I’m still trying new recipes, but not remembering to post them here. But tonight’s was a winner with 2/3rds of our family. Vegetarian mexican lasagne in the slow cooker. I used corn tortillas instead of flour and they were great. Cheesy melty goodness hiding tons of cauliflower.

Whenever we walk in somewhere like a doctors office or my grandmother’s assisted living place we get a big rush of ‘oh you’re so cute!’ aimed at Josie and Celia. More Celia now a days, but that’s a problem for another day. If we have a set of appointments and errands I find this happens repeatedly all day long to the girls. It bothers me, because seriously, that’s all they hear from people all day. How pretty they are. And I agree, they are pretty and I love them to bits. But the world is not going to magically take care of them because they’re pretty, they are bigger than just their outside appearance.

But these are also people we’re seeing only for a moment and what else can I possibly ask them to do or say? It’s not like they can magically know that Josie likes gymnastics or Celia tried pinto beans last night for the first time. So I really enjoyed this article called “How to talk to little girls” making some alternative suggestions, because it’s just too easy to comment on what  they’re wearing.

I’ve been working with Josie during Celia’s naps on a sticker book that goes into numbers and colors and animals and basic concepts like that. Today we were working on numbers and they had some small addition and subtraction problems. Like you have three flowers, add one more and how many do you have? No problem with those. Then we get to looking at four balls, and you take one away, how many do you have? Josie’s response… “Why do they take one away?” And I explain every time it’s just a math problem, a figure of speech but every time again she asks the question. I guess she wants more detailed motivational math problems so she can understand what happened to the ball.

The months keep on running past us! Celia is now 8 months old and as predicted she is walking. The daily difference in her walking ability is amazing. She can walk two rooms length now without falling down although she still walks like a sumo with her legs and arms wide and stomping into the ground. She’s very pleased with herself to be able to walk all around and generally comes to find us if we go out of the room. She also still has two bruises on her  temples from where she falls down, she tries to put her hands out, but she also bangs into the table and tips too far over. Hopefully she’ll get it more figured out soon, but you don’t get to learn how to walk at 8 months old without some extra bangs and bumps.

Celia is loving eating every night. She see’s her avocado or other plate of food and gets very excited. Even in the grocery store now she recognizes the avocado as a reason to be happy. Her pincer grasp needs some work as she often clears the whole table in an attempt to get at some food like beans. She also gets easily distracted by new food put in front of her so we have to put one thing down at a time currently but we’re working on getting her able to pick up the food more accurately so we can give her a bunch of things at once. All in all though meal times are very pleasant as she likes to listen to us talk and eat. We keep doing sign language with her but except for one brief time, she doesn’t seem to be responding to it yet and understanding. I remember with Josie it just all clicked one day around 9 months, so maybe next month she’ll decide to use it. She also has learned that she has food in her bib and when she wants more food she’ll try to find it, although sometimes this turns into an attempt to just pull off her bib.

Celia has no patience for books still, if I try to read she just grabs and closes it to chew on. Mostly she loves attention from Josie and sharing toys with her. She always jumps into the middle of whatever Josie is trying to do which is causing some tough times at our house. Given that Celia doesn’t understand any words or sense of ownership yet I still have to jump into the middle of their issues, can’t wait to hopefully be able to step back from that some day, but it’ll be a while still I think.

Celia mostly likes any toy that Josie currently has, but the dollhouse people and toys and the magna tiles are best for holding, chewing and walking around with. She thinks puppets are pretty hillarious, so is honking my nose.

She is determined to get anything she deems interesting, but thankfully we can still distract her. Today she just wanted to get the soda bottles and kept walking back to them again and again and again. What stick-to-itive-ness!

• Size/weight: size 12 month one pieces, size 9 month separates; About 17.5 lbs
• Favorite food: breastmilk, broccoli, avocado, apple and carrots
• Favorite toy: magna tiles, anything Josie has
• Favorite book: they all seem to taste the same
  
• Favorite activity: walking around and picking things up
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:30; two naps, morning 1.5 hrs long 3 hours after she wakes up and another one about 45 minutes 3 hours after waking from the first nap, wakes up 7am most of the time
• New skill: pushing up to standing from her tummy, walking, bending and picking things up while walking
• Teeth: 5; crazy tons of drooling, wouldn’t be surprised if more come in very soon
• Vocalizations: all sorts of noises, and babbles. But less than a month ago

We’ve been super busy these days building things with our magna-tiles. Lots of creative uses and our structures are getting bigger and better.

Here’s another video of Celia finding some new toys. The cat toys that is. She’s figured out how to get under my desk whereas Josie just repeatedly hit her head and got annoyed with it.

Here’s Celia playing with some light on the floor after falling down.

Celia likes to help us all brush our teeth. Won’t let us put a toothbrush in her mouth, but if we hand it to her she sticks it right in.

This weekend my parents (with some help from us and my aunt and family) moved my grandmother up to Boston from Florida to live nearby in assisted living. It was an intense many days both in Florida and up here, but she’s now in her new home and will hopefully decide to like it eventually. Some beautiful weather let me take some bright pictures.