Bliss of Life

Today I made my 36th trip around the sun.  The day started with breakfast in bed and ended with a movie enjoyed with my two favorite Mungkornpanich men.  The funniest thing about my 36th birthday is that I had to check our flicker archives to see what I did for my 35th birthday.  (The memory is already going.)

This time last year was such blurr, with a new baby, nursing brain fog and all the sleep that slipped right through the cracks of my nights.  I’m kind of surprised I remember the things I do, like where I put the keys and the baby, who is really more of toddler now.  Can you believe it?  When did that happen?

I have lots of fun pictures of Bean lately, but no gumption to figure out how to post them, so until I do, you’re just going to have to trust me when I say that they are great and that Lily is adorable in them.

We’re busy folks over here.

Bipedal Locomotion

Lily is working on her walking skills.  Today at the grocery store she didn’t want to be in the carrier or the cart.  She wanted to walk.  She put one hand on the side of the grocery cart and helped me push it through the store.  When we were finished checking out she grabbed my wallet and walked away by herself.  No lie.

Language

One of her favorite words right now is THIS.  It sounds more like Dees.  She says it when she is playing or investigating something new.  For some reason I keep thinking that my brother, Christopher, used to say this too, but I’m not sure.  Memory is slippery.  She also likes to say Mama a lot.  It usually comes out like Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma-Ma.  She says Papa occasionally, when coerced, and I think she knows that Ben LOVES it when he hears it.  But lately she is calling Me and Ben Mama.  I’m not so sure I like that…

Food

I am happy to report that Bean’s soy yogurt and hemp milk days are coming to an end.  She still eats soy yogurt and drinks hemp milk, but she also eats bananas, lentils, mung beans and rice, gluten-free crackers, berries (occasionally), smoothies, oatmeal, black beans, eggs, Chinese broccoli, and raisins.  She loves the raisins.

Favorite things to do

She loves music.  She dances when she finds a song with a good beat or at least anything from the 80s.  She likes to clap along with music or snap her fingers.  She can’t really snap, but she saw me do it, so she mimics the motions and it is so freakin’ cute.  Clapping is one of her few ways of communicating.  She’ll point and clap and say, “Ooooo, Ooooo”  when she sees something she likes.  Sometimes, she’ll clap when she sees us bending over her little hammock to pick her up or when she nurses.  Her compliments to the chef, I guess. Speaking of food… she’s started dropping food to Godiva, our family dog, while she eats her own meal.  Sometimes she drops rejected green beans and carrots other times she happily shares her lentils–one bite for Lily, one bite for Godive.  It’s kind of sweet. She also likes to hold onto the cabinet door handles in the kitchen and and shake back and forth, pulling her weight against the tot locks Ben installed.  So far they are holding up.  And this list would be incomplete if I didn’t include her insatiable need to hug the pets.

Toddlerhood

She is definitely in it.  It being her toddler years.  She spends a lot of time feeling FRU-STAT-ED.  And she has good reason.  She’s working on balance and movement and growing teeth and inches everywhere, while trying to communicate even though her language developement is way behind her mental development.  It’s a lot for such a little body, which is why she has us.

Bean had her 1 year appointment with the pediatrician today.  The doctor gave her a once over and declared her to be a perfect baby.

Her 12 month stats are…

Head circumference:  17.75 inches

Length:   29.5 inches

Weight:  17.06 lbs

Yup, she’s a perfect baby.

And now for some birthday picks!

Here are some bonus picks of Lily eating lunch yesterday and enjoying a good book.

With a lot of help, prayers, tears of joy and loss and cursing (way too much cursing) we went from here…

(Birthday picture)

to here…

(First birthday pictures)

And she took her first steps today!  What a year!

Lily gave me a sweet little kiss.

It was the best gift ever.

Her first birthday is days away.  Last night Ben and I were talking about birthday cake.  I weighed the options: making cupcakes or ordering a vegan cake from a well know vegan/vegetarian bakery.  I thought it was necessary to say, “Whatever we have, she isn’t actually going to eat it.”

Without looking up from his computer Ben said, “No, she’ll throw it up.”

This is true.

She’s still trying to figure out the ins-and-outs of chewing.  Anything that isn’t pureed usually comes back up.

Moments after I finished typing this post Ben announced that Lily wanted nothing to do with her usually feast of soy yogurt and pureed vegetables for dinner.  All she wanted to eat were things she could practice chewing:  chopped up bananas, little bits of a gluten-free breadstick.

That may be the case, but she still isn’t eating cake.

Also, you may notice a brown, furry,  little bunny sitting with her inside the wagon in both of the above pictures.  He is referred to as Night Rider Bunny in our house.  We call him Night Rider Bunny because of the sound he makes when his belly is squeezed.   It’s supposed to sound like a particular variety of rabbit, but instead it sounds just like the intro music for the Night Rider television show. It’s kind of eerie, but if you grew up in the 80s, the intro music for KIT was well known.  So known that my baby’s bunny can now channel Kit and whiplash me back into 1982 where there were braces and homework and Friday nights that had, had, had to be something–a slumber party, or an all night phone call–because they couldn’t be dates or boy/girl parties yet.

That could have been more than a million and a half years ago.

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Yeah, it’s comming.  She now has expectations about how things should be, like if the baby gate is open and she discovers this, under no circumstances does she think it is acceptable for mama to close it.   Closing the gate = tears and screams.  She is also equally insulted when I don’t let her pilfer through the cabinets and toss all the previously contained items to the kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom floor.  Diaper changes are now scream sessions, unless she is still half asleep.

On the plus side, because there is always a plus side.  She now gives hugs, full on hugs.  They bring me to tears with their sweetness.  And she understands the concept of having an audience and how to play to it, which usually involves smiles and waves.  She talks almost nonstop.  We don’t really know her language, but she has one.  And it is adorable.  Today she plopped her body next to mine on the futon and snuggled with me while I read two books.

It just keeps getting better and better.

Lily’s two front teeth.

Ben was right.  She was teething last week, but I was also right (darn).  She is also starting to transition from 2 to 1 nap a day.  It’s a long nap, but I’m having trouble readjusting my schedule.  We had a good thing going before.  I would get up and within an hour or two it was time for her morning nap.  I would eat and take a shower.  Now hours and hours go by and I’m hungry and stinky and watching for any sleepy signs.

Right now I’m sick.  Lily’s teeth still haven’t cut through.  Ben has been doing double duty because Lily hasn’t been sleeping well and all I can do is hang out on the couch or the futon.

Here are some pictures of Lily’s latest developmental stage.  She is learning about spacial orientation.  This week she took her books out of the bookshelf and crawled inside.

I was resting on the futon, until I noticed the room was really quiet.  When I sat up I didn’t see her anywhere, which freaked me out.  The room is blocked off with baby gates.   She shouldn’t be able to get out, unless she has some fancy baby-gate-opening skills.  I didn’t put it past her.   I looked around the corner of the closet and found her just like this.  She was so proud of herself.

The next day she put herself in this box.

And proceeded to play with her playgym.

Then there was the usual party time with papa.

Woohoo!

Lily will make her afternoon nap disappear!

Poof!

Seriously.  Poof?

The past two days she has completely skipped her afternoon nap.  She looked at me like I had two heads when I tried bouncing her to sleep in her little hammock.  Ben thinks it’s because she is teething.  I’m not so sure.  She didn’t seem all that cranky or tired.

What do you think?

Oh, she also figured out how to open the kitchen cabinets today.  That was her first trick.  So I see more baby proofing in our near future.

I’ve fallen behind again.  Bean turned 9 months and then 10 months, and I didn’t even mention it.

Today she is 10 months and 10 days.  In her old, baby age she can wave, clap (but she has been on clapping strike for the past two weeks), take toys away from smaller babies, say ma-ma really slow, call for Godiva, whisper papa at just the right moment, give kisses when she wants to, wipe unwanted puppy slobber from her arms and hands (she has never done after from Godiva’s affections, only my brothers 8 week old puppy), mimic almost anything we show her, crawl up stairs, climb step ladders, dance to anything with a beat, shake her head no and at times say no while shaking her head, play by herself, talk to herself, walk the perimeter of the room using furniture and walls to stabilize her, feed herself (even though she chooses not to), feed Godiva lettuce (She ripped off little pieces of lettuce for Godiva.  No one showed her how to do it.), use her play gym as a walker, pinch, turn the pages of her books, drink from her sippy cup all by herself, drink from a straw, crawl up the playscape at our neighborhood park, play games that involve her papa flying her around the room, plopping her on the futon so she can crawl over to me, wiggling and panting in anticipation of the next airplane ride with papa, she can cry through an entire diaper change, squeal with delight at the sight of something that pleases her, become upset with me if she almost falls while I have my hand on her,  and lift my blues with a single smile.

She is wonderful.