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.