Dad's Day

I had Mariah wake up Matt by putting a piece of bacon in his mouth. Mostly for my own amusement.

We had a slow morning with chocolate chip pancakes, watching Matt open his cards and gifts, and baby play time on the floor.

Mariah got her dad a new football so she can learn to play catch with him, and I got him some Big Daddy Size root beer and a gift card for Ray's Barber Shop. Mariah also scribbled a card for Matt but I think it might have gotten chewed up somewhere.

          

How on earth did I get so lucky to have these two? 

We call her Queen Kong when she climbs on the fireplace like a gorilla, and sometimes waves her hands around and shrieks and pounds on the fireplace glass.

Matt is such a caring, affectionate, and fun loving dad for Mariah. She loves wrestling and climbing all over him. 

Everywhere we go, people comment how much Mariah looks like Matt. I love it.

She loves practicing walking across his chest.

So, I've been really into grilling lately, and trying to perfect our steak techniques. I had read a lot about it over the last week, and was convinced that I was going to serve up the best Father's Day Steak the world (or at least my husband) had ever seen. I insisted on doing the whole process. I bought a nice looking rib-eye, remembered to bring it to room temp and season it in advance, and went out to heat the grill. I went inside to prep the asparagus, and when I went back out with the tray of food to put on the grill, the whole thing was on fire. Like, giant flames, black smoke. Hahahahahah. I was scared the house was going to burn down, so I yelled for Matt to come outside and he saved the day. Still not sure what happened there. I was a little gun shy of the grill at that point, so he finished up dinner while I french fried some potatoes. We celebrated the fact that we still had a roof over our heads. Happy Father's Day to you.

Red Necklace

We love baby play dates around here. One of my favorite things about having a baby is watching her play with other babies. You never know just which object is going to have that certain je ne se quois at play time. When cute little Audrey came over to play with Mariah last week, it was my red necklace. They both had a few lessons in sharing.

Mariah was getting a little too close to regaining possession of the necklace.

8 months

Here's a phone pic dump from the last month. I think this is .5% of the pictures I took in May.

Last time I saw my mom she gave me a few baby items that used to be mine. Mariah loves her new bib and sun hat. I think she wears them well.

Little puppy baby. The upside is that our floors stay really clean and crumb-free. The downside is that I've taught my baby to eat food off the floor. And that I had to fish a chunk of carpet out of her mouth last week. When we offer her food from our hands she mouths over the whole hand like a stingray until she sucks up the food.

This quickly turns into this:

(don't mind the food in her hair)

We went through a really awful biting phase a few weeks ago, and I almost weaned her because of it. After a week of her laughing in my face every time I said, "no biting", she eventually stopped, and so we carry on.

Hard to be mad at this smiley face though. She laughs at funny faces and silly voices I make; it is surprisingly gratifying to have an 8 month old laugh at your jokes.

A few weeks ago she started crawling, but since then she's mostly gone back to the army crawl and alternates between doing downward dog and planking.

Feeding, changing, and dressing her has become ridiculously difficult. I always stop and laugh at how hard I'm struggling to get her diaper on as she flips over and frantically tries to crawl off the changing table.

(I was holding on to her legs, don't worry)

 Not to mention the bad airplane impersonations I do to try to get a spoonful of food in her mouth while she aggressively blows spit bubbles to deny entrance into the hangar and yanks the spoon out of my hand.

Once she gets the spoon she peaces out on the whole gig and crawls out of her seat. We should probably get a real high chair.

Just in the last week she's starting to pull up on furniture and stand. This is her favorite place to practice standing, so when she gets up she can admire her reflection in the fireplace glass.

Yesterday I heard her fussing instead of falling asleep for her nap and I went in to find her standing in her crib. Yikes. Time to lower it, again.

We'd been putting her to bathe in the kitchen sink with a couple inches of water so she is contained and happy while we eat dinner standing next to her.

That lasted a couple weeks until she started standing up in there too. Luckily Matt caught her before she slipped. No more sink baths.

Her favorite word is dada. I'm really glad I have her saying "mama" on video from a month or so ago otherwise I'd be a liiiittle bummed. This morning I was saying, "mama" trying to get her to repeat it and she put her hands on both sides of my face and put her nose right up against mine and yelled, "DADADA." Okay, okay, I get it. You love your dad.

Mostly she likes to whisper, "Hidaaaa, hidaaa"

Other happenings from the last month:
Mariah had her first swing (above), first slide with Aunt Jenna, and first ride in the front of the shopping cart.

I think she was more excited about the shopping cart than the slide.

Once a week, I take her to play group at the park with some friends from our old ward. Lots of little kids, and a couple babies just a few months older than Mariah.

Sometimes during her naps I do weird things, like cut my hair. Then she wakes up and gives me her stamp of approval.

She ate this whole giant sweet potato over the course of a week. Atta girl.

She really likes feeding herself.

(How long can we get away with calling frozen lima bean puree a treat?)

New foods she likes have been puffed kamut, lima beans, onion, and honeydew melon. Overall, her favorite foods are apples, zucchini, and sweet potatoes.

She still loves being swaddled and sucking on binkies. I'm trying to be better about saving the binky for naps and bedtime, but I'm a pushover.

I gave her this little abacus to play with and she is obviously a genius.

I found her like this earlier today, calculating how long until her next feeding.

"Your baby looks like a boat" (aka Why I go to Work)

I started working again at the beginning of the year. When people ask me how it's going, I usually say it's going "Okay." It's definitely not great; for how few hours I'm working it's a lot harder than I thought it would be, and it's getting harder and harder the older Mariah gets. I don't really have consistent childcare. Matt comes home early once a week, when the classes are at my house I try to put Mariah down for a nap right before my students get here, and when I teach at the preschool I just bring her with me. Some days it goes fine...but there have been days where she fusses and cries for a whole class, blows out of her diaper, or just wants to be held. Either way, I feel bad that I have to adjust her whole schedule just to get in a couple hours of work during the day. And, now that she's mobile, it's almost impossible to keep an eye on her and teach at the same time. But the stuff the kids say keeps me coming back for more.


Driving up to my students' home for the first time after maternity leave. I pull up, and the two boys are standing on their front porch shouting: "HEY!!!! WHAT DID YOU NAME YOUR BABY??"
When I got closer I told them: Mariah. 

(Huge disappointment)
"Awwwww! We told you to name her Lumie!" (Apparently this means snowflake in Finnish and was the name they were really championing for at the end of my pregnancy)

"You look skinny! I mean not really skinny, but at least compared to how you looked the last time we saw you!"

I thought the awkward questions would cease once the baby was born, but turns out breastfeeding is another source of mystery and fascination for kids.

"Can you stay here and play with us?"
"No I have to go home and feed my baby!"
"Why can't your husband just feed her?"
"She's still really little so only her mom can feed her right now"
"OHHH I know what you mean...*wink!*"

"What's the baby gonna have for dinner?"
"Milk. Milk for breakfast lunch and dinner."
"Milk from the booboo?"
"Uhhh yep. anyways."
"So you mean she's gonna have booboo for dinner?

"My family did something illegal, I don't know if I should tell you."
"Ok."
"We turned on the sprinklers and we all ran around naked in the backyard. Even my dad."

"Did your baby's hands shrink?"
"Nope"
"I think they did because last time I saw her, her fingers were *thiiis* much longer" (demonstrating about a millimeter difference)

"Are you gonna tell Mariah stories about me while I'm gone?"
"I wasn't planning on it."
"I think you should. If you want you can practice while I'm here. Tell her a story about me as a fairy."

I teach one student at her grandmother's home, and with about 5 minutes left of class, she whispered to her grandma, "Go lock the door."
Her grandma said, "Miss Emily has to leave in a few minutes."
"I know, that's why I said lock the door, so she can't leave."

When Mariah was dressed in her blue and white striped onesie, one of my preschoolers told me, "Your baby looks like a boat."

A 6 year old told me, "I don't know if I really need to learn this, because when I grow up I'm going to live in Bangladesh and own a tiger and be a world class soccer player."

One of my 4 year old students has an imaginary baby friend who, coincidentally, is the exact same age as Mariah and likes to do everything she does. He told me his baby's name used to be Lizzy, but then she changed it to Lillian, and now it is Ruby. Every week he asks me what Mariah likes and what she's doing now, and then he says something like, "My baby is doing the same thing!! She's crying right now because she misses me, but I can't play with her since I'm working." I asked if he was the baby's brother or the baby's dad and he said, "I'm the baby's mom, silly! She has to eat ya know!"
Last week, he told me his baby was in the hospital because she broke her leg when she was learning to crawl. Sad.

Mariah LOVES one of my students who comes over to our house for class every Tuesday. She waves her arms in excitement and giggles and smiles just looking at her. It is hilarious watching the two of them feed off each other. It's so funny to me that my students already see Mariah as "one of the kids."

My preschoolers seem to alternate between treating Mariah like their little protege and treating her like their own baby sister that's bugging them. Some days they get really intent on trying to teach Mariah how to use an abacus, and other days they whine to me, "Miss Emilyyyy, Mariah's looking at my paperrrrrr."
Guys, she can barely control where her eyes look, let alone use them to read and cheat off your book. 

7 months

7 months baby!
Mariah has her two bottom teeth, is in size 2 diapers and 6-9 month clothes, is blabbering and shrieking constantly, learning to crawl around and getting into mischief, and her hair gets longer every time she wakes up.

Mariah likes:
Saying mama, dada, and baba
Whispering
Giving big slobbery kisses (on command!)
Scooting all over the room (not quite real crawling yet, but she gets around fast pushing with her toes)
Sitting in a high chair at restaurants!
Eating. New foods lately: millet, strawberries, spinach, grapefruit, green beans, mangoes...I'm starting to lose track. She eats everything with total nonchalance, like she's been eating it forever. She prefers the sweeter fruits and veggies. She's getting better with finger foods also.
Swishing her spit in her mouth (weird)
Spatula, measuring cups, remote control, water bottle, rattles
Putting things into our mouths, the most entertaining for her is putting her pacifier or my hair into my mouth, and then laughing maniacally
Sleeping! KNOCK ON WOOD. I honestly feel like a new woman this last week. (I wrote this last week. Last night she was up at 10 pm, midnight, 3 am, and 6 am. Heaven help me.)
Being outside. We take her on a long walk just about every day.
Biting. Her favorite things currently are my collarbone and shoes.
One of these mesh feeders, we put frozen fruit in it and she is a happy camper feeding herself.

Mariah does not like:
The back of my head
When I take away shoes from her mouth. I have to draw the line somewhere.
When feeding time is over
Any of our feeble attempts at babyproofing

 Camera bag snack

Sometimes she gets frustrated with her crawling efforts and goes into superman while flailing her arms and legs.

Playing with Aunt Natalie and Uncle Jeff

Breekend- Sunday

Aside from bringing some sunny skies and warmer temps with them, Jeff and Natalie also brought some magic baby sleeping dust with them. Ever since they came Mariah has been sleeping for 11-12 hours straight through the night. Thanks guys, we appreciate that. While they were here, we of course celebrated Jeff's 27th birthday (on the same day as Mariah's 7 months :), had our fav Kneader's breakfast, drove up the canyon, and Natalie and I got lots of q time chatting while the boys golfed. Before they left on Sunday afternoon, we visited the cemetery to find the gravestone for Natalie's grandfather and some of her other relatives. I think we read every single gravestone there before we finally found the right one.

We miss you guys already!!! Sure love you.