Do'in the monkey walk

Aquarium

We took Viv to the aquarium yesterday, unfortunately we had forgotten to recharge the batteries for the camera so not as many pictures as we'd like.

Saturday supplemental

Viv fell asleep slumped over in her backpack this afternoon. This is how she looked when she woke up:

Saturday

Alice and I have started taking Viv to this Friday happy hour gig for parents and their young kids. It's held every other Friday at an art gallery uptown and they have a band that plays and a little crafts table for the kids and beer and wine for the adults. It only lasts from 5-7 but Viv is usually starting to wind down for bed shortly after that anyway, so it works out well. Other than that not a whole lot happened Viv-wise this week. She's continuing to improve at walking, to the point that we now have to keep a very close eye on her when she's out of the corral or she's off to who knows where before we even realize it. We're also working on what we're going to do for her first b-day at the end of next month.

Finally

At last, I got around to doing this. This video is from last week and she's already progressed by leaps and bounds since then. She can now stand up from a sitting position without holding on to anything. She can also walk about 10 feet at a time now and does so without any prompting. She's pretty much given up crawling altogether.

Thursday

First off, Angus came through his operation with flying colors and he's back to his old self. I was a bit nervous about putting a 13 1/2 year old dog under anesthesia but it had to be done and the vet said he was a tough old dog and wasn't worried. Angus may need to start wearing doggie diapers before long though since he's having a harder time getting around and has had a few accidents.

Viv is starting to get pretty serious about this walking business. When we sit with her in the corral she basically just runs back and forth between us, the corral wall, the big box of blocks, etc. She'll pretty much head for anything she can trot to within 5 feet or so and hang on until she launches for her next spot. She's also sleeping through the night now in her own crib. It took us about a week of her gradually getting a little less fussy every night until she just accepted it and now sleeps from 8:30-9:00 at night until 5:30 or so the next morning. She still gets pretty grumpy when she first gets put in the crib but that's lasting for shorter and shorter periods of time.

We'll try to get some good video of walking up before long. Maybe this weekend when we have a little more time.

#10

Viv has her first molar coming in as well now. She's also able to walk 4 or 5 feet before falling on her butt. We have some video of both walking and swimming and I'll try and get it uploaded to here in the next few days. Viv also met her cousin BB today but we forgot to take any pictures.

Langa-loo

Angus went to the vet today to get a cyst on his belly checked out. He's in pretty darn good shape overall but he's going to need to go under the knife (again) next week to have the cyst removed. I'm a little anxious about having a dog his age get knocked out for surgery but our vet is confident he'll be fine. At any rate, Angus has now surpassed me in the total number of surgeries and quite possibly the total cost of medical care throughout his life. He goes in next Wednesday morning, so wish him luck.

In Viv news, she's up to 4 or 5 steps at a time now. Alice and I have started a game where we sit in the corral and have her run back and forth between us. I say run, because she's still at that stage where she leans into it and hauls ass forward until she falls on her face or runs into us to stop herself.

Teeth

We jumped the gun on the 7th tooth post. Viv is pretty cranky about having fingers in her mouth to check tooth progress, so sometimes it's hard to tell what's going on. Anyway, I bought this little fingertip toothbrushy thing-a-ma-jig, and, after pinching her nose to get her to open for a tooth brushing, we find tooth(s) (teeth?) numbers 8 and 9 coming in up top. I guess that explains a bit as to why she's been so cranky lately.

She might also be so cranky because her mom and I have instituted a "no getting in to bed with us between the hours of 9:00 pm and 5:30 am" policy. For a while we were doing the co-sleeping thing, but then thought better of it. Although we really enjoy sleeping with her and it makes Alice lessed stressed about her to have her with us, we worried that Viv was unable to fall asleep on her own. And, Viv's inability to fall asleep on her own became problematic for us too because she would resist the crib and would sometimes refuse to sleep at all until we went to bed at 10 or even later. Plus, it made it so that her Grandma had to hold her the entire duration of both of her daily naps if she was going to take them. So we started putting her in her crib, but then we'd eventually break down during the night and just let her come into bed and nurse so that we could get some sleep. That ended up being a slippery slope, especially because we're so dog-ass tired from trying to get her to sleep in her crib. Lately though, we've finally bitten the bullet and we're just making her tough it out in her crib all night. There's been a lot of howling and even more sleeplessness on everyone's part, but it's the best deal for everyone in the long run. I just hope we live through the next few weeks until she (and Alice) get adjusted to it.

7th tooth on 7/7/07

Viv had her lucky 7th tooth come in. It's another lower, which kind of surprised us a bit since you can feel a couple of the uppers trying to push through and we thought they'd be first.

In other news, Viv has had a pretty busy week. My dad, Marjie and Em left yesterday and made it safely back home already. On the 4th we had a big gathering over here. We've also been working on getting Viv to sleep on her own in the crib and have been starting to have some success. Last night she made it until 5:30 a.m. and tonight she went down fairly easily- only took 10 or 15 minutes to get her to sleep.

As far as swimming goes, Viv is completely fearless in the water.

here ya go

Everyone's in town now. Emily arrived around noon today and we all had a nice dinner at Bywater BBQ tonight. Tomorrow we're going to have a big 4th of July cookout at the house and we'll have tons of pics to put up tomorrow evening.

Quick Update

My dad and Marjie made it in to town yesterday afternoon and Emily arrives tomorrow. We'll get some pictures up in the next day or two.