Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Paela has been sleeping through the night for some months now. Except when we keep her out late -- then she wakes up a couple of times with what we've come to call her "nightmare" cries. She doesn't actually want anything when she wakes up, except to be held. And she used to not even want that, so I count us lucky that holding her now helps calm her so she can go back to sleep.

That said, we kept Paela out late last night for a BBQ with other art folks. We left around 6:30pm and Paela fell asleep sometime on the drive home from Oakland. Amazing how getting home at 7:15 is "late" now. :) It is nice, I'll warrant, that Paela can go to bed closer to 7 (instead of 6) and wake up closer to 7. Anyway, we had a good time socializing with artist friends, but it is still sad when Paela wakes up two or three times with nightmare cries after we get home.

It was a big week in general for Paela. She has started pointing at things she finds interesting, which is fun. And she took her first independent steps. She'll take about 3-4 steps towards me or Wayne; any distance further than that is worth her effort to get down and crawl. She thinks it is the greatest thing and grins so much when she takes steps on her own. Paela also has eaten enough variety of food that she can have more and more of our meals -- we just need to eat meals with less dairy. But she's passed the essential tomato and yogurt test, so only milk and salt stand between her and our meals.

Some things we're loving about Paela this week: she giggles and giggles when we say "boop" or "doh" (or any other suddent outburst word). She loves to dramatically fling aside curtains -- in the shower or otherwise -- to see what is behind it. She says: "ollie ollie ollie", "gobble gobble gobble", and "ee ei ee ei oh". We haven't seen as many bwa-ha-has in the mix lately.

It's been a scorcher this week (we're glad we moved to an air-conditioned apartment), so we went swimming yesterday. The other kids like to take Paela's ducks, but she managed to keep hold of at least one and got to watch the other baby play too.

School started this week. Yay for the lightrail and a smooth commute for Wayne. Wayne talked to his advisor this week (the new one...the old one is on sabbatical this year). Wayne came away from the meeting a bit worried about defending his thesis proposal this semester (ATC -- advancement to candidacy) because the advisor gave more questions and less answers than Wayne was hoping for. Eight weeks to ATC and counting.