Beatrice, Month Five

The big news this month (besides Halloween) is SOLID FOOD. That's right, we're into the big time with rice cereal and even the occasional dabble into oatmeal. Beatrice is surprisingly enthusiastic about what is, in essence, a flavorless gruel - she even insists on holding the spoon and trying to feed herself. A mess ensues.

Also - she's sitting! Sort of. She can sit on her own for a limited time when placed in that position, but her big break came the other day when for the first time she lifted herself from a reclining position to a sitting one on her own, held herself steady for about 20 seconds, and then tipped slowly forward until she wound up on her stomach.

She's also been enjoying some forays into object permanence - she likes to sit in her highchair and throw her plastic cups over the side, then peer after them and try to find where they've landed.

Beatrice is engaging more with the dogs this month, reaching out to pet them and following them with her eyes as they lope around the house causing trouble. The other day she was crying pretty hard until Shack came up and licked her face - she stopped crying in an instant. Good dog.

Most of her time, though, is spent grabbing her feet and stuffing them into her mouth. Accomplishments abound!

Beatrice with her cousins Rosemary and Louis:

And last but not least, Beatrice celebrating with Lucas and Veronika at a Russian Orthodox church festival featuring our favorite Russian folk band Limpopo:

(Beatrice is wearing a pumpkin hat from a previous engagement.)

As always, you can find many more photos on Flickr and Facebook.

Congratulations Mina and James!

Mina had their son Louis James Kumar Spindler at 3:28pm on Monday October 12. He is 7 lbs. 6 oz. and 20 inches long. We visited them at the hospital yesterday - Louis is doing well, very healthy and rather serene, all in all a good baby.

Beatrice, Month Four

Another month for Beatrice - this one started with Beatrice's first airplane flight, a trip to Seattle to visit our friends Chris and Lindsey and their daughter Charlotte, and then to attend Chuck and Monica's wedding. On the flight home from Seattle she was so cheerful and charming that nearby passengers actually thanked us as we disembarked deplaned.

The biggest news this month (at least for me) is that Beatrice is now watched by a babysitter one day a week. I drop off Beatrice every Thursday from 9-5pm at Mina's house, where Mina's sitter Leticia watches both B and Rosemary. That means I get eight uninterrupted hours to work. (The rest of the week I work while B is napping or after she goes to bed.) If I plan carefully, I can get almost a week's worth of work done in that one day.

I get so much done on Thursdays, in fact, that I can spend Tuesday mornings at the excruciatingly named "Mommy and Me" - which Beatrice adores. About thirty babies and their mothers gather in a room at 10am every Tuesday for singing and games for young infants. B's two favorite activities are bubble blowing and parachute time. For the former, the teacher plays soft music while filling the room with soap bubbles; for the latter, all the babies lie on their backs while the mothers take hold of a rainbow-colored parachute and wave it back and forth over their heads to the babies' evident delight.

In addition to bubbles and parachutes, Beatrice's favorite things are reading Fluffy Chick and Friends, listening to Paris Combo, watching the fountains at the Americana shopping mall, and going to the aquarium. Joanne and I took B to the Long Beach Aquarium and Beatrice was mesmerized by the brightly colored, well-lit, and continuously moving fish, very easy for even an infant to see. The hot pink jellyfish were her favorites - she liked them so much that Dev and I took her back to see them again the following week.

Sadly, the Los Angeles Zoo's petting zoo (or, as they have dubbed it, the "contact yard") wasn't such a big hit. Beatrice seemed blandly indifferent to the many goats, pigs, and sheep - at one point I tried to rub her hand over a sheep's wool but she didn't even turn around. Maybe next month...
Meanwhile Beatrice has stalled a bit on rolling over. After rolling over eight or ten times last month, she seems to have tired of it already - she hasn't rolled over in weeks. I assume she is storing up energy for the Next Big Thing.

Watch her fail to roll over!

And here she is, endeavoring to put her whole fist into her mouth (also available on the Baby Fail Blog).

Beatrice is now sleeping in her own crib, in her own room, and you can watch her do so by clicking here.

As always, there are many more photos on Facebook and Flickr.

Next month -Baby's First Halloween!