Some of you have mentioned to me that Sawyer must be the most photogenic baby in the world, because she's always smiling in her pictures. This is not true, on a number of levels. First, as she's gotten more active, she's become less interested in smiling for the camera and more interested in doing things like trying to eat the ficus tree in the living room or diving into an empty Land's End box. But more importantly, I don't think most of you realize exactly how many photographs have been taken of Sawyer since her birth nearly nine (!?) months ago.

According to the counter on the digital camera, it has taken 3167 pictures. Now some of those were taken before Sawyer was born, and every once in a while, we take pictures of something or someone other than Sawyer. So, for kicks, let's say that we've taken 100 non-Sawyer pictures with this camera, leaving 3067 pictures of Sawyer. That's 340.8 pictures per month, 78.7 pictures per week, and 11.2 pictures per day. 11.2 pictures on each and every one of the 273 days she's been with us! That's a well-photographed baby. It's no wonder that the three or four pictures I post per week tend to be good, no?

But in the spirit of full disclosure, here are a few recent pictures that are a bit more candid than others:

Sawyer raspberrying:



Sawyer scaling Mount Package-of-Paper-Towels:



Sawyer "reading" (it's pictures like this that made my father insist that I learned to read when I was nine months old, so why not give him fodder to declare the same thing as to Sawyer?):



And, of course, Sawyer crawling toward me with Daddy's sock in her mouth:



That should solve the photogenic baby issue.

(And for a quick update on other developments: (1) She crawls at lightning speed now. (2) Ditto on the Cheerios -- she can scarf 10 in about 30 seconds. (3) Today's instrument was the oboe.)

Sawyer Musician!

There's a show on Noggin that Paul and I think is just about the cutest thing going -- Oobi. For those of you who loved the pets.com sock puppet as we did, this show is for you! All of the characters (Uma's his sis, he's big, she's small, Kako is his very best friend, Grampu loves them all) speak in these 2 word sentences, which is perhaps a little too catchy. After an episode, Paul and I find ourselves saying "Sawyer big! Mommy eat." and things like that. This morning we saw an episode where Oobi takes piano lessons. It concluded with the proud statement by Oobi and Grampu: Oobi Musician!

So off we went to baby music class on Saturday. The conclusion? Sawyer is a very intense little music student.



They did this cute little thing where the teacher played a double bass while the babies put their hands on the instrument to feel the vibrations. Sawyer was enthralled.



I am pleased to announce to you today:
Sawyer Musician!

Grrrr Bop!

Sawyer had a lovely visit to her bucolic Bucks County country home this weekend -- while her parents, grandparents, and aunt spent the weekend reorganizing Bubbie and Popsie's basement, Sawyer performed all sorts of nifty new feats and perfected a few skills-in-progress:

* She can now pull herself up to a full stand. The partial version from last week is shown here:



* She has added to her growing list of consonants the letter "m," which led to a one-time event of "Mama" on Saturday morning. Needless to say, this was rather exciting. (However, I should be clear that although this "mama" was uttered in my presence, I am quite confident that it was in no way intended to refer to me. I'm not that delusional. ) "Bababa" has also morphed into "Bop."

* After spending much of last week doing this bobblehead doll thing with her head, she has now refined that gesture into an emphatic shaking-of-the-head-as-if-to-say-no. Again, no pretense that this gesture actually means anything other than "Hey, guys, look what I can do with my head!" Of course, we're setting all sorts of bad precedent here -- every time she does it, Paul and I say "that's right, Sawyer, No!" and generally praise her for doing it with umpteen cheerful renditions of the world "no." This will ultimately come back to bite us in the butt when we need to actually teach her the meaning of "no." While I recognize this, I also recognize that we are powerless when presented with Sawyer shaking her little head back and forth with a big grin on her face.

* She's more-or-less perfected the non-commando crawl, and has started reaching her arms out to be picked up. Fortunately, when crawling, she only lifts one arm to be picked up, thereby avoiding the two-hands-lifted-face-splat thing that I had been a little concerned about when this "pick me up" thing started.

* As I had suspected, Sawyer discovered Cassie's existence this weekend. Cassie was not thrilled. The routine went like this: Sawyer notices Cassie, crawls into kitchen to eat dog. Cassie gets up, wanders into living room, lays down. Sawyer notices Cassie, crawls into living room to eat dog. Cassie gets up, wanders into kitchen, lays down. After a few rounds of this, Cassie greeted Sawyer's approach with a growl. This from a dog who does not growl. Or bark. Or move, if she can avoid it, but who has been known to go after squirrels and groundhogs with gusto. That was it for Sawyer and Cassie -- at least until Sawyer is a bit more distinguishable from a groundhog who can say "Bop!"

All in all, a successful snowy weekend. Although snow isn't Sawyer's favorite thing just yet, that doesn't stop her from dressing the part:



Oh, and by the way: she seems to like Daddy again.

Poor Daddy!

Paul is feeling a little traumatized today.

Sawyer is going through a bit of a phase: when she's sad, she only wants Mommy. Not Daddy. NOT DADDY!!! Just Mommy. For those of you who know my husband well, you will immediately realize that this is a recipe for one sad Daddy.

I have emphasized that this is definitely just a phase. Sometime in the all-too-near future, she will realize that as a little girl, she is required by law to prefer the company of Daddy, and then Mommy will be SOL for the duration of eternity.

But for the time being, Paul is kinda bummed.

Meanwhile, Sawyer is about 98% recovered from her cold, just in time to visit her bucolic Bucks County country home for the holiday weekend. She hasn't been there since she's been crawling. Aunt Cassie (no, not Aunt Carly -- Aunt Cassie -- a/k/a the dog) should enjoy figuring out what to think about a baby skittering all over the house. I suspect Cassie will go hide underneath the dining room table all weekend. It's Sawyer's world, after all.

So after much internal debate as to precisely how many nosewipes per hour is too many to let a baby be around other babies, Sawyer made it to music class yesterday. I'm told that the teacher was quite impressed with my daughter's musical ear: she passed a bassoon around the room for all the babies to touch. All of the other babies looked at it quizzically, and one or two of them reached out a hesitant hand to touch the bassoon. No such reticence for Sawyer. (Can you guess where this is going?) She reached out with both hands, grabbed the bassoon, and tried to eat it. Clearly she's on the fast train to Juilliard. I may add a Saturday class to her repetoire -- not because this nascent musical brilliance needs to be cultivated, but simply because I don't want to miss out on amusing baby music experiences with bassoons and other edible instruments.

After doing some research last night, I have come to the conclusion that midtown Manhattan is something of a wasteland when it comes to baby facilities. The Upper East and Upper West Sides are chock full of baby classes, gyms, and other fun things to send a baby and her nanny off to in order to keep them from going stir crazy in the apartment all winter. But as for midtown, while I'm extremely grateful for the Hands On music school only four blocks away, that seems to be the extent of what's available. Hm.

Just a cute sniffly baby in a snuggly cat suit on Day 10 of her cold . . .

Deja-choo all over again

Still sick. Still sniffling, snotting, and coughing. We decided that the pinkeye probably wasn't pinkeye after all, so that's one item off the list. (I'm a licensed D.Dr.,* so I'm qualified to make this type of pronouncement.) (*Daughter of a Doctor.) And the fever ended up being just a one-day event. So we're doing okay.

Oh, but there's more: we now have the additional fun of a nightly 2 am wake up call. This involves howling and whimpering until both Mommy and Daddy get up, groggily lurch over to the couch in Sawyer's room, and form a three-person bundle of sleepy Niehausness for half an hour. Then she's happy to go back into her crib for a few more hours. In the words of Albert Einstein, Vaaa-hoooooo.

One of the bummers of this round of illness is that Sawyer missed the first week of her new baby music class! It sucks to miss the first week of class, you know? You have to get the syllabus from someone else, the casebook is inevitably sold out, you get behind on the reading -- it's just a mess. I promise a report on baby music as soon as she actually manages to attend!

Sigh.

Our little pumpkin face is sick again. She's got a cold (Day 3), conjunctivitis (Day 2), a cough (Day 1), and a fever (Day 1). Until the fever struck this afternoon, she was in a perfectly cheerful mood despite the face full of snot. Now she's fussy and unhappy and heartmeltingly plaintive in her little sighs and wheezes and whimpers. Poor little bunny.

We started her on eyedrops for the conjunctivitis today. I can't bring myself to call it pinkeye, since her eye isn't pink! One of her eyelids is a bit swollen and the eye is teary, which apparently may be some double-secret form of pinkeye that doesn't actually involve a pink eye. Or so the pediatrician says. Anyway, we got one drop in perfectly easily, and then she got the joke and squinched her eyes shut as tightly as she possibly could while screaming bloody murder. Paul literally had to pry her upper eyelid open with both index fingers while I moved the lower one in order to dribble in an eyedrop. And we only need to do this four times a day! God help us if she develops another ear infection and we need to do antibiotics along with the eyedrops.

Tomorrow we're supposed to head to Philadelphia for International Declare Your Love Loudly for Grandpop Day (don't ask), but I think that Sawyer won't be up for the journey. So we'll be spending her eight-month birthday right here, wiping her little face and Purelling her little hands and letting her snuggle her snotful little face into the crook of our necks . . .

P.S. Now that we've got the vaporizer pumping all sorts of healing humidity into Sawyer's room, this just made me chuckle. Poof! (The link comes to Sawyer's World via Baby and Baggage, yet another blog at least partially about motherhood by a lawyer or ex-lawyer.)

Happy New Year from all of us in Sawyer's World!