Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Some of you may know we've been signing for Paela since she was born. We don't know a lot of sign language, but what we had read assured us that babies know even less; that even "baby talk" sign language would be picked up by our child. And so we tried it, signing "milk" and "more" whenever we fed her from newborn age on.

Wayne can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was around 8-9 months that we finally thought she could understand what we were signing to her. We would do the sign while saying the word, so it is hard to know for sure whether it was the vocal or visual cue that clued her in. She started doing the "up" sign around then, when she wanted to be taken out of her high chair after eating. We were excited and were sure more signs would soon follow. We were wrong.  read more »

Paela puts a fish on my finger. She likes to play this game a lot.

Obligatory cake and ice cream feeding. She eats it, just like everything else we give to our human vacuum cleaner.

Wait, so you're not supposed to hit your child on their birthday? D'oh!

It's a tug of war match between the cat and the Paela over a piece of wrapping string.

Paela loves to push strollers and her little car. She goes back and forth on this stretch of hallway until she can't walk anymore.

Paela is using her fine motor skills to get into the wipes bag. Oh, the places she'll go.

Paela escapes my arms to wander around.

Paela had her 9-month checkup today. Yay for a visit without shots! She enjoyed meeting the doctor and not having to sleep all day long to recover.

We're pretty sure they measured her height wrong -- we saw the measuring thing angled and her head not flush with the top of the table. But they marked her at whopping 29.75 inches (97th percentile) -- that would be a huge growth from her usual 75th percentile. The weight and head circumference are steadily growing: 19 pounds (50th percentile) and 45 cm circumference (75th percentile). Solid foods are doing her just as good as milk alone, I guess. She does love her avocado!

Must protect the books! The bookshelf is one of the first two places Paela goes after she wakes up. Her toy basket is the other place. I try to only intervene when she is eating one of my favorite books, but it's hard to only have a few favorites....