This morning little EC let us sleep in, all the way until 8:00. I was very grateful, until I went in to say good morning.

I should say, first, that whether it is all the extra drooling because of teething, or the new variety of foods that she’s been trying, she has not been very ‘regular’…a bit runny, actually. But happy and without a temperature, so I’ve just been scaling back on the food variety a bit till we find out what her system doesn’t like so much.

Returning to this morning, I don’t know how long she’d been awake, but it must have been awhile. Long enough to soil…her diaper…her pants…her shirt up to her neck…her blankets…at least the crib itself and the walls escaped. There might not have been any on her socks, but I forget. And she looked up at me as I came in, and gave me a great big smile. I imagine many other babies would be very displeased with staying in that state for any length of time, and most would have just called out for help as soon as it happened. Not little EC, no…most patient baby ever.

We were “vacationing” (EM was working, but little EC and I were vacationing…) last week, so we were without the normal infrastructure such as a high chair. Little EC has begun to enjoy grabbing things and eating them. Bread is a particular favorite because it mashes up easily in the mouth and is easy to grab onto.

So without a high chair, I would sit her down on a towel on the floor, a plate of bread and cheese between us. Rip off a piece, set it in front of her…she leans forward, grabs, stuffs and chews. Repeat. One for you, one for me. And just like that, we had our first picnics.

The bread that we got was a multi-grain, whole-seed sort of thing. I didn’t think about it when buying the bread…but those diapers were really interesting. Black sesame seeds simply don’t digest if not crushed up in chewing, I guess.

It took about two days for her to get used to sleeping in a new place. She’d cry like crazy when being put down in a strange crib in a strange place. We let her cry it out, just like we did at home. Before the week was out, she was just as comfortable sleeping in the hotel as at home. But we got to relive those wonderful sleep training days, which was loads of fun.

Also, I got to change her diaper pretty much everywhere. Floor of the subway station? Check. Floor of the mall? Check. She only complains when it’s poop (and maybe more when it’s a particularly “seedy” poop, I don’t know…) so of course those were picturesque changes. Fortunately she has no concept of modesty. I, on the other hand, let a subway come and go just to get all the passengers off the platform before doing the dirty work.

And in one supreme moment of parental pride…we went out to dinner one night, and she was already tired and grumpy by the time we got to the restaurant. But we managed, through a combination of bread, mashed potatoes, and drinking straws to keep her entertained through a three-course meal over almost two hours.

And just like that, little EC has a tooth. She hasn’t been crying, fussing, or anything. No disruption to the sleeping schedule. But she does stuff everything, and particularly her sleeping blanket, into her mouth as far as possible and bite hard. She falls asleep and wakes up with that blanket in her mouth. Her stuffed animals now look mangled and are possibly biohazards.

The tooth is a lower front tooth. She won’t let me look at it, so I just have to stick my finger in and feel it.

If she’s this good about all the rest of her teeth, we should have an easy time of it. I suppose I should now figure out how to brush the tooth. The pediatric dentists of course recommend that we start brushing her gums from 1 month or so. I ignored that, so now it’s time to start.

On the food front, she enjoys and is successful at picking up little bits of food and sticking them in her mouth. Today she tried cake. That went over well. Normally it’s just toast. Or spaghetti. Or cheese. Eggs are still off limits. She likes drinking water now.

And she’s also begun, though not mastered, intentionally rolling from one place to another to get something she wants.

Last week, when little EC had just started sitting up for extended periods, she was for the most part pretty stable. She leaned forward, sometimes hands on feet or on the toy she was playing with, and didn’t wobble too much. When she did, she’d usually go down.

One week later, she’s gotten much more dynamic. Now she totters on purpose, leaning backward and raising her feet up, balancing on her tailbone, sometimes playing with the strings on her pants. She looks much less stable than she did last week, but that’s because she’s trying harder and harder things. Her side-to-side stability isn’t much improved yet…if she starts to go down that way, she’ll go down.

When she does fall backward, she tries to get back up. She doesn’t know how to get back up though, so she just struggles, flexing her abs and reaching her neck forward, as though she had enough weight in her legs to provide the counterweight to get her top up. She doesn’t, so I have to take her by the hands and give her an assisting pull.

In other news…

She hates oats. She dislikes bananas. But put the two together into a thick banana-oat porridge, and you have a hit! Instead, now she has a new nemesis on the food scene: scrambled eggs. I don’t know if it’s the flavor or the texture, but that does not go down well.

She likes a new game that I made up. I tap my chest and say, “Daddy”. Then I tap her chest and say, “Baby”. And then I do that over and over a few thousand times. It never gets old, the smile never stops, and I’m hoping that’ll teach her two important names, if she doesn’t know them already. I think she doesn’t…she won’t yet look for me if EM tells her to look for Daddy.

Oh, and still no teeth.

I’ve been wondering for awhile why little EC wouldn’t sit up for any length of time. She seemed capable of balancing herself, and if properly distracted (like when staring at the phone on a video call) she could hold herself a bit; but generally, she seemed uninterested in staying up for any length of time, and would plop back down onto her stomach after a little while.

Two days ago, it hit me: I’ve been giving her toys to play with that she can just as easily play with lying down…so why go to the extra effort of sitting up? So I trundled her off to the local communal play room, and sat her down in front of one of those ball-on-wire contraptions that she would only be able to reach sitting up. She did pretty well, practicing with a few 1-2 minute sitting sessions before she would flop back down. I thought that was pretty successful.

Yesterday, I did the same thing. But yesterday, several other small kids came in to play, and ran about yelling, and sat and played with her, and otherwise distracted her. We got a good 20-minute stretch of sitting out of her as a result. It only ended because she started getting fussy and wanted to eat.

Same thing today. I think she’s gotten the hang of it, in just two days.