Updates, updates

Well, it's been quite the time around here lately. Last Thursday Abby got sick for the first time--and she did it up big! I'd been awake around 4:30 and was just falling back to sleep when I hear her suddenly start gagging and choking next to me, but she's not moving or anything. I sit her up quick and am rewarded with vomit all over my pj's and the bed. (I've hit the P-trifecta: I've been baptised in pee, poop, and puke!) Dan changes the sheets while I clean her up and change both our clothes. Luckily she's in a fine mood, smiling at herself in the bathroom mirror and everything. Back to bed around 5:15, and at 5:30--same thing! Choke, gag, sit her up, woosh. This time I turned her towards me so the bed didn't get hit (we only have two sets of sheets!). In the end, she threw up 4 times and had diarrhea until Monday or so. She still doesn't have much of an appetite--she eats hardly any solid food at all, although she's nursing back on schedule now, so that's good. Poor kid.

She is so close to crawling you almost get the sense she knows what to do but is just choosing not to do it. However, I wouldn't be surprised if she skipped crawling altogether--twice yesterday she pulled herself up to standing without any help (other than letting her hold our hands). She manages to shimmy around on the floor, but you don't really notice it; you just realize at some point that she's 5 feet from where you set her down.

My favorite new development, however, is that she likes books! She gets herself scooted over to a book and then fussses until you pick it up and read it to her. And if you set her in your lap to read she actually sits there. So far she only goes for board books; if I try books with real pages she just wants to pull at them and chew the covers. (Oddly, she does not chew the board books.) And since we only have three board books...well, lets just say that I can "read" all three books to her while simultaneously watching TV. Her favorite is "Belly Button Book!" by Sandra Boynton. (Luckily it's my favorite, too.) So I guess we'll be on the hunt for more books soon.

She still loves going to My Gym with her 9-month-old friend, Brendan. The one thing there she does not like is the bubbles. Yes, my child is a bubble-phobic. Not sure why. When we went to visit Dan's parents this weekend (during which Dan got what Abby had, but about 10 times worse), Dan's mom ("Greena" is what our nephew Simon calls her) got out the bubbles that Simon loves so much. She blew about three or four and Abby went ballistic. What the heck?!

We took her to the park for the first time last night. It was about 7 PM and she was bored out of her mind, and I felt bad for her being stuck here all day, so into the car we went to go somewhere and swing since she loves swings so much. Well, it took us three stops before we actually found a park with swings--what's up with that?!--but it was teeming with kids, so two more stops later we finally found a park with swings and hardly any kids. (Sad: Dan was pushing Abby and I hopped onto one of the "big kid" swings, thinking, "I used to love swinging!" Well, turns out my stomach can't handle it anymore and I nearly hurled. I was so bummed.) Abby really enjoyed it--swings, slides, see-saws, and it's a cute little park, too, lots of grass and hills and a little ampetheater and roller hockey rink. It's right across the street from the library, which I have a feeling we'll be visiting quite a lot for the next few years. That makes me happy. I wish we lived a little closer so Abby could go there alone when she got older. I remember trekking to the library all the time as a kid, and it was quite the distance, too, but not with the kinds of big roads that we have here. And it's sad--I get the sense people just don't let their kids do that kind of take-off-for-hours-on-end-just-be-home-in-time-for-dinner stuff anymore. So unfortunate.