Beebop-a-Lula

“Little wonder
You little wonder, you”

Lulu is now full-on walking! She is doing great on her own, although sometimes appears wobbly like a drunken sailor. We were always so worried about her walking around on our brick floors while she was learning, but no major head trauma has happened thankfully. She’s had a few head bumps and face plants that resulted in a bruised cheek. Luckily that is all.

There is one member of the household that doesn’t quite know what to make of her new-found mobility. That would be Spooky. He is used to simply relocating whenever she got close to him, but now she downright chases him! Its so funny to watch, like something you’d see in a commercial or a movie. He tries to seek refuge from her by jumping up on the back of the couch, but she’s so tall now that even when he does she can still touch his feet.

Pretty soon he’ll learn to make himself scarce while she’s running around. Otherwise one day he’ll find himself sitting at a tea party wearing a baby doll dress.

Lately, she has been exhibiting a streak of independence and quite a little temper. It typically coincides with nap or bed time when she is tired, but when she gets mad she either hits or pinches me. I know I should be deterring her from doing so, but I think it’s really adorable. I know that will wear out it’s welcome soon.

Another new skill: when she doesn’t want you to pick her up she straightens her body out and goes limp! Heh, what a bratty little skill to master, right? I know, hard to believe from a little girl with such an angelic little face!

I really like this photo despite the unibrow! Her eyelashes, cheeks and lips make up for it.

And while she still isn’t saying a whole lot of words, when she wants something or wants you to look at something, she has learned to point at it. So…she now points at EVERYTHING, which helps with communication, even though occasionally convoluted.

lil pointer

Baby Frazier version 2.0 update

We’re coming into home stretch waiting for the arrival of baby 2.0. Thankfully this pregnancy has been incident free. Six weeks (or less) to go and we are heinously (mentally) unprepared for the new arrival, although physically I am ready! The waiting and wondering is the hardest part.

Since Lulu was deemed underweight by her doctor at her 1 yr. check up, we had to go back for a weight check today.

Today:
weight: 20 lbs. 12 ozs.
height: 33″

That’s an increase of about 2 lbs. and 2 inches. So, she’s doing great!

“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.

Since both of her parents have iPhones and are constantly using them, it’s rare when Lulu can get her hands on one of our phones. This particular day while sitting with Daddy, she got her hands on both of them. And she was actually successfully called her Auntie Amelia!

We figure we’ll get her her own phone for her 2nd birthday.

No, I’m not serious.

Even though we don’t have a large, grassy backyard like some families do, we are lucky enough to have the Salem Common just down the street to go to when we want to sit in the grass under a tree and watch life go by.

Since our doctor’s appointment last week revealed that the little miss is slightly underweight, it has been my mission to feed this child as much as she will tolerate. In between reading That’s Not My Monster (3-4 times in a row) and singing the Alphabet song for the umpteenth time that day, I have been shoveling food into this kid’s mouth.

She starts out strong in the morning. Breakfast is never a problem and she isn’t too picky: cereal, scrambled eggs & toast, pancakes and Eggo’s. She usually destroys whatever I put in front of her. Lunch starts to be a problem since all the foods she used to like (chix sticks and Graduates raviolis) she will no longer eat. She will eat any kind of pasta with butter and cheese, real cheese ravioli, grilled cheese (sensing a theme here? Cheese rules all…) and roast beef sandwiches.

Any kind of vegetable has been the enemy until just recently. She will eat peas now. She loves them. Otherwise, I’ve been sneaking veggies in any way I can: I put sweet potatoes in her pancakes, broccoli bits in her grilled cheese and I got garden veggie cream cheese for her toast/bagels and to put on crackers.

Fruit has never been a problem. She eats the basics: peaches, pears, mandarin oranges, watermelon and today discovered that she likes white seedless grapes. She still shies away from the berries, but she doesn’t mind yogurt that has berries in it.

I know that it will take patience on my part to open up this girl’s palette to eat a larger variety of foods, but we’ll get there!