Goodbye Mom, Hello Trouble

Lizzy turned 8 months old yesterday. I fear she will be walking by 9 months. Now I must admit I am bragging a bit. I think Liz is very big and strong for her age and she is very clever. She now stands up at the drop of a hat. Yes she needs to use the furniture to do it but hey she is only 8 months old after all. My books are no longer safe on the shelves. She is usually willing to be distracted by her books though. She is content to flip through the pages or chew on the corners for quite a while. The other day she was "reading" her dinosaur book all by herself. By this I mean she was sitting on the floor, holding the book the right way up and flipping through the pages in the right order one at a time with a little pause to look at the pictures on each page. I nearly signed her up for Mensa then and there.

I suspect that Karma is going to attack me soon for thinking that I have produced a super baby. I can't help it though, I think Liz is amazing.

She is also delightfully warm and cuddly. She is dozing off in my lap right now. I can only let her have a mini nap though since Patrick and I are trying to get on board with the whole bedtime routine. I'll fudge it a bit then get back on track. We have had too many nights where she is wide awake until midnight, due in part from letting her have a good long nap in the evening. I don't really like to impose my sleep patterns on her, I feel that her body does a good job of telling her when she ought to be asleep, but if I am too exhausted in the day to properly care for her there is a problem.

It was nice when my Mom was here, she let me nap while Lizzy was awake. Yes I did enjoy her visit fir other reasons too. The underlying problem still exists though. Well, it is time to wake up my little hot water baby. Oh, we went for our first swim since the end of lessons today. It was fun but I missed having the other parents singing along with the songs. It felt distinctly odd to be singing to Liz while everyone else just splashed around or swam there laps. I did it anyway, twice.

Terri

Mommies

My mom arrived for a visit yesterday. It is great having her arround. It had been almost five months since I last saw her and we didn't have much contact in that time since she was in Thailand for four months of it. Lizzy and her get along wonderfully. She is suitably impressed with Lizzy's amzing crawling abilities. Did I mention that in the past week Liz has gone from creeping forward one slow inch at a time to stomping around at full speed on all fours? Well she has! It is a wonderful sight to behold. She is even more of a trouble maker then ever before.

I noticed yesterday that my hairstyle is looking very Vulcan. After just a few minutes in photo shop I am sure you will see the resembalance too. As of Monday Liz has passed the 22 pound mark and she is almost 29 inches long. I love my big girl! She makes excellent car noises, "Brooom brrrrrm." We decided that she needed a car to go along with the noises but we found it nearly impossible to find a simple car for kids under 1 year, so she got a mixer truck. She seems to like it just fine. I will try to get a picture of her with it up soon.

Terri

Baby Bellies

I bought Lizzy her very first bathing suit today. I had to get one from the kids section since they only had one style in the baby department. It is a good thing Lizzy is such a big girl or she would have been stuck in a two piece. It took me all day to figure out why so many of the baby and little girl suits are two pieces. Babies have incredibly cute bellies and they almost never see the light of day. I wanted a cute but modest one piece for my baby. Is that so bad of me? I want to keep her chubby little zerberty belly all to myself. They had at least twice as many two piece suits as one pieces. Yes I am obsessing over this, it just seemed odd to me. You see, I have always thought of a bikini as an adult piece of apparell that can't be worn properly until you have the boobs to hold the top in place. Kind of like strapless dresses. I guess the thing with baby bikinis is it really doesn't matter if they are flashing everyone at the pool. Chances are the baby would rather be naked anyway and most babies are so androginous that if a baby girl is wearing just shorts people would probably assume it is a boy. Well, if lizzy wants to wander around half nude she can do it at home. In public she gets to at least pretend to be modest. Oh and ring the door bell before you barge into my house because that is also the policy I go by.

Terri

Lizzy Toots

My baby is the fartiest person I know. And I know some very flatulant people. Myself included. I don't know if her gassyness is being caused by my diet or her eating style or something else entirly. She farts so much that it wakes her up most nights. Sometimes they are so stinky that I am tempted to just put her in her play pen and leave until the air clears. I think the reason she floats so very well is all the hot air in her belly. She is like a motor boat put putting around in the tub.

In other news, she now inches forward occasionally. Usually she just gets around by rolling and pivoting on her belly. If she wants a toy that is just a bit out of her reach in front of her she now scooches up to it. She has all of the motions of crawling figured out but I guess that it works well enuogh rolling that she doesn't need to. She gets up on her hands and toes and holds it for several seconds like she is doing some sort of baby work out. She also props herself up on one arm and reaches up to get things off of the coffee table and the shelves. She was trying for the ferns yesterday. Maybe she is trying to copy Galidor.

Some days I expect to see her just get up and start walking. I can't believe that she is already seven months old. She talks up a storm, it is amazing to hear her little voice saying Mum. She also says Va, which we take to mean Papa, abuah, ooh, boo, and of course squeeeeel. She has definatly found her "outside" voice. Too bad it is too cold for us to spend any time outside. Whenever I am on the phone with Gramo I let Lizzy listen to her for a bit. Her face just lights up when I put th ephone to her ear and she turns to see where the voice is comming from. A few weeks ago I discouvered that she loves to listen to the radio too. Maybe when swimming lessons are over I should sign us up for a Mommy-Baby dance class. I could use the excersize and she would love the music, dancing, and babies. Actually though she is indifferent to the other kids in swim class. I do need to get her out with other kids more. When spring arrives it will be much easier.

I need to go start bath time now. Hopefully it won't take me two weeks before my next post.

Terri