Oy with the poodles already!

I know it gets repetitive for me to announce what a moose Sawyer is, but this time it's for real! We just got back from her four-month appointment at the pediatrician: she gained 2 pounds 5 ounces in one month! She now weighs 12 pounds 14 ounces -- a whopping 40th percentile! (This after she was 16th percentile last month.) Moosey moosey moosey MOOOOOOOSE!

We've got all kinds of great new pictures of her Moosiness doing all sorts of new things. Here she is doing her best to fit as many fingers into her mouth as possible:



And here she is with one of her new parlor tricks: grabbing her feet.



But her most exciting new feat is . . . Sawyer can roll over! It's less of a roll, actually, than a lateral launch -- she kind of winds up and flings herself to one side, propelling herself from tummy to back. You'll recall that she did this once about a month ago, more or less accidentally. This time it's definitely intentional. We, of course, whipped out the video camera to capture the event, but she refused to repeat it for the paparazzi.

The Hold Me/Put Me Down Dance

Today was Sawyer's nanny's first day. (She was supposed to start on Monday, but got marooned in Trinidad due to the blackout.) Everything went swimmingly -- she's very lovely, and she and Sawyer got along like gangbusters. Sawyer seems to have been on extra-special good behavior, though. So we'll see what happens when we get to her first meltdown!

Speaking of meltdowns, there have been an awful lot of them lately. Sawyer's been big into a routine that goes something like this: "Hold me! Hold me! Hold me! No, not like that! No, not that either, try the other way again! No, I was right the first time, I still don't like being held that way. Put me down! Put me down! No, hold me! Hold me! Hold me!" Repeat ad infinitum.

Something that seems to divert her attention from the Hold Me/Put Me Down dance is shaking my hair in her face. She opens her mouth real wide, as though to try to catch my hair in her mouth. Revise that: she actually is trying to catch my hair in her mouth.

She's also really getting into a couple of toys, which is good, as she has largely lost interest in her mobile. Her horse seems to be the big winner so far. This, of course, is simply the precursor to the day when she will ask for a pony. Here she is chatting with the horse:



Usually she tries to stick the horse's whole face into her mouth. Occasionally a hoof or two.

And here she is with, well, Paul's underwear on her head:

The Moose has new clothes!

Sawyer has recently crossed the 12 pound barrier, and thus is officially into her 3-6 month garb. You always hear about how you shouldn't buy too much of the 0-3 month stuff, because babies really only wear that stuff for a couple of weeks before they need to get into the 3-6 month wardrobe. Not this peanut! Her 0-3 month couture (it's all couture, according to Carson Kressley) lasted the full three months and then some. But now we have a whole new array of clothing in which to sumptuously attire Mademoiselle Sawyer!

More on the hands: they pretty much haven't left her mouth in about a week. Slurp slurp slurp. One finger, two fingers, three fingers, four, the whole fist, left hand, right hand -- no combination is too outlandish. My favorite is the sucking of the middle and ring fingers, so that she looks like she's giving us all the sign of the devil.

Unfortunately, she hasn't quite made the all-important pacifier/fingers connection -- the one that would enable her parents to stop having to wake up every fifteen minutes between 3 and 5 AM to put her pacifier back in her mouth. I have a feeling (ok, it's more a hope than a feeling) that one of these days, she'll realize that fingereating is a fabulous soothing mechanism and not just a daytime parlor trick, and that'll be it for the late night pacifier demands. A girl can dream, right?

Fingers in the mouth or no fingers in the mouth, she's still pretty darned cute.



(Keen eyed observers will note that this outfit has appeared in prior photographs. Yes, this was taken before the wardrobe switch!)

Blackout

After 20 hours in the non-air conditioned dark, we're back from the Great Blackout of 2003. (The media added the "great" sometime in the middle of the night. When I went to sleep, it was the Blackout of 2003. When I woke up, it had become the Great Blackout of 2003.)

Without a baby, blackouts are adventures. With a baby, not so much. Try finding a way to clean bottles without water or electricity. And Sawyer and I slept on a sheet on the floor of her room. Fneh.

In the blackout's defense, however, it was really cool to walk around a pitch black New York City at 11 o'clock at night.

I'm off to enjoy some air conditioning for a while before I start throwing out the contents of the fridge.

The Princess and the Pea

You're all familiar, I trust, with the story of the Princess and the Pea? Basically, to prove that the princess was indeed a princess, a pea was secretly placed underneath the huge pile of mattresses and bedding on which the princess would sleep that night, the theory being that if she were really a princess, the addition of a single pea to the pile would disturb her sleep. Indeed, the next morning, the princess was sleepy and cranky due to the pea's disturbance of her beauty sleep. And thus, the princess's princessliness was revealed to the world.

It probably won't surprise anyone to hear that Sawyer is a princess.

We tried out some new bottles on her during the Philadelphia excursion last week -- Dr. Brown's Natural Flow Baby Bottles. Although I don't completely understand how they work, Sawyer apparently thinks they're the greatest thing since hands. While she hasn't completely sworn off all of her other bottles (yet), she now dines from them grudgingly and only under great duress.

Another day, another adventure with her royal highness, Princess Sawyer!

Mad Moosey Skillz

Wow.

We got back from Philadelphia today and promptly popped Sawyer onto the scale. At the pediatrician for her three-month checkup, she weighed in at 10 pounds, 9 ounces. Today, a mere eight days later, she weighs 11 pounds, 7 ounces.

That's 14 ounces in eight days. Wow. Quelle Moose!

And not only is she batting at things, but she's flat out grabbing them. Her clothes, blankets, burp cloths, every toy we hang from the gymini -- the speed of hand skill acquisition is unbelievable.

Wow.

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation

No posts until now because Sawyer and I have been spending the week with Sawyer's Grandma, Bubbie, and Popsie at Sawyer's bucolic country home (otherwise known as Bubbie and Popsie's house) in Bucks County, Pennsylvania! So much Sawyer adulation in just six short days -- I don't know how she'll handle it when she's back to receiving only two parents' worth of affection on a daily basis. And the Sawyer fan club here in Pennsylvania is not limited to relatives -- Sawyer also met and was appropriately cooed over by one of her Bubbie's lifelong friends, Ruthi!

Sawyer spent her first four days here eating her way through the growth spurt to end all growth spurts. She had been eating about 6 times a day, but for the past four days, she's been back to an 8-10 meals a day pace -- the likes of which we haven't seen since she was maybe a week or two old! Every two hours, she howwwwwwwled like we hadn't fed her in days, then slurped down a gargantuan bottle in no time flat. Then two hours later, more howwwwwwwwwling, and the cycle begins again. I don't have her scale here, but am dying to see how much she weighs when we get home. Her face is visibly fuller than it was when we arrived. Such a moose, my daughter!

Meanwhile, Sawyer met a new friend yesterday -- Lucy Jane Bonin, who was born six days after Sawyer. Lucy's parents are our friends Adam and Jen, who blog here and here, respectively. Generally, when Lucy was in a peachy mood, Sawyer was howling, and vice versa, but we did manage to find a half hour of dual-baby spontaneous happiness, during which they blissfully whacked away at each other on the gymini, each girl seemingly unaware of the other's presence. Tres cute.