It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As you can see, the presents have begun arriving, so it must be Christmas. Daddy loaded Petra into the wagon today and hauled her to the local nursery to buy a tree. With the tree in the wagon, Petra had to walk all the way home, holding Daddy's hand as we went. We nearly caused a few accidents as cars slammed on their brakes or swerved to the curb staring at the incredible cuteness. We might have to make this a tradition, if no one gets hurt!

The tree is up and decorated, and Petra was entranced by the lights (yet, mysteriously did not start grabbing ornaments). She also had quite a bit of fun carrying around her Xmas stocking before it was hung by the chimney with care (care that it was out of reach).

What else is new?
Daddy is now officially "Dada" (no longer "Mama")

Petra let's out a loud honking roar (similar to an elephant's trumpet) when she sees the cow printed in the bottom of her cereal bowl. And she says "Maaaa" when we play with the toy sheep.

Tonight she ran through her whole repertoire of clever tricks to get us to sing her praises: put her hand to her ear and said "hello" like she was on the phone, picked up the remote and said "'mote," played hide and seek (both behind her hands, and behind the green slug rocking toy, which she just realized she could pick up), did all the signs/words for her counting book (hat, baby, flower, car, ball). Such a little showoff!

You had to ask

Guillermo! How could you?! You had to ask, and thus invoke the curse. As we all know, the second you mention how great something is, everything goes terribly wrong. Well, for the last several nights (nearly a week) Petra has been sleeping the night through with nary a squawk. Daddy hasn't had to get out of his warm bed to freeze his butt off shushing her back to bed, and freezing Mommy's butt off when climbing back into bed. Everything was right with the world. And then Guillermo had to ask, and voila! 2 crying episodes last night (not that bad though, 11:15 and 12:15, made me nervous though). Overall though, let's hear it for this wonderful baby!!! Good girl! Such a good sleeper!

In addition to being a wonderful sleeper, Petra has also been showing us all her clever monkey tricks. She's big on "peekaboo" now, pulling her shirt up to cover her face, or hiding and peeking out from behind the furniture.

When she uncovered the cow printed on the bottom of her bowl at breakfast, she said "moooo!" She also likes "Quack" and "Maaa" (duck and goat of course).

She also loves stickers. I had stuck to the door of my closet a few "I voted" and "I gave blood" stickers, and when I open the door, Petra points and taps a flat hand against her chest, showing she wants me to stick a sticker on her. VERY CUTE!!! We had to go buy a couple sheets of stickers because I ran out.

She's madly in love with cars at the moment, pointing at every one she sees (and this is LA, there are LOTS of cars!) and saying "car!" She also fondled the neighbors Mercedes. She found an add for a car sale, and has been carrying it around for 3 days now!

Were always amazed by how fast she is changing on us. She's always surprising us with new words or monkey tricks, and she seems to understand just about everything we say to her. She's growing so fast I wasn't at all surprised when yesterday she grabbed the car keys, opened my wallet and pulled out my credit card. Ahhh, if only they could stay young forever!

Be sure to check out all the new pictures on Flickr!

A Curse Upon You

I'm not going to tell you what Petra did last night, because I don't want to curse it (you saw what happened last time I mentioned that she was sleeping well!). But use your imagination.

Petra had a busy social calendar for the weekend, even if Daddy ruined it by being sick yet again. We did manage an early morning playdate at the park on Saturday before Daddy retreated to the couch, making Petra miss out on a birthday party. Sunday afternoon, after Daddy got examined at Kaiser, Katie came to visit (and chase Petra around. Petra always seems to move just as Katie finally catches up to her). We also checked out the Hipster's Gymboree, Cool Baby, which just opened around the corner from us. Petra had fun in the play area, but being rhythmically challenged, I didn't take her into the "Daddy & Me Drumming" jam session (maybe next time).

Petra is absolutely out of control. At least verbally. She is constantly babbling, she picks up words in an instant, and remembers them. She surprised me with "moon" the other day, and remembered "candle" after only seeing them lit once. We have REALLY got to start watching our language!

Thanksgiving

What could I be more thankful for, than having such a wonderful little girl? We went to have Thanksgiving dinner and a sleepover at our friends' house, and Petra was great the entire time. We put a pack-n-play in the laundry room, and put crickets on the white-noise machine, and she napped and slept wonderfully (12:30-6 for those keeping score!). She and Katie slept right through dinner, letting us eat like grown-ups, then woke and had their own Thanksgiving dinner. So sweet of them. The girls played nicely, and we all had a nice trip to the park. All in all a very relaxing Thanksgiving. Thank goodness!

Petra has been in love with the cordless/cell phones for awhile- she holds them to her ear and "talks to grandma". We got her her own toy cell phone today, which she loves. He's saying "Hlo" now whenever she holds it to her ear.

Our little sweetie has been very helpful in the kitchen- as you can see here and here. She's always grabbing herself a piece of fruit when the fridge is open.

Worms

OK, not really worms, but words. There's a movie reference in there if you can find it.

In her own words:
Shoes
Toes
Remote
Cracker
Cricket (virtually identical to Cracker, different context, I hope)
Ball
Mama
Daddy (SURE, that's what she's saying. She still calls me Mama half the time)
Cat
Door (or "Go", not quite sure, but they are semantically related in her book)
Water

She rubs her hands together when we wash our hands or say "wash your hands"

She turns around and around to make herself dizzy (and will do it on the command of "round and round")

She plays Peekaboo unprompted (lifts her shirt up to cover her face).

I lay her down to sleep in her crib, say goodnight and leave- and she goes right to sleep! (staying asleep all night is a different matter, but she is waking less often, and usually puts herself back to sleep quickly).

She bites. Ouch, not a good one. But it seems to be only when she is getting tired. Hopefully we'll get her to stop before someone gets hurt.

I love this baby!

Uh-Oh

Petra climbed up onto the couch this morning, grabbed a remote and flung it on the floor- "Uh-Oh!" she said.

Then she grabbed another remote and flung it- "Uh-Oh"

Then a magazine- "Uh-Oh"

Then a newspaper- "Uh-Oh"

I tried to explain to her that when you do it on purpose, you don't say "Uh-Oh"!

I think she's learning all sorts of bad habits at daycare. Like this "Uh-Oh" thing, and now if you try to pick her up when she doesn't want it, she drops to the ground and goes completely limp. Pesky kids!

In addition to Uh-Oh, she also said "Mote" when she picked up the remote, and she did the "cereal" sign when I asked her if she wanted some cereal. She is such a smart baby! And did I mention that she whistles now? I love this baby!

Slip sliding away

We'll get to the sleep training update in a minute, but first, the fun stuff. We had a 3 day weekend, and nothing at all on the calendar- no birthday parties or parents groups, friends all out of town, no play dates, no big sales. We had a great time just hanging out with Petra. We spent one morning at the Pan Pacific park playground, where Petra indulged in her love of slides (and learned an important lesson about static electricity), and one morning at a playground by a farmers market in Santa Monica (where she rode the bouncy riding toy again). She had a great time everywhere we went. It's so nice to have a little girl who is so happy and playful. She meets, and plays with, other kids, and steals every toy she can get her hands on.

She is such the independent little girl! At one point she just took off from the playground, crossed a walkway and a big open field, just to steal a ball (her favorite toy) from a kid playing soccer with his dad. Half the time she picks the ball up, occasionally she throws it, and now she has started to kick it along. Is there any money in women's soccer?

Petra continues to amaze us in a thousand ways. Just a few include:
*A newfound love of animal crackers, which led to her adding "kakaa" to her vocabulary. Such a big smile she gets when I giver her one!
*Handwashing motions whenever she sees us wash our hands (or, for that matter, when she gets near a puddle).
*Endless chatting and babbling (sure, cute now, but wait until she's 2).

And now the sleep (or lack of sleep) update. Things are going pretty well. Worst night she woke up every hour on the hour, and took about 10 minutes to get back to sleep (lots of whining cries). Second worse was a night with a 2 hour block in the middle of the night when she would go to sleep, but wake crying 5-10 minutes later. The best night had a solid 4 hours without a peep! She doesn't really cry much at all now, just a cry out when she wakes, but she lays right down to go to sleep as soon as daddy comes and says everything is OK. She still wakes too often (4-6 times a night), but I think she is getting better about soothing herself back to sleep.

Tonight mommy put her down for the first time. Not quite as smooth as when daddy does it, but she went to bed in her crib yet again. We've even managed to completely avoid backsliding and bringing her to bed with us, as tempting as it has been a couple of times.

Don't forget to check the photo album for more pictures.