The Comings and Goings of Lil G

Dateline: December 25, 2008. 7:00 a.m. East Point, Georgia.

When shampooing my hair as a little girl, my Dad would slick my ponytail into a tall spike on the top of my head. The more lather, the better. My sister and I would have these impressive ponytail horns that I’d be hard pressed to imitate now. Last night, Rob decided it was time to attempt Geneva’s first shampooey spike.

It’s a start…

What with Geneva crawling like crazy now, I’m seriously lacking in time and energy! It feels as if my whole day is spent chasing her around. But I’m tired in a good kind of way.

Our house is filled with excitement this holiday season as Lil’ G continues to amaze us. Here’s a brief snapshot of what’s been happening:

First things first. Our lost camera has been found. Gramma J found it outside in the leaves near where she parks her car. I must have dropped it (or it fell out of the diaper bag) the day we got back from our trip. Good news is that the memory card inside is completely fine. Bad news is, the camera is inoperable. We had torrential rain for about four days here. Combined with sub-freezing temperatures and then the weather jacking up into the 70s, the little camera just couldn’t handle it. I feel supremely stupid that the camera was out there the WHOLE time. I keep checking it periodically to see if it boots up – but no luck.

With the crawling came some really dirty knees. This pushed me into action and I got the carpet steam cleaned. I was beginning to get hives at the thought of what G. might be crawling on! The shag looks positively revitalized…well, as much as 30-year old shag can look revitalized.

Geneva loves to sit in front of the sliding glass door and look at the dogs outside. I put the girls out to give Geneva full run of the living room without incident (pulled tails, stolen rawhide chews, etc.). Ginger and Sadie sit at the door and Geneva gives them wet kisses through the glass. Geneva also likes to loll around on the ground in front of the door and pat the glass – I wonder what the dogs must think…

The biggest news is that, today, I noticed that one of Geneva’s top front teeth is emerging! She developed a snotty nose on Wednesday and I began prepping myself for a nasty cold. But the snot was inconsistent and Geneva just didn’t seem all that sick. This morning, I noticed her running her tongue over her top gum quite frequently. I thought she was performing some new kind of trick. Then, it occurred to me to feel inside her mouth. Sure enough, I could feel the rough tip of her tooth. It’s very cute how she runs her tongue over the tooth. It reminds me of when I lost teeth as a kid and couldn’t resist the urge to stick my tongue in the vacant spot. Dad told us that if we could refrain from sticking our tongue in the toothless hole, a gold tooth would grow in. Suffice to say, I don’t have any gold teeth.

Table food is of big interest to Lil’ G. She’s only really had fruits, but she loves feeding herself. She’s eaten chunks of apples, bananas, pears and avocado. I tried giving her some chunks of sweet potato and she quickly let me know that I had not steamed them appropriately. The major sign being her retching and gagging and giving me dirty looks. Geneva eats Cheerios as if they’re going out of style and her dexterity is improving by the day.

Sleeping is going okay. For the most part, Geneva goes to bed without incident. She tends to wake up only about once a night, usually between 3 and 5 a.m.  Her sleep period comes out to around 12 hours. Naps have improved and gotten back to normal over the last couple weeks. She’s usually awake for about two hours at a stretch now. The evening stretch is the longest, with her being awake anywhere from 3 to 4 hours (depending on when that last nap occurs). She has bathtime with Papa before she retires for the day.

Two neat gestures that Geneva does is wave bye-bye and nod her head ‘yes.’ The nodding is sweet enough to make your teeth rot. She does it sort of as a mimic to me or Rob doing it. Waving goodbye was a bit of a shock. She’s actually been doing it since Thanksgiving, but I was suspicious that it wasn’t really a wave. But it was. She waves goodbye (or hello) to everyone she meets! Geneva loves waving to strangers and she’s a bit of a flirt, too.

I guess that’s about it for now. We’ll be sure to post Christmas pics once they’re in hand!

Today we visited the Georgia State Farmers Market to pick out a Christmas Tree. It was a lovely day for tree shopping and we had many beautiful North Carolina Firs to choose from! We spotted one pretty quickly and asked them to wrap it up for us. Seeing as how we now have a very mobile small person, the tree size has been reduced from previous years – but it’s still a beaut!

(And despite the solemn-looking face from Geneva, she really did have a good time.)

I have lost our digital camera. I believe it made it back from our Northeast voyage – but where it went from there, I have no idea. Over Thanksgiving, that little camera captured images of Geneva with two of her Great Grandmothers. As I’m sure you can guess, I was (and am) completely distraught over the camera’s loss. It contained every image of Geneva we’ve ever taken, including ones from a minute after she was born.

One salvation is that I had the majority of the photos backed up. I had prepped myself for the eventuality that something might go awry, so I made copies of copies of the photos. I’ve been through one too many computer crashes to not have backed things up properly.

A new camera is making its way to us and should be delivered tomorrow. I still hold out hope that our camera will turn up, but until then, we start fresh. Goodbye little Nikon – you served us well.