Beebop-a-Lula

“She’s a sunflower, she’s my one flower, She’s the flower of my heart.”

It’s been a while since the last update so there’s a bunch of Lulu news to catch up on.

Lulu has grown unbelievably fast recently. She is currently wearing a size 18 months in clothes (pants especially because she is so tall). We’re still working on her pickiness with eating, but in the meantime I’m still supplementing her meals with mushy food.

She almost has all four of her molars grown in (the top two are still lagging behind a little) and I’ve noticed over the past week that she’s got four more teeth toward the front coming in. She has learned where everyone’s eyes, nose & mouth are (we’re working on ears). She likes the nose especially because it goes *honk honk* when she squeezes it. She even knows where her bellybutton is.

We think she’s been going through a crazy growth spurt because she has been sleeping so much lately. She goes to bed around 7:30-8pm and gets up somewhere in the 9-10:30am range (yes, yes…I know I am *extremely* lucky to have a baby that likes to sleep!) and then takes a long nap (1 1/2-2hr) during the day.

Her vocabulary has tripled recently. Before she could only say “hi”. Now she has added “light” (yiiiight), “hi da da” “cracker” and “noooo.”  She also waves to everyone (and anyone) that will potentially pay attention to her. I think half of Salem and the visiting tourists have said hello to her in their travels. She waves to us from her crib in the morning and I even caught her waving to the television this morning.

Even though I don’t have the best singing voice in the world, I sing to Lulu all of the time. The repetition of songs is paying off because we hear her humming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to herself. And the amazing thing is that her pitch is perfect. She absolutely loves music and dances whenever she hears a song she likes. I’m thinking of enrolling her in a toddler singing/music class this fall just for fun.

She’s also making big strides with walking! We’ve been practicing a lot and her balance is getting better everyday. She even took 5-6 steps on her own yesterday, so it won’t be long now before she’s tottering around (a blessing and a curse!). The other day, out of the blue, it occurred to her to climb the stairs. I thought she might climb up to the first landing and sort of get overwhelmed with the whole idea of it. But she climbed the entire flight like a pro without any hesitation. Needless to say, we promptly put up a gate at the bottom of the stairs. Unfortunately the downside of the gate is that Spooky doesn’t understand that he’s a cat and can’t figure out how to jump over the gate…sigh…

Her mischievous side is beginning to emerge as well. She loves to go after Spooky whenever he’s around. She only chases him if he actually bolts, it becomes a game. Most of the time he’ll sit there and tolerate grubby baby hands on him until she loses interest and moves on to the next thing.

Over all she is just so much fun. I really hope her good nature sticks around when her sibling shows up (2 months from now!). I know there will be a lot some adjustment for all of us, but especially for her having to share the attention.

We had some bloggy-type issues, but now they are all fixed.

Stay on the lookout for a big update this weekend.