Crazy Baby Demon Voice

A few days back, Sasha's Daddy taught her how to growl. It was so cute. She started growling and it was just adorable. It made us all laugh. Then she started talking in this weird demon baby voice. Her cute little voice she used to use when she said "Dada" was replaced by a deep growly voice. All day yesterday, she was growling and using her growl voice.
It's funny, but I admit I miss the cute little baby voice.

So Affectionate

One of the things about having two kids is the ability to compare their personalities. Well, not only with my own kids, but I can compare Sasha's personality to other babies I've been close with such as neices and nephews. One thing that stands out to me is how genuinely affectionate Sasha is.
Cassie was not really an affectionate baby. More of a "look at me!" baby, she preferred praise and attention to what she was doing. Affection was something she endured and not very well. Most of the times if I or someone hugged or kissed her, she would squirm away, push them away, or turn away. She didn't willingly give affection as a little one unless she was commanded or requested to, like "Give mommy a kiss", then she would do so for the praise she received or for the accomplishment of it. But most of the time it wasn't genuine affection. I know she loved me in her own way, she just wasn't a huggy kissy child. It wasn't displayed physically.
Sasha, by contrast, is so affectionate. Once in a while she gets this look on her face with full eye contact, and she'll just grab Jon or I by the head, pull our face to her, and give us this huge face biting smushy-faced kiss to the cheek that lasts for like 15 seconds. She does it to me more than Jon but that's mostly because his face is more stubbly than mine, but when he's smooth and clean shaven he gets his fair share of baby face-sucking kisses.
Then there's the times when she's sitting nicely on the ground playing. I pick her up when she's starting to get bored, and I am rewarded with a big snuggly hug...one of those hugs where you can see it in her whole body. She throws her arms around my neck and burrows her face into the crook of my neck. She shakes her head back and forth to burrow her face deeper into the folds of my neck and hugs for dear life. It's like she's saying "I'm so glad to see you" with all she has. It's not just the hugs and kisses. She enjoys being held or being close to those she loves.
All babies love their parents. Just some personalities show their affection in different ways than others. Of all the babies I've seen, Sasha displays more affectionately than any baby I've ever known.
And she's also a bit more sympathetic/empathetic too. Jon has remarked many times how Sasha looks at him with such concern when he seems to be hurt, has a headache, or just isn't feeling well. She seems to read it on him better than anyone. She KNOWS when her daddy isn't feeling right and she doesn't like it. She'll either try to make him feel better or it will upset her. It's interesting how Sasha and Jon are very in tune with each other.

All stopped up :(

Part of being a parent is keeping track of baby poo. It's in the job description.

A few days ago, I posted that poor Sasha hasn't filled her diaper with anything solid lately. Well, she still hasn't and she has her parents worried. It's been about 7 days now. I called her pediatrician's office yesterday and asked for advice. They recommended I take her temperature rectally to get things moving and that I make her drink prune juice.
Well, she stopped eating solids about 4 days ago. She would NOT have anything to do with prune juice. Their thermometer trick did not produce any results. And still we have empty diapers. I worry because her milk consumption has also declined and that caused my milk production to start to decline. And I also worry that now that Sasha has started to refuse to eat solids, that we might experience a problem with her eating solids even after she finally fills a diaper.
So today I called the pediatrician and asked for more advice. They asked me if I could have her in the office within the next 30 minutes. Gotta love our pediatrician's office! 30 minutes later, we were in their waiting room. There was a cute set of 11 month old girl twins, and Sasha made a friend with the non-sick one.
Then in the examination room, Dr Ross pushed her belly in and stuck her pinky up Sasha's butt :( Poor baby. Doc determined that Sasha didn't appear to be blocked, and that she would poo when the time was right. She thought that a good evacuation was imminent but actually we have still not seen any results.
I guess we'll see tomorrow. I've never actually been hopeful for a big baby poo.

Yesterday- My Birthday

Despite the fact that Sasha did NOT let us sleep very well, I think I had a nice birthday. I was too exhausted to bake myself a cake although I almost got a nice german chocolate cake started. Jon was understandably too tired (sasha didn't let him sleep last night) and busy with the baby, and Cassie is still too inexperienced with baking to suddenly bake a homemade german chocolate cake, or any homemade cake, from scratch by herself. Although she might surprise me.

Cassie surprised me and cleaned the whole darn house. Literally! I am definitely a mom....because that was the best birthday present ever. Haha! She did a really nice job on the kitchen, living room, bathroom, and everything.
I love my kids :)

Letter to my 12 year old

Dear Cassie,
I love you and I am very proud of you. You are a neat and interesting kid. I can't wait to see what you'll be like as an adult, but don't grow up too fast or you'll make me feel old. You are a good kid who almost never does anything bad. You are WAY smarter than you think and some day you will realize how smart you are. If you ever actually decided to do the work you should, you would be almost dangerous.
Thanks for wishing me a happy birthday. You can make me dinner if you want but please clean up whatever dishes you use or any messes you make. You can make whatever you want. It doesn't have to be mac&cheese&tuna but that stuff is easy to make. You did a good job with the fish sticks yesterday - easy wasn't it?
I got a new shower curtain since you said the one in the tub is old and stinky and dirty. If you get a chance can you take the old red one off and put the new one on? Leave the black one on.
You can have your iPod back but please done lie, cheat, steal, and please listen to Dad. Try to be someone you can be proud of.
Love you!
Mom
P.S. Thank you for doing track even though I know you don't like it.

Track & Field

Cassie, my 12 year old, is in Track & Field at her school. She doesn't really like it very much and wants to quit but I would not let her. I suppose it's not very nice of me to make her continue to participate in an activity that she doesn't like. Years from now when she's in her 30s, she'll probably still be mad at me.
Honestly, I have her best interest in mind. Right now, when she's not at school, she's got her nose glued to a television screen playing video games. That's not very healthy. I can't exactly send her outside to play. There's nowhere to play and nothing for a child to do around here. It's all busy streets and parking lots and I'm not going to have her go play out in the parking lot. I get concerned about her inactivity. It's not healthy for a child to get so little physical activity.
I told her at the beginning of the school year that I expected her to participate in at least one sport this year. At first, she said she'd do volleyball. But when time for volleyball sign up came around, she didn't sign up for it. So now Track & Field is the last sport of the school year. She actually seemed enthusiastic about it before it started. One morning she saw a group of high school joggers and expressed a desire to run with a track team. But once it was time for her to actually join the track team, she started to resist. She's asked me several times for permission to quit but I wouldn't let her. She hates days when there is track and her shoulders slump over as she leaves for school on track days. Then again, she is a bit prone to being over dramatic at times. But it's clear she's not having fun.
She's been in track for all of April so far. Yesterday was her first track meet. She insisted that she didn't want us going to any of her track meets. She didn't want us to watch her. I just might sneak and go to a few anyways but we'll see when it warms up again.
The thing is, she is actually a really good runner! She has always been a quick runner, especially endurance running. I remember through her entire grade school 'career', regardless of what school she went to, she was always the fastest runner in every class. "Mommy, I'm the FASTEST runner in my class! Even faster than the boys," she would proudly tell me when she got home, and she would brag about the various races they ran in gym.
Her track team has over 200 members in it! Yeah, it's big. So they have to qualify to go to track meets for events. She was the 6th place qualifier for the 800m run and qualified to go to the track meet for that event. She didn't want to go but yesterday she did go to her first track meet. She says she placed 6th in the race at the track meet. Good girl!
So at this first track meet, it was her school versus two other schools. One school, which is sort of like a paid private-type school, had I forget how many members in it. It was either 8 members or 16 members(?), but regardless it was dwarfed in size by her school's 200 members. The other school had a lot more than the 'private' school but still far less than her school. It sounds comical. I wish I had been there. I definitely have to sneak to one of her track meets and see for myself.
It was interesting getting her back home. She called home right after school to let us know she decided to participate in the track meet after all, and that it ended after the activity bus so that she would need us to pick her up when it ended. However she didn't know what time it would end. So we had to try to guess. She didn't have her cell phone with her. Jon went at 5pm and picked her up. And I could almost detect a little enthusiasm in her voice when she told me about the meet. We'll see how it goes!

Dada!

Dada
About a week ago, Sasha's regular babbling started to contain a lot more "dada's". The dada's increased, and so has her tone of voice when she says it. It's hard to describe, but her vocal tone is much different and a little bit sing-songy when she says it. Now, she uses Dada as a word. She mostly uses it when she wants something that she sees but Dad doesn't mind. He's flattered that she uses Dada when she wants something....Dada is certainly going to give her whatever she wants, especially when what she wants is her daddy. We give her lots of love and attention when she says it so her use of her first new word is increasing.

No messy diapers?
Poor baby has not had a poopy diaper in a while. It's been at least 4-5 days now. This from a baby who used to go at least 4-5 times a day. Every day I wake up and think "Oh boy, she's going to blow up a diaper today" but it isn't happening! I don't know what to do. We've withheld solids until she goes, in case that's what's stopped her up. She wouldn't eat more than a bite when we offered them to her anyways and several whole meals went to waste. If she doesn't go by the time the doctor's office opens this morning, I just might call and ask them for some advice.

Out to eat
I've been feeling lazy lately...too lazy to cook at least. So we've been going out to eat for a lot of our meals. Each time we go out to eat, we bring Sasha's Bumbo seat and set it upon the table for her to sit in. It really works well. Sasha gets a lot of attention from the restaurant patrons and from us, and feels like she's a part of the family meal. She is so well behaved, probably due to the fact that she is so included at the meals. I hand her one of her baby spoons and she wields it like a task-master, beating her bumbo seat with it for emphasis and occasionally attempting to put it in her mouth. I've been trying to work with her on the use of a straw to drink water. She's managed to get a few surprise mouthfuls but I don't think she's totally clear on the concept yet.

Object permanence
Yesterday, I was snuggling with the baby in bed, teaching her how to play peek-a-boo with the blankets. I wanted to test out her sense of object permanence so I let her see me put my hand under the blanket. Then I moved my hand so one finger would come into and out of view from under the blanket. Well, she would only watch the spot where the finger would come into and out of view. She didn't grab the blanket to uncover my hand. It really didn't seem like she had a sense of object permanence as far as the hand-under-the-blanket trick goes.

Rolling, rolling, rolling
Sasha has started a really annoying sleep habit: rolling around. A lot. It's like she's tossing and turning at high rpm. We could probably use her as power generator at the rate she's going. Fortunately she's not rolling in circles. If she's between her dad and me, she normally starts on her side facing me as she nurses herself to sleep. Then she'll roll over to face her Dad. She'll grab him, stay like that for about 10 seconds, then she'll roll back over to face me again. It almost seems like she's time-sharing her sleepy hugs between us. She does the same thing even if one of us is not there napping with her. It's not very conducive to getting a good night's sleep for her father and I. Eventually she ends up waking herself up by doing that too. And don't even get me started on the sleep situation. She is still on a day shift sleep schedule, which is hard on us.
Tonight, she's doing the rolling and beat up dad thing, and he has not been able to get any sleep at all. This is not good. As long as she insists on "sleeping" during the night and staying awake all day, we depend on him to get his sleep at night so he can watch her during the day. Then I can get some sleep during the day so I am not too tired at work at night.

Battered Mommy Syndrome
I'm starting to feel really beaten up. How embarassing to admit my 7 month old baby girl beats me. But boy does she beat me good. She's gotten a few good punch-kicks in on her father as well. Typically, I'm sitting on the couch with her standing in my lap facing me. She pulls my hair, hits my face, sticks her fingers up my nose and pulls, throws her fingers unexpectedly into my mouth and digs around, scratches my gums, tries to grab and pull my tongue out of my mouth, pokes my eyes. I am starting to get a bit frazzled by the hair pulling. So I put my hair up in a pony tail when I'm playing with her but does that help any? Nope. She still pulls on my bangs, pulls my hair anyways and ends up either ripping the hairs out of my scalp or pulls the hair out of the pony tail. I feel like I'm always wrestling her for my hair back. I'm starting to feel a little violated. Oh but she does it all with a smile and a cute giggle and she has such fun with it. I think it's just a phase but I think pretty soon I'm going to have to lay down the law on the little cutie. Not that I know how yet. I just know that I should probably start nipping this problem in the bud before it escalates.

That's a 'More'!

I'm going to call it today. Sasha is officially signing the word "More". She signs it when I ask her to and she mostly signs it when I'm tickling her or making her laugh and she wants me to do whatever it was that amused her again. It's so cute, it looks like she's clapping except with little fists when she does it.
I suspected she was signing "more" for the past few days but I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, just coincidence, or if maybe I was reading too much into her little clapping movement. But I think she's really doing it!

We're still reeling from Sasha's sleep schedule. I hope she has mercy on us soon.

The other night, we all decided to make a night run to IHOP. We took the bumbo seat along for Sasha to sit in on the table. She is so well behaved when she sits in that seat at the dinner table. Anyways I had a glass of water with a straw and Sasha learned how to drink from a straw.

And in other news, we were pleasantly surprised to see a sign of intelligence in that little baby brain. There is this attachment on her pack-n-play that plays music, sound effects, vibrates, and has a light. Each function has its own button. It's become her after-diaper routine to play with the buttons but she can't quite push the buttons with enough force to make them do what they're supposed to. So now she grabs one of her Dad's fingers, directs it to a button, pushes his finger to make it push the button with enough accuracy that she can switch the music, sound effects and lights. And she looks to make sure it does what it was supposed to. Like, she understands what each button is. When she pushes the button to turn on the different lights, she cranes her head to look at the specific light to make sure it goes on or off. Neat!

Happy 7 Months, Dancing Baby

Today, Sasha is 7 months old. My is she growing. I see that personality, that person that she is becoming. Or maybe it was who she was already but was unable to show us. Sometimes I look at her, and something familiar tickles the back of my mind and escapes before I can determine what it is. She just seems so familiar, like I've known her for years. Like she reminds me of somebody that I can't place. It makes me think to her "I know you".

Sasha has been in a wonderful mood lately. Today she danced!
She loves her Baby Einstein and her Baby Signing Time videos. Well the Baby Signing Time video also came with a music cd containing the songs that were on the video. Sasha and I were sitting in Cassie's room and Sasha kept looking at Cassie's radio, so I decided to show Sasha what it could do. I stuck her Baby Signing Time cd in it, and it played songs that are oh so familiar to her (and unfortunately to the rest of the household). At first she stared at the radio in puzzlement as if to say "Where's the video?". But she quickly got excited at the music. Once the Diaper Dance song came on, she started squealing, singing, dancing and having such a good time!! Oh it was so cute. I called Jon to watch and the whole family was entertained by Sasha's contagious enthusiasm and dancing.

She didn't get to sleep until very late again. But when she's in a good mood, I am mesmerized by her and I don't mind at all.

More Biting

Well, Sasha's biting is back again. Not as bad as it was when Sasha first got her new teeth, but it is still driving me insane enough to consider switching to exclusively pumping for a while. You would think that I would get used to it. That I wouldn't feel like crying when it happens. It makes me so emotional and I don't quite understand my emotional response or why my emotional response is so intense. It's not just the pain, although trust me it hurts as bad as it sounds when an infant decides to clamp down on your nipple as hard as she can with brand new, never used sharp baby teeth. Maybe it's because I have to actually wrestle with my baby to get my nipple back? Maybe it's the sudden adrenaline rush, followed by having to supress my every natural response to kick the ass of whatever is hurting me because what is hurting me is an incredibly cute and sweet laughing baby? Maybe it's the graphic image I get in my head of my baby biting my nipple off and laughing about it. Or maybe it's just a remnant of ppd, of which I think I might still be suffering from a little bit. And frankly, I do feel a little violated. I know I'm wrong, but sometimes it feels like she's mocking me.
So now, our nursing sessions are sort of analogous to those old west stand-offs. You know, the duels in the street where the gunslingers face each other and wait until some signal to draw their weapons? They just stand there twitching, watching each other, waiting. I don't know if she's quite related to my yelping in pain to the times when she's bitten me, so perhaps she thinks I'm prone to randomly screaming and it makes her nervous. I think she's starting to make the connection: "When I bite mom, it makes her make really neat noises. Let's see that again!". I applaud her cleverness but her experimentation still hurts.
Okay, so I think that I can figure out a pattern. I know she never bites me when she's about to fall asleep, or when she's very hungry. I listen to her swallow out of habit so I can tell when she is done eating. Most of her bites occur right as she decides she is done eating. Otherwise, if I this gets worse again, I'll have to see about switching to pumping for all but her bedtime feedings.

I didn't have any original nursing goals in mind. I think my goal is for Sasha to never have to drink a drop of formula. I don't mind having to pump to accomplish that goal if I have to. It would be easier on us if we continued nursing. Once she turns a year old, we can start to gradually switch her to cow's milk, so I guess that means 5 more months of nursing or pumping. In that case, we're over half way there.

Boppy Dance!

Home-made baby food

Yesterday, Sasha tried the brown rice cereal I made. Jon is the one who fed it to her and I guess she did pretty well with it. Yay! It has a little more texture than the Gerber rice cereal so she was startled by the new texture at first. Basically, my rice cereal is brown rice that I stuck in a blender, ran through a sifter and turned into a powder. Then in order to prepare it, I had to cook it in boiling water for 10 minutes.
Sure, I could just use the Gerber rice cereal but I just don't want to do that. I'd prefer to know exactly what she's eating. Gerber has this new "organic, whole grain brown rice" cereal. I looked at the ingredients and it has flour in it. WTH? Why would they put flour in rice cereal?
I don't mean to come across as a baby food snob. I just think I can feed my baby better than some corporation. I have chosen to feed Sasha home-made baby food instead of commercially prepared baby food.
I'm not sure if I've posted that before. All the food that she's been eating has been prepared from real fruits and vegetables. I find it strangely enjoyable. I take a fruit or vegetable, steam it, puree it, freeze it in an ice cube tray. Then when it's frozen I take the cubes of frozen baby food, put them in a ziploc freezer bag, and keep the baby food cubes in the freezer until it's time to feed the baby. My freezer has lots of cute little colorful squares of mango, pear, sweet potato, avocado, and plums. I'm waiting until she's consumed most of those cubes before I make any more foods for her, as she seems to have at least a month supply sitting in our freezer right now. I have to say, the mango is VERY yummy. I've stolen a little of it for my own consumption and it is very very tasty. Lucky baby.

Ambush!

This usually happens when I'm in a hurry to leave the house and take a 'quick second' to change Sasha's diaper first.
I think it was 9:25pm, and I had to leave for work at 9:30. Since Sasha had just woken up, I figured I'd change her diaper before I left for work. I had let her sleep in just a diaper, so when I took her diaper off she was pretty much a naked baby. No big deal. My husband came in, and I forgot what else happened, but the jist of the story is she started to pee... while she was laying there on the changing table. Ambushed me! This has happened to me countless times before so it should be no big deal. Jon picked her up and had her standing in her changing table so I could mop up the pee with a paper towel. She was looking at the puddle of pee near her feet as I cleaned it up and seemed a bit interested. So interested that she peed again. She seemed to find the streams of pee coming from her very fascinating...so she did it two more times! Each time, I thought there's no way she could go anymore, she had to be done but nope, somehow she managed to muster up some more. I think the last two times were intentionally done out of curiousity.
I guess it probably says a lot about what kind of mother I am, but I found Sasha's little potty experiment hilarious. I was proud of her as it seemed to me like she was experimenting and figuring out how to use her body. Yay baby! Now if only we could work on her timing.
Coincidentally this was the second time she 'ambushed' us in the last 24 hours. She got Jon pretty good earlier in the morning.

Mostly sunny

Amazingly good moods prevail lately. Sasha has been in very high spirits and her good moods make my husband and I happy. It's hard to be anything but cheery with a giggly, smily, delightful happy baby. Sasha was so animated today that I had to grab the camcorder and record a bit of it.
She didn't want to go to sleep at bedtime. Normally I would find that annoying. It threw my whole schedule off. But darn it, she had to be so cute and cheerful. I was drawn in by her. I wanted to sleep and play with her at the same time. I had to sleep but didn't want to. Eventually, Jon had to watch her and let me sleep until she wore herself down enough to fall asleep with me.
Sasha was in a similar mood on back on Sunday morning. I went home from work to give her a feeding, and she was so good humored that I didn't want to leave her...so I took her (and my husband) to work with me. She had a blast! She had lots of new faces to look at and got lots of attention. She was all smiles. She even let a co-worker hold her. No sign of stranger anxiety.
It's times like these that make being a mother so worth it. I love Sasha's little personality, and I'm watching it grow right before my eyes. I love that little girl.

A long day

Happy Birthday to my brother, who just turned another year older.
Sunday was one heck of a day. I worked Saturday night/Sunday morning. Sasha was in such a pleasant disposition that I took her to work with me for an hour or so. She had a blast. She went back home after her visit, and I finished up my shift. When I got home, we took a nap. A short nap. After all, it was Easter Sunday, and I had stuff to do.....
I got about an hour nap and I think I let my husband sleep two or three hours. We drove 90 miles north to my parents house to visit, pick up my 12 year old daughter Cassie, and to celebrate my brother's birthday. My birthday is this month also so they combined his birthday celebration with mine. Cassie baked us a cake, which was very sweet.
We hung out at my parent's for a while. My bro wanted to watch Soprano's on their tv. A family friend stopped by and we went out with coffee with him at Denny's before we headed back home.
We all arrived home exhausted and fell right asleep. It was a long day.

Good Friday

Above: Sasha plays a mean hand of Uno.

Cassie, my 12 year old, had today off of school for the Easter weekend. Her bizarre school had spring break last week instead of this week. I've never known a school to have spring break separate from Easter but whatever. So she had a three day weekend and I let her go visit my parents. It's a good thing because she has some jealousy issues with Sasha and needs more attention than I can give her. Grandma, on the other hand, gives Cassie more attention than she could possibly need, so it works out.
My Dad came over this morning to pick Cassie up. Sasha and I fell asleep on the couch, and I was pretty groggy when he arrived. He said hi to Sasha, and she responded by screaming and crying. I don't think she was expecting to wake up to visitors and she was mostly startled. It takes her a while to warm up to people. It was hard to get her to calm down, but she eventually calmed down and went back to sleep. She let me sleep for about 10 hours today! Amazing.

I gave her a bath using her new favorite bath method. We have a detachable shower head on a hose, and she loves it when I use that instead of just putting her in bath water. It's so much faster and easier to bathe her that way anyways. I put her in her bath seat in the bath, hose her down and let her play with the water streams, and wash her up. I keep the bath tub plug in while I do so, that way when we're done with the shower head, I can put her in the bath water to float and splash and play around in. Then we're all done.

Wake up!!!

Photo: Sasha playing with her piano. She LOVES that thing.

Sasha co-sleeps with me, which I enjoy. It is very convenient, especially considering I breast feed her. We don't have to interrupt our sleep for a feeding. There is nothing like falling asleep to a baby snuggle.
The hard part is waking up. Because Sasha doesn't let me wake up gracefully. I usually wake up with a baby finger exploring my nasal cavity, my lips being ripped from my face, my eyeballs being probed, my eyelashes being pulled, or my face being gleefully and repeatedly slapped. Apparently, when she first wakes up, she is content to lay there and let me sleep a bit. My husband has caught her awake and calmly looking at me while I was asleep and unaware. But at some point, she violently decides that it is time for me to wake up, and I am forced to go from asleep to "WTF?!?" in two seconds.
Before I had Sasha, I was notoriously crabby when I first woke up. So it isn't easy for me to be so rudely awakened. But I can't get mad at my baby girl. Once I open my eyes and see her smiling laughing face, I can't help but giggle a little. And that makes her laugh too.
Then I have no choice but to wake up. There's no sense fighting it or I'll get whapped upside my head again. If Sasha says Mom must wake up, well... Mom must wake up!

Anyways, the husband was mildly crabby today. Everything electronic seemed to be breaking. Our cable box/dvr wasn't working properly so I need to get ahold of the cable company....again. And his computer was still giving him problems. It stopped recognizing his nic card due to some memtest thingy he did to it. I think my husband may have wrestled his computer into submission. With all his 4GIG memory intact. He said something about a sound card, operating system, and something about a game. Anyways, he might have a working computer, which is good considering how much money we've spent on it. We'd hate to have a $2000 leet paperweight.

More?

I think Sasha may have signed to me today. There's this strange game that I play with her, only because she really seems to like it. I put her on the floor flat on her back and stand over her. Then I balance myself on one foot and put my other foot on her belly like I'm stepping on her and I say "I'm stepping on you!". For some reason she finds this absolutely hilarious. Well, today she gave me the expression she gives me when she wants me to do something again. When she did that I signed "more" to her then I stepped on her again. Repeat that last sentence about 20-30 more times and she finally started hitting the tips of her fingers together in what looked like the sign language for "more" while she gave me her "do that again!" look. I think she's starting to get it.
I tried to get my husband to look, but by the time he looked she stopped doing it. I sort of wanted his confirmation of whether he thought she was signing. It could have been coincidence. Therefore I suppose I'm not counting it as an official sign yet. If I can see her do it more often where I'm not wondering if it's my imagination then I'll start believing she's signing.
Good, because her Signing Time video is starting to drive our household a little crazy. My husband mentioned that he had some hardcore World War II dream...tanks and machine guns and explosions and the whole works, with the Signing Time lady standing in the middle of battle singing her Signing Time song. Yikes! Perhaps he's seen that video a few times too many. But Sasha is starting to get upset when she doesn't see that darned video on the television. Apparently she's also okay with Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. But AC360 had a guest host on tonight. Give us a few more days. We'll be absolutely insane if we have to watch these videos much more.

Oh yeah, she's sitting up! She really started sitting up without us having to hold her this past weekend. Before that, she would fall over after only a few seconds. Now she can sit up for over a minute or two, sometimes longer! Unless she is startled then she falls over backwards.