Beebop-a-Lula

Last night little peep was playing before bedtime and found Forrest’s riding goggles on the floor. She did what she normally does, which was to put them in her mouth. I did what I normally do, which was to put them on her face to see what they would look like!

To my surprise, she didn’t immediately tear them off. In fact, she thought it was pretty hilarious-probably because we were laughing, too. All she needed was a mesh shirt and a pair of baggy pants and then she’d look like a little raver club kid. *oontz oontz oontz*

Forrest got a new camera a few weeks ago and is nice enough to leave it out for me to use on occasion. The problem is that I’m getting completely spoiled using it because the pics come out so great. Makes me not want to use my lil point & shoot!

yes, those are her pants on her head

These days Miss Lulu adds more and more things to her repertoire. She claps when singing “Pat a cake”, she mimics sounds back when she hears us sing or say something to her and, along with crawling, she pulls herself up to standing position every chance she gets. This marks the beginning of the end for us, because that means walking and being fully mobile is not far behind! Time to invest in some gates…

She always uses her crib rails to pull herself up and it’s really adorable to walk into her room to see her standing there waiting to be plucked outta there. Even cuter since she learned how to jump up and down on top of it all (even though I know I will have to quell those urges in her eventually)!

The countdown is ON for Lulu’s first birthday! Everyone told us how fast time would fly and sure we were aware of it, but man…it DOES fly by! At every little milestone I would relish in that stage, wishing that she could just stay my tiny little baby and not grow any more. And yet, when she did something new and got a little bit bigger, she would get more and more fun and I know that’s how it will always be.

And while she’s doing so many amazing things lately, the one milestone we’ve been waiting for has finally occurred: CRAWLING!

Since this blog is mainly dedicated to Lulu, a lot of you probably don’t realize that we have another “baby” in the house; of the furry variety. Spooky is my little black cat and was the focus of my affections long before Lulu came along. He has graciously (and probably gratefully) taken to the side of the stage for her to have the spotlight.

He  keeps a respectful distance from her, but has been known to do a drive-by sniff of her when she’s not looking. When she cries, he gets very concerned and meows at us to let us know that she’s crying just in case we can’t hear her. When she naps, he sometimes sleeps on the couch in her room. And when she plays with her toys on the floor, he plays with his as well.

"I is in yur lawndry rubbin' my butts on yur kleen shirts"

Lulu is now at the age where she gets excited to see the cat. Every morning when she gets up, he follows us downstairs and she lets out a squealy “oooh!” when she sees him.

He is very patient with her when she wants to pet him. I try to teach her to gently pet him while all she’d like to do is stick her finger in his ear and grab two little handfuls of his fur. He purrs for a little while, his ears half askew (you can almost hear him sigh impatiently), and then looks at me looking like “can I go now?”

He’s pretty good about staying away from her toys that are scattered all over the floor. Sometimes when she’s in bed I see him cautiously approaching one, tentatively sniffing and bumping his nose against it. Then he goes on his merry way.

I put one of her stacking cups in front of him the other day and he sat up very uncomfortably. He batted at it for a second and looked at me curiously like I was setting him up for something bad. He bolted to avoid trouble.

Don't touch it! It's a trap!

Even though I lavish most of my attention on Lulu, he and I still hang out on occasion. Just like old times.

Lulu and I have been keeping busy for the past few weeks, going for lots of walk and visiting with lots of friends. She is now almost 11 months old (a year old next month, wow!). She has eight teeth, 4 up top and 4 on the bottom. It’s cute to see her experiment with biting things; she’ll daintily hold a Cheerio in between her thumb and forefinger and bite it in half.

Here’s a little video of Lulu that her auntie Chrissy took of her at her grandparent’s house. You can see all of those crazy teeth in her mouth!

She has basically weaned herself  from her bottles and is down to a bottle when she wakes up and one before bed, although the bedtime bottle is starting to fall by the wayside. She’s doing great eating “real” food and I try to add something new to her menu every week. And she has spoken her first word, which is “hi”! We’re still working on “mama” and we’re getting close to saying “wow”!

As for crawling, she really has no interest. It’s not a matter of not being able to, because she absolutely knows how to go from sitting to her hands and knees, she can get up into sitting from laying flat on her back-she just doesn’t want to. Her new fascination is pulling herself up to stand. But I’m usually what she uses to pull herself up by whatever means necessary-whether it’s grabbing my shirt collar or a handful of hair!

Everyday I marvel at how great this little girl is. I feel like I’m going to jinx something by saying it out loud but she continues to amaze me (and everyone else!) with how happy and good she is. Last night we had a large group of people over for a while and she had an audience of about 8 people sitting around her and she charmed the pants off of all of them!