Just the three of us

Katie left yesterday, and now it’s just the three of us for my last month of maternity leave. It’s interesting to look back and think of how different Aurora was for each of our guests. When Nancy was here, she was just a newborn, and all she did was eat, sleep, poop, and cry. By the time my parents came, she was starting to smile and focus her eyes. And while Katie was here, she became a little person!

Chuck keeps saying that Aurora’s not a baby anymore. Whenever people with children hold her, they always say something like “I can’t believe mine were ever this small!” and strangers are always commenting on how tiny and cute she is, so I know she’s still little. But compared to her newborn-self, she’s just SO much bigger, stronger, and smarter.

One of her favorite things to do now is to be held up in a standing position. Often she’ll stand up with her little hands grasping only my 2 index fingers, and she concentrates so hard on balancing. She loves to go from standing to being lifted up above our heads, and actually kicks off to make it happen! And just in the last few days she’s started intentionally bringing things to her mouth to suck on them. She did it for the first time in yoga on Sunday – during relaxation she just wanted to stand on me while holding my fingers, so I closed my eyes and let her balance on my tummy. Suddenly my finger got wet! She actually pulled one of my fingers into her mouth! Today I put a bib on her because she was getting very drooly, and she grasped the bib and put it in her mouth. She also found her thumb and sucked it this morning. These are things she never dreamed of doing as a newborn.

Last night we watched her first Baby Einstein video together, “My First Signs,” and she totally watched the whole thing. She doesn’t usually even look at the TV, but she knew this was for her. Katie gave us a book about how to teach your child to sign, so we’re starting to work on that. This morning Chuck signed “eat, milk, mommy” to her. I don’t think she’ll be able to sign back until she’s 7 or 8 months old, but that’s long before she starts talking. It will be neat when she can crawl and communicate.