Playing with Luey Baby

We are settling in to the swing of things here on the left coast and have gotten an opportunity to start enjoy the sunny side of life. This means lots of playing with Lucy and tapping into our creative sides to keep things interesting. She is definitely showing signs of boredom with older toys that aren't that interactive, although tasting them is always a favorite activity of hers.

Since we arrived I have been committed to spending as much time with Lucy exploring as possible. As much as I am looking forward to starting a new PhD program in the fall, I am DREADING seeing Lucy so much less. As she is forever showing me, though, we are living in the moment and making the most out of every day. Last week I made Lucy sensory bottles out of Dollar Store vanilla extract and beads, glitter and sequins. She has a difficult time getting her hands around them now, but enjoys rolling them on the ground. Gadagada (Jim's new name) just finished up her very first busy board. It was hard to choose only items that are safe for her to eat. The jury is still out on whether or not carpet squares were a good choice, but they are screwed in on each corner so she at least can't get them up.

 Lucy has been moving and grooving all over the place. It seems like taking her Gymboree, swim lessons and areas with other moving children has been really motivating to her. She still gets frustrated and seems to be crawling out of her skin sometimes. She even went soaring across the living room a few days ago and landed herself under the ottoman, but she figured out how to move forward after some time being stuck-ed. She is now all the way up on her knees and rocking back and forth. She is quite close to crawling. Her latest frustration is her inability to move from her belly back to sitting, as she can now easily go in the opposite direction. 

We finally made it to the Pacific Ocean to do a little rock climbing at Stinson Beach, which also happens to be the nudey beach. Questionable act in parenting, but Lucy doesn't know the difference. Live and let live, right?! The bouldering was great LouBear loved digging her toes in the sand. She didn't even seem to mind dipping them in the freezing cold water. Of course she loved touching everything and would have eaten sand for dinner given the opportunity. Despite spending an hour that morning throwing up egg yolk and milk (not spitting up, but vomiting) while we were at Muir Woods, she really enjoyed the breeze, the sound of the ocean and time together.