Just a few days later

It's interesting (to me) that when E was young(er) and not able to do much other than lie on her back, eat, poop and stare at us, I thought "Oh, it'll be great when she is more mobile and independent. Then she'll be able to entertain herself some and I'll be able to do more ____ (fill in the blank - work, cleaning, making meals, time to self, etc)." But now that E is getting more mobile, well at least more squirmy and trying to "crawl" (without actually being able to crawl), she needs my attention even more. Yes it's true that she can sit for hours on the ground playing with her toys, but she often wants us to still hold her all throughout the day. And if she is playing on the ground, she'll complain if we aren't sitting down right with her. Now in a normal home that would probably be just fine, but on our very hard linoleum floors, my body is just not able to do that comfortably for any length of time. Forget also lying next to her or even kneeling. This... all to say... it's been a while since I've had time to sit down and write a blog!

So what is the Spencer family up to?

Well, we had another whirlwind weekend. Hitting both grandparent's houses for Mother's Day and a slew of birthdays. (Happy Birthday Jordan, Gennie and my mom!)

Mother's Day was fairly "uneventful" for me.. no breakfast in bed, no non-mom duties, no special mother daughter time or even pictures, no extra special treats. If anything, my "present" was E only staying up three hours in the middle of the night and one hour of kicking me while she slept in my bed, and I didn't (sleep). (This was down from four the previous night and lots of scream-crying, which is her new thing to get our attention) Oh Yippee. I still had a hard time convincing Ian that because it was mother's day he should take all the responsibility of no sleep and baby caring for the night and day. Too bad, I guess I tried. At least now that we're home and E is back in her own bed, she's sleeping through the night again. A real YIPPEE. And she's also eating solid food dinners every night now. Soon, maybe we'll try some mashed bananas or other veggie/fruit food. That's pretty exciting. Oh, and if you could see that face of "hunger" on her right before we give her her food... it's priceless. I'll try to see if I can capture it for everyone to see.

Another exciting thing is seeing how everyday E gets more agile and stronger, so that she's able to get to where (and what) she wants. This means more vigilance on our part so that she doesn't get into things she's not supposed to be into. But it also means being able to daily see her grow. She's "talking" more with real babbling, watching us and things around us even more intently (and that's saying a lot because she was always a real observer), keeping a more uniform schedule for sleeping and eating and waking (along with longer but not as frequent naps - which is incidentally how I have time to write this post) and just able to squirm-move her body (mainly her back, legs and arms) so much that sometimes she's hard to hold. I won't be surprised if one day next week she just starts crawling. By the time July comes, she might even be cruising. But I'll be plenty happy if she stays in the crawling stage (a little easier to watch and keep her safe).

And lastly, our other nice bit of news is that we got a new replacement for our built in air conditioner (from our apartment complex). It means real air output and it does cool our living room (hopes for cooling the whole apartment were slim). So, hopefully when summer is in full force, E and I will at least be able to bunker down in one area of our apartment and hopefully ride out the heat. It is definitely better than suffering the 100+ temperatures INSIDE like Ian and I did last summer. If our apartment is still really warm (90+) with the new air conditioner, upper management said they might also consider some other ways of allowing us to cool or helping retrofit the outside of the apartment to keep us all cool. Let's keep our fingers crossed!