Still our surprise baby

Libby has been full of surprises since the day we found out she was joining our family. Libby was a surprise. As in "Surprise! I'm pregnant!" I've always been irregular, but I had a weird feeling about things back in January 2009. I thought it had been a long time, even in the face of the stress of starting a new semester and a new exercise regimen. I thought I should take a pregnancy test "to be sure I'm not pregnant". But I was. The blue line showed up immediately, as soon as it was wet. No wonder--I was already at least 8 weeks along!

She then surprised us by being two weeks early, but that's not what I want to talk about today.

Lately, her surprises have been to learn a new skill allofasudden. I had been fretting for 2-3 weeks about when she would start enjoying standing up (with help) and when consonant sounds would emerge. This week, she started both like she's been doing them for weeks. Old hat.

I am not kidding. Last week, when I took her to the portrait studio on Wednesday, the photographer wanted to get a pic of her standing with me just out of the shot holding her hands. She refused to keep her legs straight like a toddler in tantrum mode. This week, all she wants to do is stand. I was trying to show her how to hold onto the crib rail while standing, but she's not quite ready for that.

So far, the only consonant I have heard is "d", as in "ah-da" and "da-da-da", but I am excited for more! The cooing has been adorable, but come on, she's been doing it since Thanksgiving. I was ready for more language development. And the new babbling is really fun.

She's also started razzing like it's her job. She first started doing that back in January (figured out how to do it while nursing, yay), but it hasn't been a frequent occurrence until now.

Sigh. I love her.

One of Libby's latest discoveries is her voice. She has making lots of "ooh" and "aah" noises, kind of figuring out that she can make noise come out when she breathes. It's so fun to have her make noises at us. On Thanksgiving at my family's house, she sat in the bouncy seat on the floor facing Todd, and she kept making noises so he would look down at her--she wanted his attention and figured out how to get it! She also had a coo-fest that night after I fed her. I am so excited for her to start babbling up a storm.

I really love to see Libby grabbing toys. She loves to hold on to toys and bring them to her mouth. She's putting her hands in her mouth, too, and likes the pacifier a lot more. I worry about being able to get rid of the pacifier someday, but it really helps her calm down right now, so I'm trying to just let it be.

At Libby's three month appointment on Tuesday November 24th, Dr. Kleber was very impressed by her growth. Libby has had higher than average growth for probably6-8 weeks now. She skipped from the 25th percentile in height and weight to the 75th in height and 50th in weight. She was 24 inches long and 12 pounds 5 ounces. She's about 5 inches longer and almost twice as heavy as when we brought her home from the hospital, and I can't believe how big she is. Todd and I were looking at pictures of her at 4 weeks old and thought she looked so little and skinny!

Dr. Kleber was not concerned about Libby's refusal to lift her head while on her tummy, so I decided to stop thinking about it. In the week since then, she has really started holding her head on her own when we're holding her on our shoulders. Today I put her on her tummy with a rolled up blanket under her chest, and she held her head up for a long time (couple of minutes) looking at the Freddie the Firefly toy. In other words, I don't think we have anything to worry about.

One more thing about the appointment is that Dr. Kleber mentioned we'd be talking about solid foods at Libby's 4 month appointment. I need to do some reading and deciding, because I've heard some debate about whether to start at 4 months or 6 or somewhere in between.