ROCKING HORSE

My great-grandfather built this rocking horse for my father. I played on it when I was a baby, and now it's the next generation's turn.

FIRST SNOW

DUSTING

I only caught the tail end of this, but it seriously looked like she was dusting the bookcase.

SHE CLAPS!

SHE'S PART CAT

HI, GRAMMA!

I love that she recognizes that the phone is her gramma...



And she spends the majority of her day standing at this piano.

BOING

It's funny because the dog loves to do this too...

CONTRARIAN

NEW SKILLS

She scoot crawls now!



And she can say ma-ma now, though she uses it for everything, not just me.

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

Daddy has started imitating her...

GIGGLES

FEED ME!

This is how hungry she was after she stopped feeling sick...

PANTS IN BOOTS

She's feeling much better this morning...and standing in boots!

POOR SICK BABY

My happy little girl isn't her normal boisterous self...

FROZEN BANANA

They say a frozen banana is good for teething. I am not really sure how; she never really got it in her mouth. We had much more fun with this than she did.

HI, CHRISTMAS TREE!

HI, OATMEAL!

She waves all day long now, at everything. I especially love it when she waves at her food.

MY FIRST PLAYDATE

I babysat today for another little girl.



Our dog loves the other little girl, and she gets a kick out of him too. And she's fearless! It's hard to handle two babies and a video camera while making sure the dog doesn't get overexcited and maul someone else's kid, so sorry for the bad camera work.



I promise I wiped her down with a babywipe!

GETTING CLOSER TO CRAWLING

Overnight she's much closer to crawling.

CRAWL TO GNARLS

Daddy was trying to entice her to crawl. This song is the soundtrack of our life; she absolutely loves the video.

THE SWINGSET

I never would've said that she is old enough to swing, but she is!

DANCING TO THE STRING BEANS

We love The String Beans!

PRACTICING WALKING

BUB-BUB WITH DAD

So now she's progressed to this game...

JUICY

This is a pretty common way to pass the time in our house. She loves that freaking phone, and that song. Notice her manual dexterity. And Daddy thinks it's a hoot to talk about how he's just trying to make some money to feed his daughter.

BUB-BUB-BUB

Look what Daddy taught her to do tonight. (Not the puking; she's a pro at that.)

NEW SKILLS

"Over your head!"



Peekaboo



Unlatching her own diaper (She does this constantly; we have to fight her to get her clothes on before the diaper comes off.)

THE SPIDER MEETS THE PIGLET

WE'RE BONED

VETERANS' PARADE

She liked kicking her feet to the music. Also, Daddy wants you to know that whoever was calling cadence was the idiot, not him...

GO FASTER!

1) I love how she wants the swing to go faster.
2) She is babbling like this all the time now.



Take 2 was worse than Take 1, but at least her grandparents can hear her laughing.

KNEES

She's up on her knees!

MMMMM

She's learned to say mmmmm while eating.

BABY ZUMANITY

She is fearless...

DOG TAGS

She has discovered the dog's tags; luckily, he's really tolerant.

CHIPOTLE

Her grunting at food is getting stronger, and she was going nuts wanting our chipotle chicken tonight.

FALL TO CRAWL

If she learns to not freak out afterwards, I think this will be the way she starts to crawl.

AT PLAYGROUP

WALKING!

Walking with Gramma's help at the Halloween party...

PANCAKE

She ate her first pancake today and Mommy had a heart attack worrying that she'd choke...

LOCOMOTION

This is her new method of locomotion...

JUMP!

She's a terror on that Johnny Jump Up these days...

PIANO

A friend gave us their kiddie piano. 24 hours later, she is pretty good at standing and playing with it. And dancing.



And I was impressed at how she could tell that there were two separate pages here.

THE ZOO

Today we went to the zoo for the first time. Most of these videos are of me trying to make sure she can see the animals, but they're neat. Especially the monkey one.

TRYING TO MOVE

She's trying to move...both forward, lifting her bottom up, and inching backwards on her back as well.

SHRIEKING

She discovered shrieking this weekend. It's cute...for now.

LAST NIGHT

We thought she might pull herself up here...



And she rolled over! Both ways! Like she'd been doing it forever!



And here's some crying, captured for posterity.

MORE LAUGHING

Her laughing never gets old.

MONSTER MASH

Halloween is coming! And my Halloween-crazed friend has this awesome dancing Frankenstein...

FINGER FOOD

We tried finger food for the first time. She got the finger part but not really the food part so much...

SHE SURE LOVES HER DADDY

STILL NO ROLLING

She still has never rolled over from her back to her tummy, but I just watched her roll all the way over to her tummy and then immediately push back to her back. She's no dummy. I tried to entice her to do it again.

SHE HATES THIS HAT

I think this is one of my favorite videos of her so far. Looks like we're going to have to practice wearing hats...

BOO!

Finally, a video of playing with Mommy! I was trying to scare the hiccups out of her.

JOHNNY JUMP UP

She finally understands the "jump" in Johnny Jump-Up!

IN THE MIRROR

Midway through she caught sight of herself in the mirror...

WATCHING JOHNNY CASH

PLAYING, NAKED AND CLOTHED VERSIONS

SHE HATES THIS BALL

Her grandmother got her this ball and she is deathly afraid of it. I try not to think it's so hilarious.

SHE HATES PEACHES

I think she looks like she's taking shots of whiskey each time.

DADDY CRACKS HER UP

She learned to belly laugh today.

DUCKS AND FROGS

We found these light-up ducks and frogs today and she just got the biggest kick out of them.

TUMMY TIME

She's getting so much better on her tummy! Her grandma had the great idea to do tummy time right when she was fresh from her nap.

LET'S GET PHYSICAL

I made these leggings today and then we got a ridiculous idea...

TEETHING

FIRST PLAYPEN

She played happily for 20 minutes, which I thought was great for her first time in the pack-n-play. It was funny how she kept investigating her boundaries though.

HUNGRY AS A HOBBIT

These three videos are what happens when our daughter doesn't get fed fast enough. It's unreal. She had big crocodile tears running down her face because I was still heating and stirring her peas. And then she ate them all and screamed for seconds! This child loves her food.

TEETHING

So this was like the fifth video trying to get her to show her teeth, so she was getting cranky by this point. But you can see the tooth here!

ENTERTAINING HERSELF

I like how she goes all Fonzie on her toy at the end to make some music!



It's so nice now that she can sit and play by herself for a while.



And these are totally videos only a grandmother could love: boring minutes of a child putting toys in her mouth.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

By this age she should be able to locate and pick up a small object. We decided to test her with a button. Also we dressed her like a clown.

FAVORITE GAMES WITH DADDY

HAPPY HALF BIRTHDAY

BINGO!

FLIRTING WITH TEDDY

PRUNE JUICE

We finally got a food reaction out of her! She needed some prune juice for her, ahem, digestive problem. I don't know if she was reacting to the prunes or to the sippy cup, but the faces she made were funny.

CONCENTRATING

Just today she started poking her tongue out the side of her mouth. It looks like she's a cartoon character concentrating on something.

BISCUIT

It's only a matter of time before the dog biscuits seem too good to share...

A NEW TOY

GOOFY MOMMY

Her favorite toy is still her goofypants mommy.

KINDA WALKING

She can almost kinda walk...kinda...

MORE TALKING

SPLISH SPLASH

This splashing is new. Looks like we'll have to put her tub in the big tub from now on...

SHE SITS!

Sitting has never been so exciting...

WHINE

I have a folder of early photos called "the weekend from hell" that makes me laugh because now, months later, I can't really remember why it was so bad. I am hoping that yesterday fades from memory too...

PET THE PUP

She's discovering touch, and that pup is awful tempting to pet! He is doing well with her, letting her grab a little too hard.

WATCHING TV

She tipped to the side after the dog jumped off the sofa and I swore she looked like a little kid instead of a baby. I had this flash forward of years to come...

IMPROVING HER AIM

BLAH BLAH BLAH

ESCAPE FROM TUMMY TIME

It actually took several takes to get this video because she kept rolling over before I could even get the camera rolling. I had to enlist Daddy's help.

DEXTERITY

She's getting much better hand-eye coordination! (And I love these piggy jammies.)

ALMOST A ROLL

Just yesterday she really started rolling to her side. It probably won't be long before she flips herself. I kept this recording going long after it was interesting in the hopes that I might catch that first rollover on film, but no luck.

PLAYING WITH MOMMY & DADDY

VOCAL EXERCISES

The hills are alive with the sound of screeching...

ROLLOVER

She can push from her tummy to her back but shows no interest whatsoever in going from back to front...

WE THE PEOPLE

This one is kinda embarrassing because I am not a singer and I definitely can't hit all the notes in this song, but I thought her babbling at the end was too funny not to share. We sing constantly during the day because she really finds it calming, and Mommy has recently learned the preamble , thanks to Schoolhouse Rock.

HAMMERTIME

She has started doing this funny thing where she puts her hands together and then bops them towards her mouth repeatedly.

LET'S JUMP!

I love taking videos of her that are boring for anyone but her mother to watch...

READING WITH DADDY

DON'T TALK WITH YOUR MOUTH FULL

The next day, I made the cereal a bit thicker. She loves it. So much so that she wanted to tell me how much she loves it while she was eating it...

RICE CEREAL

For her 5 month birthday, she ate rice cereal for the first time.



I discovered she had more in her bib than in her mouth! (That bib is the only way to go, by the way. It was awesome for this task.)

CHEW TOYS

This was actually my bear when I was a baby.



And her new turtle...



And she has the same teddy as the dog.

SATURDAY HANGOUTS

I thought I might actually catch her first roll-over on tape here, but no luck.

LEARNING TO DRINK

We've known for a while that she was ready to start drinking from a cup because she does this constantly whenever we are holding cups. (The grabbing, not the puking.)



OK, so we tried again once we cleaned the cup.



And then I went out and bought her sippy cups. Holy smokes, there are 20 different brands and types. I just tried to get the smallest one at this point. She managed pretty well, I think.



We move on to solid food this weekend...

TALKING WITH DADDY

DANCING

She's not much for sitting, but the girl can stand pretty well already!

SHE PUKES ON MOMMY

She was giggling and laughing at me while I was making funny nonsense word noises and kissing her neck, so then I turned on the camera and of course she stops being cute.

SUCKING ON HER TOES

PLAYING

NAUGHTY DADDY

GRABBING WITH DADDY

KINDA SITTING

GIGGLES

AIM

She's getting a little better at aiming at her mouth. Of course she did this perfectly three times before I started filming...

KISS THE PUPPY

She clearly wants this in her mouth but never thought to use her hands to grab it.

FIRST DIP IN THE KIDDIE POOL

FIRST EXERSAUCER

FEEDING THE DOGGY

WITH MY PAPPY

Bouncing on Pappy's lap.

KISSES

Trying to get her to giggle...

I love how she's started grabbing my head and kissing me back.

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

COO

I love when she stares up at me and coos right after she finishes eating.

BLOW ON FACE

I discovered that blowing on her face is a hoot.

MOMMY AMNESIA

A friend had a baby on Wednesday, and while visiting her I couldn't believe how small her son seemed, even though he was the same size as our daughter when she was born. I can't believe how quickly she's grown; she's doubled in size since she was born.

Here's a blast from the past:

SLOBBERPUSS

She drools into the bib, soaks it, and then sucks the slobber back out of it. Which is so gross...but it keeps her quiet!

JOHNNY JUMP UP

She's not really big enough for the Johnny Jump Up yet, but we tested it out anyway.

CHILLIN'

Sometimes she's so cute just doing nothing.

GUM IT!

She has discovered her bottom lip and likes to chew on it. She looks like a little old man without his dentures.

SHE YELPS!

She's really discovering her range...

HER FIRST SIT

IN THE SLING

Daddy didn't know that you can't make a vertical video with the camera, but this one is still cute.

GOOD MORNIN'

She finds me amusing, and she doesn't even mind my bad singing voice. This is how we wake up every morning.

READY FOR THE DAY GAME

We took some photos with the hat that her aunt and uncle sent. The hat that's supposed to fit her seven months from now. D'oh. She's got daddy's head.

SWIMMING

We took a bath in the big bathtub for the first time. (Don't worry, all you can see is my legs.) She took to the water like a frog! I had half a mind to let go of her and see her start swimming away...

I LOVE MY PUPPY

JUST CHATTING ABOUT THE DOG

She holds up her end of the conversation quite well...

DON'T GET MOTION SICKNESS WATCHING HER SMILE

Finally, some smiles for the camera!

SLURP

The good news is that she no longer cries when the pacifier falls out of her mouth at night. The bad news is that she tries to suck her thumb instead, and the slobbery, slurpy noises drive me nuts.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

We were wondering whether she is capable of cause and effect yet. Is she kicking her legs up and coincidentally hitting the lion or has she figured out that she can touch it with her feet?

IN THE BATH

This one is rated R for nudity...

SMILING AT HER TOYS

She's just starting to get interested in toys...

SHARING THE JOY

The dog likes the new swing as much as the baby does...

HAND CHEWER

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

It's the dog's 5th birthday!

SWINGING

This video is pretty boring, but I just wanted to savor the moment of her being a little baby, sitting in her swing with her pacifier. Someday she'll be old and I'll want to go back and remember this...

HOLDING HER HEAD UP

SUCKING HER THUMB

DANCING

The beginning of this is hilarious...

WAITING FOR A SMILE

ACHOO

SLEEP NOISES

There's no visual on this because I took it in our bedroom at 4 AM. These are the noises she makes while she's sleeping. I cannot wait for her throat to mature and for this to stop...

FIGHTING SLEEP

Why won't she just give in and close her eyes? Why does she fight sleep?

THE WEEKEND FROM HELL

HICCUPS

Have you ever seen a naked person with the hiccups? Watch that diaphragm go!

(And I forgot that I can't shoot video vertically, so sorry about the sideways shot.)

SQUEAKY

She grunts and squeaks like this all day long. And all night long too...sigh.

ALMOST THREE WEEKS OLD

ALMOST THREE WEEKS

ONE DAY OLD

FIRST FEW MINUTES