She Sleeps

And I'm making the most of it!
This is a new thing in our household; Esme has been taking naps!!! One or two a day, it's true that miracles never cease. I've even gotten her to sleep 4 or 5 times in her swing.
Just when you think life can't get any better your daughter takes a nap and you can actually get an hour worth of boxes unpacked, without her helping by putting things back in the box as you take them out!

Life is good here.

So moving to Philly has been an adventure, we haven't done as much exploring as I would hope, although Esme and I did do some shopping for vegetables at the Reading Terminal Market and some food shopping at Trader Joe's last week, that was a fun day. We also explored Ikea where I dreamed about all the fun things I wished I could buy for Esme's room.
Today's assignment, and we do choose to accept it, is finding a couple rugs. My goal is to alleviate this fear I have that years from now some doctor is going to say "Yes, her learning disability is from hitting her head too many times on a hardwood floor. Does your home have hardwood floors?"

Mostly we've been in the house unpacking and working on navigating the treacherous boxes and moving dogs. It turns out that the dogs are the perfect height for a baby who is learning to walk, there is just one consistently unforeseen (by Esme) problem...they move, without any warning and often quickly. Unfortunately Esme has been toppled many a time by an excited mutt who heard something they couldn't resist investigating.

I was wishing I had some sort of "Go, go, gadget" built in camera yesterday. Andrew peeked his head in the door to grab the mailbox key and then went back out to retrieve the mail. The dogs, with Esme right behind, immediately rushed to the door. Francis layed down, nose practically touching the door every nerve alert. Clare stood at attention right next to him and Esme stood just behind them both, balancing on Clare, all of them quietly, miraculously, waiting for Andrew to come back. As cute as it was instead of grabbing the camera I had to break it up knowing the second Andrew opened that door pandemonium would break loose and Esme would be flat on her back in the midst of it. And again that doctors voice in my head...

I think I may have mentioned previously, Esme learned a while ago that just because we lay down at night does not mean you have to stay laying down. Her new thing when going to bed is to nurse for a few minutes then roll over and begin exploring everything she can find on the bed...the headboard...crawling over me and Andrew. Then she'll remember the nursing and crawl back toward me. Once she's moving though she doesn't want to give that up to lie back down and nurse. She tries to nurse while still on all fours. We've taken to calling this "drive thru". Esme has become such a fan that I've started telling her I am not a "McMama", this establishment is full service only.
The other new thing is that Esme has finally put to use some of the signs we've been working on for months. She just started using "all done" and a bit more reticently "milk" (she'd rather rock and pant/fuss to tell me she wants to nurse but we're working on that). There is only on problem with the use of the all done sign. For the last 3-4 days she will take 2-5 bites of any meal and then tell me "all done". Sometimes when I walk away she will start to fuss and I can tell she was just trying it out...but sometimes she does want to go play instead and then she wants to eat again in 10 or 15 minutes. I guess I'll have to start focusing more energy on the "eat" sign and getting her to tell me when she wants to eat so that I'm not interrupting something more interesting :) Ah the busy life of a 9 month old!
On to other things in our life, I think Andrew is enjoying his new job. He's working a ton; doing things I think he mostly enjoys. He preached his first sermon and got really good feedback; he even got scheduled to preach again this Sunday just two weeks after the first one which we all take as a good sign. He chants the gospel every Sunday but so far has done a great job with it, we are meeting lots of people ( I just wish I was better at remembering names). I'm supposed to be starting a Mom's group, I'll begin working on that soon. I also want to either start or join some sort of laid back book club. Something without kids there...I'm going to work on that as well! I can't remember the last time I read a book, definitely before Esme was born (that's not good I think).

Sorry for the lack of pictures this time. I'll get back on track with that, I'd been having all these thoughts and I wanted to make the most of my chance to get some of them down!