Fun times

Shortly after my last post, Juliana started full fledged walking (Friday, January 11th). Walking across the floor without falling, and now she moves FAST. Most of the time she starts going a bit too fast and will lose her balance, but she springs back up and keeps going. She enjoys carrying things while she's walking: socks, rings, links, toys, her piano, buckets, dirty clothes, etc.

She has started trying to pick up multiple items in one hand. For instance, yesterday morning, she managed to grab 3 links in her right hand.

She is becoming more conversationally vocal. If you ask her a question, she'll say "Uh", "Ah", "Da", "Ba", etc back to you. She's also been using the syllables to describe things around her. For example, this past weekend we were at Brian's grandparent's for our annual butchering and his Dad's boxer, Oscar, was there. Every time she saw him, she would say "Da.. da... da... da..." and sometimes this was accompanied with pointing. The other "trick" she did, was to sit on the little booster seat that was strapped to a normal adult chair, lean over the side, and drop a cheerio. Then she would say "Ah, ah, ah, ah" while pointing at it, and would look at the Cheerio, then at me, then back to the cheerio, etc. She refused to eat, until I picked up the Cheerio (no, I didn't let her then eat it). But then she'd grab another cheerio and repeat the process. I decided that she was full at that point in time so lunch was over.

Last week, she was thrilled to be a day care every single day. She would be jumping in my arms to be put down, and then would go toddling off to play with something while I filled in the book with her schedule and put her food away in the fridge. She likes to walk away to pick up a toy or something, then come running back and grab my legs (or any other adult's legs) in a bear hug, throw her head back, and bounce up and down while squealing, shrieking, or babbling. This normally only means "Up!" when she's whining/crying.

She has been nursing for a VERY short time. Like maybe 2 minutes. Then she's done, ready to go play with something or explore her surroundings. At first, I was nervous about this, thinking that her sleeping habits were directly related to how much food she was getting, but then when I started strongly encouraging her to keep nursing, she'd get nippy. Not fun. So I finally decided, okay, when she's done, she's done. And it doesn't appear to affect her that much at night. Last night (knock on wood), she slept an almost 8 hour stretch! Of course, Brian and I still woke up in the interim, and then took awhile to go back to sleep due to coughing and sniffling (thanks for the cold Juliana!), but oh well.

Her next two teeth have erupted through the gum. They haven't come up fully yet, but she now has 8 teeth!

Yesterday, I heard her wake up a bit around 6:50 am, but she didn't cry out, so I thought I'd lay in bed until my alarm went off at 7 am, or she started crying. She started fussing around 7, so I went into get her so she could nurse and she had turned her mobile on. Somehow, she stretched up as far as she could and pressed the "heartbeat" button to turn her mobile on...

She has started to pick up the baby sign for "milk" which is opening and closing your fist like you were milking a cow. One evening when I was trying to nurse her, she was very hungry, but couldn't be patient enough for the flow to start, so she kept popping off, crying and pumping both of her fists in the sign for "milk." I tried not to laugh, but I kept telling her, "Yes, I know you want milk, but you have to do some work first!" We're trying to be a bit more consistent with doing the signs for "Daddy" and "Mommy", in addition to keeping with the signs for "eat", "all-done", and "bath." I read that this time in her development, she'll start developing more short term memory and remember things from a week ago and start imitating it.

Other than that, she's an extremely happy baby (how'd we get so lucky?!), and we are enjoying everyday more and more. Her cold was only the second really bad cold that she's gotten (knock on wood again), and it's probably because she got tired from going to day care full time. But she definitely seems adjusted now!

There's a lamp beside the twin bed in her room. We use the twin bed as a changing table. So I had stripped her down for her nightly bath, and she started pulling the lamp down. She was absolutely thrilled with seeing her distorted reflection on the curved piece, and then proceeded to flip it over to investigate the light bulb.

From butchering this weekend:

 Monday morning I was trying to feed her breakfast, and first off, she had just nursed so she probably wasn't very hungry to begin with, but it seemed like the only way I could get her to sit there so I could eat my breakfast, was to allow her to play with one of the lids to her bowl. She would put the lip of the lid in her mouth, then flip the lid up so it covered her face and would look at me through it. Who knows what she was thinking, but she was absolutely thrilled with the trick, and I couldn't stop laughing!