Meanwhile, I spent the bulk of my day in a courtroom watching the sentencing hearings for a drunken driver, who -- while mourning his fiancee’s death in a car wreck a few months earlier -- fell asleep behind the steering wheel, and a guy who pulled out a knife in a crowd. And then a hearing to decide whether two boys who beat a woman to death last fall should be tried as juveniles or adults.
This week I’ve also written about a fire that broke out in a 10-unit apartment building when someone threw a cigarette butt in a trash can, a woman in her 40s who died of a medical condition while she was driving and crashed her car into a fence, and another woman who lost control of her car on a patch of ice and ended up waste deep in cold river water. She survived and I got the privilege of hearing her panicked call to 911 dispatchers …
The joys of my work.
And Cubs tickets went on sale today. But for the first time in several years, I didn’t take a vacation day from work to secure my spots … Couldn’t afford it this year. And for the first time in about seven years my chances of seeing a Cubs game at Wrigley this season might be in jeopardy … I know. Woe is me, right? Some people go a lifetime without setting foot inside Wrigley’s hallowed ground.
* * *
But then there’s Phoebe.
She’s past 10 months now. And she’s officially mobile.
For weeks she’s been walking with Kates and I, her little hands gripping our fingers … Sit her on the floor in front of us and she’ll stretch for our hands so she can pull herself to her feet. If we don’t respond to her stretching, she grunts and screams and roars until we do. Then, she’ll pull herself up again and burst into smiles and giggles and bounce uncontrollably. Adorable.
She had become so good at pulling herself up and walking with our help that Kates and I were sure she’d be walking before she could crawl. For weeks she’s been rolling all over our floor like it’s a steep hill. Rolling was clearly more fun for her than trying to crawl.
But last weekend -- Valentine’s Day morning -- she discovered she could drag herself across the floor. Now if only she could lift her belly and learn how to get her legs in sync with her arms. But it’s progress … Now, for the first time Kates and I are finding ourselves in spots where we absolutely can’t leave her alone. It used to be we could sit her down on the floor with a toy and take a bathroom break or run to the kitchen for some food, knowing she’d be in the exact same spot when we returned.
In other developments …
She still has just two bottom front teeth … But she eats just about anything we put in front of her. We’re talking real foods now, not just the soupy baby stuff. Cut-up pieces of rice, bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots, apples, chicken. Put a pile in front of her and she’ll grab handfuls and fist them into her mouth.
And the babbling. Her favorite ramblings continue to be “ba ba ba” and “ma ma ma.” But she’s added “yi yi yi” and “dye dye dye” to her vocabulary. And I’m still left eagerly awaiting the first “da da da.” … Yet one of my personal favorites is this thing she does where she whispers a single “pa” or “up.”
I also mentioned her roar. She does this mostly when she’s sitting and interacting with us. It’s both cute and creepy … I’ve likened it to Olive’s roar in “Little Miss Sunshine” in the scene where she’s practicing her routine in the hotel room with her grandfather.
She’s constantly clapping. At the TV. In between spoonfuls of vegetables. While she’s rolling on the floor. When she should be taking a nap … And we recently taught her how to give high-fives. Pretty cool.
Speaking of sleeping … She loves stalling her nap time by rolling around her bed. She’s also working at trying to pull herself up on her crib’s bars … When does finally fall to sleep, her positions continue to amaze us. Her “beach” pose – the one where she puts her hands behind her head like she’s tanning herself -- continues to be a favorite of hers and ours. But this week we caught a new one -- sleeping on her belly, but with her butt propped straight up in the air.
As for those breathing treatments I posted about a couple weeks ago -- we’re still doing them, though not as often as we were those first few days. We’ve lowered the treatment from every three or four hours to once in the morning and once at night. At times, the treatment has made Phoebe so relaxed that Kates and I referred to it as her “happy gas.”
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