We have Liftoff!

Over the last two weeks we have been watching Freya put together the principles of locomotion. Hand out, another hand out, face plant. Hand out, one knee out, another knee out, belly flop. Then, the other day, she out them together in sequence, and boom, we have liftoff! She is off and crawling, routinely covering the 40 feet from living room to kitchen in increasingly more fluid motion. There was a hilarious pause when she transitioned from rug to hardwood floor - it reminded me of the difference between mastering downhill skis on the bunny slope and doing your first real run: technique matters! Several face plants later, she got the hang of the more slippery surface, and has been exploring the majority of the house ever since. Favorite stops include the book base with Beau's school binders, the garbage can (shiny and intriguing), and the fireplace - fun with ashes.



Suffice it to say, we are enthralled!

New tricks from Nebanon

Some days we call Freya the ambassador from the planet Nebanon, visiting us from a distant galaxy. That's a reasonable explanation for her curious behavior as she continues her exploration of our world:

Yesterday's boring toy today is the. most. fascinating. thing. in. the. world. She also delights in setting up what can only be described as experiments in adaptive management. As in, "let's see what my parents will do when I surprise them with rapid full-body flips from my back onto my tummy!" That's right, after it took us about 2,000 diaper changes to figure out how to change Freya's diaper to her satisfaction, she now insists on us doing it back to front. And by insist I mean scream at the top of her lungs if we dare to flip her back.

So our mutual anthropological exploration continues. Steve has talking to stalking her with his video camera like Richard Attenborough used to go after wildlife in Africa. More on that soon. In the meantime, here are a a couple of recent impressions:


Here is Steve giving in to Freya's telepathic command to put her on the Kitchen counter.


And here she is testing the new hands-free feeding device Ingrid constructed. It's a poor substitute for the 3 servants royalty is fed by on Nebanon, but it'll do in a pinch.

first sand

is so delightful... Here is a video of Freya's first hands-on experience with the products of erosion:

Off the chart, again

At her 5-month check-up last week, Freya clocked in at 15.5 pounds, and 28.5 inches. The former is average, the latter is off the charts. And so it goes. Poor thing likes to sleep sideways in her crib, so more often than not we've been coming in to find her legs dangling through the rail. So much for keeping her bedroom furniture decently sized! Thanks to IKEA, she is now the happy occupant of a larger, but still simple, crib...

Here are some slides of Freya over the holidays (clicking on it takes you to a bigger version):


Freya continues to embrace (literally!) every new food we offer, and her current list of pureed favorites includes:

• barley with pears
  
• potatoes with apples
• carrots with a pinch of salt and a dab of coconut oil
• oatmeal with banana
• cauliflower with butter
• sweet potatoes

Oh, and today we found that there is a first tooth breaking through. That explains the drooling the last few days...

Yoga and beyond

I discovered a neat trick: do what I have always done, just do it with Freya! So she and I hit the mat every morning and do our exercises, I a modified sun salutation, she a unique sequence of amazing feats of flexibility. For a while we were trying to imitate her latest moves, but pretty much gave up after Freya served up this one:



As soon as her head is more stable, we'll go running together, courtesy of a friend's loaner running stroller. Exercise time thus becomes quality time :-)

My daughter is the boss of me

As is appropriate for a girl named after the Norse Uber-goddess, Freya is running the show. Here I thought I had figured out a way to nurse her for six months, busy work life and travel schedule and all. Had she not been the perfect executive baby just the other week, behaving with proper decorum in the first class cabin en route to Washington, DC, and sleeping through dinner in a fancy restaurant in Vancouver, BC a couple of weeks before?

Turns out she has a different idea. The other day, when we offered her a little pureed carrot, she went right for it: grabbed the spoon, guided my hand to her mouth (albeit with moderate success, see above), and figured out the mechanics of swallowing on her third bite. Ever since then my offering has been relegated to the middle-of-the-night feedings when she is too drowsy to complain, and once in three feedings during the day when I'm sufficiently engorged to resemble the easier-to-suck bottle. That's right, I am competing with a bottle for Freya's attention!

Freya at 4 months

So all parents probably go nuts over their offspring, but Freya really made some amazing leaps in the last few weeks. Now that she is four months old, she's become way more interactive and engaged -- but a picture says more than 1,000 words...