Hallie's Antics

The past couple of days have been pretty fun ones for Miss Hallie Rose. On Thursday, her mommies went to Sharon's office holiday party (which was held at the spectacular National Constitution Center, which was designed not by Sharon's firm, but by Richard Cobb and I. M. Pei (who also did the pyramids attached to the Louvre Museum in Paris).



It was nice to do something grown-up (even if it was still work related) for a change, and Hallie got to spend some extra quality time with Ami, who reports that Hallie has the most fun in the bath of all the kids for whom she's ever had the pleasure to care.

Hallie missed us, however, and demanded an extra long bedtime ritual once we got home (around 10pm) and then was super cuddly/clingy all day yesterday. It makes us realize how little time she has spent alone from us, particularly at night. I think she's gotten used to Ami during the daytime, but the night time is family time around here.

Anyway, I know I've been remiss in posting pictures of Hallie lately; it's just gotten awfully hard to get a decent shot of our whirling dervish. Here's a good case in point:



Maybe next year Santa'll leave a D-SLR under the Chanukah Bush or something, but I suspect s/he has done his or her shopping already!

So what's new in Hallie's world:

1. Hallie''s really taken to 'feeding' herself the residuals of her applesauce (prilosec) snacks. She loves playing with the spoon and cup (and also with her Reglan syringe...Oye) and usually does a good job of getting the last dregs into her mouth:



I wish we had more tolerance for flung food and lost calories around here because we probably could teach Hallie to do real self feeding if we did!

And speaking of feeding, yesterday evening Karina started feeding Hallie some cheerios from her snack trap (Karina's, that is; Hallie doesn't have one yet since she doesn't snack conventionally). When I saw what was happening, I decided to let it keep happening. Hallie did well with the one-at-a-time snacks and chewed and swallowed just fine. I think it's a matter of how many she gets (at a time, but overall, too) and that in very small quantities she can handle these. She's certainly interested in solids. So we're beginning to experiment a bit (we gave her some fruit flavored cheerios before her dinner last night and she loved them. So did Karina, who kept begging for more 'naks' and who was thrilled to have them ruin her dinner).

2. Now that Hallie has pretty much mastered walking (and staying upright; given the amount of toddler debris around here, I am not sure how she's managed to avoid sliding and falling on books, stuffed animals, etc), she has, as predicted, begun to vocalize a whole lot more. Over the past week, we've heard the following words from Hallie:

diaper (pretty often and most often related to the actual object, which she'll bring over if you ask her to do so and she's not distracted by something else more compelling. She also does seem to use diaper to refer to Elmo, which makes sense since he is the main character on the Pampers Cruisers she wears).

book (a couple of times)

Big Bird (used pretty consistently and a main word for Hallie)

baby (though her pronunciation is a bit odd)

doggie (to refer to stuffed animal and live creature alike---Elisabeth and TJ's dog was a source of much fascination and some fear on Hallie's part the other night)

kittie (to refer to the live creature and kitties in books that she owns)

paper (she used this once for her speech therapist, who was thrilled since Hallie often refuses to talk at all for Jenny).

And on top of this, she is vocalizing a lot, greeting us with babbles, bringing toys over and babbling and the like. This obviously allays a lot of our fears about Hallie's speech delays, which do seem to be delays, but not indicative so much of a disorder.

But we are wondering this: what kind of kid's first word is diaper? What ever happened to 'mama'?

3. Hallie has proven herself to be her Mommy's daughter yet again: she's begun to climb in earnest. Not only has she mastered the fine art of getting up and down on and off the couch on her own, but she's taken this one step further: She has begun to scale the arms of the couch and threatened to jump into the pack and play. She has also tried to get over the back of the couch to see what's behind it (a lot of Hallie related junk is the answer to that question in case you're interested) and she's taken to climbing onto the table that's between the couch and the window. At first it was to get a hold of the answering machine and the phone, which Hallie finds very attractive. Then it was to get a better look at what was going on outside. And now she's figured out that she can STAND on the table and wave to her public, play peek a boo, and get an even better look at the television. Great!





And just to give you a sense of how big Hallie's getting, I'm including this picture, taken last April, of Hallie in the same Hanna Andersson sweater that she was wearing this morning.



You'll note that, this morning, the sweater is riding up over her belly and is pretty snug elsewhere. In April, it was HUGE on her. Wow. Time to start hitting E-bay for some more used high-end clothes in bigger sizes!