A little New Year's Bubbly

Lucy's ... second? third? who knows, but one of her early words is certainly "bubbles." Babby babbles "bubbles."



Babby babbles all the time, actually; she's one talkative girl. We just have no idea what she's saying. Which is pretty much our fault, not hers, right? Don't blame the victim!

Here's another; this is more than a month ago now and her crawling has greatly improved, but at first she had the cutest little wiggle-butt crawl; she'd take these tiny little "steps" and her butt would sway back and forth -- those hips were flowing with the motion of the ocean. Usually, she'd crawl as an inefficient-but-ultimately-effective method of getting a disgusting, spit-encrusted dog toy to chew on for herself. Yum -- but hey, who are we to curb her individuality?








Also, we went to the merry-go-round. Lucy was appropriately merry.

"Look, Mom! No hands!"

The Miracle of an early-morning diaper change

So it's 7:19 a.m. 7:19! And I'm sitting here downstairs, alone (or as alone as one can ever be with two cats and two dogs all competing to be within a 12-inch radius of me) listening to Lu's Lullaby mix through the baby monitor. I am a master at the early morning diaper change, my fingers are pure, Desitin-coated gold, I've got the mad mad skillz and said skillz are only improving, it seems.

We don't go into her room anymore during the night, usually...she whimpers in her sleep now and then, and sometimes even wakes and cries for a few minutes, but we don't go in. Recently, though, I've been going in sometime between 5 and 6 a.m. when she wakes and giving her a new diaper, and that usually buys us another hour or so of sleep. But rarely past 6:45 or 7:00. Yesterday, though, 8:00!

I have lots of pictures to share -- Lucy's first carousel ride, perhaps a video of us playing her favorite roll-on-bed-till-puking-is-a-real-possibility game, and other assorted cuteness, but Matthew seems to have secreted away the camera cord in his bat cave, so those will be coming soon.

Hope all who celebrate Christmas have a great one. From a Jew, on the outside, looking in (but happily and not in the creepy way that actually sounds),

M&M&L

Lucy loves reading

Not that she can read... she loves books & being read to. Here she is with a favorite... 'Funny Face.' Personally, I find the character development to be rather lacking, but the baby digs it so there you go... Mostly though, this is another cute cute outfit so I had to take a picture of Lucy wearing it... No more news on the giant gopher teeth yet. But she is just crazy about pulling up to a stand and 'cruising' now. As soon as she sorts the whole balance thing out, she is going to be hard to keep up with.

Gopher teeth

So, little Lulu, you're 15 months old today! Holy cow, this has been quite a month -- so many milestones in these past few weeks! The most significant of which might be that you finally have cut two bottom teeth -- they've just cleared the surface of your gums but aren't really poking too far up yet. As usual, you keep them hidden from sight like they're the crown jewels, but this weekend we finally got our first glimpse of them and yikes! Now I see why you keep them out of sight, babybaby! They're ENORMOUS! Seriously, these are dam-building teeth, teeth to crack walnuts, teeth that can open beer bottles.

But your dad and I were talking about it and the fact is that you're simply so astoundingly, stunningly, amazingly beautiful that this will only serve to even out the playing field so that your peers won't stone you to death for being a witch (or the high-school equivalent: won't slander you on bathroom walls out of jealousy).

(Don't worry, gentler-parents-than-I: I'll make sure this post is deleted before she's old enough to read and be emotionally scarred by it.)

Also, you:

• Crawl! Yippee! Not the belly scoot, not the tiny wiggle-butt (we've still got to get that video posted, one of these days), but a real full-out crawl.
• Want to walk SO BADLY! (And upon reflection, mission accomplished: you DO walk so badly! Ah, ain't grammar fun!) I'm feeling confident about the January 17 bet I've got with dad on this one. Come on, baby, bring me the money!
• Drink from a straw, which makes restaurants about 7% less messy -- and any little bit helps.
• Swim! We went yesterday to the pool with Max, and you were clingy for about 10 minutes, but then you saw the lights! and balloons! and it was all good from that point.
• Puke! You got 5 shots on Saturday, including a flu shot, which kicked your little baby butt. 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, pukey, hot, sad...it wasn't a good night. But you're all better now.
• Smile ALL THE TIME. Oh, your smile. It makes everything, everything, worthwhile.
• Facing forward in the car! I was trying to follow Nicki's advice for as long as possible, but you're a tall one (23 pounds, 32 3/4 inches!) and my car's back seat is unexpectedly cramped, and your little legs were all folded up against the seat. So yesterday we switched you around. Big girl.

Love you lots and lots, gopher girl.

6 string

Hey there. Matthew here. Ain't rapped at ya in a while... and right now I don't have time (Lucy wants me to quit messin' with the computer and pay attention to her.) So here is this photo of Lulu enjoying her dad's guitar strumming. WOW is she ever cute! L8R!

Oh, and:

Happy Hannukah, from Oscar, the sad/surly Hannukah cat.

A new perspective

Guess who learned how to pull up yesterday?!?!

Matthew, that's who! We're all so very pleased for him...at 38 years, we were beginning to think it might never happen, but we're so very proud of him, Lucy and I are. Now, finally, maybe Lucy will be able to stop holding him up as she's had to do for the past several months! You can tell you wish she'd just be able to let him go and be free, but she knows he'd probably just fall over onto his face and she's too kind to do that to her dad.

I jest, I jest. (I do that, sometimes -- the jesting, I mean. I'm a jest-loving kind of gal.) It was really me who learned to pull up. It's a whole new world from up here!

Two teeth coming through on the bottom, by the way. When it rains, it pours.

A tooth, a tooth, our kingdom for a tooth!

This is my new favorite picture, despite the fact that her head has recently been all lubed with baby oil and she's not having a particularly good hair day. Lucy on Black Velvet...so much cuter than Elvis or a sad clown!

I think -- because she still won't let us see her mouth -- that she's finally got one tooth poking through on the bottom. I can feel a sharp little edge in there. Way to go, late bloomer!