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

End-of-Summer Fun

Wow, Sapphie is 8 months old. I can't believe it! She's got lots of new tricks, and we've been very busy!! August was full of some wonderful weather, visits from friends, and a celebration of our bride-to-be sister Penelope. I feel so terrible when it takes me a month to write a new post...but I guess I'll just have to get used to it, because it's only going to keep getting busier!
First, let me tell you Sapphie's new tricks: in addition to clapping her feet, she has finally mastered the skill of clapping her hands! Sorry, no video. I'm pretty sure her new nanny Lauren taught her how to clap (Sapphie loves Lauren, who sings "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands" to help to teach her to clap). Sapphie also plays the foot drums, and there's a video in the slideshow below. What else?...She sits! Very well, and on her own if you please!! She also shakes her head no, especially when I'm trying to feed her spinach. And her latest trick - which is very advanced for an 8-month old and I think she learned it from Luke - is that she can drink through a straw.
We started out the month of August with a visit from the Manguals. It was so fun! Liz and Kevin let us all stay at the condo, which is so generous of them and really wonderful for us. This way, we can have lots of space and also have some adult time after the babies have gone to bed. Luke is huge. Look how his legs don't even fit in the bumbo!! He and Sapphie interacted a lot that weekend, and it was a wonderful visit. Later in the month, we celebrated Penelope and Colin's upcoming wedding by giving Penelope a bridal shower. Just a few photos, but you can see it was a beautiful day with wonderful people and yummy food. I'm really excited for January!
If I hadn't had enough fun in August, Christina was very brave and decided to take me up on an invitation to come to visit Sapphie and I - in Burlington, with the kids and no Brian. She loaded them all up, drove here and stayed in Soe's basement! We had SO MUCH FUN. It was probably my favorite visit ever, not because Brian wasn't there but because it was during the week and I took time off. I got a little taste of what it would be like if we lived closer to each other...maybe dangerous? But so much fun. I love how our kids play, even though she has 3 and I only have 1. Her children are so loving and caring, and interested in everything they see. Hopefully they'll come up next month so we can all go apple picking!
Other fun events? Sapphie met her first cow, had lots of fun with Zoe at Kevin and Brett's softball games, got a mohawk, did a ton of swimming, and started with a nanny. So far, it's going really well. She's with her friend Ruby, which I think is really fun for her. Enough of my babbling, enjoy these awesome photos!!!

Monkey Feet

Sapphie is a monkey. For almost 2 weeks now, she has been clapping her feet - not her hands, and she does it on command! This video isn't great because I took it on my phone, but check it out:

We have a bunch of other exciting things going on too! She said her first word, which was book. It comes out "ba!" and she says it almost every time you give her a book. And I was so sure her first word would be dog...

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the last few weeks. I can't believe she'll be 8 months tomorrow! I'll post a big slideshow later in the week.

Here she is, lounging in Zoe's floatie. She loves it.
Auntie Hannah gave her a mohawk!!

In the garden with mummy and Cabot

At Flatbread in Waitsfield with the Manguals

How do you MOOOO?!

Cheesy title I know, but Sapphie met her first cow this weekend! One of Kevin's customers had us over for a dinner party to celebrate the opening of their new barn. Thankfully we had the perfect shirt for Sapphie to wear, thanks to Aunti Kiki. We arrived around 7pm, and Sapphie was sleeping. We toured the farm, ate a buffet meal and she woke up just in time to go see the heifers! She went berserk!!! See for yourself :)

And here's a video!

Sapphire at work

Sapphie is so funny lately. She rolls around the room to get wherever she wants, and it's amazing how fast she moves! I turn my head for a second, and when I turn back around I can't find her. Sometimes, she ends up in really funny places...

Here, at my office, under my desk

And here, at home, under my chest of drawers!

Peekaboo!!!