Right now Celia’s favorite game is ’empty the shoe box’. I fill up a shoe box full of baby toys and she pulls them out and explores them and dumps it on the floor. She chews on everything. It’s a good game, especially when it lasts a long time. Sometimes I ruin it by putting the things back in the box and she cries, silly mommy trying to clean things.

Peekaboo, walking and bouncing/jumping are the other favorites currently.

Last week, I think on Wednesday, we found Celia’s second tooth. She is still clearly teething like crazy and the top teeth look like they won’t be far behind as they are very bumpy and bulging. You can almost see the teeth in this shot.

Otherwise we frequently see her like this:

and this:

and this:

Josie has done a few funny memorable things lately. First she’s decided ‘fancy’ dress means running around in her skivvies. Two girls walking and running around naked after dinner has become the norm here.

Yesterday at brunch, we went to Flora, yummy as always, she was alternating between eating whipped cream and lentil soup. Not exactly what I picked to eat.

Josie has a very good memory. But somewhere along the way she decided to update the story of how Celia got her name and why. Now she tells everyone that she named Celia. She decided that Cecilia was a good name and she decided that would be the baby’s name ‘before she even saw her’. Plus any more children we are to have (a boy has been requested) are also to be named Cecilia. I’m just glad she continues to claim Cecilia as her own sister.

Last Thursday Celia turned 5 months old. I cannot believe how fast time is flying with my two girls and how much they keep growing and changing.

Celia’s biggest trick lately is her solid sitting and her immediate desire to walk constantly. If she’s sitting she will try to grab anything she can to pull herself up to standing, including the baby gym at my parents house, doing a pullup in the process. She loves to walk around the house holding onto our hands and has definite goals in mind now. I need to sit down and get a video of her doing it, but that requires coordinating with someone else to hold her to run the video.

She loves to watch Josie, her favorite entertainment, and she’s always thrilled to be out of the house and be carried around. She rejects the stroller like her big sister, unless it’s the super expensive Bob double where Josie rides along with her when we walk further.

She still likes to play with toys, mostly she wants whatever Josie has got. She has made me feel better about some toys I bought for Josie that Josie ignored, Celia is now playing with them so at least they’re getting some use. Sophie the giraffe is definitely the favorite though and she is very dexterous about sticking all pieces of her in her mouth.

Her sleep is currently terrible (hourly wakings most of the night), but I seem to be better at dealing with it this time. Maybe because I now have the knowledge that some day she will sleep too. I’m also making myself go to bed earlier and we’ve been bed-sharing since day 1. Plus Celia is a quick nurser and so we’re both back to sleep fast. Still, if you watch me during the day you’ll see me fall asleep on my feet occasionally while I try to make my brain think about what’s next.

She’s a pleasure to all those around her, although she’s a bit more wary of smiling at everyone these days, now you’ve got to work harder for those smiles. Might be related to all the teething she’s been doing, only one tooth so far, but there are definitely more coming soon. Lately she’s also stopped her nice baby cooing and instead learned how to screech, which is less cute and harder on the ears. She’s often happy, unless she wants to walk and is stuck sitting on the floor.

• Size/weight: 9 month size, around 15 lbs, don’t know height at the moment.
• Favorite food: breastmilk
• Favorite toy: sophie the giraffe
• Favorite book: just eating any of them
• Favorite activity: walking, watching Josie
• Sleeping: waking all the time, 2 -3 naps, one long one usually, up between 6-7:30, in bed between 8 and 9.
• New skill: walking holding on, pulling herself up
• Teeth: 1, center bottom right
• Vocalizations: ear piercing screech

Here’s a video of her watching cars go by and squealing.

Yesterday was a beautiful day that finally felt like real spring, we went to multiple parks and I brought along my camera to entertain myself. Here’s my best shots. Josie is above me as you can tell from the photo, and I am not bending down. She climbed up into the tree at Magnolia park that broke with the big storm last year and is holding onto the crevice. Celia is wearing jeans for the first time in her short life, I’ve had to move onto the 6-12 months clothes now.

That nice time when Celia would sit and play with her toys and be happy has ended. It was a whopping three weeks long from when she could sit up independently. Now, at not quite 5 months she sits, bucks, and whines to get up and move. She walks around now with focused goals while holding my hands. And if Jordi is holding her hands, it’s a focused walk to mommy.

Here she is in her first recorded roll.

I continued to use my slow cooker a lot in February and found some more good recipes, not so many duds.

• Baked beans. I had forgotten this one in my first post I think, but it was actually the first thing I made at all. Served it with some yummy corn muffins and it was well devoured by Jordi and me.
• Baked spinach and cheese noodles. This was a tremendous fail, just icky and overcooked. Do not try this.
• Tofu in peanut sauce. This had a good flavor, but it was very dry and thick. Making this again I’d need to add more liquid into the sauce, it was almost as thick as regular peanut butter. But the flavor was right on, so some broth to thin it out would have been tasty.
• Chili. We generally like our chili without tomatoes and made very thick so that I can just make chili cheese nachos with it. But we liked this recipe a lot too, so it was great to have a new version to add that’s different. Don’t forget the extra toppings!
• Potato soup. This was a bit thick and I think it had all too much pepper in it, Jordi thought it was fine. But otherwise it was a good basic soup. I’d water it down a bit more next time and I’m basically finding that either my pepper is too fresh, or I just don’t pepper my foods like other people are inclined to do, I wait until the end to add salt and pepper now.
• Split pea soup. This was yummy with a different flavor than I’m used to for split pea soup, it tried to imitate the idea of having a ham bone in it while being vegetarian, so it used some sugar and spices. We liked it and had it with grilled cheese.
• Thai tofu vegetable curry. We liked this one again, fairly mild taste and a nice entry entree for me into Thai cooking which I don’t do much of. Next time I need to cut the yam pieces smaller so they cook faster.
• Lentil tortellini soup. We really liked this, Josie was a big fan considering there is pasta in it. She may have even snuck a few lentils in along with it. We had it with some homemade bread.
• Squash stew. This was kindly recommended by Bhuvana and it was delicious, slightly sweet from the squash which completely melted into the broth for a really unique and different kind of soup.
• Wonderful Lentils. We liked this, it made a ton. I would cook the onion on the stove first next time, it was a little crunchy. I somehow totally screwed up the spice shopping for this recipe and didn’t have most of them, so I added in a little adobo seasoning. It reminded me of hamburger helper except with lentils, guess that’s the salt and garlic powder I added! Oh and I certainly did not put in reduced fat cheese, just the regular stuff.
• Minestrone soup. This was a standard soup that came out ok, nothing amazing.

I also made this Red Lentil soup which a mom had made for me after Celia was born. It is delicious, but it’s not in the slow cooker although I’m sure it could be converted. All in all it was a month with a lot of soup, given how cold it is outside! Not too many abject failures and some really good keepers. Please do share more if you’ve got ideas!

We get some strong sun in the morning, that it completely blew out the outfit she had one, I liked the effect.