J&M got Maui'd!

Elsy has been pretty proactive when it comes to feeding herself. She grabbed her own bottle last month and she has been attempting many times to use utensils to eat, but to no avail. Today she grabbed the spoon I was using to feed her yogurt and was able to shove the right end into her mouth fairly consistently. I made sure that I was the one scooping the food, but she was the one shoving it into her mouth. Well done kid.

Maggie wanted to go outside to enjoy the weather so we went for a short walk near our place and found a restaurant to have dinner at. While we were waiting for our food, I took Elsy out to explore the area. One of the patios nearby had half a dozen or so small birds fluttering about, with a raven in the mix. Elsy is always interested in looking at animals, birds especially so we wandered over and noticed that there was a bit of a commotion. The raven was pecking at one of the smaller birds that was lying on the ground. The other small birds were making a racket and eventually drove the raven away, but the poor creature still laid on the hard concrete. Elsy was pointing at the bird and we got closer to see. One of the restaurant patrons put the bird on a napkin and brought it over to the side of the patio away from traffic, and serendipitously right in front of us. We could see that the bird was having difficulty breathing. Elsy put her index finger to her mouth and made the shushing no...

We have a couple of gates in the apartment to keep Elsy out of areas we do not want her to go into; namely the kitchen and dining area. Ever since Elsy was able to walk, she was able to figure out that she was unable to get past the gates, and we have taught her to ask for assistance if she needed to open the gate. Each time we opened the gate for her, she observed our actions and studied the gate. She can easily close the gate on her own, but is still uncertain how we are able to open the gates while she is unable to. It is interesting observing her while she is watching us open the gate mechanism, as I can see the gears turning in her head. She knows what actions are required, but is unable to perform them. We know this is because she doesn't have the strength and leverage to open the locking mechanism, but she still tries. This past month she has been attempting to unlock the gate herself, and then only asking for help after about a minute of trying. I would like her to keep...

Elsy has been slowly getting the hang of walking around on her own two feet. She still is not very steady and prefers to hang on to things but last week while I was cooking in the kitchen (or cleaning in her room I really don't remember) she walked up to me and gave my legs a hug. She hasn't done it since so I am not sure if it was a purposeful hug or if she just needed something to hang on to.

Last Thursday when I woke up Elsy in the morning to feed her, she grabbed the bottle from my hand and shoved the nipple into her mouth! Whoa! Way to go girl! We knew that she was getting a handle of drinking from sippy cups and bottles with those side handles, and she even started holding a bottle by herself at my parents' place but this was the first time she proactively fed herself with one of these bottles. She drank the whole thing too. I think the hardest thing for her was to lift the bottle so that the liquid would come out. She would flip her head back in an exaggerated manner because it worked the first time and that was what she was used to. Now she does it all the time. Ah well, one less thing for me to do..

So Elsy finally took her first steps today. I was there when I saw this sudden look of determination on her face as she stood up and tried to shuffle her feet forward without any aids. She has been cruising pretty confidently for the past week and had been walking while holding onto our hands (or hand) so this day was expected to come soon. I wanted Maggie to grab a camera, but she was out of reach so I relished in being the first and only person to witness her new skill. Mind you, she did fall down after a couple of steps, but with encouragement, we were able to get her to attempt it again, and again, and again this evening (with a camera this time) until she got tired of falling down so often. She leveled up! New skill: Walking!

Elsy was suffering some constipation last weekend. Normally she has 2-3 poops a day, but on Thursday she had none and Friday she had none so we fed her some prune juice Saturday night. She really liked it. She did not like the feeling an hour later when she started to pass a stool. I think her system was pretty gummed up with skipping oatmeal for a couple of days. After several minutes of crying she left a present in her diaper: a large stone. If I had to poop something like that I would have been in quite a bit of pain too. We figured the worse was over. There was nothing more the next morning but I was not too worried. After breakfast, she insisted on being put down on the ground so I put her down and she immediately pulled herself upright and started lifting and jiggling one or the other leg, like she was trying to shake something out of her pants. She was not wearing pants. After a few minutes of that, she calmed down and I went to check her diaper. She had laid a few more stones...