Day: November 29, 2004

I hate it when Blogger decides to jack with a couple characters in an HTML line and thus screws up a post. I just noticed yesterday morning that the link I attempted to share last Wednesday was corrupted while posting and thus none of you could use it. My apologies. At times when I use the desktop posting tools I have, strange things happen. This was one of them. I’ve fixed it if you still want to read about Thanksgivings past.
M. sat through her first gangster film Saturday night. S. was working and our college student for the week was out for an evening on the town, so M. sat on my lap while I watched Miller’s Crossing on Fox Movie Channel. She didn’t flinch at all the gunplay and physical violence. Later, I found Pulp Fiction on A&E but decided she wasn’t quite ready for that, or for me to bust out the Godfather trilogy or Goodfellas yet.
She has developed two bad habits over the last few days. First, she’s started to shun the pacifier in favor of cramming her fist into her mouth. Sometimes, she tries to get both fists in at the same time. It’s amazing how if we attempt to remove one hand, the other quickly flies up to take its place. We don’t feel any teeth starting to poke through her gums, but they must be close as often as she puts her hands to her mouth. What makes matters worse is as she chews on her fist, she flexes her fingers inside of her mouth and accidentally gags herself. At least I think it’s accidental. Babies can’t be bulimic, right? Most times we hear her gagging and get her hand out before the full process takes place, but she has forced herself to puke a few times. She doesn’t seem particularly happy after she pukes, so I don’t understand why the trial and error thing isn’t taking hold. It must really make those gums feel good to chew on stuff.
The second habit is sticking her tongue out. Like most new parents, we’ve been sticking out tongues out at M. for months. Every book says that’s one of the first actions they’ll mimic back to you, which she has certainly done. In the past, she would just barely stick her tongue out and smile in response to our prompt. Over the last few days, however, she’s started to be the prompter. She’ll sit and stare at us with a sly grin on her face, the tip of her tongue just barely peeking out of her lips. If we acknowledge her in any way, she goes all Gene Simmons on us and sticks her tongue all the way out. It’s fun in the comfort of your own home, but if she starts doing it to strangers we may need to have a little talk.
We can confirm, however, that the silly gene that was present on both sides of her lineage is certainly present in her personality. In addition to sticking her tongue out, she laughs all the time now. While we were watching TV last night, I thought she had fallen asleep on my chest like most other nights. I looked down and she was staring up at me with wide eyes and a crazy grin on her face. As soon as she saw I was looking back at her, she squeezed her eyes shut, buried her face in my chest, and started laughing. Talk about easy entertainment! If we hold her near a large, well lit mirror, it’s good for at least 20 minutes of distraction.
On the down side to all of this is she has somehow forgotten how to roll over. She first rolled from her front to her back at six weeks and routinely did it when we put her on her belly. She has absolutely no idea how to do it anymore, though, and eventually gives up and drops her face to the surface she’s on until we roll her over.