No, I don't have any pictures at this time (Caitlin does, but I haven't got her to post them yet), but there is news!
First, Elinor and I did take another outdoor trek. A much smaller one this time, but fun as we had great company and it was in one of my favorite places! We went with Kurt and Frances to The Grotto (aka, The Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother), an outdoorsy little Catholic spot with a path, a church and an outdoor chapel in a grotto in the cliff (up top the cliff, there is a rose garden, a meditation building and a priest-house, but I've only been up there once, as the road access is awkward and otherwise you need to pay to ride the elevator). Anyway, it's hard to say what's best about it! I like all of the above aspects and the Grotto itself is kind of the high-point, but what I really like is the path... You follow along the "stations of the cross", each one marked with a nice relief plaque showing big J and his adventures with his cross (I keep trying to see George Harrison coming out to help). As an added bonus, there are statues up in the woods of various saints. It's all pretty cool and I've always enjoyed going there. One thing I saw this time that I hadn't seen before is a nice mosaic of St Peregrine, the saint of cancer, complete with a red gash on his leg. Should I take it as a sign that as I was writing this the iTunes shuffled to the Bee Gee's doing "Every Christian Lion-Hearted Man Will Show You"?
But there is more exciting baby-news! One is that she has moved almost completely away from baby food. We basically just give her some of whatever we're eating. She seems to like that, and I think we all do. Plus, she can feed herself easier this way, we just put a plate of food in front of her and she eats off of it (yes, with her cute little fingers).
Secondly, we think that in the next week or so, she will begin walking! She can do it easily when you hold both her hands for balance, she can do it when you are holding just one hand (though her confidence lags a bit) and in the last 2 days her ability to turn while walking her has gone from non-existent, to quite effective. Gramma Mickey will be here in about 3 weeks (for Elinor's first birthday!) and I hope to impress her with little Nell toddling around by then!
Then, and seemingly the biggest news of all... Anyone who has read this blog at all over the last year knows that we have had lots of sleeping issues. They've come and gone, but they are generally here and she generally hasn't sleep nearly enough. A week or two ago the issues got so bad, and she was so grumpy (terribly grumpy all day long) that we went out and got a copy of "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child". We didn't really read it, maybe about 2 pages, but those two pages had everything that we needed to know!
1) If the baby is grumpy, it because she isn't getting enough sleep
2) the baby must take a nap
Following the instructions from the book, this is what we did:
1) Give her a nap at 9-10 in the morning (she gets up at 6:30-7).
and
2) Put her to bed at bedtime (8:30) and if she's going to cry about it, let her.
My gosh.
She fought the nap for the first few days (fought it a lot), but now she goes along with it. Even when she was grumpy about the morning nap, she'd go down for an hour or more and her mood was drastically improved!
And the night thing? She started off complaining for 30+ minutes, but in the week or so since then, the crying (or is it yelling?) has dwindled rapidly! Less than 10 minutes of complaining 2 nights ago, not even 5 minutes last night, and tonight... For the first time ever (that's "ever"), I put her in her crib and she quietly laid down with not a peep. And she hadn't even been acting tired! Not only are her moods much improved since we started this, but she is much more at ease when she wakes up and (maybe it is related, maybe not) but she really started trying out this walking thing right after we started making her take naps and go to bed at bedtime...
It's yet another gosh-send!
