The Baby Page - Lila's Second Year
If you're new to this page, and you want to read about my pregnancy, go to this page and read backwards. If you want to read the latest about Lila, just go to this page! :) You can read about her second year on this page, and you can read about her first year here. Start at the bottom to read it in order. All of this used to be on the same page, but I've split it up since it was getting so long!I've password protected the bulk of the new photos of Lila (my daughter) from 2004 forward. If you're a stranger to me, you'll still be able to see occasional photos on her main page and updates about her on this news page, but the great majority of the new photos will now be restricted to my family and friends. I hope you can understand. It's one thing to have my life on parade, but it's another to have my daughter's out there. If you're a friend or family member who has forgotten the password I sent you, or if I missed you when I went to send it out, and let me know and I'll get you the info you need immediately!
9/28/05
Hello friends and family! It's been an exciting couple of months, and I'm very happy to share them with you. This is a pretty long update, and probably no one will read it, but I think it's important to keep up with the whole "Lila's Life" diary thing I've started here. It's going to be such a great record for her of her life. Mom says she won't care about it, but I think she'll be interested to read it. Maybe I'll print them out one day and make her a book of them, so she can read about her own life, from Day One. That would be really cool, don't you think?
If you're only here for the photos this month, you can skip down to them now.
Lila is just over 23 months old now, and will be two in just a few weeks. How old do we all feel now, right?
She continues to grow like a madwoman. She is 34" tall (65th percentile) and 26 lbs (just under 50th percentile). Things are a little different reporting her height and weight right now, as she outgrew the incredibly accurate baby scale we were using at a local maternity shop (it stops at 24 lbs) and we're having her stand up against a wall right now to measure her. I swear, she lost about 3/4 of an inch there alone, as we're no longer "stretching" her like they do at the doctor's office with her flat on her back. I'll be curious how they do it at her two year visit, as they use the exact type of scale she outgrew and so I'm wondering if they'll use the kind of scale we all use at doctor's offices...I shall report back!! But, basically, all measurements/weights from here on out are going to be subject to the accuracy of my home scale (non-digital) and of her standing against the doorframe in Lane's office. :)
She's been wearing 2T clothes for about a month 1/2 now, and is in 6 1/2 shoes, almost 7s. She's still got long legs and is generally thin, though not skinny. Her hair is coming in pretty well, although there's still not much coming from around the hairline, just the crown, but that's getting thicker all the time, so at least I know she'll have SOME hair from SOMEWHERE, right?
She understands everything I say to her now, and speaks to me all the time. She loves to talk. She loves to communicate what she's seeing, what color things are, where they are, etc. She's especially good at letting you know what she wants. LOL! She'll ask politely for things, saying "please/thank you, you're welcome" (she says all the time "oh, thank you, Mommy!") and we're working on "yes, ma'am/yes sir"....Lane's not too keen on the whole "sir" thing, but I'm going to persist with it. He's ok if she just says "no, thank you" or "yes, please", and those are good manners, too, but I want her to go the whole enchilada with the Southern Manners, as I was raised, so that's hopefully what will happen as she gets older.
She's going through a sort of thing where she says "not" for "no". It's my fault. I'll say to her "do you want to play a game or not?" and she'll say "not" and now if I say "do you want sausage?" she'll say "not"....totally my fault, and hopefully something that'll be fixed in the coming months.
She's teething again - the last set of teeth, her two year molars - and I can tell you that can't be over soon enough for me. Only the lower left one has actually broken ground, but I can tell by the way she's chewing on her binky, fingers, anything in reach, that more aren't far behind.
She's turned into a HUGE drama queen. She's started watching herself cry in the mirror. She'll get good and upset and then just run to the mirror and look at herself. SAD BABY. Once, when she was fake crying, she squeezed out a tear, and was so amazed, she kept touching her face to see if more would come. WHAT A HAM!! She'll fake cry at the drop of a hat, about anything, from how "slow" I am to make her breakfast bacon, or that we won't let her eat cake 24/7. She'll even, in worst case situations, throw herself on the ground and WAIL and thrash. I ignore her and get on with my day - unless, as things have been this last week, about frustration related to the pain she's in with her teeth. I have to be more patient with that. Sometimes, when she's fake crying, I say to her "don't laugh, whatever you do, don't laugh" and she'll start to crack up and I'll say "NO LAUGHING!" and she'll laugh harder and that breaks things up.
It's going to be very interesting to see how we get through the next year. Mostly, I stick with, "if I say it, I do it"....like, if I say we're reading two books before bed, we read two books, not more, not less. If I say one cookie, it's one cookie, and if she wails, then she wails. Lately, a lot of "arguments" we have are about her binky. She wants one when she's the slightest bit frustrated or upset, and I won't give her one. She'll find one, and I'll take it away, and she'll have a HUGE meltdown. As soon as her last teeth come in, we're going to get rid of the binkies. It's got to happen, before it ruins her teeth, but I'm not sure how it's going to work. Short of just taking them from her and saying "bye bye binky" and going cold turkey, I have only a few ideas how to proceed. If any of you have any tips, I'm happy to hear them.
We still toy with potty training. She's only peed in her potty once, and that was almost through bribery. I told her "I'll let you run naked through the house if you go potty now", and so she did, but the noise of her urine hitting the potty surprised her, so she stopped and claimed she no longer needed to go. True to my word, I had to let her run naked, and about five minutes later, she peed on her carpet. :( It was actually kind of funny in the "one step forward/one step back" kind of way.
Books, books, books, and especially the Sesame Street books. A friend sent us the first of a 26 book series of the places in SSt and Lila LOVED it. We read it to her all the time. I wanted to track down a few more, but they were ridiculously expensive and I thought "that's that" and that we'd just give up. That is, until eBay. :) I found the whole set on eBay for a fraction of the actual cost, and bought them all. It was literally all we've read to her for about 5 weeks. Only in the last week or so has she condescended to read any of her other books. FINALLY, Elmo and his search for a little lost puppy has lost its charm. Before Lane or I have to shoot ourselves. :)
She loves to help me, to dust, to sweep (we got her a toy broom and a small duster), to wipe surfaces with a cloth, ESPECIALLY to feed the dogs or cats or brush the New Kitty. She really, really wants to help me do everything, even fold laundry (which she mostly just pushes into a ball and says "there, aaaall clean!") - Fran says this lasts "until she gets big enough to become any kind of real help"!!
She LOVES to play with plastic food. I broke down and eBayed her some plastic food and Fran and Stan are getting her a small kitchen for her birthday - which is going to ROCK HER WORLD, I just know it - as she cooks almost every day. She also loves matchbox cars - we're collecting her the "Classic" series right now. We get her one every time we take her to the grocery store. I'll hold the car up and say "look, Lila, the Corvette Stingray, the COOLEST CAR EVER" and now when I ask, "what's the coolest car ever" she'll say "Stingray!!". We got her the T-Bird last week, and she now knows that as "Granddaddy's favorite car". :) It's fun.
Television is still a huge winner. We've branched out to Shrek, Toy Story (she's actually watched both of those for months now) and anything, almost on NOGGIN, a preschool television station that has no commercials (thank goodness). She loves to watch "Clifford The Big Red Dog", "Maisy", "Miss Spider", "Jack's Big Music Show" and, of course, "Sesame Street". I'm pretty sure she watches too much tv, but as long as we're still reading, drawing, talking and getting active, I'm not going to freak out about that.
She loves to sing. She'll make up songs that go "lalalalala" and shout out in the stores "everybody sing!" She'll run in from the other room to us and fling her arms wide and shout "hello everybody!". It's the cutest thing! She thinks Band-Aids are the coolest things ever. Her daddy is her favorite person and her favorite toys are probably her rubber duckies. She LOVES to play the "birthday game" where we stick a candle in a cake-like thing (dingdong, cupcake, hoho, donut, nilla wafer) and let her blow it out after we sing. I know, she has us trained really, really well. It just makes her SO HAPPY!! If you saw, you'd understand. :)
Food is still pretty much the same, except we've gotten her to drink pomegranate juice and, just tonight, milk from something other than her bottle. Granted, it was only a few sips, but it felt like a whole gallon to me. :) She's doing this control thing with liquid right now where she's refusing to swallow right away. She'll sometimes go minutes, like five minutes, without swallowing something, and, unfortunately, sometimes her own saliva gets the best of her and she just spits whatever it is out and down her shirt. Usually, that's only water, but with the addition of juice now, we've got to be careful. She'll take a drink and just eye me with this amused look on her face and her lips closed, smiling. I've recently decided that ignoring her is the best way to get her to forget about it, because she was only thinking it was funny when I told her to swallow over and over. Hopefully this won't last too long.
She knows all her major colors now, including grey. We're working now on days of the week (just started). She can do her numbers up to 11, but has a tendency to go 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 and just skip the in-between ones. She's counted a few times from 1-10 correctly, so we know she can do it, and will if pressed to concentrate. She's getting more and more of the alphabet, but seems a little burned out on it. We have a playdate friend who's only one month older than Lila, and she can say the whole alphabet (it freaks me out) and I was really hoping to be able to go to our two year doctor visit with Lila saying hers, but I'm afraid that's not going to happen in four weeks....of course, stranger things have happened with her development. Her language is coming almost exponentially now, day by day, and she'll come out with things I've never heard her say. Tonight it was "sea bean disappeared". Who taught her "disappeared"? I don't think it was me!!!
She still LOVES to play the hide game. If she hears you coming, she'll go "hide, hide" and then giggle while you pretend to look for her. She could sit on our bed and hide under the sheets while I close the door, knock, come in, say "where's the baby??" and then she reveals herself with giggles and a "BOO!" and then have me repeat it a THOUSAND times and never lose interest. Repetition is her friend. Same books, 8 times in a row, same songs, 100 times, same game, over and over.
To make her laugh, just say "OW! Acorns!" and pretend to get hit on the head with a nut. That's from one of her Kipper videos and she thinks it's hysterical. She'll laugh and laugh and say "OW, acornies" over and over. (That's another thing...all plurals are "ies", like "rings" becomes "ringies", etc...) You can also say "donkey says POP" and make a noise with your mouth or say "FAR FAR AWAY Donkey", both of which are lines from Shrek 2. She laughs so hard at this scene in the movie, sometimes I think she's going to vomit, I really do!
We're trying to get in more of a routine now that fall is here with her sleeping. I'll get her up at 9:30, no matter what, and she's usually back down at 1:15 and then sleeps until at least 3. She's down by 9:45 or 10 and seems to be sleeping much better. We have playdates usually twice a week, and go to the Storytime at the library. The pools closed a few weeks ago, so that's done until next summer. Now that the weather is turning nicer in the evenings, we're spending more time in the backyard in her sandbox and pool. For July/August/early Sept, we almost didn't set foot in the yard. It's nice to start using it again.
She's had her first nightmare (that she's been able to tell us about). She said that deer were eating grass in a field and that goats came and frightened them away. She said that although the goats were her friends and the deer were her friends, they weren't friends with each other. I told her they were friends, and that it was OK. Then she said that she thought the deer were going to eat her and she was afraid. Then we had this long talk about how we've seen the fences around the plants and flowers to protect them from the deer eating them, and how her bed is just like those fences and the deer can't get her in there. Mom said I should have just said "deer don't eat little girls", which, in retrospect, seems like the logical thing to have said, but that's not where my mind went!! Lane's starting her a Dream Journal, and is going to write down what she says she dreams. As she gets older, she can do it herself, and if she keeps up with it, will likely be able to lucid dream by 8 or 9, which would be incredibly cool.
Earlier this month, we took her to the beach for the first time. Mom, Daddy, JR & Michael went. There's tons of photos, and she had a great time. At first, she didn't want the sand to touch her feet, and wouldn't go near the water. By the end of the first full day, she'd walk barefooted in the wet sand, even though her toes still curled up all the time. At the end of the second full day, she decided it was OK to go into the water, and we had a lot of fun doing that. Mostly, she enjoyed feeding the seagulls and looking for shells with her Granddaddy.
Mostly, that's it. Her life is good and we're good and other than a very brief cold we caught at the beach, we've been 100% healthy. Everything is wonderful. We're grateful to be safe and sound from any natural disasters and keep others in our thoughts and prayers. We're very lucky.
On a personal note, I have continued to put on weight like a giant balloon. After seeing photos of me from the beach (the ones you DON'T get to see), I decided to Get it In Gear and Mom and I are having a "how long can you go without eating dessert/chips/fast food/etc" contest and motivating each other to exercise. My original exercise plan has fallen by the wayside, and as J9 says "the most important thing is to get back on it" and I know she's right, so hopefully I'll have some good news next month. I've been eating 100% better for just over a week now and already feel better and look better. At least I lost the weight I put on at the beach, where we all ate like cows. Mooo. Food is good.
Please see the notice above about the password protection on her new photos if you haven't already. For those of you with the password, you can see new photos of her beginning here.
7/5/05
Hello to friends and family! I am, once again, extremely late with my update, and I've done my best not to miss anything in this update. It's been almost four months since I checked in, so there's a lot to tell!
If you're only here for the photos this month, you can skip down to them now. So Lila is just over 20 months old now. I cannot BELIEVE she'll be 2 years in just a few months. That is just blowing me away. Lila is running, laughing, TALKING, learning, doing her ABC's and a lot more.
She continues to grow like a madwoman. She is 33 3/4" tall (85th percentile) and 23 lbs 14 oz (25th percentile). Two months ago, she grew 3/4 inch in one month! If she continues to grow like this, it's projected she'll be 5'10", which is extremely tall for my family (and, also, I think Lane's). She wears size 6 1/2 shoes and will be comfortably in 7s before the next two months are out.
She's now understanding most of what I say to her. She talks to me, usually in short bursts, but, occasionally in longer sentence form. In mid-June, when she was 19 1/2 months old, she first used two words together. They were "hi bird", followed quickly by "bye bird"! LOL! She loves to "call" people on the phone (not really calling) and she'll say "'Lo, Biddy" (Whitney) or "'Lo Neane" (J9) and then "talk" to them. Her longest "sentence" so far has been "look, my car, look a car, look, mine!" - which is, admittedly, an extremely "Dick and Jane" sentence, but at least it was a good try!
The cutest thing she's doing by FAR right now is that she's learned the word "happy" (she says it sort of like "hoppy"). She'll run over to you, throw herself in your lap, or her arms around your legs and go "hoppy, hoppy". Sometimes she's in my arms at night and will reach up and touch my face and says it again. It's SO CUTE. It makes me want to cry!! She also says "lubbie" for love and will just hug me and say "lubbie" over and over again. Also heart melting!
Her manners are coming along nicely, and she asks "pees" or "pee" for "please" on her own about 50% of the time and then the rest of the time when prompted. We're working on "thank you", but right now, when you ask her to say it, she says "welcome" instead. :) I guess that's something!
She went through a period of several weeks where she only said "no" in answer to any question, even one she wants to say yes to. Now she says "oh-kaaay" in this long, drawn-out way, as though you've just talked her into something she doesn't really want to do. "Oh-kaay, Daddy", she'll say. She also went through a period where she only called me "Mom". Despite my telling her I was only going to call her "Li", she continued this for probably two months. Now she mostly called me "Daddy", unless I correct or it's at night and she's calling for me. Still, almost daily, she calls first for "Daddy" in the morning, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't mean me.
Her canines have FINALLY come in, from mid April (17 1/2 months) to mid May (18 1/2 months). They were worse than all the other teeth put together, and it was made worse because they didn't come in at the same time, but one after another. They're not fully in, even now, and still I think they bother her. I'm just glad it's over. Now all that's left is her second year molars. We're brushing her teeth at least twice a day now, aiming for three, but honestly only getting two. Sometimes that goes well, sometimes not so much.
We have begun thinking about potty training, though not seriously. Lila likes to sit on her potty while I'm on mine (sorry if that's TMI) and pretend to go. While sometimes she's declared that she needs to go, although we put her on it, she hasn't yet used it. She has, however, just starting last week, begun to tell us daily when she has gone poo, something until last week, she would vehemently deny, even if it was obvious from the smell that she had indeed gone. It's HUGE that she comes and tells us, and we make a big deal of it. Hopefully she'll start being able to identify when she needs to go and we can get her on the potty to begin with. ?? We're not in any hurry at all, so it's just nice she's doing all she is already.
She still loves her books, and now will sit quietly "reading" to herself. If I can't find her, often she's in her room, reading by her bookcase, one book after another. She goes through her favorites, about one every week or so, and we simply can't read that book enough times. She loves books. One of her favorites is "Pickles the Fire Cat". She likes to help me water the plants outside by holding the hose like Pickles does when he learns to be a fire cat.
She likes to pretend to cook things. She loves to watch me cook in the kitchen, and for Father's Day, she called Lane into her room and showed him how she was stirring in this sort of hollow of a toy and told him she was cooking. He asked her what she was cooking, and she said "eggs". She also likes to cook soup, and when you ask what kind, she'll say "peach soup". Maybe those are the only two foods she can remember to say, I don't know!!
She also loves her television, and adores watching "Kipper" videos. (It's a British cartoon.) She has recently discovered Mickey Mouse - because they're on her diapers, if you can believe that - and I got her a plush Mickey that came with a video. Unfortunatly, the old Mickey cartoons aren't anywhere close to "PC" and I'm going to have to take it away from her because I think it's too violent. I found some newer ones on Amazon that I'll get her that are getting good reviews from the mommies and daddies who post there. She LOVES "Sesame Street" and is really getting into Ernie (after favoring Big Bird for a while). She loves to sing (just made up words, mostly lala) and she especially loves to "help" me sing "You are my Sunshine" (she sings "hoppy, hoppy" when it gets to "you make me happy when skies are grey") and "How Much is that Doggy in the Window", during which she barks when the doggy barks. Have you ever sung the first verse of that song 20 times in a row? I have. :) Woof-woof.
One of her favorite words is "cake" and she'll say "mmmmmmm cake" for just about no reason. She's made up a song, and it goes "la la cake, la la cake, la la cake". I SO LOVE this song! She LOVES ducks, and is almost as obsessed with them as she is flags. She has four rubber duckies that we keep spread out all over so she'll have one at all times. She says it "guck", even though she can very well say "d" words. All the ducks are named "Biddy" after Aunt Whitney. Go figure. (The first time we let her name a toy, it was a tiny dragon, and I said "what do you want to name him?" and she went "hmmmmmmmmm" and thought for a long while and then announced "D'goy D'goy D'goy D'goy". !!! To this day, she will still call him that, and when you ask where "D'goi etc" is, she'll go and show you. What's that about??) "F" words are new and not said very well. "Flag" comes out "schlag" and "foot" is "schut", which you can imagine what we thought she was saying for a really long time!! Still no "j" words, "s" words or any "g" words other than "go". For a while, every word she said was prefaced with "oh" or "a", like "a ball, a bird, a car" or "oh, car, oh, Daddy!", etc. That's mostly stopped, but it was really cute while it lasted. She often says "oh, look!" again and again. She's HIGHLY observant and will see the tiniest details that you don't even notice yourself. Usually, if she tells you something is there and you don't see it at first, she's probably right and you need to look harder!
Her favorite foods include many healthy things, like sweet potatoes, watermelon, grapes, broccoli, peaches, corn and beans/black-eyed-peas. She also loves bananas, spaghetti and rotisserie chicken (hates fried chicken - this is NOT my child!), sausage, hot dogs, chalupas and burritos. She likes her food ICE COLD, and if it's the slightest bit warm, she protests. We can often feed her "right out of the can" for some things. Some things we have to cook (like hot dogs or corn on the cob) and then put them in the freezer to get cold!! She will only drink water out of her sippy cups - not juice or milk - and she prefers it with ice. She won't drink juice of any kind, but consumes vast amounts of water. She likes milk, but only cold, and only from her bottle, not from any kind of cup. We're working hard to get her to drink it from a sippy cup, but so far, no luck!
She can identify all of the major colors by pointing but can't say "green" or "orange" yet. She can also do her shapes, not just the basic ones like circle, square, triangle, but also rectangle, half circle, pentagon and parallellogram (she has a cool shapes puzzle)! She can correctly identify up to 85% of the alphabet about 80% of the time. She knows just a few of the numbers 1-10 and only really likes to say "2" and "8". Her favorite letter of the alphabet is "B", followed closely by "K", "T" and "P". Her favorite color is purple.
She does this thing now when you're doing something she wants to do or when you have something she wants (usually the former). She says, "me....you....me" in this really sad voice. I suspect that what she means is "I want to do it. You're doing it now. Let me do it" all in shortcut "me, you, me" lingo! She's also really working her frown these days. She'll put her lip out and pout and frown really deeply when the slightest thing distresses her. That's starting to lessen, thank goodness, but for a while, it was really prevalent.
She still LOVES to hide and to pretend to be asleep. She'll say "sleep! sleep!" and then put her head down and then pop it up again and go "wake! wake!". She prefers to be naked, pretty much at all times. She says "nagee, nagee, nakee" after her bath, and heaven forbid you should say "naked" about something in conversation, because then she pulls at her clothes yelling "nagee! nagee!" She loves to spin around and around until she's so dizzy it makes her fall down. She laughs hysterically. Right now, the word "burger" is the funniest word she's ever heard. She loves to look at photos of herself and will readily identify herself as "me!" in the photos. She's been doing that for months now. She has recently discovered stickers and loves them. She loves magnets and small figurines that she can carry around with her. She loves purses and to put things inside of them. She loves to play with her friends, but still prefers to play alone mostly, and has a hard time understanding playing "with" other kids. She does love to play chase and peek-a-boo with them, though! That's great fun!
She's become enamored of the wading pool. She'll hardly be in the "big pool" now, she just wants to walk in the water. At our local pools, she'll walk down to the 2ft water (the deep end of the wading pool), and says "deep, deep!" as she walks, and at the end is standing on her tip-toes so she won't get her mouth under the water. At home, in the bath, she loves to go on her belly and pretend to swim. She says "kick, kick" and kicks her legs.
She's gone to only one nap a day sometime since we last spoke, and sleeps from between 12:30-1:30 to about 3 or sometimes four, if she's exhausted. She still goes to bed anywhere from 10-11pm, waking up between 9:45 and 11, depending on how tired she is. She's a good sleeper.
We still take her to the chiropractor about once every two months, which she isn't always thrilled about (she doesn't like to see me get adjusted), but I can tell does her a lot of good (as it does me!). She's been going since she was three weeks old!
On a personal note, I put on 10 lbs. :( Eight of it I put on while I had the Computer Prison Project going on (to recap, 392 hours in 42 days, meaning 9.3 hours a day, 7 days a week, for six weeks, just SITTING at the computer, eating from stress!!!), but the other two were just laziness. I thought about buying a really cool bike, but it's just too hot here and I can't just throw Lila on a bike in 90+ degree weather when I feel I need a workout, so we bought our first ever "real" exercise machine, a Gazelle Power Plus. It's amazing, and I really, really like it. I do an hour a day (I've had it for a week now), always while watching television while Lila takes her nap. It's a nice, steady, very low-impact workout and it's very "doable" for me, as I can certainly manage to watch television (haha) and at least this way I'm doing something productive while I rot my brain. Usually, I'm rotting it to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". They're running two hours a day on FX and I tape them and watch them, doing two 30 minute blocks surrounding a break for lunch while she sleeps. That and portion control (very, very difficult for me, I eat like a HORSE) and I'm hoping to get my body back at least as best as it can be post-baby.
Now on to the photos!!
Please see the notice above about the password protection on her new photos if you haven't already. For those of you with the password, you can see new photos of her beginning here.
3/16/05
Hello to everyone! I'm sorry this update is so late, and I know that, because of that, I'm going to miss a lot of stuff that Lila's been up to. I'm so sorry! It's hard to believe that the last time I wrote it was Christmas....BAD DANA, BAD DANA!
If you're only here for the photos this month, you can skip down to them now. So Lila is almost 17 months old now. She's running, climbing and trying very hard to jump, but she hasn't figured that out yet. She sits in chairs, colors with crayons, and feeds herself moderately well with both a spoon and a fork (it's still really messy, though).
Lila is growing like a weed. Three weeks ago, she was 32" tall (still 80th percentile) and 22 lbs 6 oz (30th percentile). My tall, skinny girl!
She's now understanding 80% of what I say to her. I can tell her long, complex things, and she'll totally understand and do whatever it is I've said. She will now clearly say "Mom-MEEE" and "yellow!" (sometimes said "LELLO!", very triumphantly). She can tell you what the cow, camel, dog, sheep, cat, owl and frog say (only she thinks the frog sticks out his tongue, not says RIBBIT). She said "unicorn" very clearly for about three days, and then it degenerated to "LOO-CORN! "She knows all the "main" parts of her body, and we're working on things like shins and elbows. She's gone from saying "yes, yes, yes" all the time to just grunting "uh-huh!". Very annoying. Hopefully she'll go back to yes. :) No sign of no, though she did shake her head no the other day. While we know she can talk, she doesn't often use words regularly other than Mommy and Daddy. Oh, she also says Momo a lot for Grits and Puh for Pitter.... I've started forcing her to say "up" and "out" and "more" for things, or I don't give them to her. She prefers when I just read her mind, but then, don't we all! I tell her she has to use her words, and most of the time she'll say what I'm asking her to say.
No sign of her canine teeth, upper or lower. ?? She did, however, tell me last night that her teeth were bothering her, and I gave her some homeopathic teeth gel, so maybe they're coming in soon??
She's learned to say "BOO" and to jump out at us. She LOVES to hide behind furniture, stare at us from under chairs, pillows, whatever, and to pop up and say BOO! We just pretend to be scared and she laughs and laughs and laughs. We got her a sandbox that we play in almost every day. She loves the sand, and especially loves to dump it into the grass or into the dog pool. Swinging is still pretty high on her list, too. CLIMBING is moving up to a favorite, too, and if you leave a step stool or ladder around, be prepared to find her trying to climb it. She can get four or five rungs up a ladder before she gets scared. (Mommy doesn't do so well!) She likes to walk around on her tip toes.
Books are still her favorite toys. Her favorite book right now is "It's OK to be Different" by Todd Parr. She LOVES her bears. She loves sharks. (??) She has taken to leading people around by the hand when she wants something. She also takes our hands and points to things in books, like we take her hand and point at things. She likes to be in charge. (Where does she get that, I wonder?) She loves to hug and kiss her stuffed animals. She can make a kissing sound with her lips and does it all the time. She likes to feed the animals (and inanimate objects in her room) imaginary bites of food and sips of water. I already bought her a tea set to give to her either for Easter or for her bday - it'll probably Easter, since I can't wait until her bday!!
She loves to help carry things from one room to another. She is a good helper. She still loves to give "zerberts". She loves to count things, or make patterns....like, if there are lights lining a walkway, she likes to touch each one on the top and go "BOWWW" each time. She likes to poke the holes in the hammack and the cinderblocks outside. She likes it when there is more than one of something so she can touch them all.
She is VERY obsessed about flags. She LOVES flags (American or Texan). She will go nuts in the backseat and I'm all, what's she see, and then I see, sometimes many blocks away, a tiny flag waving at a car dealership or in someone's driveway. She notices flags on people's clothing and cars, and just about anywhere! Later, you will learn about Soldier Bear, and you will know why she loves him so....
She LOVES television, especially "Backyardigans" and "Sesame Street". We call it "Lila TV" when she gets to watch one of "her" programs. Sometimes she gets pretty upset when she isn't allowed, but we persevere! Mornings are "TV free" times, and I only put on the radio with classical music. We eat and take baths and color and play outside. Then it's nap time. It's about 50/50 these days if she's taking one nap or two. It all depends on how early she got up that morning. She's sleeping 12-13 hours a night, going to bed anywhere from 9:45-11pm, depending on if she had a second nap. She wakes up between 9:45 and 11!! Most days, I don't like her to sleep past 10; it throws her whole schedule off. Her naps are anywhere from 1 hour to 2 1/2 hours long. We try to stay flexible, depending on what we have to do that day. She loves to take walks and to play outside. She loves to dig in the dirt or sand and to splash in the water.
Mostly, she just continues to grow up and change all the time. Her hair is getting thicker - I even had to cut a little bit off the bottom in the back!! (Yes, I saved it.) She loves animals and to play and she especially loves her daddy. Daddy can do no wrong! :) But we knew that, right? So, anyway, on to the photos!
Please see the notice above about the password protection on her new photos if you haven't already. For those of you with the password, you can see new photos of her beginning here.
1/5/05
Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! I hope you all had a good one. We did. Even though technically we had our first Christmas with Lila last year, this year felt like our first Christmas, since she's really so much more aware of everything and so interactive and communicative this year.
We put up a tree up, and she loved it. We put ornaments within her reach that weren't either 1) very important or 2) breakable in a way that would hurt her (like glass). She was extremely good about leaving them alone. All her "touches" were been soft, with just one finger. I did have to tell her not to hit the ornaments with the drum sticks, but that was only once. :) When she woke up in the morning, the very first thing she wanted to do is to run to the tree and have me turn it on. She would check in on it several times a day, and often took her dolls or bears to it to show it to them. It was so cute!
I'd like to totally apologize for the number of photos this time. Really, you only thought it was bad last month. What can I say? Holiday Photo Madness? :)
So Lila is 14 months old now. She's gone from walking to running in just a matter of weeks. She's now climbing up the bookcases (thankfully bolted to the wall by Granddaddy and Daddy) and generally being a running, shouting, monkey.
I am happy to report that our health has been good EXCEPT for a very brief bout of stomach flu that was so short I think it's hardly fair to count it. Truly a 24 hour thing that went from Lila to me to Lane and was over and done with before we could even be too upset about it. Lila has taken a surprising turn in that she hasn't grown a SMIDGE this month and actually lost an ounce, leaving her at 21 lbs 4 oz and 31 inches long. I was being sarcastic to my mom and I said "oh, it's so sad, Lila is only in the 80th percentile for her height instead of the 90th. :) She's somewhere in the 30th percentile for her weight. I'm not worried. With all the running she's doing, I'm not surprised she's slowing down in her weight gain. (And we all knew her height was going to have to slow down one day, didn't we?)
She'll now say "mommy" and "daddy" when prompted, but doesn't ask for things by name. (Sometimes she calls her daddy by name, but still not often.) We're working hard to get her to say things. For Monty Python fans, I was joking with her the other day and saying, "Are you the baby who says 'nee!'?" and she said "NEE!" Now that's added to her vocabulary. Mostly she says long sentences like "t-good, t-good, t-good" and "guh-lang, guh-lang, guh-lang" and stuff like that. She'll say long things to herself or to the cat or to her toys. Who knows what she's saying....she obviously thinks it's something, but we don't know what. Her vocabulary is getting bigger every day for what she understands. I can't even tell you how smart I think she is. You'll just think I'm bragging. Wait and see. She'll come up to you in a few months and explain why it rains and then you'll believe me!!!
She's gotten another tooth, her lower right lateral incisor. Now all that's left are her canines (cuspids) and her second year molars. I can't WAIT for teething to be over. Molars suck.
She's trying to work our VCR/DVD. She knows the remote controls do SOMETHING, but she's not sure what yet. She will read to herself (usually she reads to one of her toys) for 10 minutes or more at a time. She loves her books. Her favorite book right now is the "Alphabet Book" by PD Eastman (author of "Go Dog Go"). She can carry bags and baskets by their handles all around the house. She got a babydoll stroller and pushes all her toys and dolls around the house in it. She's so proud of herself for this, you can see it all over her face. She's trying more and more to eat with utensils, but it's not working out all that well. I know she'll get it soon, but it frustrates her and she gets hungrier and hungrier while she waits to scoop something up or spear it.
She's dancing to music, and loves to dance on top of Granddaddy's or Daddy's shoes. She's taking sometimes only one nap a day (depends on how late she sleeps, really). She's totally aware of the camera, and has developed a fake smile that she uses when you say "smile!" to take a picture. It's hysterical. You'll see it all through the photos here. For the first time last week, she tried to use her toes to pick something up. I've been trying to teach her that since Day One, and I practically fell all over myself telling her how great it was she was trying it.
She's making jokes now. She gave me a "zerbert" on my tummy the other day, just like I do to her. She also had some socks next to her on the ottoman, and I said "where does the sock go?" and she looked at me with this huge grin and put the sock deliberately on her head. She just laughed and smiled and then did it again when we asked her. She thinks she's so clever.
She also surprised us all when she started watching a Care Bears movie on TV. She ran to her room and got her two small Care Bears, Giggles and Moonie and brought them in to watch the movie with her. Mind you, she didn't bring her dolls, but her CARE BEARS. She knew what was on TV was the same as her bears, and she wanted them all to watch with her. How cool is that?!
She's gotten a little particular about who can touch me. She doesn't like it when Pitter or Grits is touching me too much, and will push their paws away from my leg or arm. Today, we had a playdate, and a boy put his hand on my arm and she got mildly upset and tried to push him off.
Sometimes, either when she's upset, or for no particular reason, Lane and I say "FAMILY SAMMICH (sandwich)" and we grab her up and squish her between us like jam between bread. She loves it and laughs and laughs.
She's very, very sensitive. She gets very upset to see me adjusted at the chiropractor. I clipped Grits' nail too short and he yelped and she was so concerned about him and kept trying to pat him and hug him. She's also starting to show fear of things on television. In the movie, "Finding Nemo", there's a scene where a big momma fish opens her mouth and little fish come out (it's supposed to be a funny part) and Lila just goes BANANAS at this and cries and cries and cries, we have no idea why. She was also upset about an elephant yelling for help on Sesame Street last week. I guess she wanted to help him!
Personally, I'm still getting smaller. Now, I'm so very close to my pre-pregnancy measurements everywhere except for my middle. My torso is still thicker than it should be, but it's shrinking slowly but surely. I finally took new photos, so you can see the animations here: front & side.
Please see the notice above about the password protection on her new photos if you haven't already. For those of you with the password, you can see new photos of her beginning here.
12/3/04
This update is going to be a little strange. Because I'm so late in doing it, I have more photos than I plan to update this time, I may mention things here that you won't see photos of until next time. Sorry! So Lila is 13 months old now. Her first birthday has come and gone and she (BIG NEWS ALERT) started walking on November 2nd, just after her birthday. She took several steps on that evening and then didn't do it again for two or three days. But now she's really good at it and it's the norm for her to walk and the exception for her to crawl. She's climbing like the dickens, up on the sofa, off the sofa, up on the step-stool, off the step-stool. She even learned that she can stand up on the drawer pulls of her dresser to see what's on top. (I'm in trouble now.)Lila has been suffering from some allergies this past month (we all have, including our dogs and cat). Other than that, we're all well and happy. As of two weeks ago, Lila is 21 lbs 5 oz and is 31 inches long. This is the 45th percentile and the 90th percentile. CRAZY. She grew over one inch this last month. I was wondering why she was waking in the night for food off and on. She was a growing fool! A friend led me to this neat site that has a program that will calculate a chart for a child's height and weight since birth. Her is Lila's. She's been consistently above average in her length since birth. CRAZY.
Still no talking, but lots of grunts and noises and plenty of indication that she understands what I say. She's also developing a schema (J9 and I think that's the right word) where she knows, for example, what a frog might look like as a stuffed animal or a drawing or a cartoon or a photo. She knows they're all frogs even though they look rather different. Her vocabulary is HUGE for what she understands. There are things we've only told her once or twice that she now knows.
Since we last spoke, Lila has cut ALL FOUR of her one year molars and her top left lateral incisor), bringing her Grand Tooth total to TEN. Molars are NOT FUN to cut, if her reaction is any indication. She's fussier than she normally would be, and more easily frustrated. I can't wait for these teeth to be good and in! Probably just in time for the two year molars. :/
We had our first trip to a hotel for her first birthday. She did relatively well the first night, only taking about an hour to go down for the night and then having to get up and sleep in our bed for part of the night. The second night, she was so keyed up from the wedding we attended (I haven't done those photos yet - sorry!) that she just screamed and screamed and silly me, I hadn't brought anything like motrin or something and I was losing my mind and at one in the morning, we packed up and drove home from Houston. !!! We got home at 4. And of course, she slept almost immediately after we got in the car. We discovered that next week that she was cutting to of those aforementioned molars, and that was probably part of what was bugging her, and also realized that probably Lane could have gone to some 24 hour drugstore to buy some motrin, but, well, hindsight is 20/20, right? We'll be better prepared again when we travel with her (like maybe when she's three or four). (You think I'm kidding?!?)
She won't eat something (again) that she can't feed herself. She's loving eating sandwiches with her daddy at lunch. He breaks off pieces to give to her and she loves it! Her new favorite food (cottage cheese) is a REAL TREAT for me to give to her because it gets everywhere when she tries to feed it to herself!! We discovered that another favorite food (peanut butter) should actually be called "sugar butter" because it's so high in sugar and she BOUNCED OFF THE WALLS one night after having some before a nap. We won't be doing that again, let me tell you!
She can put on and pull off bead necklaces on her own. She loves to throw the ball at us or the dogs from a standing position. She'll watch cartoons from the sofa side-by-side with us and LOVES "Shrek 2". She even laughed several times at things that were actually funny going on in the movie! She's going down small slides on her own and getting very good and turning around to get off of high things. She doesn't even try to go off face-first anymore. She LOVES to go to the park and play on playscapes. She LOVED our trip to the zoo (she chased peacocks for 45 minutes). She can blow bubbles in the water in her bathtub and has discovered how to play not only the harmonica, but also the kazoo. She knows "behind you", "on the floor", "under" and "on top of". She can show you how to let the water out of the tub and where the water goes away down the drain. Her aunt J9 taught her how to "dust off" her hands when they get dirty, and she does it all the time at the park now. She's not showing any fear of anything except for my blowdrier. She thinks the feeling of my wet hair in the bathtub is ooky. She makes a funny face and shakes her hand to get it off.
She can identify her knees, ears, nose, eyes, mouth, tongue, teeth, belly, chest, head, hair, hands, toes/feet, and her vagina (which mom tells me is NOT appropriate to bring up in public, and I guess she's right....). We're working on her chin and shoulders. She seems to think her chin is just her mouth, but we'll get there. Her absolute favorite toy right now is her Fisher Price Farm, the one from the 70s where the doors "moo" when you open them. She LOVES it and plays with it every day. I swear, she's obsessed with it. I think she thinks about it when she's in her crib....where's my farm, wonder what the cow is doing, did someone feed the chicken, who's riding the tractor....stuff like that. She goes for it first thing when she wakes up.
Personally, a miracle: I can fit back in my pre-pregnancy jeans. !!!! I have this lovely roll of fat poking around the waistband, but they totally fit through the hips and legs and I'm not killing myself to get into them. I still have my eyes on the February Carnaval Prize, so hopefully I'll be down to my pre-pregnancy weight by then. It's only taken over a year, but I'll be grateful for what I can get!! I have no new photos or measurements, but I've been working out, and things are shaping up (no pun intended).
Please see the notice above about the password protection on her new photos if you haven't already. For those of you with the password, you can see new photos of her beginning here. I apologize in advance for the SHEER NUMBER OF PHOTOS. Probably if you're not a blood relative, you could just skip all this and wait for next time when I'm SURE (haha) there won't be as many photos.
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