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.