Apples!!!

Last weekend, we did our first apple picking of the season at Shelburne Orchards. For Sapphie, it was her first apple picking ever! We had such a blast. Sapphie ate almost an entire apple (except the skin), and I ate 4. Afterward, we had sausages and Apple Betty with ginger cider. It was such a fun trip!! Here are some of my favorite shots:

Waiting to go to Shelburne. LaLa made her sweater.

Picking apples with Daddy!


And here are some more great photos:

Another Vote for Nurturing Mummies

I'm so tired of hearing "you need to let your baby cry at night"..."she needs to learn to comfort herself"..."she should be in her own bed now"..."you need to get her onto a regular schedule!". Here's my problem with all that: first, my little baby is so tiny, just 9 months old. Why should I let her cry, when my instincts say to comfort her when she cries? Why should I ignore my instincts, follow your advice, and make myself and my baby feel terrible? Why do I need to get her into a routine? To make life more convenient for me? Screw that. I'm a new mom, and nothing is supposed to be convenient. In my opinion, this period of my life is crazy. Insane. Exhausting. Rewarding. And very, very short. Before I know it, she'll be in college. Instead of analyzing all of the different phases that my baby goes through, I am enjoying every single minute. Even when she's up every 2 hours with sore gums, I just want to snuggle her and love her. I have no desire to trouble shoot and try to force her to be in her own cold bed when all she wants is to cuddle and be reassured. But as moms, we get bombarded with the advice of others. Sometimes other moms, who so easily forget that all babies are different (yes, I'm guilty of this. So is Kevin, but we try to remind ourselves all the time). What works for one will rarely work for the other, so kindly keep your advice to yourself (we try to do this too!).

And just when you start to feel that maybe everybody else knows more than you do about how to raise your baby, science boosts your confidence!! New research in rodents has shown, in short, that maternal instincts maybe more important than we've realized. Mice who are good, nurturing mothers - who nurse their young, lick them and comfort them - raise babies who are more healthy and less susceptible to disease than mice who are poor mothers. Specifically, neglected mice were more likely to develop diabetes and some forms of cancer than the nurtured mice. Even crazier, if you take the pups away from the bad mothers and let them live with the good mothers, they become less susceptible to those diseases! What this means is that genes don't tell the full story...the quality of mothering can have huge implications for disease susceptibility and life-long health. If you really want to know the term, it's called epigenetics. It's totally hot right now, and scientists are making amazing discoveries about how epigenetics influences heredity - without changing DNA.
What does this mean for us, as mothers? It means that we need to believe our instincts, cuddle our babies as much as we please, love them, hug them, comfort them, and trust your own motherly intuition, no matter what it is! Ignore everybody's advice. Only you know what to do - it's programmed in your physiology - and if you follow it, you'll have a better chance of raising happy and healthy babies.

On the Move

For almost 3 weeks now, Sapphie has been crawling. Check out the video I took shortly after she started. It's in the slideshow (if you double click on the slideshow, it will take you to a new window and the pictures & video will be big). Doesn't she look like a wounded caterpillar?! Now, she's gotten much better at it. She's really fast and looks more like a wounded soldier. As you can see from the photos, she is having so much fun with the dogs. She crawls onto their beds and plays with them, and she loves to feed them her biscuits!! Winston is going to be in heaven next time we visit the Kouri's.
We went to Northampton to celebrate Danny's marriage to Julie. It was so much fun!! We met Julie (who we love!!), and her family, and it was a fabulous party. Alison and Dan have done some amazing things with their home, and we love it. The best part is their patio. It's so party!! Huge, and beautiful, with an outdoor fireplace. We had a really fun dance party at the end of the night, and Sapphie slept through the whole thing in the Ergo.
At her 9-month check-up, Sapphie got her stats. She's a beanpole! 20th percentile for weight, and 80th for height. That was about the extent of the check-up...everything else looks great.
Her first word ("ba!"), has become the word for everything. She points at the dogs and yells "ba!"...at her book, at her babies, "ba!" "ba!". It's so cute. The only other word she says is "mama!" a lot. When she cries, mostly, or when I leave the room, and it's heartbreaking!! She'll be talking more in no time, according to the pediatrician...
My favorite new thing is how she feeds the dogs - deliberately - whenever she gets the chance. It can be frustrating, but also really cute. She leans over and dangles her biscuit for them to grab. Of course Cooper behaves himself, but Cabot falls for it every time. He takes the food from her little fingers, and is ever so gentle. It's very sweet. She's really got quite a personality. Enjoy the photos and video xoxoxo