Milestones: Teeth, Crawling & Taco Bell

Dear Miss Sammie,

I’m getting a lesson, little one. NOTHING is ever boring in the life of a baby. I keep waiting for the week when I can write about the little things in your life: your blue robe thing, your knack for zeroing in on your books in your room, the way you eat anything and everything we put in front of you…but that week has yet to come because dangit if you aren’t hitting milestones left and right and I fear that if I don’t write them down right that very week I’ll kick myself because I’m doing AWFUL at combining my roles of scrapbooker and mommy and I’ve yet to do ANYTHING to your baby book. This blog has been my saving grace for chronicling everything you’ve done in your first year. Since you currently have no baby book, milestones will always surpass life’s little things in this blog (I still hate that word—BLOG—sounds so…BLAH).

But this weekly update isn’t about my hatred for random 21st century lexicons. It’s about you. Alas, the reason(s) have surfaced for why you hadn’t been sleeping so well at night. The first reason, as I mentioned last week, came to light last Tuesday when your first tooth made its debut.

The second tooth/reason made its appearance Sunday morning. We were in the church lobby because I didn’t want to run the risk of ruining our good graces with the church’s nursery staff by infecting all of the other babies with your evil cold. While I held you, you kept opening your mouth in excitement, and I, being the obsessive tooth-watcher-outer, kept looking proudly at your gumline and your new tooth. It was then that I saw that your new tooth had company: a little smidgen of white was protruding from your gums next to the other tooth (follows are the pictures from St. Patrick's Day yesterday--notice the two little teeth peeking through on your bottom gums!):



The close up efforts were less than successful...



Of course, I wanted to shout from the rooftops that my baby’s getting TWO new teeth, but I had to contain my excitement because they tend to frown upon that type of thing during church. Fortunately, I did have company to share my joy with: the entire Voetberg Family. They were our church’s worship guests that morning, having traveled from Washington state to perform foot-stomping tunes with their impressive musical talent. We were in the lobby (you made it through worship but just as the sermon started you decided you’d had enough of sitting down, thankyouverymuch) when you caught the eye of the middle daughter, Lilja. You had your own hand in getting her attention, of course—as soon as we sat down in the church’s comfy chairs you made eye contact with the teen and grinned and bounced whenever she looked your way.

Before I knew it, Lilja asked if she could take you outside to play. Fifteen minutes later, you were back and were mesmerizing the rest of the Voetberg clan with your adorableness. They loved your chunkiness (I think their exact words were something to the effect of “chunky babies are cute babies.”) and said that they’d hire you to join their band if they could (of course, this came from an eight year old so I wouldn’t get your heart set on traveling the country with them just yet). The teacher in me was impressed with their maturity, the mom in me reveled in just how much they enjoyed YOU.

Enough about the Voetberg family; time to get on with the milestones. While teeth may be a big deal—especially when considering that you waited so long to debut your pearly whites—I’m talking about a milestone that’s even bigger than teeth.

I’m talking about crawling. You crawled for the first time this week (Tuesday, March 16th) when I came home from work. I had been playing with you on the living room floor, when you saw something you wanted—something you’ve had your eye on for a long time: the (insert drum roll and much fanfare here)….dog dish. I figured something was up when you didn’t do your standard “pivot, pivot, roll, roll” maneuver after eyeing the shiny bowl a few feet away (all pictures below are from a few minutes ago--I snapped them as you were showing off this afternoon):

Instead of rolling over, though, you put yourself into the push up position by planting your hands on the ground and straightening your arms to support your upper body weight; your little feet supported your lower body weight while your butt was straight up in the air:


Then, you crawled/dragged yourself towards the (thankfully empty) dog food dish.


It wasn’t quite creeping (that’s where babies do an army crawl of sorts by using their arms to move forward while their feet drag behind them), but it wasn’t quite arm/knee, arm/knee crawling, either. Rather, your legs were doing all of the work while your arms dragged behind and your chest stayed on the carpet. Honestly, it was kind of like you were swimming the breast stroke on top of our living room carpet:



As the evening went on, you “swam” the living room less and less and moved to more of the regulation crawl. The next night, after coming home from a night of teaching college students, your father was so excited to tell me about how much he’d seen you crawl. Tonight will mark two days from the time you first discovered that moving forward beats rolling side to side. I’ll bet that you’ll show us how you’re getting even better at your wicked crawling skills!



Of course, I have my own theories as to why the crawling just happened to have started last Tuesday. Something must’ve happened earlier that day to give you super human strength. Something must’ve changed to give you the courage to propel yourself forward and tick off another milestone on the list.

I’m talking about tortillas, chicken, beans and rice.

I’m talking, dear Sammie, about the wonder that is Taco Bell.

You ate your first Taco Bell burrito on Tuesday. *sniff, grin, sniff*

I promised you, darling Sammie, as I held you in the hospital last May and we memorized each other’s faces, that I would one day introduce you to the joy that is Taco Bell.

And that day came this past Tuesday, hours before you showed us your mad crawling skills. It started out innocently enough. I came home from work that day with my typical lunch fare: Taco Bell combination #2 (grilled stuffed burrito with chicken--no baja or fiesta salsa, nachos and a soda). I set you down on the floor next to me while I scarfed my lunch down…but you started giving me what can only be described as “THE” eyes.

You tried to crawl then and there by getting on your knees to move toward me, but you only succeeded in scooching backwards. Sensing your frustration, I picked out a piece of chicken and gave it to you. I swear, Sammie girl, your eyes about popped out of your head with glee. Before I knew it, you had your little mitts on my lunch and weren’t about to let go:





You definitely quiero Taco Bell and I, for one, couldn’t be more proud.

Te amo mi mija,

Tu madre