Tumbling Blocks

It's been a good day. I took Norah in for her weight-check today. She's up to a whopping 13lbs. 1 oz. Still only in the 5th percentile, but at least she's on back on the chart. (Last week's weigh-in was 12lbs. 9 oz.) Thanks for all the prayers and encouragement.

In celebration of Norah's 6-month birthday last week, we pulled out her first 6mo+ toy. Its a classic...colorful, shaped, plastic blocks that drop into a big, yellow bucket. It has a lid with matching shapes cut out for her to insert the corresponding blocks through the appropriate holes, but right now, we're just doing good if we can get her to put the blocks in the bucket at all! And no, we aren't teaching our beloved daughter obscene hand gestures, she (thankfully) doesn't know any better, so please don't take offense.

Jason and I got a kick out of watching her explore her new toys. At first, she was convinced that these multi-colored blocks were "snacks" because we couldn't keep them out of her mouth. After demonstrating a few times how to drop a block into the bucket, she continued to put the blocks in her mouth, and occassionally would get a lucky shot whereby the block would fall from her mouth into the bucket, followed by a proud grin, as though she meant to do that all along. She's done better as the week has progressed, but every block still has to be taste-tested before it can be dropped into the bucket. (She is at least using her hands to drop them now) By far, her favorite function of the blocks set (besides the aforementioned "taste test") is tumping the bucket upside down, which sends the blocks tumbling out in a cascading array of rainbow-colored chaos. The telephone is still her first love though--she'll happily leave all her blocks behind for a few intimate moments with "Ma Bell".