What is your baby most afraid of?

Natasha is terrified most of the ambulance/police/fire-fighting siren and something new we discovered yesterday: the air conditioner. I assume if you live in a small town or a rural community, you wouldn't hear the 911 sirens on a regular basis, but in a city the size of Toronto it's pretty common. And so whenever we're out walking and Natasha hears the loud siren nearby, she raises her little hands, places them above her head and dissolves into tears. It's the saddest thing ever!

And back to the air conditioner - yesterday the weather was up to 30 degrees Celsius and so we turned the air conditioner on in our living room. The moment the cold air started coming out (with a loud "shhh" noise), poor Natasha got the most terrified look on her face, raised her hands up, and started bowling. Aww. We even tried taking her in and out of the living room a few times, but nothing helped. And today we experimented with it once more, but the poor kid would have none of it. So for now we have to boil until our little chicken toughens up.

Some other things she's afraid of are noisy bags, loud rattles, and harsh voices.

So we have finally booked our 1st vacation of the year. We've considered and re-considered about half a million places, but let me tell you, Canada is pretty freaking boring. Feel free to disagree, but there is really nothing spectacular to see in this land. I've scanned a ton of travel guide website, checked different packages for different locations, and the choice is either wilderness or a city. Now, we're not exactly nature people so observing grizzlies in the wild is not our type of relaxation time, and neither is fishing or hunting. As per cities, we've considered Vancouver, BC, but honestly in terms of tourist attractions, it's not any different than Toronto. And spending $2000 on airfare just to see another museum is not my cup of tea.

United States or Europe could be options if we had at least two weeks off, which we don't. Matthew has one week off, plus we don't have an outlet for Natasha have we left anywhere for two weeks, and dragging her along with us would not allow us any break or relaxation at all; besides, she's too small to enjoy a trip yet, anyway. So, in case you're wondering where we're going, we have settled on Montreal, QB.

Montreal is not far. Montreal is within driving distance. It's a city, yes, but it's a different 'environment', different 'culture' than Toronto and that should be good enough of a break for us. Montreal was never my first choice because I've been there twice before, but it still got places I haven't visited, funky restaurants, and just places intended for sight-seeing. Plus, simply not having to baby-sit for a few days should allow us both to mentally re-charge.

Natasha will be staying with my parents for four whole days which should be interesting since she's never spent a night outside our home. We're leaving on the morning of June 11 and returning the eve of June 14; June 11 is also our 2nd wedding anniversary so it would be nice to have some "us" time to celebrate and be away together. I really hope Natasha does well for those three nights, but I'd probably be worried sick about her the entire time!

My blog can now speak! Well, not literally, but I now have a new feature installed that reads out my blog in a nice human voice. How cool is that? Matthew showed me the feature this morning, it's available from a site called Talkr, which converts blogs into podcasts. Anyway, after some light begging, Matthew had Talkr installed on my blog this afternoon. And now there is a link underneath each entry which allows you to listen to my entries instead of reading them. I am not too sure if anyone will use the feature, but I think it's really cool regardless of that!

We've been taking some risks lately and having Natasha try all sorts of new foods. I mean, why not? She's over 8 months now, not a tiny infant anymore, and I think her digestive system can handle it now. A few days ago Matthew let her drink some lychee juice from a cup, and boy, did she love it! The juice doesn't taste exactly like the fruit, but a little similar to grape or apple juice, nice and sweet. Of course, Natasha wanted more and more. Then, yesterday Natasha and I came to Matthew's workplace to visit him for lunch, and so we went to Tim Horton's and ordered their chili. Natasha was sitting in the stroller watching us eat with those enormous wide eyes, and I just couldn't handle her staring in my mouth like that. So I let her have some chili from a spoon, and of course she really liked that too. In fact, she kept whining and opening her mouth wide to get more and more. We also lucked out because Timmy's chili is not spicy as opposed to many other places, as I definitely wouldn't want her having spicy foods just yet. Other things she tried are a snow-cone (vanilla ice cream) from McDonalds and some apple-pie filling from Subway. So she's definitely showing much interest now in "real people" food.

16.2 lbs (7.4kg) > between 10th and 25th percentile
31.1 inches (79cm) > above the 100th percentile

I haven't updated in a bit mainly because things are going rather slowly here. Natasha is doing good, but the same as before. Recently I have tried stage 3 jars of baby food with her but she kept choking on the chunks of food. Guess she isn't ready for those just yet. It's kind of strange because the veggies of stage 3 jars contain chunks, but the fruit ones don't; i.e. I tried a strawberry and apple jar and she ate the entire thing in seconds because the consistency was so smooth, yet the chicken and veggie dinners she refused. I've also bought her Gerber Fruit Puffs which are made to melt in your mouth, and although she liked the taste of them, she could not figure out how to push them from the front of her mouth to the back which causes a chocking potential, and I am too scared for that. So that has to wait, too. She's currently eating 3-5 (small) jars of baby food per day, or 2-3 large ones. She loves her jars. Even if we make homemade baby food, I still have to place it in an empty baby food jar or she won't have any of it.

Aside from that, the weather has been fantastic most days so we spent a lot more time outdoors. Natasha is now completely fearless of the baby swing in the playground and wants to 'fly-up-high'. She also likes to watch the other kids running around while she swings.

Natasha has gotten A LOT more vocal lately than ever before. And not only at home, as she used to before, but now she's expressing herself in public places too. Her latest thing is a combination of mostly "ba-ba-bababa" and "dadada" with some "lala-lalala", and one, and only one time, she said "ma-mama". Woo! How exciting is that? And she's saying these all the time now, all day long. Today I took her outside to the bank and the plaza, and all through she was sitting in her stroller going, "bababa" and "wawababba". The sales ladies thought it was cute, of course, and kept smiling and talking to her. She ignored them...

The other thing is she's getting incredibly difficult to feed. She's so distracted with everything around her, from the TV to the empty wall, that she keeps twisting and turning in her chair and not opening her mouth very well. And today she added to the mix by constantly grabbing my hand which was holding the spoon - I almost smeared the green peas she was eating all over the chair a few times. Ugh. I mean it's cute, of course, but incredibly annoying! Slow down, Natasha!

I've also noticed she's getting a lot better at stuffing her toys into her mouth - I know it's silly, but she hasn't been doing this before so how could I expect her to feed herself cookies or cheerios if she doesn't have the tendency to stick items into her mouth. Well, she's doing it now. The cookie eating business is going way better, but I am not ready for the cheerios because they seem too tiny and I am just afraid. She's turning eight months this Friday and so I need to make an eight-month doctors appointment so he can give us the green light on cheese and yogurts.

Just for fun, I took American Baby's Baby Personality Quiz. And according to the results, she has a type B personality. Which is honestly, exactly what I was expecting considering she's so quiet and laid back. Here are her results. What is your baby's type? Or what do you expect your baby to be?

You Have a Type B Baby!

These are often the easiest children to care for -- they're friendly, accepting, patient, relaxed, and generally content. People with these traits are very trusting of others and genuinely interested in learning about people. Anger and unhappiness are rare for the Type B personality, who tends to see the glass as half-full. Happy and well balanced, Type B children will often grow up to be at peace with themselves and life's circumstances. This pleasant flexibility provides a Type B the opportunity to be successful in his work, through his valuable team-member skills and his ability to both lead and be led.

Source: Treating Type-A Behavior -- and Your Heart, by M. Friedman and D. Ulmer (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984)

This quiz is for entertainment and/or educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for informed medical advice or care. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your pediatrician or family doctor. Please consult a doctor with any questions or concerns you might have regarding your or your child's health.

Ugh, I know I haven't posted in like 6 days but that's because I have been out of the house a lot more than before. It appears that summer might actually be here to stay. It was incredibly warm yesterday with the temperatures hitting 27C and today will go up as high as 26C; it was so hot yesterday I had Natasha out of the house in a blouse and some shorts and she was still sweating bullets. With it being so nice outside, I took her to the park a few times and put her in the baby swing, which she really loved... I've also started paying more attention to the meetup website, especially the group of moms from my part of the city, and yesterday actually went to a nearby mall with another mother and her six-month old girl. It was really nice to socialize "offline" for a change and to just have Natasha around another child her age. I am planning on meeting with another couple moms from the area as well.

A couple of photos from swinging time!

It seems all I do every two to three weeks now is re-organizing Natasha's nursery. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, I rather enjoy it, but it is still incredible how quickly she changes and outgrows her clothes and everything else. Today I went through her entire closet and chest drawers and pulled out all her summer t-shirts and tank-tops, her shorts and skirts, her sun caps, sandals, and summer dresses which would fit her this summer and not the next one. I put all these on hangers and closet shelves where I can see them, and packed away into boxes all the winter stuff and summer clothes that are too big for this summer season. Anyway, she has quite a varied wardrobe for this summer. Some stuff is brand new and other items we got second-hand from my sister-in-law and other people; combined together, I think Natasha won't go naked this summer. Which is great! I also packed away into boxes a lot of items which no longer fit - some to give away and some to keep for #2, whenever #2 happens which won't be for a while, mind you.

These are some new clothes we bought yesterday; most are from Baby Gap, Children's Place, and Mexx.
The fall jacket was on sale at Baby Gap for $14.99! We had to get this for upcoming fall. Too good of a deal to pass.

This is a name plaque I bought her recently from Grand River Toy Company, it's cute!

Natasha's shoe madness. She outgrows most before she even has a chance to wear them.

The couple times a month that Matthew and I get any time for ourselves we usually end up going to the movies. Before Natasha came along, and I mean way before, we had months when we watched every single movie playing in Famous Players. And I am not kidding there. We really had our totally movie-holic days when we would run out of films to watch. Now the case is entirely different; it's more among the lines of: what's playing? Anything worthy? In fact, the last Academy Awards were so pathetically boring because I didn't know over 90% of the movies being nominated.

But last week we left Natasha with my parents and went to watch Disturbia. We weren't planning on seeing it but it was the only film playing at a time that suited us. Matthew was very negative about this movie from the start and when we came out he was still iffy and rated it an F (as he does with every other movie I choose). I, on the other hand, thought it was entertaining. It was a fast thriller, had its "scary" moments, but was all too predictable. So next week, Spider-Man 3 is coming out, which Matthew's been planning on seeing for months and months now, and of course we'll be heading out to watch it. I am not a huge Spider-Man fan at all but he won't let me escape out of this one for sure!