Friday, February 26, 2010

Videos!

In the last couple of months I've actually remembered to pull out my phone and film some of the things Rebecca's been doing. I suppose in a way it helps that she is becoming so much her own person, and the fact that catching her on a still photo is nearly impossible lately also helps! We like to refer to her as "Hurricane Rebecca". :)

This first video is of Rebecca trying to eat a cookie. She was ABSOLUTELY determined she was going to eat the cookie. I even tried to take it away a couple of times before I got the camera out instead!



And... the below picture is from another day, at supper instead of lunch. I promise, I don't normally let her get this tired, it just happened that I caught this sort of thing twice on camera!


The below video is of Rebecca dancing. She dances to just about any music she hears, but any time I get out the camera to try to catch her at it, she stops, hence Justin being on film trying to get her dancing off to the side there!



For whatever reason, Rebecca has developed a liking for chewing on her toes again... but has a preference for which foot!



And, the last video (taken yesterday, in fact!). Rebecca has figured out how to move boxes, stools, or any other potentially stable item so she can climb onto it, and then climb onto the piano bench. She loves to sit and play the piano, and on this video just happened to play nicely, and hit on a couple of harmonies even! She gets very pleased with herself about playing, which is what the leg kicking was all about. :)



And... in other news, I am 26 weeks pregnant now, so I guess somewhere around the start of the third trimester now? Things are looking good.

Rebecca is now 15 months (plus a couple of weeks!), weighing in at 20lbs and has a height of exactly 29 inches. These measurements place her in the range of 5-10th percentiles (I think they are 8th and 9th to be exact), so she's maintaining her percentiles perfectly. She has been on a food strike the last couple of days, however, so she'd better start eating again soon, or we'll be looking at a drop (not that there's far for her to go!). She's still nursing, but I think there's been a decrease in my milk supply because she has (by her own choice) decreased the quantity of nursing she's been doing, so I'm not sure we can really consider it sufficient daily nutrition to make up for a lack of solids anymore. Of course, the decrease could also be due to the pregnancy, in which case she may pick up more nursings again in June/July once there is a lot of milk again. :)

Uh-oh is growing nicely, and weighed in at almost 5lbs at his appointment last week! He gained nearly a full 3lbs in the three weeks between appointments! He needs to slow down though, because we definitely don't want to end up with a 60lb+ dog here. I imagine considering how beagle-ish he looks, he won't be much bigger than 40lbs though. We're having issues convincing him to eat his meals though, until Cinders decides to try and eat them instead, and then he starts trying to make her back off his dishes! Rebecca no longer tries to carry him around, but does occasionally try to pick him up by his ears or tail. Good thing he's not only resilient, but good natured as well! Most of the time she's pretty nice to him though, such as this morning when she went over to his bed (where he must stay during our meal times), and gave him a kiss. :)

We've had snow a few times in the last month, but only one weekend with a lot of it. We've tried to get Rebecca out to play in it every time, as it really is quite rare to have more than a dusting on any day. Now we're moving more into the rainy season, however, so Rebecca has been discovering the joys of jumping in puddles with rainboots... or wellies, or gumboots, or whatever else you want to call them! I've had three people call them three different things in the last week! She loves her rain boots, has become 'okay' with her open umbrella, though doesn't want to stand under it yet. At least she doesn't run away from it anymore like she did when it arrived at the beginning of this week!

The one big concern at the moment is the neighbour's dog, who apparently is known to be dangerous. He nearly came across the street to our yard (teeth bared) a couple of days ago, and they even admitted that if he'd got across the street he would most likely have done some very significant damage. We called Animal Control, and while these people have been on their radar for a little over a year now (which we knew) they said their hands are basically tied unless we can catch the dog (or they manage to be here when the dog is running loose outside), or until it actually injurs someone OFF it's property. They're sending a reminder of the leash laws, which say the dog can't run at large, so if it isn't going to stay on the property they need to tie it, but that's all they can do for the moment. So... now we're discussing protection methods for when we are out on our street, because while we could (and very well might) call animal control every time, it only takes a minute for something to happen. I'm leaning toward pepper spray, Justin's leaning toward a (legal length) knife blade... we'll see what ends up happening.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

January pictures and such

It's hard to believe it is already almost the middle of February! We've been rather busy this last month too... which is probably obvious considering the lack of posting on here!

Rebecca is starting to say a lot more words, though she still doesn't tend to use them to actually tell us what she wants. Perhaps she'll actually talk to us by the time she is two?! She comes out with sentences on occasion, and almost always made of words we've never heard her use before, which makes us think she will just start conversing with us in full sentence form one of these days, and then never stop talking.

I spent this morning making 'baby cookies' using various recipes my mum and I found online, because we're thinking perhaps Rebecca's daily meltdowns are due to a low blood sugar issue, since it is pretty consistently the same time of day every day. She loves the ones I've let her have, so I guess they're a success. I don't prefer them-- I like my cookies a little sweeter! I also made a 'chewy granola bar' recipe, which, while it tastes quite nice, isn't quite what I'm looking for still. I don't want it to have a cakey or cookie-ish texture, I want it to be fairly similar to the quaker chewy granola bars.

Rebecca has taken to playing with some much more grown up items than she used to... she really enjoys playing with things such as the paper animals pictured above, and the tea set pictured below.


We're honestly not quite sure where Rebecca learned to 'make tea', but she will use the teapot and pretend to pour tea into a cup, and then gets a spoon and stirs her cup of tea. :) Perhaps from watching my dad? Anyway, this is a super cool tea set, made by Green Toys, Inc., which is an entirely recycled plastics company! They use recycled milk cartons to make their toys, and they're really nice quality... and best of all, no batteries, and can work with water/juice in them. :)

I gave her a piece of paper with some glue on it, and a whole bunch of scraps of paper to play with. She spent about half an hour sticking the pieces on the paper and pulling them back off again.


Supposedly, toddlers like to play in Cool Whip, or whipped cream, or whatever is similar. Well... apparently my toddler is an exception to this, as all she did was literally sit there and eat the whole blob!

This is as 'played with' as it got!!

See? she demolished it!

The really big news of the last month is that we got a puppy. It is suspected that he is a full blooded beagle, as he has a number of birth... anomalies, shall we say? that would indicate some pretty severe inbreeding. He has five toes on his front paws, and six on the back... normally a dog would have only four on each! He also has a very cute little over bite. :) Rebecca really enjoys feeding him, and likes to carry him around every chance she gets as well. It's rather amusing, though we are really trying not to encourage her to be picking him up! At least he is quite small-- probably close to 3lbs right now. He was found under a dumpster at perhaps a week of age, in a pile of rotting junk, maggots, and roaches. Gross... but at least he's doing well now!

So... meet "Uh-Oh", the newest member of our household! :)