Still waiting...

Well, Lily's three new teeth are not so much teeth as they are pink little bumps in her mouth. Seriously. Still waiting for those teeth to come all the way through. This is the slowest teething process ever. Her cousin, Evie, started pushing a tooth through the same day Lily's started to show. Now Evie has two little teeth poking through and Lily has...well...pink little bumps in her mouth.

On the flip side, she is SO grown up in other ways. I think she says a new word every couple of minutes or so. She can babble along for hours and a large portion of it seems to be recognizeable words. Or, I'm so tuned in to her babble that I recognize the words. Either way, it is very entertaining.

She has also taken to coloring and painting lately. A girl still after Momma's heart! Here we are at a preschool party at church painting frog rocks. (Ours promptly fell apart-but the process was cute!)

We are also discovering that she really only needs to see us do something once and she can mimic it-or figure out things we don't want her to figure out. Any time a cabinet door, refrigerator door or dishwasher is open, she wants to "HEP!" close it. You should see the lengths we go to in order to keep her from seeing how to lock and unlock or turn on the dishwasher. A couple of weeks ago, Gram (my mom) took the tupperware lids out of Lily's cabinet and put one cheerio on each one. The idea was to keep her occupied with different shapes and colors. Now, almost every time Lily is in the kitchen she goes to her cabinet, pulls out the lids and waits for her cheerios, or goldfish, or crackers...and yes, her hair does typically resemble this every morning. "Good Morning Crazy Hair!"

Pearl

Yes, it only took 17 months and 12 days, but there is finally, FINALLY a glimmer of a tooth in Lily's precious little mouth. She has been working her tongue against her bottom gums tirelessly lately and for good reason. Of course, I am assuming that if it took this long to get the first tooth, the others will either come in rapid succession or she will only have two by her second birthday. I wonder which it will be?

Chilly Lily!

It's a good thing Lily has her new coat (a Christmas gift from a former student of mine) because it is 25 degrees outside right now...although the weather site chirps that it "feels like 14 degrees!" Nice.

Almost like old times

Today Lily did not get a good nap. She slept for a pretty normal length of time, but I could tell when Pete brought her in the room that she was having a very cranky wake up time. So, a couple hours later, Pete went to meet some friends at an Ethiopian restaurant in town (I'll skip anything with curry as a major ingredient!) and I was left with little Miss Crankypants. I asked her if she wanted to go take a nap with mommy and she just kind of nodded in relief.

Off to my room we went. Now, you'll remember that when she was a tiny four-month-old, she only sleep during the day in my bed with me next to her. Now, she usually gets pretty squirrly if we put her up on our bed, so I wasn't sure how this would go. I knew that if she was going to get restless it wouldn't work because that usually involves rolling up next to my stomach and the gigantic scar and still-tender ribs were not going to put up with that! I hoisted her across from my wheelchair to the bed with one arm and pushed myself in after. I lay back and she crawled up on my tummy-uh oh, I thought. Nope, she snuggled her head under my chin, stretched her little body along mine and tucked her hands under my arms for a very hard snooze. It was almost like being mommy again!

Eyeful

Lately, I'm kind of obsessed with Lily's facial expressions and especially her eyes. Her personality is almost too much for her little body to contain right now. It just comes bubbling over into our lives every moment.




She's my angel baby.