Cruising, crawling, and sloppy kisses at 9 months

Elise is 9 months old today! And, over the past month, she's been one darn cute, sloppy-smooching, raspberry-blowing, drum playing, cruising (walking while holding onto furniture, etc.), and crawling girl!


She's given up the belly crawl for crawling on all fours. She still loves to pull herself up to a standing position and has been cruising around the furniture, walls, baby gate, dressers, bookshelves, etc. for a while now.


She's also started giving "kisses" over the past few weeks -- big, sloppy, drooly, open-mouthed kisses. They are definitely kisses, though, because she occasionally even makes the "mmm-waa" kissing sound. Sometimes, when she's feeling especially goofy, she'll even blow raspberries on our cheeks, necks, arms, whatever piece of skin she can get her mouth on.


She still says "mama" and "dada" pretty indiscriminately, but it is starting to seem like its correlating more and more with the correct person. Jake is convinced that she is trying to say his name, too. It kind of sounds like "hike" (some combination of "hi" and "jake"?), but he may be right. She does seem to say it almost exclusively when he is around.

I love these next two pictures...

Elise's First Halloween

Elise got to experience her first Halloween out of the womb. She fell asleep just as the first trick-or-treaters were trickling by (kind of late - after 6:30 - our last group was by at 9:15 !), but was up an hour later, and in her "anatomically incorrect chimpanzee suit" (called such because it has a tail, but chimps and apes don't have tails). Dad was a spooky vampire, and mom was a gypsy. Jake who got back from a cross-country track meet in the evening was already in costume, and so he was a "cross-country man" for Halloween. Our pumpkin was even in disguise - as Jack Skellington. Here are some pictures of this year's home-based festivities.

Elise's 1st camping trip

Elise went on her first camping trip with her dad this past weekend, where we met up with on old friend of Eric's and new friend of Elise's: Geoff. Unfortunately Jessica couldn't make it because she had to conduct some research and was also volunteering along with Jake at the local senior center.

The camping trip was to Pinnacles National Monument. We spent Saturday relaxing at our campspot. Elise got to meet Geoff for the first time, and enjoyed her opportunities to pull on his beard, and to get some botany lessons. Hopefully she retained the most important message which Geoff kept repeating: "these plants are good for looking at, but not for eating..."


On Saturday, after getting our camp set up and getting Elise well fed and settled into the great outdoors we went on a little practice-hike with her in her new backpack carrier. It worked out great, she was excited to have a great vantage from up above and soon was asleep with the motion of her dad walking along.


That evening Elise got to see her first camp-fire which she was mesmerized by --but after about 15 minutes, she was out like a light. The night got very cold, but bundled in her bear-suit, lots of fleece blankets, and sharing her dad's sleeping bag, she managed to stay snug and toasty. The morning was quite chilly, and she was content to pass the first few hours tucked away where she knew it was the warmest:


We made breakfast, and let Elise play in her corral a bit before heading out on our hike.


On the hike, we saw tarantulas, and enjoyed many nice vistas from the high peaks.


Elise slept most of the way up, and woke up as we neared the ridge line. She was quite excited at the top and was hooting and making all sorts of happy-sounds. It was pretty cool to think that she was enjoying the same gratifying "on-top-of-the-world" emotions that drives us out-door lovers to climb to high places with beautiful vistas.






Now we are back to our usual. Elise is cozy at home, and mom, dad, and Jake are busy with their school work, and all the other demands of day-to-day humdrum. Fond memories of this outing just might be creeping into her daydreams- I know they certainly do with mine.

Elise is 8 months old!

Its hard to believe, but, yes, Elise is 8 months old today.

She is still doing her belly-crawl, but has recently started pulling herself to a standing position. Who knows -- maybe she'll start walking without ever crawling on all fours.

Besides standing, one of her other new favorite things to do is to crawl through her Ocean Wonders tunnel.

She's recently started cutting her two top teeth (consistent with her bottom teeth, they are coming in at the same time). The tip of the tooth on the right finally poked through the gum yesterday, and by the looks of it, the other one is not going to be too far behind.

Elise and I recently took a trip to Cincinnati to see some family. She was awesome on the plane -- actually, all 5 planes we rode due to layovers, switching planes, etc. She slept a lot, would wake up occasionally - smile, laugh, and talk to people around us - then go back to sleep.

On our first flight from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz, there were very few other passengers so she got to sit by herself for a little while. Here she is intently watching the safety information video before takeoff...what a good little traveler, huh?


She seemed to have a great time in Cincinnati --playing with cousins and our good friends the Hooks, seeing aunts and uncles, and hanging out with Nana. And, of course, they all seemed to really enjoy spending time with her too. Here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip, and as you'll see, she definitely was not lacking in attention.

Here she is being held by her cousin Marley...
Here she is being taken for a walk by her cousin Rainey...

Here she is with India (daughter of a close friend), who was reading her a story...

Here she is sitting next to her cousin Brianna, who (although you can't really tell) is 7 weeks younger than Elise...

and, last but not least...here she is hanging out with with my mom, her Nana...

That Crawlin' Baby Blues

Recently Elise has been learning to crawl. She's kind of doing an army-crawl now, which is an improvement from her earlier proto-crawl where she would power herself with her legs, but end up draggin her head and upper body along the floor. It seems like it must be a bit difficult from a baby's perspective to learn to coordinate those chubby little limbs, and get around with such a heavy head (infant heads --relative to body weight-- are about 10 times heavier than adults'). She was crying a little bit in the beginning of this clip, but eventually was quite happy that she got over to some papers that were on the floor (we don't usually let her get at papers --- so they are especially interesting and enticing!).

I was looking through music on the computer to find some background music for this video, and after doing a search for "baby", and ruling out all the adult "baby" love songs, came across Blind Lemon Jefferson's 1928 classic blues song called "That Crawlin' Baby Blues". The beginning of the song starts out appropriate enough, about a crawling baby who cries.... crawls and stops in the middle of the floor, and luckily the video clip was short enough to use along with this beginning part, before it gets well into the not-so-cute lyrics of the "blues" part.

Elise's 7 month old update

Elise turned 7 months old this month. Some of her favorite things to do include:

playing peek-a-boo...


blowing raspberries at Jake...

and swinging in the park...


Also, this past month she's started saying "da-da-dad-da-da-daddy" and "ma-ma-mom." In addition, she waves at people and says "hi."

Another new recent event in her life has been her belly crawl. She hasn't yet figured out how to crawl on all fours, but she's getting close. A few weeks ago, she started scooting along - pushing her self forward with her legs with her head on the floor. And now in the past week, she's started doing more of a military, belly crawl. She's using her arms to help pull her along and has her head up off the ground. Its amazing how fast she can get across the room, though, when she wants to.

Oh, and did I mention that she likes to play peek-a-boo?

Jake's first BYOB party

Yesterday Jake turned 14-years-old! He's been getting into surfing over the past couple years, and this year for his birthday he chose to have a surf party. So he invited some of his surfing pals, and Saturday we headed down to Refugio Beach for a barbecue/surfing/kayaking birthday party -- which Jake very delightedly referred to as his first BYOB party (BYOB = Bring Your Own Board).

The day started out somewhat cool and overcast with the coast covered in mist, but by mid afternoon the mist burned off and the rest of the day was nice, hot, and sunny. The surf wasn't too great at the beginning of the day either...

...but it did pick up a little bit...

...and every once in a while there was a ridable wave.

Although the surf might not have been ideal, Jake and his friends had a great time regardless.
(In picture, from left to right: Augusto, Jake, Ben, Josh, and Joe)

Our friends, the Dabos', brought their kayaks. The boys (including Eric and Gustavo, the dads in attendance) took turns in pairs kayaking out to the buoy and were able to check out the kelp forest out there. They all reported back that it was awesome - the waters were crystal clear out there and they could see schools of fish swimming around. It was definitely a nice treat for Jake because he had never been kayaking before, and he seemed to really enjoy it. I think its safe to say he had a great 14th birthday!