Our daughter had learned how to hold a bottle all on her own.  Caution:  So cute it may make your teeth hurt.

On Easter we got to dress Celerity up in a pretty pretty dress.

She also discovered my parent's fountain:

So, I'm sitting on the couch, watching TV, when I hear this sound . . .ZzZZzzzzt . . .Prrrrrrrrr.  I look over, and there is Celerity, pulling the string on her "purring blocks".  Not with her hand, though:

So very very talented, my daughter is.

Also, Happy Spring everyone!

Celerity has been taking one and two steps here and there for a while now. She'll step from the chair to the couch, or the couch to the coffee table. Today, however, she's really started walking for real. Our daycare gal told us she had taken quite a few steps across the room. When we got her home, we tried to get her on video.

I'd say this is walking:

Be sure to see our Christmas Update below.

Here is Celerity eating now, in 4 parts.

Here is what feeding her is really like:

Now that we've starting feeding her rice cereal, we've been paying a bit more attention to her mouth.  Dodi just noticed that she had her first tooth!  She hasn't even been especially fussy or anything, either!


Also, let me tell you, it was hard to get this picture.  She kept sticking out her tongue, the little stinker!

One day before she turned 6 months old Celerity Wowed us with her amazing crawling ability. This is just minutes after we witnessed her first crawl.

As I had previously reported, my daughter can roll herself over from her back to her front.  She now does this on a regular basis and has stopped complaining about being on her stomach.  Or at least, she waits a bit longer to complain about it.

Now, I'm pretty certain that she can actually roll from her front onto her back on her own, but I have yet to actually see her do it.  She just never seems to roll over when I am in the room and looking.  It can't take her very long, because I step out of the room for less than a minute and, when I come back, she's moved two feet across the floor and is now on her back again.  So, either she's rolling over on her own or crawling, which I seriously doubt.  She is doing it well enough that she's getting into trouble, rolling up against the coffee table (and then screaming).  I will be purchasing baby fencing shortly.

It's like some sort of uncertainty principle - I can always tell her position, but never her momentum, from one moment to the next.  My theory is that when I am not observing her, she actually takes all possible positions in the room at once and only when I check on her does she settle into a discrete position.

Oh, yeah, I have a blog. Here is a quick summary of what's been going on with Dodi and I over the last couple months.

Back to Work for Daddy
I went back to work the second week in May, when Celerity was 3 weeks old.  We set up a cot in Celerity's room so Dodi could take care of late night feedings with CJ without waking me up.  We worked out a plan where Dodi would head to bed somewhat earlier than normal, I would take the evening shift, and Dodi would take the the late night feeding.  This ultimately didn't work out that well, since Dodi tended to not be able to get back to sleep after Celerity's feeding.  It didn't help that Celerity was still in her "Late night party" stage.  We were so busy that the image to the right is the last one was have in May.

A lack of sleep and the overall stress of going from part time care of CJ to all day care of CJ was turning out to be too much for Dodi.  She managed well for a couple weeks, but eventually started to break down.  I started to work from home to help take some of the pressure off her.  Unfortunately, it was too little, too late.  At the end of May Dodi had to go out of town*.

Effectively a Single Parent
I was largely unprepared for single parenting.  We had not considered what might happen if Dodi had to go out of town.  We did not have a Daycare provider, had not even considered looking for a Daycare provider.  I was kinda in a daze.  I knew Dodi was going to be ok, but I had to work, if only to retain my sanity.  I started calling friends and family and managed to get a patchwork fo folks to watch kiddo for the next week.  Our friend Julie gave a recommendation for a local gal who does Daycare. She turned out to be just a couple blocks away, very affordable, and had a slot open for an infant.  I was super lucky to get Celerity in and thus was set for daycare. 

The next couple weeks were largely uneventful.  Celerity began to sleep through the night . . or at least most of it.  There were off and on 3am feedings, but by and large I was putting her down at Midnight and she was waking me up at 6 or 7 the next morning.  This meant that I was largely conscious while at work.  We settled into a (somewhat bleary eyed) regular schedule.  I fed and entertained Celerity at night while watching TV or trying to type (babies don't go well with typing).  Every morning I'd drop her off with Daycare, then pick her up after work.  Rinse. Repeat.

* If you don't know what I mean, feel free to contact me privately.

This weekend I went over to visit my friends who have a 6 month old boy, Jak.  He, of course, is quite cute, but a good deal more mobile than Celerity.  I mentioned to his mother that Celerity could almost, but not quite, turn herself over.  She proceeded to grab her son by the feet and ROLL him back and forth across the floor (giggling the whole way).  She says she did that and within the day he was rolling over on his own within the day.

Armed with this new technique, I set up a blanket on the floor, grabbed Celerity by the feet, and proceeded to roll her back and forth across the floor.  She doesn't go quite as smoothly and, frankly, looks a little bit confused by the whole ordeal.  I try and get her to roll over on her own, but no dice.  Later that day I go out of the room for a snack and when I get back, lo and behold, she has rolled herself over!  I rejoice in my manly parenting skills and call my friend to thank her.

My celebration is short lived as I quickly realize a few things:
1)  My Daughter can roll herself over from her back to her stomach, but not the other way around
2)  My daughter loves to roll herself over
3)  My daughter HATES being on her stomach

Before, I had a child who I could put down on her back and expect to keep herself amused for an hour or two. Now have a daughter who, as soon as I put her down on her back, rolls over to her stomach, gets angry, and starts to cry.

I am sure that this is just the begining of things I will teach her that I'll regret.

Edit: Changed both instances of 'feed" to "feet" - I'm not sure what would happen if I grabbed Celerity by her "feed".

This last weekend I learned something about myself:  While I am a really big and unreasonable tightward, I really like things to be in boxes.

A while ago our good friends Michelle and Pete helped us out in finding the right baby stuff that we needed at a local baby supply place called Goores.  They also found out that there was going to be a warehouse sale going on in a few weeks.  With the promise of scintillating savings at rock bottom prices, we decided to forego major furniture purchases until we went to the sale. 

That was all find and dandy because, as previously mentioned, I'm a famous tightwad.  That lasted about 10 minutes of looking around a warehouse at pre-assembled and slightly dusty cribs.  Sure, they seemed to have at least one of the pieces that we had been looking for, but it was unclear if we could get the matching dresser, and what if it was missing something and it wouldn't fit in the back of my car and . . .yeah.  So, a trip to Goores and about $1000 later we are now the proud owners of a "Sleigh" crib and reversible dresser. 

The cool thing about the dresser is that you can turn it upside down and it's also a changing table.  The not so cool thing is that neither it nor the crib will be in for six to eight weeks.  1.5 to 2 MONTHS.  We're due April 10th.  We'd actually known this, but had manged to forget it, assuming that we would be getting fabulous (and instant) bargain at warehouse land.

As I understand it, babies initially do pretty much only 3 things:  Eat, Sleep, and Poop.

Eating we've got covered.  Dodi has these amazing attachments that should cover feeding for the next six months, at least.  Sleeping we also have covered  - my mother-in-law got us a nice little Bassinet that we plan to put in our room (ask us how that works out . . every time I mention it to a parent they get this smug little half smile . . .).  So we're good for that.  The pooping thing, though, has me worried.  We had been counting on the magical reversible dresser/changing table thing for diaper changing duties.  We were now without it.  Since I don't think we can convince her to not poop for the next 1-2 months, I had to come up with another plan.

Behold, the product of 3 hours work and a can of varnish:

It is made entirely of pre-finished scrap wood that my buddy Pete got me off one of his electrician jobs.  We picked up the changing pad, and have attached the snaps to the bottom of the table.  Right now this is the only piece of furniture in my child's room, and will likely be the only piece until we get the crib and dresser in.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Welcome, Friends, Family, and Internet, to my little slice of teh interweb!

As you all hopefully know by now, Dodi and I are expecting a baby girl sometime in early April. We plan to use this space to document the process as best we can to share it with you, friends and family, and presumably the rest of the internet. Hi Internet!

Blogs are really ideal for this sort of thing - being a fundamentally "Push" medium, it allows us to write once and anyone who is interested can stop by and see what is up . . or not. We don't have to send out 10MB e-mails of baby pics, don't have to wrangle e-mails, won't forget to tell auntie about the latest news. Humm, now that I think about it, we're pretty lazy huh? Rock on! Welcome to the future, please don't forget to visit the Gym.

As is customary, you can check out some of our very first "Baby pictures" from our second Sonogram. Truth be told, I am only reasonably certain about the content of one, and that's only because our daughter (proto-daughter? Is she technically a daughter yet? She's  negative 0.25 years old . . dunno) has our thick skulls. Thank goodness for that. Maybe we can have a poll as to what the other images are. A Giraffe? A Cloud? A grey blob on a black background? We may be in the future, but we've still only got 2D sonic cross sections of our unborn child.

Without Further Ado, our (grainy grey blob of a) future daughter: 

Probably Her Head 
 

Random Body Parts


A Profile Shot?  Is she looking at us?


A Note about the blog name - I've used "XerTheEvil" as a random username for some time.  Since I had the LJ account under it and that's what I've been using, I decided to just use what I had.  Odd, sure.  But, then again, what did you expect from me?