out of sorts

She's stopped talking! For two days now, my sweet pea hasn't made a sound...except for crying and grunting. It's very odd. (Here she is talking to her doll...back when she was still talking) I was concerned because of this sudden change, plus the fact that she's been sleeping pretty fitfully and her diapers haven't been as full (yeah, I know...probably more than you wanted to know!), but then my brother told me today that he once read that babies do something really intensely when they first learn to do it, and then they don't do it for awhile. It's like it's being stored in their memories, and isn't accessible for awhile or something, so I'm hoping that's the case. She must be downloading the "I can talk and coo" nugget of knowledge into her brain somewhere, and has moved on to learning something else and doing that intensely instead.

So what has she moved on to? Fist-staring. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, my daughter can stare at her fist better than anyone on the block. She raises her right arm up in the air with her hand in a fist. Her eyes catch sight of the fist and she slowly lowers the fist closer to her face, aiming for her open mouth, but rarely hitting the target. Over and over and over and over she's been doing this.... for two days straight (the two days that she hasn't been talking, mind you!). She's gotten to be a pro. But I suppose in a few days she'll be downloading this knowledge, so it'll be absent for awhile, and perhaps she'll move onto.... oh, I don't know.... learning her rocks and minerals? No... but nothing would make her Daddy happier. Daddy's trying to teach her that she can only hold her head a certain way in order to get milk out of the bottle, but I told him it wouldn't work; she's still learning that her fist is always attached to her body. She has a long way to go!

Oh--here's another milestone. She slept in her crib for the first time yesterday afternoon. As I mentioned before, since she was born she's been sleeping in her cradle that Daddy made her. But the changing table Daddy's been building is almost done, and in order to move that into her bedroom we have to move the cradle out, so I'm trying to transition her to her crib. She hated it yesterday, and slept very poorly, so I went back to her cradle for the rest of her naps and for bedtime last night. But today she's taken two very good naps in the crib, so perhaps we're making some headway. Maybe she'll sleep in there tonight. We shall see........