Finally! Another product review! thinkbaby Trainer Cup

Just a quick post to let you all know that I finally did another product review on my other blog, Geared Up Mama. One of my resolutions for 2009 is to be better at updating my blogs. Since that's out there now, hopefully it'll hold me accountable!

Anyway, the review is for the thinkbaby Trainer Cup, pictured to the left. In my quest to find the best and safest sippy for Annabel, I've bought a few, which I'll review on my other blog.

Hope everyone is doing well and having a great 2009 so far! More pictures of Annabel, coming soon!

Cheers!

Foto December

So I have some photo blogging to catch up on for sure. Annabel is growing like a weed, and it seems like she hits a new milestone on a daily basis. As Chris likes to say, we feel "cognitive dissidence" because on the one hand, we are so excited to see her do new things. But on the other hand, it means she's growing up so fast and too soon will not be our little baby anymore, which makes us a little sad and wistful. Oh well, we just have to remember to treasure every moment with her. Fortunately, we live in the digital age, which makes it easy (and cheap!) to take thousands of photos and capture hours and hours of video of her.

Annabel has been crawling for several weeks now. She's got the army crawl down pat! And she's also learned to pull herself up. At first it was to her knees, but now she's getting all the way up to her feet and using her toys to walk from one end of the living room to the other.

We'll start off with a video that Chris took of Annabel awhile ago when she first started crawling. She got under the exersaucer, and Chris is encouraging her to get herself out.


How about that ending? I guess we forgot about the 30 minutes after eating rule!

She seems to particularly enjoy getting UNDER things. Here she's under the coffee table.

Annabel gets a better view of her singing stage toy by getting up on her knees.

And, crawling into the coffee table again...

We catch her under the coffee table again! She tests the distance to the ground...

"Think I can make it Mommy?"

And there she goes!

Another favorite spot for Annabel -- under the exersaucer!

As you can see, she doesn't have much trouble getting out from under it anymore.

In other walking news, Annabel's Ba Ngoai bought her a fun walker. This wasn't originally on my list of must haves for Annabel, and our pediatrician has said they are quite dangerous. But, I think it's like what they say about bath seats -- you just can't leave your baby alone in them. As long as we're not letting Annabel run amok in her walker unsupervised, it's safe.

And I gotta tell you... Annabel LOVES her walker! She loves being able to follow me around in the kitchen. She frequently gets stuck and is still getting the hang of it, but she's really enjoying it nonetheless.

Our little cutie pie in her walker.

The toy on the front of this is called "The DJ." Annabel spins some tunes and says "Take it away, Mommy!"

Ever the curious one, Annabel tries to figure out what makes this thing go. Is engineering in her future?

Moving on! Annabel goes whizzing around in the walker. Hmmmm... maybe RollerCoaster-geneering is more likely in her future.

On the eating front, we've added Cheerios and Gerber Puffs to her finger food repertoire. And she is loving them! We're probably creating a monster, but whenever she gets fussy, all we have to do is put a few Cheerios within reach, and she is effectively distracted from whatever was making her mad.

The other new thing is, all of a sudden, Annabel is a GREAT eater. For most of late November and December, eating her meals would take at least 30 minutes. On the bright side, we burned lots of calories ourselves from all the singing and dancing that it took to get her to open her mouth. However, just in the past week or so, she has become a very enthusiastic eater. It could be because at her eight month mark, we added meats to her menu (chicken and turkey so far, and no, I haven't cooked those for her yet). Still, even her vegetarian meals are gobbled up with zeal lately. We're pretty sure she's having a growth spurt.

The faces she makes when she's eating crack us up.

Annabel's accuracy rate is pretty erratic. On a good day, she'll get 3 out of 5 directly into her mouth without us having to hunt for the dropped ones (in her lap or chair). When she's feeling lazy, she'll get maybe 1 out 5 and push the rest overboard for Baylor and Macee to gobble up. (They LOVE her mealtimes now!)

Goal! A Cheerio makes it in!

Annabel is also an on-the-go eater. The other great thing about this walker is that we can take the toy out and put Cheerios and Puffs in the tray.

Yummmm... drive-thru.

LOL! I just love her expression in this one. Maybe she ran out of Cheerios and is waiting for Daddy to give her more. Impatiently, it appears.

She has her Cheerios now, so she's happy again!

And finally, I'll close with this video of Annabel. Since she's always on the move, she hears Mommy and Daddy say "No no, Annabel!" quite a lot. So, she's learned to give us a dose of our own medicine...



Our New Year's post coming up...
Cheers!