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After a fun few days in Arizona, the family headed to northern Wisconsin to spend some quality outdoors time with Meredith's Grandma and Grandpa Burrows. Meredith went on a hike, crawled on and picked lots of grass, and thoroughly explored every corner of the cabin. She also enjoyed being entertained by her Uncle Jesse.
Being true to her inner thrill-seeker, Meredith threw caution to the wind and tried several new furniture-climbing techniques--some not very successful. Meredith took one particularly nasty dive at the couch and ended up with a sad bruise on her cheek. On the plus side of the injury report, Meredith victoriously came away from the mosquito-infested Northwoods with virtually no bug bites.
Meredith's vocalizations aren't yet to the official "word" status, but she is getting there. One of her favorite sounds is "ma-ma-ma-ma." She seems to say it when her mom is around and when she wants mom-related things (like food), but it is not at the level of consistency where her parents can say it is a word, although they'd like to. In general, Meredith is making more of a variety of sounds and she loves to talk to everything around: her parents, the cat, photographs, the television, and her toys. Meredith will see someone and just let out a string of sounds like "da ga ta from gro tu thbt da mamama grappa zo ko ma..." as if she were holding a conversation with them.
June 20, 2004
Meredith has now been to 10 states. This weekend she flew with her parents to Arizona for a Sonja and Willie's wedding and some fun in the sun. Meredith was a little impatient on the long plane ride, now that she is accustomed to crawling as she pleases, but overall was very well behaved.
Besides crawling up a storm, Meredith loves to pull herself up on everything, be it a couch, chair, stroller, or her dad's knee. She is "traveling" on her feet more and more, slowly improving her pre-walking skills. She likes to grab hold of objects with one hand and reach out with the other as far as possible, trying to grab forbidden objects just out of reach. Meredith continues to demonstrate her daredevil tendencies diving and lunging without fear.
Meredith is also perfecting her eating skills. She now enjoys feeding herself not only Cheerios, but cheese, bananas, plums, and rice. Feeding herself by hand is so much fun that she almost doesn't even want to be spoon-fed.
June 11, 2004
Today featured Meredith's 9-month check-up. All-in-all, she received a clean bill of health from the doctor, except that she has yet another ear infection. By her parents' count, this is number four. Meredith is a trooper (about the ear infection at least, she still isn't thrilled about taking medicine for it). Meredith's growth has slowed down. In her first few months, she exceeded the 95th percentile for weight and height. Now she's closer to the 25th percentile. In spite of the growth slow-down, Meredith continues to display a voracious appetite. Who knew crawling and exploring could expend so many calories? Also at the doctor, Meredith received another vaccination. The shot in her leg was quite upsetting, but she recovered quickly as she always does. (Life is too much fun to dwell on the unpleasant stuff.)