So, I believe Joy is going to have hazel eyes, just like me. Infant’s eyes can take several months to turn their final color, but they are looking pretty hazel to me. They change a lot depending on the lighting and her clothes. I have seen medium brown (like her papa’s), avocado green, forest green, grey-green, teal and grey-blue. Also, around the outside edge is a dark grey ring, also like mine. No matter what color they turn out, they sure are pretty! (sorry to not have a picture that shows good color!)
Sometimes looking in her eyes fills me with wonder. Those little eyeballs developed inside my belly, and now, not only are they pretty, but they can SEE! Light goes in them, gets translated into signals that go into her brain, where she uses the information to understand the world around her. They work, and that is such a crazy miracle just by itself!! Sometimes, I watch her pupils contract and expand as she looks at me and around at the world, and I am amazed at that little spot of black. It’s interesting how she uses that little hole to take in the world around her, but to me, it’s just blackness, I can’t see in. So much is happening inside of there that I can’t see, but nonetheless, it happens! Perhaps I’m obsessing a bit, but it’s just amazing to think about how much of a miracle even an eyeball is!
(Joy had a good day today, only a little bit of tooth pain)
This is a picture of Joy today in one of her calmer moments (I feel like it’s rude to take a picture of a screaming, crying baby). Joy was screaming with pain for large portions of the day today. It was rough. I had plans to go out and do things, but because her pain seemed so intense, I decided to stay the day home and take care of her.
It was a day full of rocking, listening and singing to Yellow Submarine (or other music, when she would tolerate it). It was a day of teething rings, which unfortunately get warm about 5 minutes after removing from the fridge. It was a day of manually massaging her gums, which does seem to help a little bit, and just plain cuddling. We used tylenol too, which I okayed with a pharmacist (who said to use it only when feverish or really freaking out, and only in the correct dosage–which we did). I hate using the drugs, but homeopathic stuff doesn’t seem to have a big effect when she’s really upset, and I only use the baby tylenol when the pain just seems out of control. Another thing I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t last as long as it needs to. I’m only supposed to administer it every 4-6 hours max, but it only really makes a difference for 2.5-3 hours. That means that there’s that painful time while we are waiting for another dose, and while the new dose is kicking in. Those were the worst times today. Even when it was fully kicked in, she was still crying, but she would pause to relax a bit between crying fits. Thankfully, she did get a couple naps in, and tonight she is sleeping as soundly as ever.
I’m starting to feel angry at these teeth. Why do they have to hurt Joy so much? They had better come in by tomorrow or the next day!!! Obviously, there’s nothing I can do if they don’t, but I do hope she gets some relief soon!
Lately, Joy has been much more grabby. She’ll try grabbing almost anything within her reach.
Only one bad thing about this… It’s time to put the non-board books away!!! One of our favorite books has been “Where the Wild Things Are,” but that has paper pages. Now that she is grabbing everything, I’m scared she is going to rip up this book, so now I’m going to have to put it away until she is more ready for it. It is cute, though, she is starting to turn pages in books when we are reading. She’s actually not too bad at it, although she goes backwards, and doesn’t wait until I’m done reading. I’m pretty amazed she’s doing it at all, although I finally understand why we have a communication problem…she doesn’t speak English, she speaks Hebrew!!!
I’m tempted to start reading the books backwards now so that she can do all my page turning. The only thing I don’t like about the idea of reading backwards is the way it might change the stories. For example, Joy’s Aunt Heather and Uncle David gave her this great counting light-up book about fireflies. The first page says, “One friendly firefly blinks a lonely light. He comes out when it’s dark and cool to make new friends at night.” Each page adds one more firefly, and at the end it says, “Ten friendly fireflies no longer are alone. They warm each other’s hearts and find their way back home.” So, do you see the problem? Reading it front-to-back, the fireflies make friends and become less lonely. Reading it backwards moves the fireflies from friendship to isolation. Isn’t that sad? But, I want to encourage this exploratory behavior of Joy turning the pages herself, so maybe we will read back-to-front for a while!
Now that Joy is technically able to complete each part of a full 360 degree turn, its time to take more safety precautions. Today, Grandpa Paris helped me put my mattress on the floor. That way, if Joy rolls out of bed, she’ll only have a few inches before she hits the carpeted ground. In the next month or so, I plan on baby-proofing the rest of the house, as well. At the rate Joy is going, I anticipate she could be crawling as early as 6 months. The average is 8 months old, but babies can start crawling from anywhere between 6 and 10 (although some skip crawling all together and just wait to start walking). If she hits this milestone later, that’s fine with me, but if she does hit it early, I don’t want to be caught unprepared and have safety hazards throughout the house.
Grandma and Grandpa Paris came into town today. We had a nice time. They played with Joy a bit, we had some lunch, and we attended a fundraiser some of my friends were holding.
Waiting for the Folks
Grandma and Joy
Grandpa and Joy
Megan and Frida (in sleeping ballerina pose) at fundraiser
Joy went as a witch, and I went as her cat. I’m a very loyal kitty! I carry her around, get her dressed, feed her, change her diapers and play with her. As her familiar, I’d say I take pretty good care of her!
Frida came to the party with her parents Eric and Kari. Also attending were the wild and crazy Toni and Megan, friends of Kari’s and mine. In the pictures below, Megan is the egg, and Toni is the ghoul. During the party, they had a hilarious dance party where Megan danced wildly in front of Joy, and Toni held Joy and used her arms to dance too. Joy clearly loved it. She cooed and babbled and smiled and laughed. Whenever Toni would pause in her dancing, Joy would wiggle like crazy on her own, as if to say, “let’s keep going!!!” It was the most fun to watch ever, I laughed my head off. I got a little video of it, although it might really be too dark to watch. These two ladies have so much fun with Joy, I’m definitely thinking they will be her favorite babysitters once we hit that stage. It was a great party, I enjoyed hanging out with everyone, and I feel like it was a very successful first Halloween for my little one. Halloween is my favorite holiday, so I’m glad that this is a good one.
Getting ready for my Halloween Party… having friends Toni, Kari and Frida over to help (also, Shauna, at a different time).
About a week ago, I witnessed Joy roll from her side to her belly for the first time (August 8th was the first time she flipped belly-to-back).
Last night, I witnessed her turn from her back to her side. That means she is capable of a full 360 degree roll!!! It may be a bit till she’s rolling all over, because often there is a slight delay between the first time she does something, and when she does it more frequently, but I’m guessing within the next few week, I will see a full turn all at once.
If you ask Brian, she has been rolling back to front for some time now but being he witnessed this, not me, I didn’t blog about it. Sorry, Brian, for having so little faith!
So, is another milestone hit ahead of the average!!!! I am very excited about that at the same time that I feel like I obsess too much about milestones. Babies can hit these late, and still be normal and healthy. It is exciting, though, to see her doing new and fun things!!!!
Joy seems to have a magical propensity for sensing the precise exact moment the sun sinks below the horizon at night. It seems that right at that moment, she wants to go to bed. At this point, it hasn’t even started darkening yet, but by the time she is actually in bed, it has gone all dark. Incredible. I wonder if she’ll always be this way! She doesn’t get this early bed-timing from me! I’m as nocturnal as they come. It’s cool, though. I’m happy to work with her sleep schedule. Certainly, it works well for me because this way I get some time alone at night. Thankfully, when we are out busy doing something (so plenty of distraction for her), she seems to be pretty patient with me about her bedtime, but if we wait too long, she does start getting fussy.
Joy has been giving her vocal cords a good workout lately! Her voice has been hitting very high screechy squeals, and deep, gutteral growls. It does seem like she’s just practicing the fun, exciting art of making noise!
I have also noticed a newish sound that’s somewhere in the middle, and I think it’s her voice. I thought I was hearing her voice before, in her everyday noises, but this sound is different and seems to me a lot like a speaking tone. It’s so cute!! I don’t know how to describe how it’s different, but it just is. It’s incredible.
Every now and then, it sort of sounds like she is actually, honest-to-God talking (just not in English or any language I recognize). Every now and then her voice takes a cadence and rhythm that doesn’t sound entirely dissimilar from actual speech. Other times, her voice will be expressive in just tonal quality. She can signal contentment, curiosity, comfort, discomfort, delight, frustration, confidence, anticipation and possibly even more with even just small changes in pitch.