Tonight we had pea salad for dinner. It’s ok to laugh. I did multiple times today when I had to tell Jordi and Josie what was for dinner. But it was pretty good and did not require heating up my kitchen. We had it with bread. Josie refused to even try it, more for us. Celia likes peas, although she didn’t get the dressed ones. She had her first egg yolk today and found it to be dry but she kept trying it. She also climbed onto Josie’s bed for the first time today, let’s hope she doesn’t learn to climb stairs in the next week.

We’ve now taken 10,000 pictures since getting this camera, the numbers rolled over!

These photos somehow just struck a chord with me.

and now at age 3

This month has been all about walking all over the place. Celia has learned how to move and move quickly when she hears the bathroom door open. She just wants to play inside. She sneaks around trying to get in when someone forgets to close the door. Thankfully when she gets in there, thus far all she wants to do is look at the tub, not the toilet or the cat litter, but that day will come.

She’s in love with exploring her world and everything in it. Everything goes in the mouth. Especially non-food items found on the floor. It’s really hard to take her to a playground or someone elses house that doesn’t have a baby because she’s fast and extremely determined.

She has definitely developed her own preferences and desires now. When she doesn’t get her way she screams and throws her head or whole body backwards. She’s still somewhat distractable but if she’s tired there’s often no way around a fit, even when it’s because I have to go wash her pear off that she dropped on the floor. Once I bring the pear back she’s just too mad to even care. She is loving her baby signs so that she can tell us better what she wants. She’s using her hands more to point and voice to show approval and dislike. She often wants to discuss art and pictures on the wall, especially pictures of us.

She continues to absolutely love Josie and want to be near her and annoy her constantly. She’s still pulling Josie’s hair regularly and it’s tough to keep her back again. She also likes to head-butt Josie and other babies. She and Josie have managed to play together a couple of times a week where they are actually interacting and playing instead of Celia just crashing the Josie-party. Sometimes it’s dress up, other times it’s dolls, or parade around the house wearing funny things. It’s such a pleasure to see them enjoying each other.

All in all, she’s becoming her own person. Very loud and talkative. She tends to imitate Josie so it gets really loud really fast when Josie starts yelling, so does Celia. She’s chasing after Josie and the big kids we play with. She’s very entertaining to all the people at my grandmother’s assisted living facility, they love to see her each week even if they can’t remember her name.

It’s hard to tell from all her sounds what she means to be a word,  but we sure hear the sound ‘hi’ a lot, sometimes at the right time. So maybe that will be the first word, but we’ll see. It definitely won’t be ‘cat’ I have a feeling, she is not nearly as enamored with the cats as Josie was. She has a better play partner.

And her 8th tooth has broken through now, but isn’t all the way in. I am just hoping that it will settle down soon, but with the walking she’s clearing still working that out and trying to walk in her sleep though.

She’s got her pincher grip now for the most part and is really enjoying getting to eat peas and other similarly shaped things!

• Size/weight: size 12 month; 28 inches tall and 17 lbs 14 oz
• Favorite food: breastmilk, broccoli, carrots, apples
• Favorite toy:  whatever Josie has
• Favorite book: not yet interested
• Favorite activity: walking everywhere and picking up small pieces of things and eating our shoes
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8:00; naps 3 hours after she gets up for on average an hour and a half twice a day; gets up 6-7am
• New skill: clapping and signing
• Teeth: 8, four on top and bottom
• Vocalizations: very loud, dada, hi, kah

Celia’s had some busy days teething. She’s gotten teeth number 6 and 7, and 8 isn’t far behind. She is not sleeping well at all. It is past 10, we should be in bed!

Tiger says that last nights dinner was yummy. Try the Garbanzo and Artichoke Quinoa yourself. Best with fresh from the farmers market feta cheese. Celia got her first quinoa! That was a big mess!

I got my first look at Celia seeming like she remotely understands all the hand signs we’ve been going at her for a few months. Here’s a video from today lunch. She did ‘all done’ later too! See Josie for demonstration of mostly proper technique.

Today my parents cat Ginny passed sadly. She was young, the litter mate of my Fred and George, my last family of foster cats. My parents graciously took her from me when I had too many cats after she had been returned from her first home. She was named ‘ghost cat’ for a long while as she didn’t show up much. But she eventually got comfortable in her new home and was very happy. The vet could best guess that she had some kind of infection which caused kidney failure, very fast.

It’s hard to figure out how to explain it to Josie, she does not understand the concept that our bodies don’t last forever. She asked where Ginny would go now that she’s not at Pama’s house. We said we didn’t know, she guessed Florida. She tried her best to come up with a solution (couldn’t the mailman bring medicine? why don’t the doctors give her any?) to the intolerable situation. Hopefully for Josie, the memory and the sadness will just fade, and for the rest of us we get to keep our happy memories of a very skittish but loving cat.

Me trying to be artsy again, Josie waiting for people to show up.

Swinging and more swinging…

Per usual, Josie was not terribly cooperative with looking even remotely near the camera

Look ma, no neck!

And grass isn’t the worst thing I got in my mouth while mommy was busy with the camera.

I had fun this past Friday taking some more pictures of my friend’s kids, as they don’t run away screaming when I try to take their picture yet. Actually Celia still hams it up for the camera, but Josie is decidedly sick of me chasing her around. This is my favorite picture so far.