Yesterday before leaving to work, Elena was holding Emma on the couch and I was behind them in the kitchen. Elena asked Emma, "Where's Daddy?" and Emma looked straight at me. We repeated this four more times before I left to make sure it wasn't a fluke and Emma looked at me each and every time. We even threw in a deceptive, "Where's Peeps?" (a fleece frog we have) to see if she would still look at me. Emma wasn't fooled and did not look at me. Elena and I couldn't stop laughing in giddy astonishment. Today things are back to normal and when asked "Where's Daddy?", Emma pretends not to know and is unresponsive. She is playing games with us I am sure of it!

Emma received her second array of immunizations 11 days ago. She was at the trail end of her cold and her Dr. felt she was healthy enough to have them. She cried just as hard and loud as last time, but I didn't, which meant that I got to hold her as soon as the last shot was administered. Emma is still at the 95th percentile for weight and the 75th percentile for height. We have been giving her extra time on her Jumperoo in an attempt to provide her an outlet in which she can burn some calories, but her Mother's milk must be made of condensed milk or something because she is still a chunky monkey.

We picked up a high chair for Emma last week so that she could join us during our meals. We put some of her toys on the tray to give her something to do while we eat.

Ever since Emma's oral fixation kicked in, nothing is safe. Everything goes straight into her mouth and gets bit , chewed, and slobbered upon. When I'm holding her she even attempts to stick my fingers in her mouth. I let her stick the back of my thumb knuckle into her mouth the other day and she nearly grinded it to dust. She's got a grip like a pit bull. She is teething something horrible and it appears the only thing that brings her comfort, is inflicting pain on others. All her toys try to avoid making eye contact with her in hope that they will not become her next victim.

I finally picked-up the wood I needed to place under her mattress to stabilize her Angelcare monitor. That's the monitor that sounds an audible alert in the absence of motion. We were getting too many false alarms because I had not stabilized it properly. Despite the addition of the wood, Houdini over here can still trigger a false alert when she escapes from her "Rest Assured" and scoots away from the sensor pad. Imagine our surprise when we were awoken by the siren only to find Emma staring at us from the corner of her bed. After we breathed a collective sigh of relief, we found the humor in the whole thing and snapped this picture.

Developmentally

Emma is getting bigger and bigger. She now weighs 17 lbs 6 ounces and is 25.25 inches long. She is still unable to sit up on her own but she tries hard every day. I imagine she will be able to accomplish this feat within the next two weeks. Her range of vision seems to have improved greatly and can make out my smiling face from fifteen feet away. She continues to be a happy smiley baby and the apple of my eye. I can't get enough of my Emma.

Emma likes to be carried around in what I refer to as my "Emma Suit". From this position she can see the world from a whole different perspective. It works out for me as well because I can move about the house with both my hands free.

Today we gave Emma solid food for the first time. One tablespoon of rice cereal mixed with Mother's milk. The Dr. instructed us to try a single food item for 3 to 5 days and watch for any allergic reactions. If after this time she has not shown any, we can introduce the next food item. Let me tell you, with our numerous failed attempts at getting Emma to drink any kind of formula whatsoever, we didn't know what to expect as we gave her solid food for the first time. Suffice it to say, that anything mixed with Mother's milk is good as far as Emma is concerned. Once she learned that the spoon would be delivering her meal, she opened big and wide for each subsequent bite like Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors". If all goes well next Saturday we will be introducing Emma to another new food.