New Tricks!

Aida has been a very busy girl learning new things lately. When we were at the doctor last week, she encouraged us to really start to trying to get Aida to stand. She has known how for a while, but just hasn't seen a need to do it very often. So now when we put her on the floor we try to get her to stand first or we encourage her to stand up to the couch and other objects. But the pool has been the most helpful! With her floaty she can stand up on her own and start to make her way around the pool. She is so impressed with herself and the fact that mom does not have to hold her! She has also learned how to climb out of the pool...she stands up on the top stair and climbs out, so our whole afternoon is spent climbing in and out of the pool! I don't know how her knees aren't raw from the cement!

Aida has also made a new friend from the pool. Her name is Olive and she is 7 months old. Yesterday we joined Olive and her mom, Danielle, for a Gymboree class. Aida loved crawling and climbing all over the activities and singing some of the songs, but it was just a little too structured for her (really for every little one there). They really encourage you to get them into the circle for a lot of things and Aida was much more interested in just crawling all over everything. I don't for see that we will sign up for any classes (they are pretty expensive), but we may just drop in to the open gym at times. It is fun to watch Aida interact with other children though...how they just love to touch each other as if seeing if this other baby is actually real! It's also nice for mom to be able to have another adult to talk with!

Her other new trick and probably mom's favorite is that she has learned to put herself to sleep! We had tried this a few times out in Colorado, but she just never got the hang of it. It was starting to take 30 minutes to 2 hours to get her to sleep for both her naps and at night, which just frustrated everyone and was a big waste of time. So about 2 weeks ago we decided to just put her in her bed and let her "cry it out". We would read stories and rock for a bit, so that she is relaxed and then kiss her and lay her in her bed. The first few days it took about 45 minutes of crying & playing, but we stuck it through and it is wonderful now! It only takes her about 5-15 minutes to fall asleep and she is sleeping so much better; generally not getting up till about 6 am which is early, but I will take it over 2 or 3 am! She now takes a nap in the morning for about an hour, a nap in the afternoon for about an hour and is in bed by 8pm.


Standing in the kiddy pool!


Eating a lemon...she actually seemed to like it!



She has learned how to climb onto things, i.e. the table!

*I tried to load a video of her in the pool, but after an hour and 2 more tries it would not load. If anyone knows any tricks, please let me know! For now it is on Facebook.