9 Months!

Will you indulge me for a longer than usual post? 9 months is significant, after all. She's officially been out in the big, scary world for the same amount of time as she was safe inside of me. In the first few weeks of her life, I remember thinking how glad I was that I could see her and hold her and share her with everyone who loved her. But I also felt a really weird instinctual desire to have her right back inside of me. Because at least there, I knew exactly where she was, and taking care of her was just a matter of taking my vitamins and eating a well-balanced diet. Anyway, here we are in the big, scary world...so far, so good.



The above picture is representative of my attempts to take the requisite cute, posed picture of Meredith at 9 months. You'll see more attempts below. You'll also see some sleeping pics, cause that's the only time during the last 2 days that she's been still enough for me to take more than one quick shot.







So what's different about 9 months? Well, most importantly (because it ensures that we'll make it to future birthdays), Meredith now seems to be getting over her almost complete aversion to solids. It started with some scrambled eggs that Chris was having one day. She macadoodled those (um, that means "ate" in Chris-speak). Since then she's been loving the peaches and cereal--and pretty much anything else that we try. Like peanut butter. The girl loves the peanut butter. Good thing, since that's pretty much what we live on around here.



Meredith stands up a lot--she leans on everything and pulls herself up (often on my legs, which are covered with her little talon marks). She likes to walk when we hold her hands. She's still not interested in crawling, but I can't blame her. What's fun about that? Banged up knees on itchy carpet? No thanks. She's jabbering more and more and I think she's starting to give kisses. They're very wet and noisy, but she has lots of fun with it. She's also waving a lot and most of the time she picks up on the right times to do that all by herself. Bath time is a blast (we had our first "why would you ever make me get out of the bath" screamfest just this week) and she also loves her new pool (best seven bucks we ever spent).



That's the news. I feel like our baby won't truly be a baby for much longer, so thanks for indulging me.

Scary

It's been a tough few days for Meridy. The teething has begun again and she's had the spitting up, the low fever, the inconsistent sleeping: all the joy. She tries to be happy; she wants to be happy; but sometimes it's just too much. So on Sunday afternoon she had just awoken from a not so successful nap and really wasn't feeling too hot. I got her a bottle and put her on her quilt. She holds her bottle now (when she feels like it) , so I just got down next to her on the floor to keep her company. The two of us were flat on our backs on the floor -- me reading, her happily sucking away. After a few minutes, I heard the tell-tale gurgling sound that means she's lost interest in her bottle. I turned away from my book to see what you see in the above picture. Meredith was reading her book, too. It was scary to see how exactly she was imitating me, and how unconscious her behavior was. I hope the impact of this first mirror-image moment stays with me in the coming years!

Taking the Good with the Bad

THE BAD: The U.S. lost to Ghana in the Thursday morning game. There was a ridiculous call against us, allowing Ghana a PK, but you can't attribute our loss entirely to the momentum we lost with that PK. We just didn't have our stuff together, and we didn't deserve to win.

PRE-GAME HOPES

STILL HOPING

ALL HOPE IS LOST

THE GOOD: There's a free sprinkler park in Midtown, and we went there after a loss-recovery nap.
MAKING MOM AND DAD FEEL BETTER IS SERIOUS BUSINESS

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO LET DAD GET A LITTLE CRAZY

AND IT HELPS TO HANG OUT WITH SOMEONE WHO REALLY KNOWS HOW TO PLAY SOME BALL

But Where's My Cookie?

We tried to add some arrowroot cookies to the repertoire the other day. Thanks to Holly and Virginia for leaving those at the house. They were good fun for the sore gums. The little angel girl was innocently gumming her cookies and making her mess when her Uncle Matthew and her dad decided to mess with her. They realized that the gumminess of her cookies could be used against her, and they did so. Sick. Sick guys.

The Best Dads We Know

Happy Father's Day to the all the dads in our lives. We love you.

The Age at Which It's Fun to Throw Things on the Floor and Then Look at Mom and Implore Her (Silently) to Pick Them Up

Game One: Czechs vs USA

First, let me say that Tivo-ing the game to watch it 7 hours later didn't really work all that well. Let me give a shout out to long-time listener, frequent commenter Kevin Conway for being my unsought source of game info--by posting game results on this blog. Thanks KC. But really it's okay, cause it was good to have a heads up on the results of such a depressing game. From this point on, I'm just going to watch World Cup games for the love of the beautiful game. America, despite our gains in the last 10 years, is still the baby of this sport. These countries have been playing football for hundreds of years. Yes, hundreds. So we'll just love the game for the game--root for the boys in the upcoming games--and cheer for England and Brazil when the time comes. (Disclaimer: These opinions are those of Kate Lareau and Kate Lareau alone and are possibly/probably not endorsed by Chris Lareau or any Lareau/Sugg relatives).



Anyway, as you can see, Mer was all decked out for the game. Uncle Matthew came up with the tag-line for her shirt, since our hope was that Giant-Man Onyewu might be able to slow Nedved a bit. Turns out that wasn't the case.

The evening wasn't a total wash, because earlier in the day, we tried out swinging for the first time. Below, you'll see Meridy looking unsure (at best) about the whole thing and Walt demonstrating how simple and, in fact, almost boring it is. Needless to say, he's an old pro.

World Cup Mania

It's World Cup 2006 and Meredith is appropriately excited. Her Papa Sugg bought her a soccer outfit before she was even born and she and her little mate Ollie (Timothy Charles) Cogan were all decked out for the England/Paraguay game. Never mind that watching it with Dad's soccer team meant a 7am drive out to the farthest reaches of outer Collierville. It was worth it. (It usually is when bacon is involved--thanks Cogans!). Not surprisingly, England took that one. America makes it's first appearance on Monday--Tivos will be working overtime to capture the game for we schmucks that needs must go to work despite such an important event. The Ecuadorian presidente gave his country a half day off when they won--you think Bush will hook us up? GO USA!

Where's Meredith? (AKA Peek-a-Boo)

As mentioned in a previous post, Meredith has become aware that she can play an active role in our "Where's Meredith?" games. She lifts a cloth over her head and waits for us to ask where she is -- sometimes there's quite a long pause while she makes delighted little sounds -- and then she brings down the cloth and waits for us to say "There she is!" Sometimes she forgets to bring the cloth down (funny). Sometimes she forgets which direction to look when she brings the cloth down and looks expectantly to an empty corner of the room (sad). But it's usually a pretty good time. Awww...our first game.

Harbortown 5k: Baby's First Race

Friday night was the Harbortown 5k, and the Lareaus decided to take it on, armed as we were with a new jogging stroller and a desire to introduce our daughter to the joys of road races. Right. She did great for the first 2 miles. But then it was dinner time. And we all know that dinner time waits for no race. So after a detour through a sprinkler to see if that would cheer her up (decidely not), we realized that the only answer was a pit stop for a bottle. Said bottle was concocted on the side of the road, and sweaty daddy carried Meredith and fed her, while mom pushed the empty stroller. It was stunning how many people thought it would be funny to say "Can I have a ride?". Those who weren't asking for rides or laughing with (at?) us, were glaring at us as if to say "You maniacs, take your kid home." Oh well. We finished the race...together. And by the end of the bottle, Meredith thought 5ks were fabulous, especially if you run them on your dad's shoulders.