Baby Stuff and Pictures

There are a few new pictures over at my Picturetrail photo album.



I laugh when I look at this picture. All I can think of is Sydney saying, "Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?"

Anyway, Sydney can now sit up by herself. A lot of it depends on her frame of mind. When she wants to she can sit up for several minutes without a problem. Other times she falls over without making an effort to sit up.

She started really sitting up a little over a week ago. On Saturday last week we had some friends stop over for a little while. While we sat in the living room and talked I had Sydney sitting on my leg on my lap. And she sat. And sat. And sat. I hardly supported her at all and she sat up for a good ten minutes with only a nudge or two from me. Just the day before while we were practicing she would barely sit up for five seconds before she's wobble over.

Unfortunately, rolling over isn't going as well. Developmentally speaking, Sydney is behind the general guidelines in that. Other than the one time she rolled from her stomach to her back on her own for Anne she has yet to roll over. According to the developmental guidelines she should have been doing it about a month ago.

But they are only guidelines. Anne and I aren't worried about it. She's ahead or right on track for most things. Just because she doesn't want to roll over yet doesn't bother us. We'll continue to work with her (which we have been a little lax in doing regularly) and she'll get there when she's ready.

Other than that I don't think there's anything to report.

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. (That link is currently down. This time of year they always retool the site to get ready for November. If it's not back up in the next couple days it should definitely be up by October 1.)

The object of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. You might think that 50,000 words doesn't really make a very long novel, but it is plenty of words to try to write in just a month, I can tell you.

Last year I completed NaNoWriMo. I won it, as they say. Anyone that completes the 50,000 words within the month wins the satisfaction of having done it. (There's also a certificate you can print out and an icon you can get to use as an avatar online.) Everyone is on their honor to whether they win or not, though there is a verification process of the word count. But really, they don't know what you submit or when you wrote it. The satisfaction, though, of completing it was enough to deter me from ever trying or wanting to cheat it.

Unfortunately, this year I hold no delusions of actually being able to complete NaNoWriMo. There's this certain little lady that takes up a lot of my time. (Not that I would have it any other way.)

What I am going to do, though, is what I've been meaning to do for almost a year. I still need to edit my story from last year.

My month of November will be spent working on my story from last year. I am going to edit it and then get it posted where I can share it with my online family and friends. It won't be quite as exciting as doing the full-blown NaNoWriMo and probably won't have the same sense of accomplishment at the end. But it will have some sense of accomplishment and will get me working on my writing a little bit again.

And that's always good.

Lots of Stuff

Let me say first off that I wasn't trying to make anyone feel bad for not seeing the pictures of Sydney's teeth before I posted about them here. Most of the time when pictures get posted a blog entry will come the same day. Updating the blog and showing or mentioning the new pictures is the way they get announced.

It just so happened that I took the tooth picture before work one day. I came to the computer to see how it turned out. I saved it, posted it, cropped it, posted that one and then had to go to work. I didn't have time to sit and write out a blog entry for a day or two after. So I was just genuinely curious if anyone saw them on Picturetrail before I got a chance to post the blog entry. (Subtle hint with the link there. New pictures are posted. Only some of them are scattered in this entry.)

But enough of that. Let's get on to really important things.

Monday was Sydney's five-month birthday. You may be shocked to learn that I have a picture of her next to Fievel:



The second picture is Sydney at four weeks. I put that up for comparison. Though you can't really see Fievel's hat in that picture you can still see that Sydney is shorter than Fievel. At five months she is now longer than Fievel. Anne measured her on Monday and she's roughly 28 inches long. That's probably rounded down slightly rather than rounded up.

Her two bottom teeth are well in now, as you can probably imagine. She's now starting to get a top tooth. She almost constantly has a hand (or two) or a toy in her mouth. She's drooling all over. But she's still rarely fussy. (*Knock wood*) When we've been able to get to her mouth to look, one of her top front teeth has definitely started to drop. It shouldn't be long before it breaks the gum. Then the other one will undoubtedly start coming...if it hasn't already.

Sydney still can't roll over on her own, though we are practicing with her. Anne says she did roll from her stomach onto her back on her own once. She hasn't repeated it yet.

Sydney is also learning to sit up.


It's really more like she leans forward until she can support herself with her arm(s). But if Anne wants to call it sitting up who am I to argue?

She does rather resemble a gorilla when she does it, though. I've come to think of it as her "Gorilla-Style Kung Fu." It just popped into my head the other day. I'm not sure why. But I derived it from kung fu movies where they are always using animal-style kung fu of some sort or other.

A week ago Wednesday one of my best friends left from his visit. Neal and I have known each other since high school. We were roommates for ten years. We moved from Michigan to Las Vegas together.

It was great to have him here. We showed him the area a little bit, but mostly we just hung out, played with Sydney and watched movies. It was great just doing that with him.

He really enjoyed meeting his "niece," and she enjoyed meeting him.


This past Saturday I got a call out of the blue. It was my Uncle Dave (my mother's - Grandma B's - brother). I hadn't seen him in a long time (fifteen years?) despite the fact he lives a seven-hour drive away in Portland, Oregon.

Uncle Dave and his lady friend (girlfriend, companion, significant other? - sorry, I'm not sure what to call her) Karen (Aunt Karen?) were thinking of coming over this way. That weekend. He has a pilot's license and he was going to get a plane and fly to the area. Karen and he were going to camp, but wanted to see me and meet Anne and, of course, Sydney.

Sunday they stopped in to see me at work. They flew into Coeur d'Alene because it was too windy further north near Sandpoint where they were planning on going to camp. Despite my best efforts I couldn't get them to stay in our guest room.

They drove north in their rental car and camped at Priest Lake. The next day, Monday (Labor Day), they came back south and we got to visit with them at our home for a little over an hour. They got to meet Anne and Sydney. Karen held Sydney almost the entire time they were here.

Their visit was way too short. They did promise to come back again. Even better, they will try to come back in November. That is when my mother (Grandma B and his sister) will be coming back again. And, with any luck, my grandmother (Great Grandma M) will be coming for a visit with her. Hopefully the chance that Uncle Dave will visit will be enough extra incentive to entice her out. And hopefully the fact that his sister and mother will be here will be enough to get him to come and stay longer.