Laughter

Madeline's been laughing for a while now, but I just recently got a chance to capture it on video. In this case, all it took to crack her up was a (clean) sock on mommy's hand.

Seven-month check-in

Madeline doesn't have another scheduled doctor appointment until December, so we took her by the office today for a seven-month weigh-in. She weighs 19 pounds, 12 ounces and is 27 inches long. She's grown about a quarter-inch since her last appointment, earlier this month, and put on 1 pound, 6 ounces. That's 22 ounces, or almost an ounce a day, over the last 21 days.

We're not sure how to attribute her rapid weight gain (at her last check-in she was gaining about a half-ounce a day), especially since she seemed to have lost some weight as a result of her illnesses this month. But she's still in about the 80th percentile for weight, which is just fine.

This picture, taken this afternoon, shows how she's starting to get up on her hands, elbows and knees. She got up like this and rocked back and forth several times before collapsing back onto her stomach.

Exploration

Here's another picture from our outdoor session this week. It's fascinating to watch Madeline explore new things, like this grass from our yard. While she'll handle some objects roughly, slinging them about, banging them against the closest surface or dropping them on the floor, there are other things that she'll handle ever so tenderly.

She'll hold an object in her fingers - just tightly enough so it won't be dropped - and turn it over and swap it between hands, slowly inspecting it from every angle. Then, of course, she'll try to eat it.

The thirtieth week

Madeline has been a ton of fun this week. Almost immediately after returning home from our vacation last weekend she began to rediscover her former cheerfulness. No longer sick, she was sleeping through the night and napping well during the day. And lots of rest means lots of energy at playtime.

She has been impressing us all week with her movements - she's been getting up on her hands and knees during playtime over the last few days as she practices rocking back and forth and otherwise generally squirming around. It's as if she's making up for all the energy she didn't use when she was sick for two weeks.

But just in the last couple days her naps have been a little less restful and she's had a little more trouble getting to sleep at night. These are the same symptoms she displayed several weeks ago when her first teeth started to come through. Maybe we'll start seeing those upper teeth soon?

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Happy 60th birthday tomorrow to Grandpa Glover!

Movement

Madeline is so full of energy that when we put her on the floor we don't have to wait very long for her to do something fun.

Today I put her on one side of her blanket and put a toy on the opposite side, about three feet away. Sure enough, within about two minutes she wriggled and squirmed and propelled herself across the blanket and grabbed the toy. It's the first time I've witnessed her move herself that far with a single-minded purpose.

She has also been pushing herself backward in a straight line, a motion that I've read is a precursor to forward crawling. And today she actually got herself up on her elbows and knees, even though she didn't hold that position long.

Hitting the streets

Today Madeline and I went for our first run together. Running was a big part of my life before Madeline arrived, but I found out quickly how having an infant in the house can curb those kinds of activities - both because there's little time to get away and, when there was time, I was often too tired to think about going for a run.

But over the past couple months things have been smoothing out at home and I've been able to run more frequently. Also, Lacey bought me a running stroller at the neighborhood yard sale a few months ago, but we had to wait until Madeline was big enough to fit in it - six months is the recommended age.

So today was the day. We kept it short and quick - 2.3 miles at an 8:21 pace - and I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to push this big stroller around.

Like Lacey cooking some of Madeline's food, this is a passion of mine that I can share with Madeline, and another good way to get her out of the house and in the outdoors.

Back home

It's been a busy weekend, but it's nice to be back home after a week at the beach. Madeline is feeling much better after two weeks of back-to-back illnesses - I think that just being at home and getting back into the normal routine has helped put her at ease. She had been abnormally quiet during her sicknesses, but today the house echoed with her familiar laughs, chirps, oohs and drool-soaked spitting. She's happy again, and we've certainly missed her.

To celebrate the first day of fall today, we spread out a blanket and played in the front yard. For reasons I can't explain, this is the first time we've done that. We've had a yard, and we've got blankets, but this was the first time the two were combined for playtime. Must have been something about the gorgeous weather today and Madeline's rediscovered good cheer.

Madeline loved playing in the grass, exploring the slender stalks with her fingers and attempting to eat anything she could pick up. Hopefully we can get out in the yard more frequently as the weather softens over the next few months.

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Happy birthday to Nana Glover today!

The twenty-ninth week

"Vacation" now and forever has a new meaning for us. What once would have been welcomed as a week-long respite from the rigors of daily life instead became a simple relocation (and, at times, an amplification) of those rigors.

We returned today from a week at the beach - a highly anticipated trip for Lacey and me. However, as I wrote last Friday, Madeline took a turn for the worse the day before we were set to leave after apparently recovering from a bout of hand-foot-and-mouth disease earlier in the week. Friday night was terrible and we visited the pediatrician on Saturday morning before our scheduled departure. We were told that Madeline had an ear infection, and her poor sleep and agitation the night before were a result of her (obvious) stuffiness and discomfort.

The first few days of the trip followed the same script - little sleep and lots of crying. She was so congested that whenever we laid her down for a nap she would clog up and wake in a coughing fit. Eventually we decided to let her share the king-size bed with us at night so we could comfort her there instead of having to get up every few minutes.

By the end of the week she was stringing together several hours of night sleep, which was great news for her parents, who had been vacationing on as little as three or four hours of sleep a day. Madeline was also in a much better mood as she began to feel the results of the prescription antibiotic and benadryl.

Even if Madeline hadn't been sick, this vacation would have been a different sort of trip. Since Madeline has been with us, my profession has taken a less prominent role in my life as my focus shifted to caring for my daughter and being there for Lacey. It used to be that a vacation was an escape from the workplace and the monotony of the daily routine. But when the issues that consume your life are family-related, they become permanent companions. It's almost as if the vacation was more stressful and tiring than a normal week at the office might have been.

None of this is to say that we didn't have a nice time. We were at the beach, after all. We spent the week with family, we played in the ocean and saw the sights. Madeline set foot in the Atlantic for the first time.

During the first part of the week I wondered if we made the right decision to continue with the trip despite Madeline's illness. I think we did the right thing, despite the struggles. We'll remember the good moments - of which there were many - and the bad ones will simply be filed away among the experiences that strengthen our parenting confidence. We made it through, and managed to have a good time, and that says a lot.

Vacation 4

One last photo until we return from the beach.

Vacation 3

I guess every parent thinks their baby is the cutest of them all, and we're no different. But sometimes I do think it would be hard to argue otherwise!