Ten Months of Tenderness

We recently had friends ask us if we could even remember what life was like before we had our darling girl and were a family of three. We simultaneously and vehemently answered, YES! It is easy to think about rock climbing in Thailand, not packing diapers to go out for dinner and sleeping through the night. In the same breath we agreed that while love having a marriage and partnership based on that life, we couldn't imagine doing anything now without our little lovebug.

Messy hair, don't care.

In addition to loving books, being playful, showing confidence and independence and showering us with love and nuzzles, she gives life a whole different meaning. I have never felt more present in the moment than I do now (and I can write like this today because we have been having some sleep break-throughs!).  When I with her I do my best to notice every little thing about her. Her smile, her inquisitive, exploratory nature, the way she examines everything she encounters. I work hard when I am not with her and take advantage of even five minutes of time to accomplish anything I can so that it doesn't distract me when she wants to read books or play ball.

Developmentally, Lulabee is making forward progress. I can't help but think how overwhelming it is to change so much each day. She is able to use her pointer finger and thumb to pinch small objects (including tiny pieces of flesh, ouch!) and is getting into finger food, although she isn't very interested in gumming food and it can sometimes be found in her mouth an hour later. She recently figured out how to make the uh-uh-uh noise when she taps something against her mouth and her impulse to do this with everything is adorable. She is really getting into playing ball and gets faster at catching it and then throwing back (occasionally in the right direction) every time we play. She is eating pretty much anything we are eating, although she won't in her seat any more. If we go out back and do bird watching/calling while she eats, she can put back the whole bowl of food. So weird.

Little Biscuit is totally into standing now and seems a little disappointed that our house doesn't
provide her with much for doing this. We took her to the Bay Area Discovery Museum this week and she was all over the place...standing, crawling, dancing. Her favorite part of going new places is people watching and medium sized humans astound her with their walking/talking/eating skills. She played in river of water, bounced on a water bed "pond," listen to insect noises and climbed an ant hill. We are so fortunate to live in place with seemingly limitless resources and Jim and I really enjoy taking her on new adventures.

How you get PhD work done with a
teething baby. Nailed it. 

Sometimes I hold my mom's on the way to
school. Aunt Crystal says my mom should be
thankful they are not panties.

In a strange twist of fate, I would like to give three cheers to sleep!!! We have actually gotten some sleep around our house for the past few days. After I wrecked my bike and lost my mind, I took some notes from a dear friend and from Lucy's school. I decided to patiently, lovingly and calmly take back the night. She fights and fights and fights. She wants to explore the world and sleep keeps her from adventures. But just as I choose what she eats and where she goes to school and what diapers to use, I am also in charge of her basic need for sleep. She has nursed to sleep for the past four or five nights, which is just fine with me (easy, peasey, lemon squeezy) but then wakes up and loses her mind 45 minutes later. At school they watch for sleep signals and then hold her close and rock her until she falls asleep. It isn't full proof, but it often works for her (and allllll of the other babies). So the other night I held her close, rocked her and provided her some boundaries for sleep. She was pissed. She yelled at me, close-eyed, no tear yelling. Until she passed out and slept for five hours, nursed and slept even longer. That night she got a total of 14 hours of sleep with only 3 or 4 nursing sessions. Amen. I have kept up the boundary enforcement and, while I HATE to see and hear her upset, everyone is getting what they need and it is taking less and less time every night.

Sleep means everything. Because we are getting more sleep, Lucy and I rode bike to school EVERY day last week (well, except for Wednesday when she was teething with a fever and needed a rest day). I guess we rode 4 days, but still! Sleep=exercise=health=energy=better mom/wife/student/friend. Lucy looks forward to getting in the bike cart and it is a nice way to get to school. I like that she gets some quiet time in before school and she often falls asleep on the way there or the way home.

Nine Months of Nurturing

Lucy gets more amazing every day (with the exception of the whole putting her to sleep is a big game of exhausting antics and I am sure that we have created this stupidly long and tiring process). She has started doing some pretty cool stuff and I continue to be astounded by her development. She clearly signs, with both hands, for milk and even uses the sign when she just wants me sometimes. She has generalized the sign and uses at school as well as at home. I have been waiting for her to start clapping and now that she has she loves it! I have taught her to clap for Jim and me when we pee on the potty and she will even do this now before I do it. So cute :-). She is really into musical instruments and sometimes request that I get them out of the bucket so we can play, dance and sing together. 

Recently she has taken up bird watching as a hobby and seems fascinated by the different sounds birds make and we love to take bird watching walks together. In addition to enjoying swinging at the park, she often likes climbing the steps on the jungle gyms.  Her independent play skills are phenomenal and she sometimes leaves the space we are in to play by her self. She gets really interesting games going and it is easy to tell how much satisfaction she gets from exploring the world around her. She spontaneously started waving to people, animals, birds and inanimate objects, particularly when she is excited to see them. She gives high fives now and also uses this as a greeting. We didn't even really teach her how to this. Like so many other things, she seemed to wake up and just start high fiving everyone!

Little Biscuit is a kissing machine and now gives kisses to animals and people in real life and in books. She often pets a blanket or animal in a book and leans in for a big, wet, sloppy kiss. She is generous with her love and affection (which helps me avoid taking shots of tequila when she won't sleep). She has become obsessed with books and reading and we have been hitting the library for new books weekly. She cried the other day when we had to stop reading so we could leave for school. She prefers to sit in the lap of someone to enjoy stories, but is happy to pull them out of a basket and read them herself. Opening the book and turning the pages still requires the assistance of a medium to big sized human, but she can easily flip through soft books on her own. After 9 months of having no attachment to anything but the nursies, she now really likes her Aden and Anais linen blankets. If she sees one of them she heads right for it and does we call "nuzzles." I like to put one on my shoulder so that I get some secondary nuzzles out of it. 

Crawling as become second nature for our little lovebug. She dives off the bed head first (usually does okay, but sometimes tumbles and lays on her back like a dead bug) and bolts out of the room. We often crawl around the house with her like a family of elephants, which she finds terribly fun and entertaining, and will bait us to follow her like we do to her. It cracks us up.

I have feelings that are new. I am going to share
them with you. This one is "dismay," as in, "I am
dismayed that you won't let me stick my fingers
in the fan while it is on."

School is going well for her and, although she is usually sad when I leave, her lovely teachers and student-teachers usually have her distracted and happy as a clam by the time I peek on her from the outside window. Today Janiciara was reading a story to her while Lulu sat in her lap. Makes my heart melt.