Katharine Lange: Arwyn Week 35: 8 Great Months of Arwyn!

Arwyn turned 8 months old this week. She is starting to talk so much these days (aka, babble); I guess after 8 months of observation, she's finally ready to tell us what she thinks about everything! She can definitely say "Da da da da da" already, but I don't think she's talking about her Daddy quite yet. She's got tonal inflection and the other variances of speech sound down pretty well, so I can tell whatever she's saying is quite interesting. We worked a little more on her eating this week, and while we had a bit more success, she still ended every eating session by gagging and puking it all back up. At this point I'm desperate for her to eat anything, so I've somewhat abandoned the "only one food for 4 days to check for allergies" rule, and I just try stuff. She likes the Peach/Banana/Apricot squeezie that Leia won't eat, and she went to town sucking on the juice of a fresh mango too. Puffs and MumMums are also acceptable to her. Like I said, Arwyn has been doing lots of observing for the last 8 months, so the other new thing she's trying to imitate is kissing...she gave me my very first kiss this week! It was surely a kiss because she was looking at me lovingly and then purposefully brought her partially open lips slowly to my cheeks for a little tap. So sweet! Lastly, I wanted to say that she was "crawling" because on the night of her 8 month birthday she officially took 4 crawls steps forward, but realistically log rolling and scooting continue to be her idea of the most economical forms of transportation, with just a little bit of crawling added in for convenience in certain circumstances. She has totally mastered the art of sitting up straight and balancing herself.

Leia had a Valentine's Day Miracle this week...after going to bed at her normal time, she slept in until 10:00am the next day, and I actually had to wake her up or she would have kept sleeping! In fact, we ended up having to wake her up at 9:30 or 10 for the rest of the week. Seems like something might be wrong, but when you get little bonuses like that, you aren't really in a hurry to figure it out, and she's completely normal otherwise, so it's probably not too serious. Maybe a growth spurt? But I can't imagine that she could get bigger than she already is! Ben and Sara Kraines graced us with their presence this week, and Leia was so excited to see them and play. Whenever they were gone skiing, she kept asking, "Where is my Uncle Ben?" It was really cute; she definitely remembered them from this summer and did not stop talking or showing off the entire time. As I've said before, Leia is taking after her father as far as her singing goes, and she took it one step further this week by pulling off one of his most famous moves: One night while Josh was putting her to bed, she tells him, "Daddy, I wrote a song for you. One for you, one for Mommy, and one for Arwyn." She then sang him his song. Unfortunately, I've never been able to get her to sing me mine. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. Finally, thanks to the new Star Wars Comic Book that Leia got for Valentine's Day from Aunt Stacia and Uncle John, Leia has finally been introduced to the origin of her name, and boy does she love it. We even watched the original Star Wars movie with her this week, so the training is in full force. She loves to read the stories about her, aka anything with Princess Leia, and she refers to Darth Vader as "my scary Daddy" and Anakin Skywalker as "my good Daddy". I'm even a character in there as Padmé.