Watch out, Lulu!

with English subtitles:

Before Bathtime (but after Dinner):

featuring butternut squash, wax beans, lentils, etc.





During Bathtime:

Dick Cheney swears this isn't torture, Lulu!

No, Mama!

Apparently someone is NOT ready for Old Man Winter to arrive. The pink puppy hat was a NO-go at Target earlier this week.


But the Animal Crackers were a BIG hit!

Continuing the Vacuum Theme...

Reason #1 Why Not to Let Daddy Fix Your Hair.

Exhibit A:

The Vacuum Hairbrush


Nice Punk Mohawk, huh?



And some video of the event:

Toddling around

Backyard Fun

Lulu spent some time in the backyard with us today as we did some much-needed gardening. Walter cut down a sunflower (or three) and Louisa had fun dragging the stalks around like a samurai sword (or color guard flag--take your pick).



All the playing in the dirt resulted in a VERY dirty face. Walter ended up hosing her down (literally) in her dance-dance-revolution before I took her inside to change her diaper and change her out of a wet onesie and into something dry for her afternoon nap.




I also shot a video of her toddling around on the patio this afternoon that I'll post soon!

Three Martini Playdate

Not only is Three Martini Playdate the title of one the books on my Amazon wishlist (hint, hint, people!), but also the accurate description of a nice respite we enjoyed with our friends Tina, Kyle and their daughter, Shaya who is *almost* one! She and Lulu are fast friends and playmates.

Anyway, Walter, Lulu, and I met them for Happy Hour at Lounge on 20 Friday afternoon after Walter and Kyle got off work. We sat outside in the shade on the patio and let the girls crawl/toddle all over the place. I snapped a couple of cute pics of the girls with the daddies (but not their own!).





The adults shared appetizers and cocktails while the girls shared grapes and bunny grahams. Fun time!

After the farmers market...

This first one is a little fuzzy, but I like the joy it captures on her face.


And someone is really enjoying the set of plastic measuring cups I got her in the cheap bins at Target. They bang together and make lots of noise!

She also likes those stainless steel bowls for the same reason--noise!

Forward-Facing

In other news, we also finally turned Lulu's car seat around to forward-facing. A colleague of mine, Daffyd, swears that it's a brand new world when you turn your kid's car seat around to forward facing, so we've been wondering what this day would feel like. Louisa was just getting too big to remain rear-facing for any longer. When we put her in her car seat, her poor little legs were all splayed out on either side of her car seat like she was having a gynecological exam because she couldn't fit any other way. So we broke down and flipped 'er around!

Dinner with the Small Fry...

Walter, Lulu and I had dinner with our friends Cat, Paul, and their son Joey this past weekend. Cat is currently 10 weeks pregnant with their second baby, so we agreed that it would be advantageous to meet at a restaurant so neither one of us had to cook or clean up dinner! I snapped a few cute pictures of Lulu and Joey (aka The Godfather) together after dinner with their daddies:






Awwww, double-dating with their daddies!

At Arm's Length...

One drawback to taking lots of pictures is that you don't often get to be included in the pictures. So these are the only two recent ones that I've got of Lulu and me together--and that's with me holding the camera out away from us both and guessing at the angle. I still these turned out well!





Check out those chubby, wubby thighs!

Hugh Hefner who?

Our friends Trent & Aimee gave Lulu a bathrobe last August and she's finally big enough to enjoy wearing it:

Puzzle

Walter and I stopped by the Goore's Outlet yesterday and bought a completely age inappropriate toy for Lulu. It's a HABA wooden puzzle that you can make different designs with all the pieces which have little magnets on the back to hold the pieces in place on the board. When it's 50% off, we couldn't resist. So, it's currently sitting in Lulu's closet, waiting for her to be old enough to play with it. In the meantime, her parents had fun playing with it this morning!



She's very much into "organizing" right now, by which I mean putting things into piles. (When I was picking tomatillos in the garden yesterday, she "helped" by putting in all in a pile on one side of her and then moving them into a pile on the *other* side of her). So, this is an action shot of her taking the tiles out of the box and putting them on the board.



And a video, too. We were playing a bit to wear off some energy before her morning nap, so you see her rubbing her eyes quite a bit. Unfortunately, I turned off the camera, *right* when she was about to have a very um, graceful fall on her bottom onto the floor. It was pretty funny, but unfortunately, it's not on tape. Sorry!

Another Video

Here are two snippets of video of Louisa walking. It's hard to get her on video because invariably she's walking toward me!

Yummy!

So, for those of you who were wondering, here is a typical day of meals for Lulu while she is at daycare (I'm re-using the plastic bag that our swaddle blankets came in and it's been very handy!):



As you can see, she has breastmilk and water to drink, black beans and cannellini beans to feed herself, orzo pasta with green beans, and a mish-mash of quinoa, squash, zucchini, and pepperjack cheese. I also included some corn puffs and a few pieces of whole rye bread that she didn't finish at breakfast this morning. We haven't introduced her to meat yet, so this is a strictly vegetarian diet for now.



I had to get another bottle because the daycare staff couldn't figure out how to use the Adiri bottles that we use at home. The little food containers were bought as a set at IKEA for only $5 and I feel very Martha Stewart-esque with how matchy-matchy the whole thing is. When you rush out the door to get her dropped off before arriving at school and realizing you've forgotten to brush your teeth or put on deodorant that morning (true story!), it makes me feel a little bit more competent to have everything match. It's the small details, right??

She eats lunch around 11am, goes down (hopefully) for a nap around noon and enjoys an afternoon snack around 3pm before I pick her up between 4:30 and 5pm.

She is doing really well with drinking water out of a sippy cup at daycare and she seems to prefer that to her orange bottle with the flexible plastic straw right now, so I think we've finally caved and bought a couple of sippy cups for her to use at home. I keep reassuring myself that there's a difference between drinking out of a sippy cup and thoughtlessly just carrying one around with you all the time. Ideally, I'd like to teach her that eating and drinking is a special activity and we sit down together to enjoy our meals, so I don't want snacking on the go to become a habit.

The daycare staff reported that she likes their vibrating teething toy, so we bought her one at Target to use at home, too, but the biting still continues. Liz, Kim and I had a nice talk about it yesterday and this morning, so hopefully we can nip this behavior in the bud before it becomes worse (biting can get you kicked out daycare!).

Here is a picture of Louisa from this morning as I was packing up her food for daycare:

Chomp!

So, I dropped Lulu off at day care this morning about 11am, in time for lunch and afternoon nap time (we're still trying to get her adjusted to their timetable/routine). I came back and picked her up about 4:45pm. Interesting tidbits to share:

1. She didn't take a nap (again) today. She fell asleep in the car on the way home from the gym ~10:15am, but she woke up when I tried to bring her inside and she never fell asleep after that. She didn't appear cranky or tired though when I picked her up this afternoon. That said, she was asleep in the back seat before I could get to the second stop light (~2 min). It's now 9pm and she *still* hasn't woken up from her "nap" that she started when she came home from day care this afternoon (and after last week's fun, we did NOT wake her up!). We're letting her sleep!

2. I had two "incident reports" waiting for me when I arrived to pick her up. Apparently she spent our time apart trying to bite everyone in sight at day care. Seriously. I kid you not. Now, I have some sympathy (I was/am a biter myself), but I'm a bit unsure what to do about this behavior, especially since daycare centers do NOT like biters and won't tolerate serial biters. So, I'm hoping today was an abberation. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

3. I know that I'll have another incident report waiting for me tomorrow morning when I drop her off because Liz, the day care center director was cleaning up her face and giving her an icy/teething thing to suck on when I arrived. Apparently, another little kid whacked her in the face and cut her lip....probably because she was trying to bite him?

So, if "American Gladiators" comes back on the airwaves, I think we've got a future contender. Once she wakes up from her "nap."