First Steps

Vienne Juliet is 14 mo. old today.

My little baby girl is pretty much walking now!  Very exciting times in our home.  She's been walking, holding onto our hands for a few months now - but now she is walking back and forth between me and Mark!  And, last night for the first time, she let go of the edge of the table to walk towards my open arms!  That was huge!  Any day now I know she is just going to let go and walk towards something that she wants instead of towards my arms of security.

She has also been sleeping on her tummy every night and naptime and now I find her on her hands and knees once she is awake.  Perhaps she will finally start crawling after she is walking!?  That would be funny!  Or at least this position is teaching her to sit up on her own....finally!

As far as first words, Vienne has been saying "Mama" and Dada" for quite some time and also says "num num" on occasion and just added "Bob" to the vocabulary.  "Bob"?  You ask?  Oh yes, Bob is one of Grammy's puppies.  

Vienne has been mimicking me more and more, which has been totally cute.  She now picks up her comb and tries to rub it on her head.  She has picked up my makeup brushes and shoved them at her face.  Last week she started using her spoon quite accurately.  And, of course the organizational skills of hers continue to grow and grow.  Have I mentioned these?  This girl loves to organize - to put things away, in their place or at least some new place she has assigned them.  Rarely does she make a catastrophic mess because she is always putting things in containers and back up on shelves and in little holes.  Yes, of course we have covers on the outlets!  Her favorite toys are tupperware containers and boxes along with tiny little objects to sort in the boxes and then shut them away with the lids.  The other week we were in a little health food store and I set her down on the ground to walk along a shelf that was at her level.  The shelf was filled with display boxes of granola bars and such.  A normal baby would probably pull everything out of those boxes and strew them all over the floor.  Nope.  Not my Vienne.  She re-organized those boxes in her own terms - removing bars from one box to put them in the next.  Not one granola bar was on the floor, nor even on the actual shelf....each of them were in different boxes from their original spot.  It was so funny.  Of course, I had to put everything back where it belonged before we left - but I was quite impressed.

Growth-wise, Vienne is still so very small.  I'm not really concerned because she still has a decent amount of chunk on her thighs, belly, and cheeks.  I just wonder when she will have a growth spurt!  She is 14 months now and can still fit into 9 mo. size clothing!  And  last night I just happened to check the tag on one of the jammies she regularly wears...it is size 6 mo.!  I put it away for principle's sake!  And, man oh man, her feet have never grown!!  She still wears a size 2 shoes!  That is the same size she was wearing a year ago!  Surely saves on the pocketbook!  But it's kinda weird, isn't it?  At her 12 mo. checkup (which was actually at 11mo.) they said she was "perfect" so I'm not going to think twice, I guess.  

And I think that about sums up June for us!  And, here's a video of those first steps last week along with a few cute pictures!

Summer finally arrived here on the Oregon coast!

Getting my girl out to enjoy the beach she lives at

Organizing garlic into the jars while she eats lunch on the counter

Took a morning walk to check out the low tide and the tide pools around Haystack Rock

Being coy

Vienne Updates - June '09

Well, this past week has been full of a few new things from our precious little girl.  

Last week, while visiting Grandpa in Portland, Vienne took her very first 4 steps on her own, away from her Daddy's secure hand.  It was very exciting and showed us that she may just be closer to fully walking on her own than we thought!  She has grown very skilled at scaling the walls and really only needs one hand on the wall or furniture to get around.  I think it's more for her own security than anything else...like she doesn't realize that she really can do it on her own.  One characteristic I've really been noting about this little girl is that she is in no rush to acquire a new skill...or at least hasn't been up until this point.  She takes her own leisurely time and doesn't need to prove anything.  It's funny.  Most kids I see are just so dang determined!  She's totally skipped the crawling stage...and if I haven't mentioned before, we've already gotten a lot of flack about that one!  Like you can control whether they crawl or don't!  It's funny - this girl can pull herself up to standing position and pretty much navigate around any obstacle as long as she can have a grasp on one edge of it...but, if laying on her back she canNOT sit herself up to save her life!  When on her back, she is like a beached whale flapping her arms until you sit her up or pick her up!  Isn't that weird??  I know she'll learn it on her own, soon enough...but it is strange.  She'll be walking on her own soon, but won't even know how to sit up on her own....like a turtle flipped on it's back! 

Well, along with this new realization that she is sooooo close to walking, she has just actually given up the interest in scaling the walls in preference to holding our hand and walking her all around the house, in circles, back and forth.  It's terrible and tiring.  And, of course since I am not game to do this for more than one loop around the house, she has begun to reveal her first selfish tantrums!  I experienced the very first full-body fit just the night before last.  It was sooo strange for me to watch!  Let me explain - this girl has been sooo mild-tempered and easily consoled and distracted.  Now, she knows what she wants and it's all that's on her mind and she will scream to get it...finally showing that 'determination' that I thought she lacked!  I was a kindergarten teacher for like 4 years...I've seen my fair share of fits, so I don't give in too easily.  I just stood over her and watched her thrash until she calmed down, panting and gasping for breath.  Then I held her until she was breathing normal.  Once she was calm and content, I let her walk just a bit.  But, I want to nip this in the butt as soon as I can...I am not one who will placate her through her tantrums and give her what she wants.  But, man oh man, it is so ugly to see this new side of your child!  I should also add in, though, that that night we discovered a new tooth that just broke through the surface that day...thus, most likely explaining her dramatics and moodiness.  Poor girl.  

So, this week has been interesting...pushing a little toother forth and enduring many little fits.  It's hard to get much done now when she's awake cuz she's so moody if she doesn't get to walk about, holding my hand.  Eventually, I just sit her on her bum, or leave her holding onto the couch and tell her that if she wants to walk that she needs to do it on her own. Yeah, that's not getting across to her too well...but, that's my mentality!  Anyone have any suggestions for how they've dealt with their baby's tantrums??

Through all of this, Vienne surprised us the other night by sleeping fully through the night!  What a treat for me!  So, despite the fact that she is breaking a tooth forth, I am going to go ahead and start weaning her from her one night time feeding...which, I know, is against the books.  "They" instruct you to wait til their body is not going though anything traumatic, but I think she is ready and I want to follow through with what she accomplished the other night by doing it all on her own.  So, that's my new endeavor...maybe this Mama will be more refreshed and rested through the days!  yay!

Here are a few pictures...

This is my "mild baby" - the one who sits on the counter and plays with garlic cloves for 20-30 minutes while I cook.  But, this is soon to change, I am learning!

So close to doing it on her own.

Bored with that...now wants my hand!

Starting to whine and getting close to a possible fit...

This is her yelling for me since I walked out of the room...haha

Playing 'pat-a-cake'

When Mark Dresses Vienne...

It always gives me a fun chuckle when I emerge in the morning to discover that I forgot to lay out clothes for Vienne, which left my color blind husband in charge of dressing her for the day!  Today, we have a darling little peachy-pink dress with brown trim, layered over a strawberry pink undershirt with darker pink polka dots and finished off with plum purple fleece pants with striped cuffs.  Doesn't actually look that bad in the picture...he has managed to pull of worse...but it was just silly enough for me to share.  He literally thought the colors here were brown, green, and blue.  Not really sure how that would've worked together, anyway...but man oh man this color-blindness of his keeps me on my toes!  Isn't it great?!

How Does My Garden Grow...

We did it!  We finally got our garden veggies planted last night!  Mark built this beautiful raised bed over a month ago and we have just been waiting to find the best and most affordable way to fill it with good soil.  We finally got a truckload in it yesterday.  We planted mostly cool weather veggies, since we live here on the coast.  We have a mesclun blend of greens in those first few rows, then some rainbow chard, a winter squash, a summer squash, a row of carrots, a row of beets, some broccoli, and sugar snap peas growing up the lattice against the far end of the wall!  Fingers crossed that everything grows well.  We had a very very small little garden in our last home....but this is my first real vegetable garden and I am so excited to see how it turns out.  Man oh man, if we can get away with eating veggies only from here and not have to buy produce for a while, I will be so ecstatic!  Lord willing, I am diligent to tend to it regularly with loving care!

And, now we are just waiting for an opportunity for more soil to fill the area to the right of the garden bed in which we can plant grass seed!  Then, Vienne and I will have a little side yard to play in during the summer!  Oh I do hope that this works out and that we can grow the grass quickly.  Soil is so gosh darn expensive!  

And, finally, we will finish this area off with a compost bin that Mark will build from scrap wood.  Then I won't feel so guilty about throwing food scraps into the garbage and we will have compost for our garden!

This is how my garden is growing!

8 things

Just another one of those silly little questionnaires to pass the time...

8 Things I Am Looking Forward to:

1. Sunny weather

2. Planting my vegetable garden and getting a grassy yard area growing

3. Anyone to come and visit us!

4. Getting my hair trimmed soon

5. My grape kombucha to finish brewing

6. What the coming year may hold for us

7. Throwing Lacey's baby shower

8. Meeting my little niece that is brewing inside her belly!

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Cleaned up the house

2. Threw a mini temper tantrum over Vienne's 30 minute (WAY too short) nap

3. Visited Mark at work

4. Had a friend come to visit and chat about homebirths

5. Rejoiced over Vienne's 2 1/2 hour afternoon nap to make up for the morning one.

6. Realized that she's in the depths of painful teething still

7. Made a lame dinner

8. Watched 'Dancing with the Stars'

8 Things That Bring Me Peace and Comfort

1. Reading

2. Quiet morning time, on the porch, in the sun with an iced coffee

3. Staring at our ocean and breathing in the salty breeze

4. Spending time with my mom

5. Good worship

6. Prayer 

7. Knowing that I've been productive

8. A date with my husband