Stella the witch

Well, we got into the Halloween spirit in true American style this year. Stella dressed up as a witch and we went from door to door, trick-or-treating with some friends of ours who live a few blocks away in a neighbourhood called Shaw. Luckily the first house we went to was also equipped with bags for poor children like Stella whose parents hadn't thought that there would be so much to carry that a bag was necessary! She definitely enjoyed marching up to people's houses and having sparkly goodies put in her bag. This year she didn't realise what was inside the shiny wrappers. I'm sure she'll have cottoned onto that next year though.

In the window light

I've been having lots of fun on a digital darkroom course at the local art school in Washington. Hopefully you'll notice an improved standard of photos as a result! This one of Stella by the window.

Stella at 17 months

We're all feeling a bit jaded today as Stella decided to return to newborn sleeping patterns last night. Well, not quite... she woke up twice, very angry, for no apparent reason. Tim said it was the worst night he'd had since she was born - I think he's got a very poor memory!

Fortunately, Stella generally specialises in new tricks not old ones these days. Most exciting of all is the speaking. She recently started to put together more than one word - Daddy's shoes, Good story, Nice bread etc.. Her vocabulary is expanding rapidly as well. Two of her favourite new words - lorry and lift - thoroughly confuse the American babysitters. We're trying our best to make sure she fit's in OK when we move back to the UK. I did notice this morning though, when we were reading an alphabet book, that when it came to the last letter there was a definite "zeee" rather than "zed".... oh well, I guess this can be remedied quite easily at a later date.

Stella is a flower girl

Stella was one of the flower girls at her babysitter Alice's wedding on August 13th. The wedding was in the garden of a lovely B&B on the Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Maryland. In spite of temperatures of about 110 degrees Fareinheit, she had a great time and took the whole event in her stride and even walked down the aisle with all the other flower girls (with a bit of help from her escort who kindly carried her basket of flower petals!).

Daddy practises his karate moves!

Tim had a karate grading this month and was keen to get out and practise. Stella was much more intrigued by me and my camera though!

All wrapped up

This is actually a photo from when we were in Canada last month. This was early one morning when Stella wouldn't sleep because of jetlag and we were trying not to wake the grandparents!
She's lots of fun at the moment, we counted over fifty new words last night - of course most of them only intelligible to her parents! Some current favourites are oh dear, door and beer.

Subscribe to Stella's site feed

If you click on the "feed" icon below right, you can subscribe to the Stella's blog site feed. This means that if you have an RSS Reader like "Sharp Reader" which you can download for free, you will automatically get updates when we post on Stella's blog. How cool is that?!

I can walk!

Stella took her first independent steps aged 13 and a half months, while on holiday in Canada at her Great Uncle Gerry's house by Pike Lake in Saskatchewan. With perfect planning for maximum attention, Stella also timed her first walk to coincide with the visit of the Monks Grandparents to this side of the Atlantic. It will come as no surprise to hear that our lives have changed again as we busy ourselves running around after our increasingly mobile daughter!

Cows go mmmmmmm

Cows are without a doubt Stella's favourite animal at the moment, so we went to visit two of them at the Washington zoo.

Breaking for freedom

Stella's getting firmer on her feet by the day. When given both space and something to lean on at a friends' house in the suburbs she was off in a flash....

Roosevelt Island

Roosevelt Island is in the middle of the Potomac River and a rare urban wilderness in Washington DC. In the hope that Stella will get to know what trees and birds are we went there for a lovely walk one very hot Sunday.

Stella turns one!

Stella turned one on May 13th. I don't think any year has ever passed this fast! The actual birthday was quite quiet with cake and a quick round of Happy Birthday to celebrate. On the 14th we had a party with nearly 40 adults and about 15 children. It was crazy but Stella loved it. In fact Tim and I hardly saw her all evening as she crawled around following her friends.

A very exciting development over the past couple of weeks has been Stella's increasing vocabulary. She can now say "teeth" while pointing to her teeth, "moo" when asked what cows do, "brown bear" at the sight of any book (Brown Bear is her favourite) and the latest is "hi" whenever she or anyone else enters a room.

Presents the American way.....

The morning after Stella's party, we were a bit overwhelmed by the generosity of our party guests... No shortage of toys in this house anymore

Reading on her bed

Stella will often take herself off to the bedroom and spends hours leafing happily through her books.

Still enjoying the sling

At 26lbs she's getting quite heavy but Stella still loves being in the sling and for short journeys I can still just about manage it!

Learning to walk

Stella is an independent soul. She's now a super fast crawler and an expert cruiser and is learning to walk with the help of anything that moves, furniture wise that is. She doesn't seem to trust her parents not to let go, so she'll only walk with a solid inanimate object to cling onto.

We've also made big progress on the sleep front in the past couple of weeks and for the last few nights she's slept all the way through the night. Well, until at least 5.30am, which strangely enough we now consider to be morning..... Tonight we erected some black-out curtains in the bedroom so we're hoping for more of a lie in tomorrow. Let's see.

The Cherry Blossom Festival

Just like the Japanese, the Washingtonians like to celebrate the coming of spring with a Cherry Blossom Festival. Unlike the Japanese, the Americans don't like to sit under the trees drinking beer and singing Karaoke. Nevertheless, Stella enjoyed getting her first proper look at these beautiful flowers as we walked around the Tidal Basin at the weekend. Huge crowds had gathered to see the wonderful blossoms and Stella was kept very busy trying to capture the attention of all passers by with loud shouts and waves from her buggy. Much to her delight, some of them were even kind enough to wave back.

Waving "Da Dye"

Ten months old and Stella is having lots of fun waving and using her "first word" a great imitation of Bye Bye, "Da Dye". She's fascinated with doors and hinges, including the dishwasher door, the loo seat (which she loves to eat) and wardrobe doors. On the same theme turning book pages and flicking through daddy's Journal of Economic Perspectives are other favourite pass-times.

Last week we started a babysitting swap with her friend Alvar, who is Finnish-German and was born two weeks before Stella. We'll do it a couple of times a week so that Stella gets a regular break from her mum, something I'm sure she'll enjoy a lot!

On the swings

Ten Months Old

The revolution is in full swing

Returning from England, we discover that Stella's previously-tentative crawling (here made to appear more dynamic by the deceptive skill of the photojournalist) has become genuinely rapid. In addition, she has suddenly decided to pull herself to a standing position on various objects (the shower door, trapping her mother inside; the upper tray of the dishwasher, the one with all the knives, etc. etc.) and also cruise backwards and forwards. A whole new world of exploration has opened up to her. This is alarming, but on the bright side, her mother has started singing songs about poo.

Stella's favourite place to stand seems to be the window-sill, which is at a convenient height of eight inches. She'll pull herself up and stroll backwards and forwards looking out at the city below. Shades of Scarlett Johanssen in 'Lost in Translation'...


Scarlett Johanssen

Stella Harford

Stella is baptised

While we were in England Stella was baptised at St Etheldreda's, where we were married in 2003. It was a lovely day with family and friends. Stella was on good form and amused the congregation and charmed the priest with her broad smiles and apparent willingness to be welcomed into the Catholic Church.

Eight months old

Crawling at eight months

Aged eight months and one day, Stella finally made her first forward motion in the direction of a telephone. It started as a marine like shuffle, but only a few days later Stella was enjoying her new found independence and heading out of any room to explore the world alone.

Other major milestones include two more teeth and plenty of new sounds. Da da, ba ba, a a, hi and eee are some favourites. Not to mention some excellent rasberry blowing and clicking.

Stella's eating lots more solid foods these days too. Favourites seem to be lentils, celery, chicken, sweet potato, cheerios, pears and bananas. Yoghurt and raisins are new arrivals on the menu which seem pretty popular as well.

We have a busy week of activities out on the town nowadays. On Tuesdays it's music and art at the Jewish Community Centre. On Wednesday it's swimming and on Thursday it's baby and mom yoga. Yoga is getting a bit less relaxing for mummy now that Stella would rather spend the class exploring the other babies and their toys than watching the yoga. Swimming is definitely Stella's favourite especially the songs which we sing like "Swimming swimming in the swimming pool" and "baby shark".

All this activity is exhausting and so Stella still takes two naps a day at 10am and 2.30pm... roughly! Unfortunately, not exhausting enough to make Stella sleep for 12 hours straight at night. That is a milestone which I'm hoping to achieve one day soon :)

Ready, Steady.....

....Go!