Tatiana was sitting in the backseat with her, and Calista would put the coat over her head for a few seconds, take it off, and laugh hysterically. Today she started playing again, using a towel in the kitchen. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen!
In the DC area, we get Veterans Day off. We went to work on Monday, then had the day free on Tuesday. Kinda weird, but I am not complaining. We took the opportunity to explore a National Wildlife Refuge on the Chesapeake, called Eastern Neck, that we had not been to before. It's on an island that is visible from the Bay Bridge, but requires at least 45 minutes of driving beyond the bridge to get there. There was a very nice visitor center in an old hunting lodge, and we hiked a series of short trails. Bright sun was out much of the day, but there was a cold wind. We had some pink "bearpaw" mittens for Calista. We thought she might not like having them on, but she seemed to get a kick out of them.
Calista turned 9 months this past Tuesday. She has been doing lots of new things and is generally very happy these days. She is crawling around like crazy and exploring distant corners of the room. She has learned to clap, and gets very excited when she sees the cat. She's also eating quite a bit of "solid" food, and can manage to get cherios and other small items into her mouth. She can also pull herself up to standing using the couch, side of the crib, or the sliding glass door.
We spent the weekend in western Maryland, staying in a small rental house with a few friends. The colors were at their peak, and weather was perfect - blue skies and warm temps. I had a cross country meet on Saturday, so I headed out in the afternoon when the meet was finished, joining the others who had arrived on Friday. We hiked Sunday at Coopers Rock State Forest in West Virginia. Monday on the way home I did an 18 mile run along the route of the Tuscarora Trail near Hancock, MD. This particular section is mostly flat and along narrow country backroads and the C&O Canal towpath.
turn around. She started crawling last week, and is now zooming all around the downstairs . . we still need to do some serious "babyproofing" of the house, including getting gates. Today we finally got around to putting our china in the cabinets. We packaged it up last fall during the addition process, and were waiting to unpack it because we were considering getting a china cabinet or sideboard for near the table. It looks like that's not going to work well in terms of available space . . . anyway, while unpacking we put Calista in one of the empty boxes and she loved it.
ad crawled up to the glass door which leads to the porch, and the cat was on the other side (Keisha spends much of her time out there now). They were looking at each other through the glass. We put a few more pictures in the "7 months" album on Picasa.
Wow, it's been over a month since I put up a new post. Things have been busy for the past 2 weeks. I started back to work on August 15th, and we promptly went camping for the weekend with my parents, staying at a National Forest campground in West Virginia near the iconic Seneca Rocks. Calista started with day care a little over 2 weeks ago, and we are very happy with how things are going. She enjoys playing with the 2 other children and her provider is really good.
