While every day with Shiloh up until this point has been filled with joy, the last few weeks I have especially noticed the joy in her life. It makes me think about how in the Bible, Shiloh was referred to as the town where God was dwelling, since the Ark of the Covenant was kept there. God definitely dwells in this amazing girl and we are so privileged to be her parents! We searched long and hard for a name that meant joy, because we wanted our daughter to have true joy. Instead we ended up choosing the name Shiloh, and it appears she has been blessed with abundant joy anyway! Wow!
Laughing with Shiloh has to be one of my favorite things in life. Chris describes her as having more of a chuckle, but occasionally, she will burst out laughing, and we have so much fun together. I'll insert a video here of her laughing at me, although this is the second time around, so imagine her laughing much more robustly the first time we played the game:
Shiloh is doing so much now! She is really enjoying music (big surprise there...). She has always been calmed by one of us singing to her, but since the band Go Fish performed a concert at our Vacation Bible Camp at church, something has changed. She gets the biggest smile on her face when I start up a Go Fish CD and starts bouncing and clapping. Her piano skills have improved considerably as well.
Shiloh is taking more and more steps every day (her first steps being June 20). I'm truly surprised that she's not running yet. She is so eager to just go, go, go and do, do, do. What a busy little girl she is! I really think that if she would slow down and not try to carry her largest stuffed animal and a book at the same time while trying to walk, that she could focus on her feet and would be off!! But she's developing this skill plenty fast as it is. I've explained to her that if she would just set some stuff down she could walk more easily, but apparently she's already ignoring my advice :o).
Some other things have just recently seemed to "click" for Shiloh. After signing to her for over four months she is finally signing back!! It is so exciting to have her tell us that she wants milk or more. She understands the signs for drink and eat as well, although she hasn't started using those yet. It seems that she's made up her own sign for dirty diaper as well, so we're ready to start introducing more signs. I think we'll find the actual sign for diaper to teach her along with help, hurt, please, and thank you next. Shiloh has also used her hands to communicate lately by pointing and (finally) clapping. She was slow to clap, but she's making up for lost time now! She is also waving bye-bye like it's her job. It's often delayed (like after Daddy leaves), but is almost always there. She is particularly fond of waving hello to Lucy, or any animal!
Waving also seems to be helping with bedtime. She's been going down without a fight most nights now and sometimes even sleeping from 8:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. Wow! Talk about a blessing! It all seemed to change the night I waved bye-bye. It was as if she understand that it was okay for me to leave. Of course things are always changing, but at least for this season, short as it may be, she's going to bed well and I'm sometimes getting some nice solid hours of sleep.
When it comes to eating, it's hard to tell what Shiloh is going to want from day to day. Some days she wants to feed herself, other days she doesn't want anything to touch her mouth. Anything that is, except cantaloupe. Or watermelon. Or honeydew. But mostly cantaloupe. I think it is her favorite food at this point. Melon is followed closely by cheese and yogurt. And we finally had success with applesauce:
We've started whole milk and I have officially stopped pumping at work as of this Monday. I am very grateful for a good pump and the opportunity to give Shiloh the best nutritional start I could, but I cannot even express what a relief it is to be done pumping at work. It is another job in and of itself! I love nursing, though, and am not in much of a hurry to wean Shiloh. I'll let her take the lead on that for now. And she mostly still enjoys it, when she takes a moment to actually slow down and eat, that is!
There's so much more to say, so even though this is long already, I'm going to keep going! Shiloh's top front tooth made a final appearance after taking a good week to decide it was actually going to stay put. It looks like she is super close to cutting her other top, front tooth as well. Shiloh is excellent at expressing her likes and dislikes. This is a good thing. Really, it is. (Yes, I am reminding myself this important point.) Her tendency to shriek very loudly lately when she doesn't get what she wants is, well, it's loud. Luckily, even with her new-found power to make really loud noise, Shiloh is very persistent, not getting frustrated easily when she has a task in mind. It is fascinating to watch her persist with a task she has determined for herself.
Shiloh likes to play catch, often initiating the game, even with dogs! She loves looking at books and loves taking them all off of her shelf. She has been showing affection to her baby doll by hugging her. We get occasional kisses from Shiloh too! Her language is developing like crazy, especially her receptive language. When I picked her up from Robyn's house one time last week, I saw the baby doll around the corner from where Shiloh was playing. After greeting her I asked, "Where's your baby?" knowing it was out of sight. She promptly stopped what she was doing and crawled right over to get her baby. She'll do the same thing with her monkey, and now her binky as well.
We've been so super busy over the last month...but some of the fun things we've done together include:
- Celebrating Chris' first Father's Day! Shiloh ate French Toast (Daddy's favorite) while sporting her new bib. She also suggested we get him a hammock stand for the hammock we've had for almost 4 years as a way to encourage him to rest and take a Sabbath. What a great idea, Shiloh!
- Enjoying Sturgis Falls parade and celebration. Wow...that jumbo corn dog just looks delicious...
- Attempt at swimming in our little pool at home (which resulted in unhappy shrieking but eventually happy play by the side of the pool). This was followed up by a spur of the moment trip last Thursday to successfully enjoy an hour at the Falls pool which has a zero entry area that was perfect for Shiloh. She also really enjoyed riding in an inner tube down the lazy river with Mom or Dad pushing her.
- 4th of July-no fireworks this year, but Shiloh was super good as Mom and Dad split up to help with different weddings that day. She was a great girl while I did makeup for Kristen and Charlie's wedding, hardly even getting fussy for an entire day away from home!
On the challenges front:
- We're still dealing with diaper rash and Shiloh scratching herself despite all the things we're trying (treated cloth diapers, disposable diapers, changing very frequently, only using water and cloth instead of diaper wipes, cornstarch on every diaper, letting her go diaperless-although you've read about my success with that!, a food diary, less baths, aveeno oatmeal in the baths, creams, creams, creams, etc).
- A possible egg allergy? Shiloh gave Robyn a scare one day after barely eating a little bit of a hard boiled egg and immediately getting very fussy and breaking out in a rash. We'll definitely be staying away from eggs for awhile...
- We also said goodbye to Edmund the cat and half of one of our trees due to a much too expensive bladder treatment (we were looking at a minimum $200 treatment f
or the cat vs. $35 to end his pain peacefully from a baseball-sized obstructed bladder) and a storm with high winds. We lost both on the same night. We do miss Edmund, but not enough to get another cat for a long time :o)
If you've made it this far actually reading everything, I'm impressed! Thanks for caring about our lives that much! Less than a month until the big 0-1. We're pumped to celebrate 1 year of Shiloh's life. Thanks for being a part of it!
And as promised....finally...a sampling of animal noises (and a bonus kiss for you!!)
And as promised....finally...a sampling of animal noises (and a bonus kiss for you!!)
