That's My Girl!

Jazzy Milestones V : 11 Weeks

I was all ready to write about Jasmine and how she has turned her personality on like a light switch: she talks up a storm, gets super excited when you interact with her, and we can now make her smile on cue with funny faces and cutesy noises. In all, it has made daddy's world light up and has paid dividends for all the maintenance she has required over the past 11 weeks (we always claim that she's much higher maintenance than her predecessor was... but then I also wonder if that's because we've just forgotten so much over the past 2 years). But yesterday she took it to a whole new level when I caught her laughing for the first time. Not just a big crazy smile, but a real laugh that made her little belly jiggle and shoulders wiggle. I just about melted. And then I spent the next 24 hours trying to get her to do it again. Evidently the joke was on me. But even still it was just about the most adorable thing ever.

One cool thing to mention (well, cool for us) is that she and Justin are pretty much on the same sleep schedule now. He's roughly 8:30pm - 7am, and she's 9:30pm - 6am... plus or minus 30 minutes of sleep here or there. Hence our slow but steady drift back to sanity. Hooray for synchronized babies. She also baffled us last week when we learned that, if positioned the right way, she could reach and play with the toys on her walker tray. Like most things around here, this was an accidental discovery by virtue of not stuffing the walker with as many blankets as usual. And so I almost fell out of my chair when I had my back turned to her and suddenly heard someone start playing the piano. It was hilarious. And now, every 3 hours we have the pleasure of music accompaniment by our residential baby mozart and her walking sound machine. Now that V is officially staying home to be with the kids this upcoming school year (don't you love I how I just slipped that in?), between her piano and Justin's Elmo microphone, we might have to start charging admission for the Justin and Jasmine show... ahem... I mean the Jasmine and Justin show.

In other news, she also moved in her walker for the first time today (and yes, I will spend all of the weekend trying to get it on video). Funny enough, I think it surprised her as much as it did us. The look on her face was priceless (oh my gosh... what just happened... did I do that?). But the cool thing now is that she clearly gets it and did what she could to replicate it again when she was back in the walker. The trick, by the way, was that V put shoes on her for the first time; and that gave her the extra 1/2 cm that she needed to make contact with the floor and get things moving. But now she doesn't need the shoes. Apparently just knowing that the floor is there has given her the motivation to stretch that extra stretch and do the Barney Rubble. Cutest thing ever.

Last but not least, there is simply no way I could really explain, capture, or quantify just how smitten Jasmine is with her brother. I don't know if it's because he's closest to her in size (because she doesn't pay us half the mind that she pays him) or because he zooms back and forth at the speed of light... or because she knows somehow that he's her brother (I put nothing past her)... but the way that she lights up when he is in the room, there is definitely something there. But like I said, no words can describe. Just had to mention it for keepsake. So when she's 14 years old and can't stand her older brother I can look back and say, "I remember when you were 2 months old..."

And then she'll roll her eyes and walk away as I run to check the blog archives for evidence.