My Bed is a Boat by Robert Louis Stevenson

My Bed is a Boat

My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor's coat
And starts me in the dark.

At night I go on board and say
Good-night to all my friends on shore;
I shut my eyes and sail away
And see and hear no more.

And sometimes things to bed I take,
As prudent sailors have to do;
Perhaps a slice of wedding-cake,
Perhaps a toy or two.

All night across the dark we steer;
But when the day returns at last,
Safe in my room beside the pier,
I find my vessel fast.
--Robert Louis Stevenson

I posted another bunch of pictures of Elizabeth on Picasa recently. After the glut of pics and stress in June, I got almost none taken in the first half of July till I realized that it was her 6 month birthday, and I ought to take a picture (those are the ones in the stroller). Anyway, when I let people in the family know they were there, I got a bunch of comments and questions, and as I was responding to them, I realized I had the makings of a good blog post, so here it is. First, the comments I'm responding to:

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thank karen,
Elizabeth looks super cute. And her hair is still strawberry. I love your pictures.
--Lesli

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Thanks for the pictures of Elizabeth! She is sitting up very well, and looks so cute in her sailor's suit, and the other two too! I think Redbeard looks good too:) Have a great day!
--Miriam

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So cute! She's getting big!
--Helena

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Oh how cute. such good smiles. I like the matching hat and how she plays with it. And the sailor themed photos are a cute idea.
Thanks for sending those.
--Love mom

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Look! I'm a sailor! I'm sailing! Ahoy!
--Steve

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And now my response:

Yeah, her hair is still red, but it seems a lot thinner than it used to be. I guess there's more head now for it to cover, but I've also found bits that have fallen out (like in the hood of the penguin outfit. On the back of her head, there's an almost bald strip where it seems to have rubbed off where her head touches the mattress, and then below that where her skull recedes into her neck, there's a band of very thick hair (comparatively). It's kind of funny.



The sailor suit is one of the outfits I got at the children's resale shop that I took some used stuff to for store credit. They had some VERY high end VERY cute outfits, and I got several for the junk that I was gonna dump at the Goodwill. Most of them were frilly with lots of poofy skirts and lace and smocking, but this was just such an elegant line on the sailor suit that I just couldn't pass it up.



I did a themed sailor toys shoot before, but she really wasn't interested in picking things up at that point, so this one was a lot cuter. Notice how she's totally uninterested:


The ones with the hat were fun -- she's sitting in her crib -- which is actually a Pack N Play with a little "bassinet" that's really just a hanging platform that attaches to the top bars. When Elizabeth gets excited, she wiggles, which made the whole platform wiggle, which she thought was fun, so she wiggled some more. I tried to get video of it, but missed the best shots.



Elizabeth is really focused right now on learning to crawl. She can roll from front to back or back to front without any problem, and can go from sitting to her belly without bumping her nose about 75% of the time. She can pivot while lying on her belly to reach toys around her, and she can sometimes manage to stretch and grab something that's out of her reach. She tries really hard to use her legs and feet to push herself forward, and in the past week or so has started getting up on her hands and knees with her belly off the floor. Once she's there though, she doesn't know what to do, and generally rocks backwards back onto her belly. She will repeat this until she backs up into a wall or other obstacle -- sometimes several feet away. It's deeply frustrating to her since she wants to go FORWARD to get whatever toy is so tantalizing, and she just keeps getting further away.