Video of Adelaida eating yogurt (if you can't see the video, visit our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/):


the first ravioli was so good we decided to make more -- unfortunately, it was substantially more greasy and the tomato-based sauce stained everything!


Adelaida loved the ravioli! Fortunately she has a smock-bib that covers her chest and arms, but it was actually pretty hard to clean after this meal.


On the third day we gave Adelaida ravioli, she was wearing a very cute dress, so we stripped her and let her eat (almost) naked.


We've also been letting Adelaida eat from the table more recently, but she still sits in her high chair and eats off the tray for the really messy meals!

Spring Is (or Was) Here

After a winter with more snow than I've seen in my six previous winters in New Mexico, spring finally arrived. It came quite suddenly: we got six inches of snow on Monday, then yesterday the sun was shining, the snow was melting, the sky was clear blue, and the temperature was, if not exactly warm, at least approaching balmy.

In literally three days, we went from this:



to this:


We celebrated by dressing Adelaida in her most spring-time-y clothes, a short-sleeve onesie with bright pink and green and orange flowers and white capri pants with similar embroidered flowers on one leg (I'm a sucker for baby pants with embroidery on the legs!). After playing inside for a while, we took Adelaida out to the backyard to play -- the first time she's really been able to play outside (at our house) since she's been walking.


There were some falls (some caused by Maggie and Murphy and some that spontaneously occurred), but Adelaida never got upset and seemed to love being outside. She watched as Dale and I played fetch with the puppies (who also loved the warmer weather because it meant we would play outside with them!) and generally explored the backyard. She never quite figured out that the backyard is not an even surface, and fell into several small gopher/Maggie holes. I'm sure by this time next year she'll be a pro at navigating our uneven backyard!


It was wonderful to have spring again after a long winter of snow and cold, but unfortunately it didn't last -- the snow started again this evening and we're expected to get four to ten inches tonight!

Adelaida's First Words

Things have been pretty busy at our house the past few weeks, so this is going to be a relatively short post. But it is so exciting that I want to share it with all of you as soon as possible!

Before I had kids, I imagined that a child's first word would happen something like this: Baby spends the first few months grunting and cooing, then graduates to babbling with various syllables that have no basis in English. Then, one day, Baby and Momma are outside and Momma says, "look, Baby, a flower." Baby points to the flower and says, in perfectly enunciated English, "flower."

I don't know whether other children begin to speak their first words like this or not, but Adelaida certainly did not. Her vocalizations have gone more like this: she spent her first few months grunting and cooing and aahing, then started adding consonants to the "aah" sound, specifically "b" (starting around five months and abruptly ending around eight months) and "d" (beginning abruptly around eight months, when she stopped saying "baah").

The "daah" phase began so abruptly that the first time she said "daah," Dale and I both thought she was referring to him and saying Daddy in her wonderful baby way. Of course, she first said "daah" while looking at a puzzle piece of a pig, but we were certain she was talking!

After that first beautiful "daah," Adelaida's vocabulary was really limited to that one syllable for another five months: sometimes a single "daah," and sometimes repeated seemingly infinitely. She said "daah" when looking at her Daddy, when banging a wooden spoon on a plastic bucket, when talking to herself in the carseat, and when playing with her barnyard animal set. That one syllable meant everything to her. In the course of those five months, Adelaida became much more consistent in saying "daah" or "daah-daah" when looking at or pointing to Dale, so I have to claim "daddy" as her first real (meaningful) word.

Note: There were some reports that Adelaida clearly said "I love my Nonna" around six, eight, and twelve months, but those reports were unconfirmed and from a potentially biased source. :)

Around thirteen months, Adelaida really began experimenting with her consonants, making such wonderful sounds as "paah" and "maah" and "faah" and "raah." She also resumed "baah" and never really stopped saying "daah."

And then, Saturday, the most amazing thing happened. Dale was holding Adelaida, and said something like "now Momma is going to hold you while I let the dogs out" and handed her to me. She went into my arms, tapped me on the chest (her sign for me), and said "maah-maah." She said "momma," and it was in reference to me! It was such a wonderful, amazing moment, and since then she's done it several more times. I think "momma" is officially her second word -- about seven months after she started saying "daddy," but it is still pretty wonderful!

Of course I haven't gotten any videos of this yet, but I'll try to get one and post it here for everyone to see and hear.

(I also don't have any recent pictures of Adelaida, so I'm using some older pictures, from late December and early February. But I promise I'll get more pictures posted soon!)

A hectic week

Sunday: day 3 of my cold, day 10 of having a refrigerator that no longer cools itself.

Monday: day 4 of my cold, day 11 of using our refrigerator as a giant cooler. Spent $1700 on a new fridge (which won't be delivered for three weeks, and which necessitates knocking down a wall in the kitchen so the refrigerator will fit!). Returning from fridge-shopping, I got the car stuck in the mud on our road. Dale tried to drive it out, which resulted in me being splattered with mud from the tires spinning, and the car ending up in the ditch. We walked in to the house from the road, carrying Adelaida and all of our things, and left the car in the ditch overnight.

Tuesday: the cold turned into laryngitis and I sifted through the food in the fridge and freezer, throwing a lot of it out. The refrigerator is at least a well-insulated box, so I've been keeping our food cold by putting large blocks of ice in the fridge, right next to the milk (which I am buying one gallon at a time, necessitating frequent grocery-shopping trips for the past two weeks). Dale and I spent some time in the morning pulling the car out of the (now frozen) mud with our newly-working truck.

Wednesday: full-blown laryngitis: my throat hurts and no one can understand me when I talk! I picked Adelaida up from school and learned that she had a rough day -- I walked in and she just wanted to be picked up. Poor baby!

Thursday: day 7 of my cold/laryngitis, and still living out of a room-temperature refrigerator (the freezer has long since been cleaned out -- we aren't even trying to keep the freezer cold). At 5:00, I returned home with a very sleepy baby. I decided to nurse Adelaida and let her take a nap for a few hours. This backfired when, while nursing, Adelaida had a bout of diarrhea that immediately leaked out of the diaper, through her clothes, and onto mine! The ensuing diaper-change process only resulted in a baby whose bottom was cleaner but whose hair was decidedly dirtier, so I stripped her, removed my dirty shirt, and carried a naked baby very quickly from her bedroom to the bathroom. Adelaida was standing beside me as I knelt on the floor of the bathroom to draw her bath when I felt something wet on my knee. I looked down, saw the spreading yellow puddle, and just started laughing.

Friday: can only be better!

Two things have kept me going this week: the certainty that this week will end and another week -- I'm hoping for a gentler, kinder week -- will inevitably follow, and Adelaida's smiling face. Throughout all of these challenges -- being carried in from the road well past her bedtime on Monday, her momma being cranky because she's not feeling well, having a rough day at school on Wednesday, eating room-temperature food all week, being sick on Thursday -- Adelaida has been a happy, affectionate, beautiful little girl who makes us smile and laugh every single day!

The Perfect Sippy Cup: An Update

I revealed to you all a few months ago that, after a long and arduous search, I had found the perfect sippy cup for Adelaida.

I thought I'd give you an update about Adelaida using the sippy cup over the past few months.

First, I'd like to make it clear that Adelaida loves her sippy cup. She gets excited whenever she sees it and loves to pick it up (those handles are just perfect for her!); she knows that she has to tip it back and even generally gets the spout in her mouth (although she also seems to enjoy chewing on the handles). I give her the sippy cup several times a day, both with meals and between meals. Between meals, she loves to walk around with the sippy cup in her hands and really likes to put the lid on it. When I give it to her with a meal, I often have to take it away for a while so she will eat -- Adelaida sometimes forgets about her food when the cup is in front of her.

Here is a video of Adelaida with her sippy cup at a meal. Note the untouched food on her plate and the fact that she barely takes it out of her mouth the entire time.


The fact that Adelaida loves her sippy cup (to the exclusion of food) is a very minor problem. The biggest problem with this (and every other) sippy cup is that Adelaida doesn't suck on it to get water! Instead, she puts the spout in her mouth and blows on it, or chews on it, or puts it in her mouth and babbles. Water occasionally (very occasionally!) falls out of the spout of this cup, but even if it happens to fall out of the spout and into her mouth, Adelaida doesn't swallow the water. Instead, she lets it dribble down her shirt or bib and happily continues blowing/chewing/babbling with the sippy cup in her mouth.

I'm still not ready to give up on the sippy cup -- after all, it is so easy to clean, and has those great handles and soft silicone spout, has a lid to keep it clean in the diaper bag, and has a nonskid bottom so it doesn't fly off tables. Now if only Adelaida would use it as a vehicle for consuming liquids, it really would be perfect!

Adelaida's First Report Card

There have been a lot of Adelaida "firsts" that I've really enjoyed in the first year or so of our daughter's life; this "first" is one that I really didn't think I'd experience for several more years!

Adelaida's daycare is really a school, and we've begun to think of it as a school rather than daycare. Yes, the kids take naps and do finger-painting, but they also work on counting exercises ("let's count all the pictures of dogs in the room"), language skills ("let's say hello to our friends"), large motor activities ("let's climb up this picnic table"), and so much more, every single day.

And, like a school, there are parent-teacher conferences.

Dale and I met with Ms. Sandy last week for a run-down of our daughter's accomplishments and "areas of potential growth." I have to admit, I felt like I was ready to hear my own accomplishments and areas of potential growth! But I quickly settled the butterflies in my stomach and prepared to hear all about Adelaida, from someone who spends a lot of time with her and is not biased (or at least, not as biased as her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles, who all know she is the most wonderful little girl ever and that she couldn't possibly have any areas in which she could be any better than she is!).

Ms. Sandy started by saying that Adelaida is a joy to have in the class and is a very bright little girl. She was impressed with Adelaida's command of sign language (I promise I'll post some videos of Adelaida signing soon!) and with how quickly she learns new things (like choosing the yellow block when Ms. Sandy says "yellow").

She then showed us Adelaida's very first report card. The report cards are set up for kids of a certain age, and since Adelaida is 14 1/2 months old, she is right in the middle of the twelve month and eighteen month report cards, so Ms. Sandy filled out both for her.

The twelve month report card is here (double click on the image to see a larger view):

There are a few things here that Ms. Sandy has never seen Adelaida do, but that Dale and I have seen her do, like knocking two blocks together -- Adelaida actually started doing that when she was about six months old, and had largely given it up by the time she joined Ms. Sandy's class. She also copies sounds (a little bit) and actions (a lot) that we do, and definitely recognizes family member's names (Daddy, Momma, Maggie, and Murphy). Unless we count the repeated "da" syllables Adelaida makes when looking at her daddy (and the dogs, and the trash can, and her shoes), she doesn't yet say her first word.

Ms. Sandy said she wasn't quite sure about showing apprehension about strangers, but she does show fondness toward people she knows, so Adelaida's "apprehension" might just exhibit itself as a lack of fondness.

On the back of this paper, Ms. Sandy had written:








Ms. Sandy then gave us Adelaida's eighteen-month report card (below; double click on the image to see a larger view). Recognizing that Adelaida is only fourteen-and-a-half months old, I think she did pretty well on this one too!

Again, there are things on here that Ms. Sandy hasn't seen Adelaida do, but that we have, like solving problems by trial and error, saying hi, bye, and please (and thank you!) with reminders, and asking for something by pointing to it. And there are accomplishments that Ms. Sandy has seen that we haven't, like carrying a stuffed animal or doll and scribbling with crayons (she scribbles with my help, but when she has control of the crayons, they end up in her mouth).

We asked Ms. Sandy if there were any areas that we needed to focus on with Adelaida, like maybe her language and social skills. Ms. Sandy said that Adelaida is doing quite well, and every child develops differently, and she is certainly not lagging behind her peers. Then Ms. Sandy looked at the list, noticed that "seems selfish at times" is a milestone that Adelaida is still working on developing, and told us that we could, for example, encourage Adelaida's selfishness if we wanted, but that Adelaida would surely exhibit selfishness eventually and we shouldn't be worried that she isn't selfish yet. That wasn't exactly the milestone we were thinking of working to help Adelaida develop!

The parent-teacher conference was a good meeting -- it was reassuring to hear from someone less biased than I am that Adelaida is doing well and is a very happy, well behaved little girl, and it was good to know what milestones we might look for Adelaida to accomplish next, like speaking and acting out a familiar routine in play (which I wouldn't have thought to do with Adelaida, but now will).

I was pretty proud of my little girl!