A Mish-Mash of Things

First off, some more Celeste-related gerunds

Sleeping ... Celeste has managed three sleep-through-the-night nights thus far. That's the good news. The bad news is that each of those good nights was followed immediately by a terrible, wake-up-every-hour night. I don't know if there's a connection. (And Sunday night, it could well be that the cake had more to do with her frequent wakings than her sleeping through the night before.)

Cruising ... This afternoon, being quite brave, Celeste cruised off the couch on to my shoulder and around my back. I was reading to her from Babar's Museum of Art, and she was trying to get at the book some while also moving around. It was a pretty good bit of cruising.

Walking ... On the walking front, she's doing equally well while holding our fingers, but is starting to get a little more brave. She'll (reluctantly) walk short distances holding only one hand now, and last week, she let go of Evelin's hands to stop and clap for a moment before grabbing back on to walk again.

Eating ... New foods for Celeste include black-eyed peas (not a favorite, but not immediately tossed aside), and Pete's sesame-ginger tofu2go (again, not a fave, but not an immediate reject). Current favorites (may well change tomorrow): mango, grapes, and Land O Lakes American cheese slices. I feel bad about giving her the later, but she loves them and comes pretty close to signing CHEESE for it. I've also fed her some manchego cheese, and she seems to like that, but not as much as the plastic-wrapped stuff.

Weighing ... 20 pounds, 6 ounces — as of today's 12-month checkup. She was also measuring 29 1⁄4 inches long. Which brings me to ...

Facing ... forward, that is, and she has been since Montana, actually. The rule is 1-year-old and 20 pounds before the carseat turns, but we figured she was running near, if not over, the weight guideline and Montana was only a few weeks shy of 12 months. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but we justified the early turning by feeling she might travel better facing forward in the rental car/strange place/etc. and then, when we got back to D.C., it just made sense to keep her facing forward instead of setting up the seat facing backwards only to turn it two weeks later.

Moving on from gerunds to random paragraphs of stuff ...

• The last of my kinfolk from New Orleans has been accounted for to the best of my knowledge, and it seems like everyone was lucky enough to make it out. (Blegging ... There's a link to donate to the Red Cross there at the top of my sidebar, as well as a link to offer housing for those displaced by the catastrophe.)

• The D²/F² is finally over. The new (undamaged) dishwasher arrived this afternoon soon after I got home and Evelin headed off to work. We haven't put it through a cycle yet to make sure there's not some hitch, but, in general, it's nice to have closure on that ...

• Oh, and Evelin's pregnant again. I just "un-drafted" the post about that because the proper familial folk have been notified (and at least one of them has started spreading it around).

A million-and-one caveats because things are early yet (9 weeks or so at the furthest, we guess) and, given our history, anything could happen. Plus, since our recent conception/pregnancy experiences have all been pretty medicalized affairs since day three, things feel a little out of sorts at the moment. With Celeste, we had a lot more information at this point in time; right now, we have a positive HPT and one rather high β-hCG. Due date: April? May?