First Halloween

Mabel enjoyed her first Halloween party tonight. Her good friend, Mia, came over in her white tiger costume. Mia's mama and daddy also came along and enjoyed some pizza and an adult beverage or two. As you can tell from the video, Mia made it a little longer than Mabel, but Mabel perked up and played for a few minutes more after we filmed this. Although there wasn't any candy at the party, mushed up vegetables were enjoyed by both girls. We're also including a few other pics you might enjoy.

See You Next Fall

Sure enough, not 24 hours after posting about Mabel's perilous escalation of motion, she went ahead and launched herself off the bed in the guest room, landing on the floor between the side of the bed and the wall. Pops' panicked reaction probably caused her to freak out more than the fall itself, though her crying didn't last more than a couple seconds. All extremities and mental faculties were quickly assessed and judged intact, but as a precautionary measure, she was held out of the team portion of practice today and will be listed as probable for Monday's game at Denver.

She followed up that act with an explosion of movement today that can only be described as intense. No place - neither the changing table nor the bouncy seat, both of which are typically sanctuaries of relaxation - has been immune to Mabel's relentless rolling, ab crunching, kicking, and other assorted aerobics. Hopes remain high that she can tucker herself out before this afternoon's four hour car ride up to Grandma Joyce and Grandpa Dick's, lest that ride turn out to be eventful enough to warrant a blog post of its own. Please keep us in your prayers. Speaking of the proud grandparents, they haven't seen Mabel since Labor Day, and I'm here to tell you that they're in for some shock when they get a load of the chatty, active, one-and-a-quarter-stone infant whose blog has been delighting fans worldwide.

In other Mabel news, she's finally begun to enjoy the occasional nuk, though, keeping in spirit with her rugged individualism, Mabel has decided she enjoys the crunchy part best, as evidenced by the following photo.

Little Miss Dangerous

Mabel's self-propelled locomotion has finally reached the level at which she presents a danger to both others and herself. There's really no area of the new rug (a good deal bigger than the 6 x 9' barbed-wire job it replaced) that is inaccessible to Mabel. No area of the entire first floor of our home, for that matter, one suspects - though parental guidance thus far has prevented putting that hypothesis to the test. Mabel's first real bonk occured this morning, near the intersection of the chest and the rug. She had picked her head up good and high to more closely examine a corner of the chest when gravity reasserted its authority. There were no tears, but instead more of a surprised, thoughtful silence.


Mabel's ambulation is stuck in the clockwise position, at least for now. Reorientation of up to roughly 90 degrees is possible, thus opening up travel to more locations than straightforward tumbling. But while rolling a single time counterclockwise is no problem, particularly from supine to tummy time, the arrow of extended counterclockwise movement just isn't in her quiver yet.

We are currently working on a grant proposal to take a trip to New Zealand, where relational behavior changes could be observed. Interested sponsors may leave correspondence in our comments section.

Sick

...a couple miserable nights, but the worst is over.

First Cold

Mabel has her first cold. Nothing too serious. Just a little snuffy nose and cough. She's handling it like a trooper. She had a harder time falling to sleep tonight, but she's currently sleeping like a baby.

Patch update - not so good. Mabel hates the patch. She occasionally will tolerate it for a while, but the longest we've been able to keep it on her is 45 min. It's really hard to see a baby who never fusses cry and grab at her eye. We just keep doing as much as she and we can tolerate. I should note that she appears to be able to see something with her weak eye. Her favorite thing to do when she is patched is play in her gym and look at the fish.

We had a nice quiet weekend at home. Mabel had her first vegetable - squash. She wasn't too sure about it, as you can tell from the video.

We took a nice walk today in the neighborhood and did some shopping. I had been eyeing up a Christmas dress for Mabel for about a month through a shop window. I finally went in the shop today and realized that the dress was ridiculously overpriced. Somehow, it mattered not. The dress had to become Mabel's. They didn't have her size, but we should receive it from another location in a few days.

Weekend with the Three Sissies

Mabel had a great weekend with her cousins and Aunt Meagan and Uncle Bill. The girls modeled their Halloween costumes and Mabel even got in on the fun. If you can't tell, that is Mabel as Hannah Montana.

The second picture isn't too flattering, but it does capture life with a baby pretty well. This was taken right after a diaper change during which Mabel peed all over herself. After she got a new diaper on, she rolled over, threw up, then put her hand in her spit up. The girls thought this was all pretty hilarious as did Mabel.

The Wigchers showed us their generosity once again by passing down a whole new wardrobe of 6-12 month clothes. It pays to have a sister-in-law with great taste who loves to shop. We also borrowed this jumpy thing for Mabel to play in. She really loves it, despite that she looks like she's about to cry at the end of this video.

The Patch

Mabel went to see Dr. Rabiah yesterday, her pediatric opthamologist. Overall, we received great news. He is confident that she has a great deal of vision in her left eye. We were expecting this news, but it is still reassuring to hear from the expert. He also suspects, as did we, that the vision in her right eye is affected by the coloboma. Our new course of treatment is patching her strong eye for two hours a day. This is also not a surprise as I had read that this is a typical treatment. Patching the strong eye forces Mabel to use only the weak eye. Otherwise, her brain will just stop reading messages from that eye altogether and there will be no vision in it. Dr. Rabiah didn't seem overly optimistic that the patching will make a huge difference, but because she seems to have such good vision in her left eye, he said we were not yet candidates for outside services for vision impaired kids. We head back to see him in six weeks to check in and see if the patching is helping. So overall, great news, but Mabel may now have to switch her Halloween costume from a skeleton to a pirate.

No pictures of her in the patch yet, but we'll post one when we have it. These pics are from Aunt Meagan taken when she and the girls were babysitting Mabel last weekend.

Home Alone

Life's been busy, as you can tell from the lack of posts. Nathan and Mabel are on their WI road trip. They left yesterday and will spend time with family, attend a wedding, and watch the Pack. Well, Mabel is not going to the game or the wedding, but she will be hanging with her family. Mama misses her like crazy, but Mabel and daddy stopped at school yesterday for lunch. I was able to show her off at school for a few minutes. Picture a hundred of middle school girls all crowding around Mabel going "awwwww" all at the same time. As you can imagine, Nathan loved all this attention. :)

Mabel continues to grow like a weed. She's officially into all of her 6 mo. clothes and has outgrown her bassinet. She still loves her swing and we think she has a month or two left in the bouncy. She loves to roll over, but is still working on rolling over to her right. The rice cereal is going great - more is going in her than on her bib, unlike some of her first feedings. I feel some squash is in her near future.