Life:
Harmony had her first Halloween last Sunday! We went to my Uncle's for supper and actually did a little bit of "Trick-or-Treat"ing. It was suprisingly warm out and the perfect weather for "Trick-or-Treat"ing. Harmony went to 6 houses in her little Teletubbies costume (she was Laa-Laa, the yellow one) and walked the whole way- she refused to be picked up. Everyone thought she was so adorable, especially the younger kids (most of whom recognized who she was). I know she didn't grasp the concept of Halloween (she kept thinking we were going inside the houses after the door opened) and she didn't get to eat any candy, but she really enjoyed playing with the boxes of candy my uncle had out and I know she had lots of fun seeing all the kids dressed up in their costumes. We took lots of pictures of her playing with the candy, shaking the little boxes and chewing on crinkly wrappers. We had to really watch her though- I had to go to the bathroom and left Harmony with my grandmother and by the time I returned she'd chewed through the cardboard top of a Gloucettes peanuts box and was spilling them on the floor! I'm glad I got there in time to pick them all up before she started eating because I don't think Grandma had really noticed what she was doing. Oh, the funniest thing about the evening was at one house where someone was offering Harmony some little wrapped chocolate bars and she took one and then threw it down on the floor, and then she took she second one and threw it as well. I think she was just interested in what kind of noise it would make... It was a really fun Halloween!
Unfortunately, the rest of the week was not that fun. Chris said he'd noticed Harmony getting a bit of a cough on Saturday, and it got worse. On Tuesday morning, I took her to the doctor, who said that her chest sounded very congested and prescribed some medicine to clear it up. I took her to daycare that day, and managed to go to one of my classes before the daycare paged me to tell me she'd gotten a high fever and wasn't feeling well, so I took her home with me. It was supposed to be her dad's night to pick her up at daycare, but he wasn't able to get there in time, really, so I brought her home for a little while until he came to pick her up. She has stayed home with her Grandma Sue all week, and on Friday went back to the doctor, who gave her some more chest x-rays, another differen cough medicine, and prescribe some psysio to loosen the phlegm. There are some exercises we have to do with her at home too, and I really hope she gets better soon! That's always seemed to be Harmony's health problem, chest congestion. Well, that and exema are the main ones. Like, some babies get tons of earaches, etc. but with Harmony, she's always seemed to have a cough quite often. Although this one seems to be a really terrible flu virus. I ran into the daycare chef when I was at school on Friday and he was saying he really missed Harmony and the other babies- there were only 4 babies there on Friday (out of the ten in her group!) and they were mostly all sick with the same bug. So at least I know where she got it from. That's the problem with daycare, when babies first start going, they catch everything! Although supposedly after that first year, they hardly ever get sick at all...
Harmony's Growth:
Harmony has been working on her walking skills this week. She still can't go more than 6 or 7 steps at a time, but I suspect in a week she'll just take off! I think it's not so much a balance problem, just that she knows that crawling is much faster and takes the "easy" route! :)
I swear Harmony is trying to say real words! We went grocery shopping and she saw little stuffed dogs and she said "da" and it really seemed like she was trying to say "dog"! And he dad swears she's trying to "count" and repeating the numbers. So either our baby is a little genius or we're just reading way too much into her babbling, or maybe a little of both. I suspect it's a little of both, but it's still really neat to think about Harmony being able to communicate more! She's starting to understand a lot more too. She's understood the words "bottle","no", and "Not in your mouth!" for quite a while but now she's starting to recognize other speech patterns. She seems to know that "car-car" means going in that big blue thing and being strapped in (sometimes when I say "Let's go in the car-car", she'll protest because she knows what's coming and hates being strapped in. She also understands "walkie" means to walk, "ta-ta" means "give me that toy" and she tries to repeat you when you said "there you go" and even "Teletubbies"! One thing I'm going to really concentrate on when talking to her is using Baby Signs. I remember reading that book a year ago, and I think it's finally time to start teaching her some signs.