Three hundred and sixty four days later

Tonight we went to the Capitals/Flyers hockey game for Scarletts first birthday eve. Scarlett loves sporting events. Not necessarily the same way daddy does, but she probably has more fun if the good guys lose. As a matter of fact, I don't think she cares so much if the team wins or not, as long as everyone around her gives her the time of day. I take that back. If the home team is losing, people around her won't be as happy and won't pay as much attention to her or give her as much positive feedback. That would not be good! We count on that assistance to get us through a 2.5 to 3+ hr sporting events. I will say that it is amazing how much attention she receives while we are out (whether its a game, at a restaurant, on the metro...) I'm sure other infants receive quite a bit of attention as well, but just using tonight's game as an example, multiple strangers came up to us on the concourse to tell us how cute she was. Our seat neighbors, front, back, left, right, and passersby made similar comments and played with her, and a camera man planted himself in the aisle of our row for 10 minutes so he could get Scarlett on film. I don't think there was a moment where she wasn't feeling the love. Sure makes taking Scarlett to sporting events worth while!

Scarlett has been to 3 sporting events so far. 2 Capitals games and a Ravens game. The last 2 have gone into overtime. Just to give you some perspective, The Ravens have had 2 overtime home games in 3 years, and The Capitals? OK, well they seem to go into overtime every other home game, so that's a bad example (3 OTs out of 8 games). All I'm saying is that Scarlett seems to attract the long games, but regardless of game length, its not really an issue as long as we have the food and the neighbors to keep her mind off of it.

This week has been relatively slow in terms of activity. Tuesday's swim class was poopless and went on as scheduled :) The conservative woman instructor led the class this week as opposed to the crazy man, so I extended Scarlett's swim time by 15 minutes after class was over. I worked in actual swimming during that time. The lady instructor seems to be stuck on simply getting the babies used to the water in general. Scarlett and many other babies are beyond that.

Scarlett has made some serious physical and verbal strides. Physically, she can walk more than a lap around our 1st floor without stopping. She can eat with both hands, and more importantly, she is able to throw with both hands! Today, Shonna brought home 2 plastic packages of apple slices. Scarlett grabbed them off of the coffee table and spiked them on the floor with her right hand, then picked them up and threw them in our direction with her left hand. Our little athlete! :) Verbally, she is starting to form compete sentences that only she can understand. I will say that she is starting to put actual English words together, which has been catching us off guard. She will say something like "yea dada" or other phrases, and Shonna and I just look at each other and say "did she just say..."? Its so interesting to see how quickly babies develop physically and cognitively .

So we've covered swimming and the hockey game this week so far. On Friday we went to buy stuff for Scarlett' upcoming first birthday party. She loved the party store because there were lots of little colorful toys for her to play with. Saturday after I got home from work we went to the playground. Scarlett is such a little daredevil! The playground by our house has five or six different slides but her favorite was the sttep tube that goes really fast and you can't see what is coming beneath you. She giggled everytime she got to the top and if we didn't make quick enough progress toward sending her down the side again, she started without us. She tried to climb bck up the slide (not very successful) or would charge right toward it (stairs and all) if we put her on the ground. All told, she probably went down a slide 30 times before we were able to drag her away because it was getting dark.

In other news. Scarlett MUST be going through a growth spurt. She has had a cold this week (as hav I!) and has been teething, so she was already having some trouble sleeping, but she has also been eating constantly and huge amounts. She has probably been having 7 meals per day including snacks and milk (she is on 100% whole milk now) isn't really the base of her diet anymore. Some of her favorite meals include macaroni and cheese, peas, and bbq chicken -- and that is just in one meal, which she'll then follow up with a banana! She really seems to be a bottomless pit these days. I can only hope that it means she'll be getting taller soon, because her cheeks have definitely filled out again over the last week!

Well, it is now her birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SCARLETT!) and we have a big day ahead! We'll add pictures later!