Always Something New

This past week was a very busy one. Earlier in the week, while Mommy was at work, Grandma Mary brought the dogs over to our house. It was an unseasonably warm day so Karina got to sit outside in her stroller while the dogs played. According to Grandma Mary, Karina was so excited that she did her "fully-extended trembling arms and legs" move that she'd done with Daisy when we were in Door County last summer.

We've been continuing to work hard on Karina feeding herself, so I bought this "fresh fruit" feeder that you see below. The idea is that you can safely give your baby a piece of fruit that she normally wouldn't be able to chew, by allowing the baby to gnaw on it through a mesh bag attached to a handle. She was able to eat a banana this way.

Karina eating a banana from her "fruit" feeder

Otherwise on the developmental milestone front, Karina is still not walking but while she's standing up she'll experiment by letting go of whatever she's holding on to for just a few seconds. Verbally she's got the word "Mama" down...that is as a long everyone in the world who she cares about will answer to Mama!" It's very cute...I'm Mama, Tom's Mama....Bart's Mama...hee, hee. Tom insists that Karina does know that Mama is me, however. I had gotten home from work after being gone from Karina's life for about 24 hours, and had taken a few seconds to use the rest room...just two rooms away from where we had just been playing. Tom said that Karina looked around for me and when she realized that I was missing she started crawling toward the door to the garage, saying over and over, "Mama, Mama, Mama...it was heart-warming and heart-breaking at the same time!

Mommy, Bart and Karina right before the "Mama, Mama" incident

Mommy and Karina playing

At the end of the week we took a trip to the local Stonefire Pizza (basically a yuppie Chuckie Cheese) with Karina's new friends George and Alex, who met us there with their mommy Julie. The first thing we learned is that Friday at 11:30 am (the lunchtime opening) is probably not the best time to go, but overall once we got through the line...that was long enough to require a weaving maze thingie like they have at Great America...it was not too bad inside. There is an area for bigger kids, with rides and games that require tickets or tokens, but we were able to have a lot of fun with the smaller scale stuff...like the jungle gym, the pretend diner and the water toys. Karina showed her true colors as a daredevil by going head first down the slide on her own and she sampled some new fine cuisine when she tried macaroni and cheese, chicken tenders and a breadstick.

Karina eating lunch at Stonefire Pizza

Later that day, Quentin and Lisa came over to see Karina and we ordered Chinese take-out. I thought in the spirit of trying to help Karina try feeding herself, I would cut up a bit of Cashew Chicken and put it on her high chair tray. I didn't think about how difficult it is to pick up rice with your fingers, but I realize now that I presented Karina with quite a challenge. She liked the taste of what sauce had gotten on her fingers but because she really couldn't pick up the food to eat it, she did the next best thing...just put her whole face straight into the food and slurped up as much as she could! It was so hilariously cute! Unfortunately it seemed like most of it just stuck to her face!