I guess sometimes no means yes

Gabrielle loves shaking her head back and forth - too bad she has no idea what it means.

Saturday mornings with mama

Most Saturday mornings, I take Gabrielle out of our bedroom as early as I can drag myself out of bed and give Mark the chance to sleep in a little. We head over to the living room, where I immediately turn on the cartoons. I hate getting up early, but I love Saturday morning cartoons. I'm trying to get Gabrielle into watching them, but so far she's not terribly interested. Mostly, we just wrestle around on the couch, reading books and playing with her toys.

Of all *her* toys, her favourite thing to play with is *our* camera and cordless phones. There's alot of unh! unh! from her whenever she sees something that we don't want her to touch.

Here she is actually watching the television for a moment. Look how she's making herself at home, leaning back onto my face.

Monkey see, monkey do. Here I am making myself at home, leaning back onto our baby.

Life lessons: good grooming

[Meaghan wrote:] Gabrielle. Interesting little girl. Every day after her morning nap, we have had a tradition of changing her diaper and getting her dressed and ready for the day. Last week she discovered what to do with a comb, as she has little hair obviously adult brushes and combs are too big for her. Belinda went out and grabbed her some cute little kiddy sized things. Now every morning I sit her on the sink and let her do her thing.
She is developing great grooming skills!! She now brushes her hair every chance she gets. It's the most adorable thing!!



This particular picture was in the afternoon one day, she pointed at her hair and I handed her, her brush. She is brilliant!! She knows exactly what to do!!
I have high hops for potty training one day ;)

Dawning of a new era

Sorry for the long delay since my last posting, but Mark and I have both been overwhelmed by the transition to leaving Gabrielle with our nanny, Meaghan. The first week went terribly - Gabrielle cried lots and was very clingy and whiny. We cut short her first week with Meaghan and took care of her ourselves on Friday. The weekend was not great either - Gabrielle had several tantrums (isn't she too young for tantrums?), one of which lasted two hours. We finally gave up trying to console her and put her in her crib and let her fall asleep. She kept sobbing in her sleep - it was really heartbreaking. Her eating was off, she refused to be consoled, she screamed bloody murder at bedtime, and awoke several times during the night. We had guessed that the transition to Meaghan was upsetting Gabrielle to her very core and all her systems were reacting. Needless to say, we weren't looking forward to Monday and starting the nightmare all over again. 

I'm not a religious person, but I can say that a miracle happened on Monday. We left in the morning and Gabrielle started to cry. I phoned Meaghan once I got to work and she told me that Gabrielle stopped crying soon after we left and had been perfectly cheerful all day. She was eating, wasn't crying, and was in a genuinely good mood. That night, Gabrielle went to sleep without a fuss and slept most of the night. She woke up in a great mood, unlike the moods she had been treating us to for the past week. All day Tuesday was happy happy, as was Wednesday. 

I guess we can attribute all this to a couple of things. First, Meaghan is fantastic and Gabrielle obviously likes her. She's never upset to see Meaghan in the morning, she just doesn't like when we leave her. When I come home in the afternoon, she's very happy to see me, but she's very smiley and friendly with Meaghan too. Second, Gabrielle had a giant molar come in last week. I'm pretty sure it broke through the gum sometime on the weekend. That, more than anything, might have been the reason for her sudden personality change from adorable demon child to hateful demon child and back. Just kidding. Sorta.

Anyways, all is good for now. Mark and I are very grateful that Meaghan has been so patient with Gabrielle - it seems to have paid off. Stay tuned.

First year stats

I took Gabrielle for her first year check-up and vaccinations. Here are her numbers to round out her first year:

weight: 11.35 kg or just over 25 lbs.

height: 79.5 cm or 31.3 in.

As her birthweight was just under 9 lbs, she barely fell short of tripling her birthweight.

Her birth height was 54 cm, in case anyone's interested.

She's still in the 95th percentile for both height and weight. 

Lots of baby to love...

Ta-DAH!!

The day before her first birthday, Gabrielle took her first solo steps. Here she is a few days later. She is quite happy to perform on cue, and will take up to ten steps or so before wanting some support, and always looks quite proud of herself when she's done. Here's our toddler:

Gigi's first Chrismukkah. Part three: Birthday

Although Gabrielle's birthday isn't *technically* part of Chrismukkah, it will no doubt be subsumed by it, as likely happens with all late December babies. Mark's family was incredibly generous, trotting out a whole bunch of fresh gifts, even though we had opened Christmas presents just the day before. We are now well-supplied in very noisy toys. Gabrielle is pleased.

Here's the GAK (Great Aunt Kitty) giving Gabrielle a big stuffed bear for her birthday. Gabrielle's like, that's for me?

Maggie and Gabrielle modelling their semi-matching sweaters. Maggie's clearly thinking about how Gabrielle is ruining the photo with her crying, and won't she please just grow up?

We went out for a walk in downtown London. Guess who loves riding on daddy's big shoulders? Guess whose neck was killing all the next day?

Gigi's first Chrismukkah. Part two: Christmas

We left Montreal for the long drive to London, Ontario, to spend Christmas with Mark's family. It's about an 8 hour drive, so we took a number of long breaks to give Gabrielle some stretch time. One of those breaks was lunch at Swiss Chalet in Kingston. This was our first time ever ordering Gabrielle her own meal, and off the kiddy menu no less. Chicken fingers, veggies, all you can drink milk, and a bag of M&Ms (those went to her parents). It made us feel like she was very grown up.

"Hey, I wonder what's in this big red bag with my name on it?"

This was Gabrielle's first experience with the big red Christmas "stockings." They're actually bags as big as a laundry bag, and Gabrielle's was filled to overflowing. For a novice, she took to the spirit of Christmas immediately, and quickly figured out what to do with the pretty packages in her bag.

She worked hard all morning, tearing into her gifts. Behind her on the couch is her cousin Maggie, who had an equally enormous bag to tackle.

What was cool was that after she opened each gift, she'd stop and appreciate it or play with it. Here she is enjoying a shiny gold coin. No, it's not chocolate, Gigi.

She worked up such a sweat opening gifts, we had to take her dress off. Here she is surrounded by the aftermath of the unwrapping.

Nana sneaks in for a photo behind Gabrielle. Gabrielle's stranger anxiety makes it so hard to get photos of people with her, so we do what we can.

Here she is during the traditional crudités before the main meal, with Grandad and Kitty. It's also when the cocktails start flowing. Hey, it's noon - let's drink!

Unfortunately, Katharine was sick for a good part of our visit, so she spent almost no time with Gabrielle. This is the only photo I have of her, but it's an important one, because it shows her putting the finishing touches on the log and the trifle. I also have no photos of her husband, Ray, who was industriously working around the house during much of our visit. Next time we have to get a picture for sure Ray, OK??

Gigi's first Chrismukkah. Part one: Chanukkah

Gabrielle's first Chrismukkah began with a trip to Montreal to celebrate Chanukkah with my parents, my brother, and his kids. Gabrielle got to try potato latkes for the first time and my father's *famous* Lithuanian-style duck, also known as "Pincus Pines" style. Whatever. It was delicious, and she ate everything we put on her plate. As my mother says, she's a Jewish mother's dream. Speaking of my mother, she broke her arm about a month ago, and so she wasn't able to interact very much with Gabrielle. Well, mostly because she would have to fight Ben and Amelia to get to her. Also, Gabrielle's stranger anxiety doesn't seem to manifest with kids, I have no idea why. Anyways, the two of them basically monopolized Gabrielle for the entire visit, and thus I have almost no photos of anyone but them with her. Sorry mom, sorry dad, sorry Amos...

The kids got Gabrielle some amazing gifts, including this floofy-poofy fairy costume, a cool eating bowl and chopsticks, and a hat shaped like a giant chocolate chip cookie. 

It's amazing we got Gabrielle out of there in one piece. There was alot of "I wanna hold her!", as usual.

We stayed at my dad's house on this visit, and Gabrielle finally started warming up to *Curly* on the last day. Here she is pointing very specifically to every item in the fridge and asking "Whazzat?"