What Will We Look at Now?

I can't remember when it happened exactly, but sometime between leaving Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dave's on Thanksgiving and unloading the car I realized that - horror of horrors - we'd left the digital camera at their house. On the end table next to the chair in which Matt sat watching Thanksgiving football, to be exact. My first thought was, "What am I going to put on the blog?" As if it would be some sort of tragedy not to have recent pictures of Harper to post. In order to give us all some perspective, I thought we'd revisit a photo of Harper at Thanksgiving a year ago:

















Looking at that picture makes her seem pretty impressive now! There are lots of things that Harper seems to be taking her time with. We thought she'd never crawl or pull up and cruise around the furniture. And she up and did both when she good and felt like it! Now we are waiting for her first steps. If you try to tempt her into taking even one step without holding on to something, she just sits right down. She'll crawl right off the bed (yikes), but she's not much of a risk-taker on her feet. When part of me starts worrying that it's going to be another six months before she walks, I need to look at these pictures taken a mere year ago, and remember that she'll get there.

I wonder if any other new moms find that the baby book gives them a complex about how well they know their children? For example, there is a space to write Harper's first word and the date she said it. Well. . . what counts? Apparently some babies just up and say a distinct and clear word and the parent goes, "Hooray! Your first word!" Um, not our baby. We're pretty sure she says, "doggie" which sounds like, "deegee". She doesn't use it all the time, but has used it in context enough that we're pretty sure she means it. She also seems to say, "Daddy." And occasionally, "hi." Nana and Dziatku are thoroughly convinced the child says, "thank you." I'm not sold on that one yet, but maybe she's much more advanced than I imagine. Harper's favorite and truly first word is probably, "Oh!" But is that really a word? Does it count? When she sees something new or something she likes she says, "Oh!" She also says it often when "reading" her books. So which one of these should go in her baby book? And does, "sometime in October" seem specific enough for the date?

(Aside: as I was spell checking this post, the Blogger spell-check did not recognize the word "blog." Hmmm. . .)