Here are a bunch of pictures I managed to take but neglected to post in the last week or so...
Sydney sported her Red Sox outfit when they had won 11 in a row.

Sydney wore the outfit John and Maura gave her to honor the birth of their daughter, Maeve and because it finally got warm enough for her to wear it!

She has three teeth with two on the bottom and one on the top left...you get a nice view of them when she hams it up for the camera.

Don't worry, she hasn't fully grown out of being a messy eater.

Here's her cuddle bunny t-shirt from Nana.

Now we get to the video portion. The first one is of her mastering the IKEA ring stacker from Grandma and Grandpa.

Here is Sydney blowing bubbles in the bath for the first time. Joshua has been working on this trick for a while.

I tried to take pictures of Sydney wearing this outfit but she wouldn't really stand still long enough for me to take them (as in, I would lean her against the recliner and she would let go of it and start chasing after me and the camera!) I had to enlist Joshua's help for the photo shoot and I realized that the days of still pictures are now behind us. This video was taken at the beginning of the week and she is now walking all over the place and really getting her feet underneath her. We'll try to capture the extent of it this weekend.

The Word

One thing Joshua and I have noticed in our limited time as parents is that you have a lot of latitude about certain assessments of your child's developmental milestones. We noticed this because as parents, you get asked about the milestones all the time. Several months ago it was "Is she crawling?" Well, that depends...what is crawling? Was she crawling when she started pulling herself forward? or was she crawling when she could crawl from one side of the room to the other? Same issues apply for walking. In the spirit of that discussion of the role of parents in deciding when children have reached certain milestones, we are happy to declare Sydney's first word is "burp." She has been signing words for a while and she has been saying "Mama" and "Dada" and "bop" for a while...but the sequence of exchanges that led us to choose "burp" are pretty funny...plus, it makes for a memorable first word. Two nights ago I was putting Sydney to bed after a bottle and we had the following exchange after Sydney burped.
Me: "Nice burp."
Sydney: "Burp."
Me: "Burp?!"
Sydney: "Burp."
I told Joshua about it so last night toward the end of dinner, he and I started seeing if we could get Sydney to take the bait. We took a couple of short videos of her reaction to us baiting her.

Despite all of that lovely repeating, Joshua and I decided (because we get to make these decisions) that it really doesn't count as a word until she says it, on her own, before or after an actual burp. This morning I had her with me in my office and after I gave her a bottle, I started patting her on the back. She said "burp," actually burped, and said "burp" again. Now it's official.

Toots McGee

One of my favorite personalized onesies that Sydney has says "Toots McGee AKA Tooty McTooterton. This morning I took some photos of her in that onesie.


Here she is leaning on her crib,

cruising around the furniture,

and making faces at me until I finally started feeding her. (She's not actually unhappy in the second one but she looks like she could go either way, doesn't she? Don't mess with a hungry baby.)

Daffodils

Here are some pictures I have been meaning to add...Enjoy!

Some Steps

Lots of people have been asking us if Sydney is walking yet. My response has pretty much been "She is running with assistance." Last night and again this morning, she took some steps to get from one parent to the other. Here's a little video of this morning's session...

Three at the Tree House

Last weekend we went to Nashville to help Lucy Claire celebrate her 3rd birthday. She had her birthday at the Monkey's Tree House which Sydney thoroughly enjoyed. Yeah! for ball pits.

Joshua gave Sydney a ride in the donut mat on wheels.

We all had fun with the tunnel mats. Here is the scene from a distance.

Here is Sydney's point of view.

Here's what we were greeted with when we peaked in the tunnel.

Joshua and I both thought the lego panel on a wall was a cool idea.

Sydney enjoyed having some extra space to gain some momentum.

We celebrated Lucy Claire's 3rd birthday in style and we were thrilled to meet James Henry who hit the one month mark during our visit.

Laps

The other day I had Sydney doing laps in her play yard while holding onto my fingers. By lap 30, my back started to hurt and I realized...we have a walker. I set her up with the walker and she took off chasing me across the play yard. Same workout for her and less back pain for me!