This morning, Saturday morning, I was a little hazy thanks to the cold medicine, but I followed the routine. I made oatmeal for Squeaker, drank some coffee, etc. It was all I could do to get her to eat more than a few spoonfuls of the stuff. She fussed and signed more food. I tried to give her more oatmeal. Tears came. She signed more food. I gave her more oyster crackers. More tears came. I tried to give her more milk. Bigger tears. So, I put the milk and oatmeal in the fridge and put her down on the floor with her books. Fewer tears. I drank some coffee. Squeaker plays, but keeps giving me the food sign. I drank some coffee. A lightbulb (in the shape of a coffee pot) appeared over my head. Pancakes!
I pulled the high chair into the kitchen, got out the griddle, mixed the batter, and away went the tears. I put Squeaker in her chair and whipped up the first batch, gave one to her and got the more sign in return. She ate almost half the pancakes, drank more milk than usual and all together had a great breakfast with her daddy. Now, I ask you dear reader, she can't possibly know that today is Saturday, right?
Squeaker went to the doctor this week, she's a couple of pounds heavier now and just a little bit taller. I was working so I can't report this first hand, but Aunt Brite came away from the appointment wondering, "She can't possibly remember getting shots last time, can she?" Let's just say that Squeaker Fussypants knows her checkup routine pretty well also.
Squeaker's been busy this week doing research. She's a fellow at the Bedsore UNderstanding Network , or BUNNY for short. As part of her research she has been probing the limits of how much a little person like herself can sleep without falling victim to the onslaught of the dreaded bedsores. Wednesday night she went to sleep around 7:15 pm. 7:15 am came and went with nary a peep from her test facility. 8:15, all quiet. 9:15 gentle rustling of the blankets then silence. At 10:15 Aunt Brite checked the monitor and confirmed that it was working. Finally at 10:35 she seemed to be waking up. 
Aunt Brite went in the test facility, but Squeaker didn't seem to be that interested in getting up despite having been in her test facility for over 15 hours. Those bedsores must be lurking out there at 16 or 17 hours. Don't worry BUNNY, Squeaker is on the job.
That's all for now Squeaker fans. Good luck with your shopping. If you look closely at the second picture you can see a new tooth.
She eventually started walking in them, rather than just standing there. She brings them to me when she gets up now, wanting to wear her new shoes. Squeaker's development has continued on the same path as the last few weeks. She's running Aunt Brite ragged reading books, her walking is stronger and more confident and she spends much of the day pointing at objects and wanting to know what hey are called. 
My plan to travel at night worked like a charm. Squeaker was asleep not long after we got on the road. Squeaker and I do share an appreciation of a proper mixture of Steppenwolf and horsepower. She was rocking back and forth and giggling as we drove to lunch today. Awfully hard to love that Squeakerpants. That's all for now. Enjoy your week. Make sure to read the other half of this weeks post.
I have more to add to this post, but squeaker is up and needs lunch. Check back this evening as she goes to the other end of the fashion spectrum and gives her first piano concert.
Squeaker and I have been waiting to wear our new t-shirts until today. We probably should have found a better occasion given the way things turned out. We didn't go to the big game today but squeaker did go to her first NCAA sporting event on Sunday. We watched the UVa women beat UR at JPJ. Squeaker enjoyed everything but the buzzer. We started off in the second row, but after a substitution and some tears we decided to move up away from the action some. Her favorite part of the experience was watching the blimp fly around at half-time. My favorite part of the game was during the second half when she turned around and gave me a big hug and a kiss. We're planning on going to lots of afternoon games this season. I have started explaining the rules to her, but I suspect she has only a cursory understanding of the game at this point. I thought I was pretty special getting a hug and a kiss at the game, but she does a lot of hugging and kissing now, usually when she comes across favorite creatures in her books. Speaking of books, Aunt Brite gave Squeaker a couple of new board books on Monday. She has been asked to read each of them about seven times a day since then. Aunt Brite would like to request lots of new board books for Christmas. I am happy to relay this plea to the wider community. Don't tell Aunt Brite I said this, but I think she may not have fully considered the consequences of Squeaker having more new books, i.e. reading each of these new books seven times a day until they both have every word memorized. One of the new signs that Squeaker has learned is "please". Unfortunately, I think she learned it not as "please", but as "PLEASE READ ME THIS BOOK AGAIN, I HAVEN'T MEMORIZED IT YET AND IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT THAT I DO!" "Please" is starting to get used other contexts, but never with less emphasis. If you look closely at the picture, you will notice that Squeaker's hair parted in the wrong direction today. Unfortunately it is covering her first bruise. Squeaker is far too confident in her walking ability now and it caught up with her. She tumbled into a door-jam around bedtime last night. She's fine as you can see. I think the drool has more to do with a new tooth than the knock on her head, but I could be wrong... Blogger now has a button to post video so next week I will put up some footage of Squeaker walking.
Over the last year many things have confirmed for me the power of genetics. Squeaker is tall. Squeaker has brown eyes like her father. Squeaker doesn't seem that coordinated when she walks. Squeaker isn't a morning person. Squeaker has a prodigious appetite. Squeaker likes the outdoors, even when it is cold. Squeaker loves books. Squeaker takes reading material with her to the bathroom, well the changing pad anyway. In this last case, it isn't that she takes after her parents. However, certain of her other relatives, not to name names, but her paternal grandfather does come to mind, have been known to take reading
material with them, indeed to have many years worth of the Atlantic, pre-positioned, at their disposal, as they say. Hopefully when she's old enough to read these posts, she'll forgive me for the second picture, but when we go in to take care of a diaper, she grabs her book, I'm sorry, her libro, and tries to be helpful. We almost made the "man bites dog" segment of the evening news today. Since she learned to crawl, Squeaker has enjoyed shutting doors. She was playing on the floor after breakfast this morning when our dog wanted out. I went to the door and slipped outside to put the dog on its leash so it could do its business outside. Squeaker crawled over with me and when I was just outside the door, she tried to shut it. I managed to stop her just before she locked me out of the house. I noticed this evening that she's now just tall enough to reach the door knob. She seems to know what to do with it, but she's tall enough to get a grip yet. I we can put off her locking me out a few more weeks, she'll be able to let me back in herself. See you next week Squeaker fans.
I realized taking these pictures that she understands something about the camera now. Her demeanor changed when I took it down off the shelf and pointed it at her. I guess it is going to be hard to get those candid shots now. Remember that you can click on the pictures to see them full sized. The 'game face' shot is a full 6 MP image in case anyone wants to print it. One other interesting note. Squeaker and I had almost the same breakfast this morning. She had half a cup of oatmeal, made with whole milk, and flavored with applesauce. I had a cup of oatmeal, made with water, and flavored likewise with applesauce. I think her breakfast probably had as many calories as mine did. It looked much creamier and probably tasted a little better than mine too. She finished almost all of it. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Squeaker has been walking more and more this week. She's gotten to the point where she can walk all the way across her play area. The big difference isn't so much her success in walking, but that she considers it her primary mode of transportation now. Her desire to learn what everything is called hasn't abated yet either. The only downside of this new confidence is that she's starting to be really stubborn about her eating. The bannana and apple pancakes were great for breakfast, but she found them wanting at lunch. Too bad for her because there are more left for breakfast tomorrow. We worry some that she's not getting quite enough to eat, but the bigger worry is that she's really started testing her limits. My hope is that if the terrible twos start at 14 months that they willl end early too. Twenty-two months of terrible twos would not be fair.
We did have a little trouble at bath time tonight. The end of bath routine involves my shooting baskets with her bath toys. I bricked Mrs. Pufferfish off the rim and kinda sorta hit Squeaker in the head. She didn't cry, Squeaker that is, not Mrs. Pufferfish. Mrs. Pufferfish seemed fine with a few more moments in the bath. Squeaker on the other hand was ready to be out of the bath.
Well Squeaker fans, that's all the news that's fit to print.
We had pancakes this morning, as scheduled, with bits of apple for flavor.
Sqeaker has made a lot of progress this week with walking and talking. The last few days she has done a lot more of both. About midweek it was more confident than it should have been. She would start to walk a couple of steps by leaning forward. Much of the time her legs wouldn't end up getting out ahead of her enough and she would end up falling into a crawl. Since last night her walking has been stronger and confident. She does better now as she toddles across the play area, though her range is still isn't much better than a couple of steps. Her new skills are really obvious when she stands to play with a toy or bends down to pick them up.
Squeaker's vocabulary, signed and verbal has expanded too. This week she has answered the question "Does your diaper need to be changed?" with a "yus". Not a nod mind you, a "yus". Being a scientist I have been testing her skills in answering this question. So far she has given only one false positive. Stricly speaking the true positives are pretty negative and stinky so I wasn't upset. Unfortunately she's only answered with a "yus" that once. On the subject, "daper" is another word that's come out once. 
As you can see by this picture, there's another new activity that Squeaker is undertaken, brushing her teeth at night before bed. She attacked the activity with such gusto, such apalom that its obvious that she takes after her mother's side of the family in this regard. She did a pretty good job of brushing in the right place too. If you think about it her teeth are a pretty small target. You can't just stick the brush in and expect to make contact with teeth. Her teeth are neither big nor numerous at this point.
We'll that's all for now. Squeaker and I are hoping that y'all are enjoying all this rain.
Squeaker is still walking occasionally, rarely more than a few steps at a time, never when her dad is in the room either. We are more and more interested in what the grown ups are eating and less and less interested in Gerber products. We've said goodbye to dad's bannana milkshakes for breakfast and moved on to organic Quaker oatmeal. She's still eating jar food most meals, but the as our supply dwindles, I don't think I am going to replace it. There remains and ample supply of pears as a topping for pancakes.
She's gotten interested in building her vocabulary up again. For a while everything has either been 'aba" or 'dah'. 'kat', 'dug', 'uh-oh' and 'ishhh' (things that live in the water) are words that she's starting to use again. We have been using some baby sign language too. Most of her signing is pretty good, although 'finished' looks more like 'Stop the train the bridge is out!".
That's all for now, enjoy your week.
Not that it has anything to do with Squeaker directly, but the Class of 1997 had it's 10th reunion this weekend. Attendence was far beyond what any of us expected. We donated more money back to the "I" than any class since the 1980's. Most importantly we beat 93+3. We didn't quite give until it hurt, but Squeaker seems to be happy with her new slogan, "Two Meals a Day!"
She's still been very coy about walking. Maybe Aunt Brite and I got too excited and Squeaker's afraid we might hurt ourselves is she walks again. If you haven't read it yet, there was a special post on Thursday about her first steps. These are some pictures up from this morning. As you can see, we put the legs on her music table. 
She stands up to play with it now. Most of the time she can't resist the beat of the drums and she ends up dancing, but she seemed more interested in using it as part of an obstacle course today. She's been trying lots of new foods this week. Thursday night she even fed herself some mashed potatoes with a spoon. I figured they would be an easy first step since they stuck to the spoon. That's all for now. Sorry for the late post. No pancakes yesterday, instead continental breakfast...
What followed can be best summed up as #4 from Daddy Hugs, the first steps hug and the Mypos "Dance of Joy" (think Perfect Strangers). Squeaker seemed a little weirded out by the Mypos "Dance of Joy". She hasn't walked since. It could be because she's been asleep more than of the five hours since she "woke up" this morning, but I think maybe its because she's afraid I will do the Mypos "Dance of Joy" again.
That's all for now. I am going to go tell Squeaker's mom.
I waved the baby monitor at every fire truck, ambulance, and tractor so as to indicate that a baby was sleeping, so please don’t blast the horn in front of this house. They responded with repeated blasts of their sirens and horns, but the Squeaker slept on.
I suspect it was a pepper fleck that finally woke Squeaker up. Once awake she didn't really want to hang out with me, because the daddy person keeps trying to put her to sleep. So the daddy person went kayaking on the river and saw a pair of bald eagles. I might have seen a juvenile too, the body was clearly that of a large bird of prey, but the color was wrong. Squeaker had a good afternoon with her family and yet again now, Squeaker sleeps on.
You see, Squeaker is kind of stubborn. I gave her a small slice of squash on Friday night. I was told she couldn't have squash because of the seeds. She didn't like that she couldn't have more squash. She complained about not being able to have more squash. She wouldn't eat anything else until we finally gave her some butternut squash. Squash is not a metaphor in this story. Squash is squash. Woe unto he who gives her chocolate cake and tries to take it away.
Also this week was a visit to the doctor, we found out that she's much taller than the average girl her age. We've been working on her left-handed dribbling skills since then. Squeaker got a clean bill of health from her doctor. All other things being equal the height she's put on is the only data point I need to confirm her health.
Enjoy!
She's been learning about bubbles. She was a little slow to warm up to them. She's pretty close to walking now and was much more interested in standing up and picking leftover cheerios up out of the seat. What kid doesn't like bubble though! I think she thought she was going to catch this one and keep it. The other major development this week is that she's finally started drinking cow juice out of a sippy cup. I am really excited that she's taken to sippy cups because it means I can stop setting an example and using one at dinner. It takes a number of refills to get though a meal when you've only got a 5 oz of space. On the upside, it was the perfect size for bordeaux. Sorry for the late post. No pancakes this morning. We had lox in the house so fresh bagels seemed like a must!
That's all for now. Classes start Monday for Squeaker's dad, so it is going to be a busy weekend.
Squeaker's dad is going to be fishing tomorrow morning, which means two things, an early post and no pancakes this week. As you can see, that tooth has popped right on through to the other side. It also doesn't seem like it'll be long until there are two teeth gleeming back at the camera.
Since I know at least half of the audience is horrified at this un-cute picture of Squeaker, here's a normal one from this week. FYI: You should be able to click on most of the pictures and view them full screen. Don't be surprised if you can identify what she's eating. Most of the pictures should print well up to 5x7, 8x10 if you're not fussy. 
I trust y'all feel better now that you have had your cuteness fix. Squeaker discovered the Gerber baby this week. You know, the one on the label of each and every one of the 17 jars of food she eats each day. Squeaker likes the baby enough that she tries to share food with it. I'll see what I can do about getting some video of an attempted sharing.
Well, that's all the news that's fit to print.
Squeaker and I would also like to introduce you to Hope. She was a gift from the girls in our youth group. 
The girls pooled their money at the "Build-a-Bear" in Atlanta when they found out about Squeaker's mother. They each put in a heart (so Hope has five). Squeaker loves Hope and uses her as a pillow at night. This loss of prestige has been hard on her favorite cowboy action figure, Honey Bear, but after some adventures at Sid's house they seem to be getting along now. Squeaker and Hope climbed up into the chair by themselves, too. Aunt Brite claims credit for making sure that the outfit matches the paint and the chair.
That's all for this week.
The next line of the bears song is"Sharp teath and claws and furry paws the better to eat you up." Aunt Brite took care of the claws on Friday, but the big news is that Squeaker has a couple of teeth that are about to pop through her gums. I for one hope that this week has been the worst of teething.
She's also gotten practice at climbing stairs, plural, not singular. We were visiting friends and squeaker climbed their stairs twice between the main course and dessert. She has no idea how to go down yet, which is fine because I can't imagine letting her either. That's all I have to report. Pancakes were postponed for tomorrow, due to an unexpected attack of English Muffins.
Have a good week from Squeaker and her Dad.
Squeaker continues to make good progress learning her way around this oversized world. She's mastered crawling up, but not down the single stair out of my parents florida room. The last time I watched her do it, she put her hands out and walked up to it. Of course the time before that she put her hand out too early and almost ended up flat on her face. She seems more wobbly now than she did weeks ago just sitting around. My guess is that whatever it is about teething that causes toddlers to grab at their ears is messing with her balance.
That's about all I have to report. Sorry for the late post. We did have peach pancakes for breakfast....
That's all for for now. Squeaker and I have decided to make blogging and pancakes part of our Saturday morning routine so check back for weekly updates.
