All About the Lils

-Eek. The baby (when do I have to stop calling her that?) is in bed alone, and has been for at least half an hour! We had been working on getting her to sleep alone, and then she went through a spurt of awful sleep, up screaming a ton. Then she got sick, twice. We just let it go and haven’t given it much thought. But I have a new video game and Christopher has a fantasy football draft right in the middle of what is supposed to be my alone time (and she was unusually super clingy today, so I need it!). So I decided to just go for it and see how it goes. Christopher should be done and heading for bed soon, but if she’s doing this well I think we can plan to start maybe having an hour or so of time together in the evenings for the first time in over a year. Woohoo! (Update- Yep, I’ve been leaving her every night now, and she’s fine and dandy! A bit wiggly, and I do sometimes have to go in and help her settle, but overall it’s working beautifully. I’m glad we didn’t try to force it, even if it would have meant more free time sooner. It’s so nice to just go with the flow and do what works, instead of feeling like we “have to” do things a certain way.)

 

-Oh, that was sweet! As I was coming to bed, she started getting a little restless. I settled her but she wasn’t wanting me to go get ready for bed- every time I tried to get up it made her stir again. I grabbed Christopher’s arm and pulled it up against her, her eyes closed and she hasn’t moved since. She loves her daddy! (Update- The next night I got up to pee in the middle of the night, came back and she was sprawled face down across his chest.)

 

-She loves opening and closing things. Today she’s got the case from my manicure kit (without the nail clippers and things, of course), and she’s sitting working as hard as she can to get the zipper open. Once she does she brings it back to me to stick something new in it (like a bottle lid or hairbow) and rezip it so she can do it all over again.

 

-On a non-Lily note (does anything non-Lily really even matter these days?)- For those who don’t know, I dropped out of college after a year. It was the right decision for sure (though I’m also glad I went for that year because I met my best friend and my husband there!), but at the time I had a friend who just lost her shit over it. She had Aspergers, so socially she wasn’t typical, but it was still really weird. She said I was wasting my gifts and she would kill to be as smart as me (so basically how dare I not use my abilities exactly like she would if she had them), and wound up refusing to ever speak to me again. I remember thinking at the time (and saying to her) that I also have not inconsiderable, though not super spectacular, artistic talents, not just “book smarts” (I was a physics major, for what it was worth), so was I wasting those gifts by not becoming a professional artist? These days I’m thinking I’ll probably wind up baking/decorating when Lily (and any future kiddo?) is grown and I’m ready to go back to working (noooooo). While there’s some various non-artsy skills involved (there’s some major engineering in some of the cake structures some bakers can do!), overall I’ll be focusing on the artistic side of my personality. And I can assure you it makes me far more happy than physics, even though I still enjoy a good book on cosmology or game theory or psychology or whatever nerdy topic piques my interest. And I wonder sometimes now what she would think. I feel like the outcome proves I was right to not keep wasting money on a college degree that wouldn’t have given me half the satisfaction I’ve found in doing something I love. Would she agree? It doesn’t matter- I don’t know what came of her, and I’ve long since gotten over being hurt by her cutting me off so abruptly and inexplicably. But I do wonder.

My first ever fondant cake

Still my favorite cookies

 

-The Lils has a new thing where she cuddles up to go to sleep, but just before she actually passes out she starts wiggling and talking. Then just boom, out go the lights. And it makes me freak out that she won’t go to sleep every. damn. time. Even though I know she’s been doing it every time for several days now, I’m still trying to get her to stop and settle back down because it’s time to sleep, child! I’ll probably actually get used to it just as she stops. 

 

-Arg. She took forever to fall asleep, then I realized she was poopy (I sniffed but didn’t smell it before; anytime she fights sleep that’s one of the first things I check, but I missed this one). Tried to change her without waking her up, just moving the nightlight close. I *almost* managed it- if we had a wipes warmer, I might have managed it. Not shockingly, a cold, wet wipe on her little booty startled her awake. And then she proceeded to stay awake for the next two hours. Of course. I think next time I’ll wait till I think she’s very soundly asleep, instead of dealing with it as soon as I realize she’s poopy (assuming, of course, that I don’t realize till after she’s asleep). I probably still won’t be able to keep her asleep, but hopefully she’ll pass right back out.

 

-She loves to push her footstool over to the toy box (big fake leather ottoman that opens) and climb on top. Usually she just pushes the footstool to the general vicinity of the toy box and tries to climb over. If it’s too far away, she falls. This time she pushed it, started to climb up, and apparently realized it wasn’t close enough because she got back down and pushed it closer before climbing up and over. So I guess she’s learned to estimate distance a bit. Neat!

 

-Her new favorite sound is “oh-eee oh-eee oh-eee” over and over. It’s adorable.

 

-She just tried to stick one of her rings from her stacker on a pickled green bean.

 

-She was trying to climb on the arm of the couch (which is about 4 inches wide and not against anything, so she’d almost definitely fall), so I told her no and shook my head at her. She looked at me, then slowly nodded yes. 

 

-She’s playing “Where’s Lily?” with me around the door jamb, with her in control! She mostly only plays when we cover her (or ourselves) with something, or hide around a corner. This time she’s the one hiding and peeking back out! So stinking cute!

 

-She’s all but walking! She’s up to about 5 steps before she falls on her butt. It’s so fun to see how excited she gets about working on it! And she’s got her first pair of shoes now. (Well, she had some baby shoes now and then just for cuteness, but you know, first *real* shoes.) She seems to like them, in that she’s currently sitting patiently trying (and failing abjectly) to get them on her feet. She’s a little less sure when they actually are on her feet, but she mostly leaves them on. I don’t know how much I’ll make her wear them, since a-I still hope to wear her most of the time, and b-I just don’t care as long as it’s safe, but I’m happy to have them. For one thing, asphalt is hot as hell around here this time of year. For another, most of the playgrounds have wood chips, and she doesn’t like the feel of them. I expect I’ll take her a lot more once she’s really walking, since she pretty much refuses to do anything as long as she has to crawl on the chips. Though I will say, regarding the walking, I’m really ready for her to get it mastered and move on. She’s so unsettled lately. She’s been super clingy (which isn’t terribly unusual for her when we’re out (yesterday at the indoor playground she wouldn’t move away from me when the other kids were around, but as soon as they left she took off and played with everything, which is how she seems to roll), but normally she has no interest in me or my lap at home), and her sleep has been very restless. I’m ready to just get back to normal (fingers crossed, of course, that this isn’t just the new normal).

Shoes!

And the usual zillion pictures because I have the cutest kidlett ever and I know you all want to see.

Rearranging the playroom again

Hard to get a good picture, but she had the most perfect curl one day

She’s still all about the climbing

And climbing

And climbing. I am less than thrilled

Though I’ll grant that the climbing in her seat is actually helpful

Sleeping booty

She stuck her head in while I was showering, and she’s like a puppy- she goes wild when she’s wet