Violet update

I keep starting blog entries and then having to stop them midway because I get interrupted. I always have ideas for some grand unifying theme for each post, but now I think I'm just going to write whatever is going on because I'm starting to forget everything that's happening with the kiddos.

Violet is seven months old already. She is starting to babble a lot, and it's really cute. She says "va-va," "da-da," "ja-ja," and "ma-ma." Of course, Tom and Jack are convinced that she is really saying "Violet," "Daddy," "Jack-Jack," and "Mommy."

She is still not mobile at all, which is both a relief and a concern. I love that I can set her down and not have to worry about what she will get into. But she's getting old enough that I'm starting to wonder if she should at least be rolling over more. She'll flip every now and then, but I know of babies younger than her who are a lot more mobile. But she hates tummy time, and I don't know how much I'm supposed to push it if she's just laying her head down and crying while she's on her stomach. I'm trying to remind myself that Jack was on the late end of normal for all the gross motor milestones and that it's really no big deal. But just like I was with Jack, I just want to know that she will roll, crawl, cruise, and walk someday.

We started giving her solid foods a little over a month ago. I think she likes savory more than the sweet. She really doesn't like apple sauce at all. Whenever I give it to her, she gets the funniest expression of disgust on her face. She is also not fond of peas (takes after her Auntie Renee). But she doesn't scream or cry about the foods she doesn't like the way that Jack did; she just simply refuses to open her mouth. I'm glad that she is learning early on that there really is no reason to throw a tantrum about something like this, although we did get some funny photos of Jack's first time eating avocados.

She has been teething for what feels like forever. She has had these little buds in her gums that I keep waiting to sprout with teeth, but so far nothing's come up. It was the same way with Jack. I remember people telling me, "When you see the buds, the teeth will come through within a matter of days." Jack had the first little buds for about six weeks before his teeth finally came in. But I really can't complain. After that, it seemed like all his teeth came in all at once with minimal fussing. Hopefully it will be same way for Violet.

We've had a "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" summer. It feels like all the hot weather was crammed into a couple of really intense but short heat waves, including one record-setting day where it hit triple-digits at our house. Aside from the fact that I actually like warm weather and the sunshine, the cold weather has also been a bummer because I have so many cute little dresses for Violet that it's been too cold for her to wear. As a consequence, on the warm days, I rush to stuff her into her sweet little outfits and hope I don't forget to take a picture.

The dresses I'm most anxious to have her wear are the ones that my mom saved for me when I was a little girl. They were made of heavier-duty stuff back then and my mom took really good care of them, so all the dresses are in really good shape and still pretty fashionable. However, I don't know if I was just a really tiny kid or if the dresses shrunk, but in most of the pictures my mom has of me wearing them, I am clearly much older than Violet. In a lot of the photos, I'm even walking. And yet I feel I'm actually cramming Violet into these dresses before she gets too big for them. My friend pointed out, though, that dresses sometimes have a second life after the babies become mobile and slim down. So even though some of the dresses look a little tight on her now, she may get a chance to wear them again once she is a little taller and more active.

Jack is, as ever, a vocal participant in the raising of Violet. He always has an opinion about anything we do. The other day, he came in as I was dressing Violet in this adorable outfit that had leopard-print trim on it. He saw her and said, "She's so pretty! She looks like a lion!"

The fact that I have him as built-in entertainment for her has really made life with a baby a lot easier the second time around. The other day, we were at a semi-fancy restaurant to celebrate Tom's birthday. The table behind was reserved, and I remember thinking, "The people who are going to be seated here are going to be so bummed to be so close to a table with a baby and a four-year-old." But Jack was doing something that was cracking Violet up, and she just kept laughing and laughing. I could hear the ladies at that table exclaiming how adorable she was and saying, "We have the best seats in the house!"

One of my favorite things that he says a lot is, "I love her. I want to keep her forever. She is precious to me."

And it's clear that she feels exactly the same way.