Just some whining. . .

Have any of you noticed that "Next Blog" button in the upper right hand corner. Sometimes I'm bored and I click that button. Sometimes I run across some really interesting blogs, some of which obviously have quite a readership, and some of which don't, poor bloggers. I mean, I'm sure most bloggers blog mostly for themselves. Still, it's nice to know that you are blogging for someone else's benefit too. In any case, sometimes I also run across some of the stupidest blogs ever. I'm not trying to be judgemental here. I'm not trying to say that my blog is better than anyone's elses. But by all objective measures, these blogs SUCK. I just read one that consisted of entries about how the writer's dog bit her ass, how she did laundry one day, how she hates going to the doctor, how she likes taking tests. All very poorly written. Not at all amusing in a Seinfeldesque "about nothing" kind of way. And this person's blog had comments, and therefore, readers! How can this be??? Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about my readership. I just don't get how some really interesting and well done blogs out there get so little love, while crappy ones do. Maybe they just have very loyal friends. There is no justice in this world!! I hope that I'm not totally blinded by love for my child: HORROR UPON HORROR, what if my blog is as boring and mundane to others as their doing laundry blogs are to me???

Willful, willful, willful!! These days if Lilli doesn't want me to do something, she'll push my hands away and very effectively too. Like if I'm trying to button up the front of her outfit, which she HATES. Conversely, if she WANTS something, sometimes there's not very much I can do to stop her. I have to be pretty quick anyway. She can grab for something so quickly the little rascal.

And I don't know why, but she hates having her diaper changed now. She used to love it, maybe because it was something different and because she got to see the mobile that is above her changing table. Now it is an unwelcome interruption to playing and as soon as I put her down on the table she starts to throw a fit. Of course, that is nothing compared to the crying that starts when I try to put her clothes on. If she's changed this much in nine months I can't wait for her to be a teenager :)

But she's still cute as ever, don't get me wrong. Most of the time she's a happy little girl. She's so funny: she'll do something wondeful like make a song start on a toy or bang some blocks together, and she'll at me as if to say, "wow! aren't I amazing???" SO pleased with herself. She's still not crawling yet either but she is getting more and more adept at moving around. She can turn all the way around in a circle on her bum and she can really stretch out with her arms and belly to the ground, get her desired object, and then push herself back to a sitting position with her prize in hand. It is so funny watching her try to get an object just out of her reach. She'll be all stretched out and her face is so strained and determined and she'll make little grunty noises and wiggle her bum. Sometimes all of that works and she finally manages to get it, and then boy is she proud. Sometimes I'm jealous watching her: if only I could be so proud and pleased for something so simple. Ah, the life of a babe.

It's been a WHOLE WEEK since I posted, I can't believe it. Maybe I'm running out of things to say about the cute things Lilli is doing. . .NOT! HA HA HA. We've just been busy I guess. We went to Bob's family's lake cabin this last weekend and Lilli got lots and lots of attention. There was no shortage of baby love. Lilli loves looking at the lake and watching all the dogs run around. We were thinking of taking her swimming this time but it was kind of cool so we decided not to after all.

She's continued to say "uh oh", and I have been vindicated by the vast majority, who agree that she is in fact saying "uh oh." It is too cute for words. It makes me wonder though how much language she understands and is just not capable of saying. "Uh oh" is easy because it's more intonation than actual vowel or consonant sounds. Duyen is the lone skeptic, but even she doesn't doubt that Lilli's saying "uh oh." She is just in doubt over whether she understands what it means. BUT, I have noticed she says it mostly when she's dropped something. So there, Duyen. :)

She's also making this funny "ne ne ne ne" sound. She's been doing it for awhile now and I'm still not exactly sure what it means. It's very fast: kind of like she's rolling her tongue to make the sound or chattering her teeth. I can't duplicate it. Sometimes she does it when she's upset and sometimes she's just wiggling away, happy and noisy, making little rolly "ne ne ne's."

We've also noticed that she is getting a bit of a temper. MAYBE this is due to her having a touch of red in her hair, although Bob's mom and grandma claim he was the sweetest more darlingest baby EVER. In any case, if she decides something is not to her liking, or she is mad I took something away, sometimes she'll let out this yell that rises and rises in volume and pitch until the finale which consists of a drawn out shriek. But then it's over and she seems to forget she was mad. Maybe it's a good thing if it gets her frustration out. Although this morning I took away a video game controller and she didn't shriek but she held onto that cord and pursed her mouth with the most determined and stubborn look imaginable. Hmmmm. I think she has a mind of her own already.

Anyway, I could go on and on but I won't overwhelm you (yet). Maybe I'll catch up some more tomorrow.

Nine months old!

Lillian had her nine month check up today and there weren't any surprises. She now weighs 23 lbs and 14 oz and is 30 1/2" tall and her head has a circumference of 18". She had one shot and she just looked shocked at first and then when the nurse pulled the needle out she let out a cry of outrage but it didn't last very long, thank goodness. I am in dread of her crying after shots after the first time she had them. Anywho, she is still in the 99th percentile and is in great health!

Lilli is becoming very strong willed. It used to be if she were playing with something, and we didn't want her to play with it, we could just replace the object with some other interesting object. It was pretty much all the same to her. Now, she knows the difference and if she has something we don't want her to have (perhaps because it is TOXIC or could POKE HER EYE OUT) it's not such an easy thing to pry it from her hot little hands. She'll put up QUITE the protest. For example, this afternoon I was drinking a juice from a bottle, and because she saw me drinking from it she wanted to drink from it too. So I emptied it and gave her the bottle for a bit while I was watching her. However, when it was time to take it away boy was she ever mad. And she wouldn't be appeased with something else either. Nope, she wasn't done with that bottle and she wanted it back.

And, for awhile now she's known that if she drops an item, it hasn't just disappeared. Now it's on the floor! The cute thing she's doing now though is that when she drops an item she'll kind of say "uh oh!" She might not actually enunciate those syllables, but she'll do the intonation of "uh oh." Some people think I'm making this up and hearing with the doting ear of a mother. But really! It really sounds like "uh oh!"

We also spent like fifty bucks on this enormous toy that is a huge block with all these different features. You put blocks in it and it plays music and spins around and on and on. What's so funny is that when the music comes on she gets so happy and does this little wiggly jig. That's worth the fifty bucks alone. Too bad the music is so freaking annoying though. Why is all baby music so obnoxious? Can't they invent some good baby music??? At least she likes it and I guess that's why it's for babies. . . :)

Getting dry. . .

I don't know why this pose strikes me as being so funny but it does.

Bath time. We didn't have her rubber ducky so we had to improvise with a water bottle.

I see you!

So many toys, it's hard to choose.

Later, playing with Dad.

Getting comfortable.

Getting comfortable.

very awake. . .

Still not sleepy. . .

Getting ready for a nap but she doesn't look ready to sleep does she?

I had to rescue her from her tummy. . .it's not her favorite position.

My mom took these at Lummi. She took, literally, fifty pictures. So I had to cull them down quite a bit. If you want to see more, I have more. Here she's having some tummy time with her favorite thing: two hard objects that make a lot of noise when you bang them together.

Lilli woke me up this morning my stoking my face and saying "ma! ma!" Not a terrible way to wake up, but to be honest, I'd have rather slept a bit more. She's not always so gentle though. Sometimes she pokes me in the eye, or scratches my face, or feels in my mouth for my teeth when she wants me to wake up and play with her. The other morning I was having a hard time waking up but Bob was awake and encouraging her and she was enjoying trying to rouse me from my very comfortable slumber. It was kind of cute though, even to a very sleepy, though biased, person. She kept pulling my hair back and cocking her head to try to look at my face and she'd smile at me when I cracked an eye open.

She's also has this winning way lately of putting her hands on the back of her head, in a kind of swimsuit model pose. I have no idea what this means or indicates. Maybe she has just discovered the back of her head. It also kind of reminds me though of Japanese anime: the characters, when chagrined, always make that pose with their hand on the back of their heads. Probably only Schuyler will know what I mean, but since he never reads my blog he will never get to appreciate my striking insight. :)

Finally, a nice smile!

But the amusement quickly fades. She is very discriminating.

Ha ha ha! That's so funny! Probably my mom was making the stuffed tiger talk. She thinks that's pretty hilarious.

Closer up. Notice the teeth.

Very serious here.

Good view of the teeth :)

Close up.

But of course her favorites are the ones that aren't hers. Here we've tricked her with a phone without batteries.

MY BALL!

Play time! She has SO MANY TOYS.

Now she's posing!

Now she recognizes the camera. . .

Dad took this series while at Lummi over the weekend. She's a little unsure of the camera here.

Wow, it's been a long time since I published anything! A whole week! A lot has happened :) I wanted to write this last night but then a car ran into the telephone pole across the street at like sixty miles an hour and knocked the whole pole into the yard across the street. So we didn't have power. So no DSL. Ah, what a tenuous connection we have to the internet. And what a great neighborhood we live in.

ANYWAY, Lilli is ever and ever closer to crawling, but not there yet. She scoots around very sneakily. It is a slow process and so I don't notice it until she's got somewhere I'd never think she'd get to. So far she has spilled a can of soda on herself, gotten into my knitting needles and waved one around, and many many times gotten ahold of wires and cords. Once she got a breast pad (clean) and obviously thought she wasn't supposed to have it and so took unusual glee and delight in waving a piece of cotton around. She seems to like anything she isn't supposed to have. Although yesterday she was very happy when she discovered her whole basket of toys and spilled them out everywhere :)

This morning she was really funny when I was giving her a bath. I was just finishing up and I had drained the bath (in the sink) and I had the water running so I could rinse her. I had turned to the side a second to lay her towel out and in that split second she got ahold of the sprayer and had squeezed it. . . right into her face! She looked so surprised! And then she did it again! So funny! But then she's been REALLY grumpy lately every time I try to change her clothes or her diaper. This morning after her bath I tried to put her clothes on her and she just BAWLED. She acted like she was in such pain and just threw herself onto the bed and cried and cried. I have no idea what was going through her head.

Then yesterday we went to Alfy's with Bob's family for Theresa and Pat's birthdays and Lilli was putting on a show. She loves trying to drink water from a cup and she was getting it all over herself, but each time she wanted more she'd do this little fake cough: ah ah. I wonder if she thinks thats the proper way to ask for water? I need to start to try talking to her more during the day. After awhile you kind of forget to do it.

Well, that's all for now. I'm sure I'll remember other things from the past week. We went to Lummi for the weekend and my mom and dad took a ton of pictures as usual so hopefully I will have some of those to publish soon.

I know I've been kind of tooth obsessed lately, but here is another tooth entry! I've been griping about those teeth but I have found that she is making a lot more different sounds now, probably because she can use her tongue against those upper teeth. This morning while I was half asleep and she had her finger in my mouth and was poking around, I swear she said "taste"! I'm sure she didn't mean it, but it gave me a kind of a surprise in my delirious state. At least she's making different vowel sounds and esses and tees!

arggh. Those cute little teeth make it hard to feed her too. She keep biting the spoon and won't let go, not unlike Atticus with one of his favorite toys. She really get a vise like grip going. Well, hopefully soon she will be feeding herself and she can bite the spoon all she wants. . .

Lilli's new teeth are very cute (the top ones have a huge gap!) but they can also be very vexing. I thought before that just the bottom teeth hurt when she bit me, but today she bit me with both sets and OUCH!! I didn't mean to yell but when your poor little nipple is gnashed into by those sharp little things you really can't help it. She just looked at me, suprised, like "what??" At least she doesn't do it on purpose anymore. When she first got teeth she would do it just because she could and because she liked the reaction. Then she stopped doing it when I read about this technique where as soon as you sense the baby is about the bite you (which I could as she would always do it at the end of a feeding when she was getting bored) you pull her into you rather than away so that she can't breathe easily and so let's go. (Was that a totally confusing run on sentence??) Now I think she does it because those big teeth get in the way! When she hasn't latched on well she'll try to get a better grip and here come the chompers. I'm actually surprised that she doesn't bite more andor that I don't feel the teeth at all when she's nursing normally. Quite a big relief actually. I dreaded the coming of those teeth.

Tonight, a couple of hours after I put her to bed, she woke up and so I went in to her and she was doing the strangest little cry. I swear, she sounded just like a sheep!: baaa baaa baaa. Usually she quiets right away when she sees me too, but I don't know why she just kept baaing. Maybe she was still half asleep. As soon as I nursed her though she came to her senses and was very pleased to see me and drifted back to snoozyland. Which is where I am heading as well . . .

Lilli stood up all by herself yesterday! She was in the crib and she just held on to the bars and pulled herself up, like it was no big deal and she'd been doing it all this time! I spent today trying to get her to duplicate the feat but it hasn't happened yet. There must have been a fortuitous alignment of her feet :) Maybe she will skip crawling and just go to walking. She's closer to crawling but not there yet. She spent a lot of time today straining forward with all her might to get at things, and I kept saying "try to crawl!" but she just kept straining and wriggling until she got it. If I put her in the crawling positiong she'll rock for awhile but eventually splat down and stretch out because she has a longer reach then. Maybe someday she'll just have an epiphany. Who knows.

In other news, our house is cleaner! There was awhile there that I didn't think the house would ever be very clean again. Lilli just wouldn't let me put her down and I was feeding her constantly, but I realized the other day how much time I have again, at least as compared to when she was first born. Then there was awhile where I had time to clean but I would have to sacrifice time with Lilli and I wanted to prioritize Lilli over a clean house. Now I feel I can have both. . .what a relief! I'm not saying the house is perfect, far from it, but Lilli and I can do our own things but co exist in harmony. She's so much more independent now, but she still constantly looks around while she's playing to make sure I'm still there and hates it when I leave the room. Someday maybe she'll get over that and Bob and I will be able to have a date night :) I'm holding out hope. . .

She's getting smarter. I used to be able to trick her with certain things but she's figuring it out. Like the phone. She loves the darn phone! In fact, she throws a fit these days when I take it away from her. It used to be that I could put it out of sight and she's forget about it in a bit. Now it's getting harder to make her forget her precious phone. Also, when she drops a toy I used to be able to be lazy and just substitute it with another one. Now, I actually have to GET UP and get THAT toy.

She's also using her smartiness to sidestep crawling. Not crawling yet. But if I put something out of reach, instead of crawling to it if she's on an area rug she'll just bunch up the rug towards her and miraculously the toy comes too. Whoopee! She then gets that very pleased look. Of course, while cute, I have left the room a couple of times thinking that everything bad was out of her reach, only to come back a few seconds later and find her tearing up the newspaper or playing with the video game controllers. Speedy little devil.

Did I mention that my shoulders hurt like the dickens?? That darn baby weighs 23 lbs! I guess that's what I should expect. But actually, I think it was from nursing in bed a few nights ago and sleeping funny on my shoulder. Of course, it's not like my shoulder is getting a break now or anything, so it's not getting better very fast. I love my chubby healthy little girl but sometimes I wish I had a delicate little flower of a baby :)

Oh, and we went shopping yesterday. And guess who got all the stuff! Seriously, Bob gets so disgusted with me when I enter the world of Gymboree. They have a sort of power over me that makes me forget the closetfuls of clothes Lilli has at home and the clothes are so dang cute I pretty much ignore the price tag. But they were having a sale!! So everything had to be a good deal right?? If it had been just me I could have stayed there a long time going through the racks. As it was, I was hampered by civilians, so I had to zero in on the items I already had my eye on via the website. Probably a good thing as I still managed to spend $80. But, on the CUTEST OUTFITS EVER. Seriously. I will post pictures. We also went to Babies R Us and bought this huge toy thing that is supposed to be really interactive and fun and you put these blocks in and plays music and so on and so on. Well we set up that toy and all Lilli wanted to do was climb it and make it fall over on herself. We tried to show her how she could put the blocks in the holes (fun!!) but then all she wanted to do was play with the diaper genie refills. I wonder sometimes if we are buying the clothes and toys for Lilli or for us??

Now she notices the camera. . .

Mmm, mirror tastes good. . .

She's looking at herself in a little mirror here.

My grandma took these at her house the other afternoon. She loves those green cups to pieces.

Lilli's been really grumpy these last couple of days. I think her teeth must be bothering her. All four new ones have poked through now. Anyway, today she was just fussy fussy and wanted to nurse a lot more than usual. It's probably comforting. And she wanted to be cuddled a lot and she slept a lot more. Poor girl! At least she hasn't been feverish or anything like that. However, when something bothers her these days she's taken to doing this high pitched scream. Very unpleasant. I try to speak to her in a whisper after she does it to encourage a quieter tone of voice, but I'm not sure she gets it. She just looks at me like "why are you whispering?" She's also becoming very independent. Lately she doesn't want to bed and wants to do it herself, but when I try and let her she just flings the food all over and doesn't seem to actually put the spoon in her mouth. So I had an epiphany today and gave her another spoon to play with and tried to get bites in with my spoon while she was distracted. That seemed to work.

At the same time though, in the just the last week she's gotten even more responsive. I think the main thing is the hand clapping. It has progressed to a happy thing. If she's amused or happy she claps her hands, and it's so fun to see her figure out how to express herself so other people can understand. They're not just hands hitting together! They can tell the world she's happy! It pleases her so much that usually when she claps she giggles along which she does a lot more now too. I can also get her to clap by clapping myself so she's imitating me too. I think I may be able to get her to start waving bye bye if I do it a lot in front of her.

We haven't had too much progress in the crawling department since her last developments, but I don't want to push her. I figure she'll figure it out when she's ready. ok, off to bed.

Today has been an exciting day for Lilli. We had a whole bunch of family over for dinner, which was very nice, and we were all sitting around encouraging her to crawl. No go. She tried awfully hard and she did the side splits but she just didn't seem to get it. Then, like twenty minutes later we were putting her to bed and sitting together on the bed and trying to get her to crawl again. All of sudden, it was like a lightbulb went off and she started to wriggle and lift her bottom and there she was crawling backwards! When not twenty minutes ago she couldn't figure out how to get her bottom in the air! We were very excited and cheering her on, but she didn't have a lot of incentive to go forward, so (this might sound weird, but we were trying to think of what would be the biggest incentive) I got on the other side of the bed and got out the trusty old boobie and she IMMEDIATELY tried to scramble in its direction. She didn't manage quite crawling forward but by wriggling and sheer force of will she did manage to get quite a bit closer to it. By then though she was so frustrated with her goal so close that we gave in and helped her the rest of the way. Then she drifted off the sleep. . .

I think I will try to get her crawl towards the phone tomorrow. She LOVES the phone. I was on the phone a lot today and it made her so mad that I got to play with it and she didn't. When I finally gave it to her she was so happy and pleased and just turned it over and over in her hands, gazing lovingly at the buttons and occasionally giving the antenna little kisses. What she loves best though is to talk on the phone. If I'm on the phone, usually she gets fussy because I'm not paying her all of my attention. If I get the person I'm talking to though to talk to her she immediately gets quiet and listens really hard and starts to smile and then usually eventually tries to eat the place the voice is coming from. Yesterday she talked to my grandma calling from Japan and was so focussed on that phone and smiled so big and kept saying "ah!". Then my Aunt Linda talked to her this morning: Lilli was crying because I was talking so I put her on and immediately the biggest smile and then a rare laugh! But then boy was she mad when I had to take it back. She doesn't understand sharing yet.

I will keep you updated on any new crawling developments. I bet she's crawling in a week!

Lilli has been terribly difficult to get to go to sleep these last couples of nights. She's just so revved up for some reason. If anything, she's too happy and excited to go to sleep. I'm not exactly sure what is making her happy and excited, and far be it from me to want to stop her from being happy and excited, but I also want her to go to sleep! She'll just bounce and bounce and laugh and wriggle until I finally get her to nurse for awhile, but she is usually still wriggling quite a bit. I'll finally think she is asleep and I'll try to sneak away, and then as soon as I get up I'll see those little eyes looking at me and those little bottom teeth grinning away, so pleased to see me. So I'll lay back down and she'll snuggle up and I'll think she's asleep and NOPE, she caught me again. Finally tonight I just hovered over her and she fought it, but her eyes finally closed and didn't open again. Phew.

Speaking of sleep though, she is so endearing when I get in bed. I've been meaning to observe this for awhile, because I saw some movie or tv show . . . you know that cliche where the wife is sleeping and the husband comes home late and tries to sneak into bed without waking up his wife and she turns towards him in her sleep and snuggles up? Well, Lilli does exactly that. I'll slip into bed and she'll immediately turn towards me onto her side and snuffle into my arm. It's very sweet.

Her new thing is clapping her hands. I don't think she does it yet to express happiness or excitement. She just likes the idea that she has two hands that she can make clap together. BUT, then she does get happy and excited because she likes that she has hands that can clap. Maybe that is why she is so hard to get to sleep at night. Too much exciting hand clapping!