5 Months Old

Matilda has had a big month.

She is still working on perfecting the art of sitting up.

She got to go home and visit her roots.

Matilda is a busy girl and would prefer to constantly be on the move. She is working hard at standing. She has always loved to stand and would demand that I hold her in the standing position for hours some days to survey the landscape. Now she can stand up by holding onto something for support - the coffee table, her fluffy sheep, the play mat arches or her dad's hair. Matilda's other new development this month has been scooting backwards, soon nothing in the house will be safe from her drool.


Rather than enjoy the swing ride, Matilda's objective was to suck on the cross bar. Matilda has been teething for the past month or so and has had everything under the sun in her mouth. Thankfully the puking has decreased somewhat, but is replaced by the drool. She will soak whatever she is playing with. One day recently Tim came home from work and picked up a toy to offer her, unaware that she had given it a good soaking earlier - he let out a good scream as he had a handful of cold soggy duck. Matilda is also developing new vocal sounds and has quite a grunt - we have yet to decipher the meaning.

Vinyl

Someone said recently that babies will show you what needs baby-proofing - I don't think that Matilda was trying to tell us she is a fan of the vinyl format. The days of leaving her on her playmat with a pile of toys are clearly numbered. She was busy pulling all the plastic sleeves off of her father's records.

On the Move

Matilda is definitely on the move more lately. Today she has really gotten the hang of scooting herself backwards. The funniest part is how aggravated she gets. She clearly is trying to move forward to get some toy and gets so mad to be moving farther from it. It usually ends with her screaming in frustration at said target. This morning I watched her go backwards in a complete circle, ending up in the same place still just a few inches from the crinkly goldfish that she wanted. Pictured here you can see that Matilda has backed herself under the edge of her changing table.

Perfect for the Nanny!

Seeing how much Matilda enjoyed the animals on our trip home, we have been looking into getting a zoo membership. It is close to our place and would be a nice destination to take Miss M and get out of the house when she has had enough of these four walls. Plus it is a nice hilly zoo and would be a good workout to hike around with Bob. In researching the various membership levels I found this:

KEEPERS' CLUB

• Free unlimited admission for three adults named on card—perfect for a nanny! - or two adults (named on the card) and one guest for one year
• Free admission for all of your children and grandchildren ages 2 - 17
• Six one-day guest passes
• 10% discount in shops and restaurants, subscriptions to Zooscape and Zoo View, and discounts to lectures and educational programs

Only in Los Angeles.... I think I will just send Matilda to the zoo with the nanny while I read and eat bon bons.

Teething Much?

Please note the drool dripping off the rail.

Quality Assurance

When we first started accumulating baby toys I was annoyed by the huge tags that come on everything. Most toys have disproportionately large tags. I had just written it off as labeling laws for children's toys or something like that. Turns out the toys people know their business - Matilda prefers the tags and always will seek them out on any item. She spent a good ten minutes today inspecting each of these tags. I see a bright future in quality control, Inspector Number 12 maybe.

A Word to the Wise

Never question your child's sleep habits out loud. The moment you speak of a new trend it changes. One minute after I put up yesterday's post Matilda woke up and it was a rough day......after all that sleeping she was charged and ready to go. She barely napped yesterday and went to bed with us close to midnight. By then everyone in the RD Mama household was ready for the rest.

Jet Lag?

Matilda has now been asleep for 12 hours and 13 minutes?? And she napped yesterday for a total of 5 hours? This is all very uncharacteristic. My poor boobs are so full I keep running the blender and slamming doors hoping she might wake up but no luck so far - instead I just resorted to pumping to relieve the situation a bit. And you would think I was being really productive with this time, like cleaning for the impending grandparent visit or catching up on sorting out the ever-growing pile of papers on the counter. But no, instead I am enjoying a leisurely breakfast and catching up on my web surfing.

Bad Parent

So Matilda seemed to have a fantastic time on our trip to NY, or at least her parents did. She was spoiled by the grandparents, fascinated with the animals and seemed unimpressed by the gorges. We let her get a bit too much sun one afternoon so now her little chubby arms have a farmer tan left to remind me of the mistake. But at least she didn't get bitten by the bat in Dad's house or drugged by the lady next to me on the plane.