We’ve been crazy busy lately. Here’s a fun photo from apple picking. I had hoped to get Celia’s 1 year note up, maybe tomorrow!

Last week Celia turned 11 months old and boy is her personality coming out more and more. She has strong desires and watch out when they are not met. She points, she hits, she screams. I can’t wait for the screeching phase to be over! Right now I can get her to stop by singing ‘if you’re happy and you know it…’ sometimes but I otherwise would like some earplugs.

She is having major developmental leaps and along with those a desire to never sleep again. She’s mostly only taking one nap, two hours at most and staying awake otherwise from about 6am to almost 8pm. I couldn’t get her to nap until 1pm today! There is a ton going on in her brain.

She is anticipating and starting to understand how she controls her world. She knows when I get her shoes, to go to the couch so I can put them on. She understands when I say shoes, to go stand near the shoe rack. She knows to hand me a book and turn around and back herself into my lap to get me to read to her. She grabs her sippy and gives it to me pointing at the top when she wants it opened. She’s working on communicating to get her needs met, but has little interest in using our sign language. She does sign for washing hands though, usually when I need to do so after changing her diaper. She insists on banging on the doorbell before we come into the house every time (although she hasn’t figured out how to ring it yet, I think she’s just imitating Josie). She’ll start smacking kisses when Jordi comes in the door at night.

She also knows when she’s doing something wrong, and runs away. She does this in the bathroom and kitchen when she tries to just get as far into the rooms as she can while we chase her. Thankfully she isn’t trying to do this in the street yet. She rarely listens to me but does sometimes acknowledge that I’ve said her name and goes and does what she wants to do anyway.

She’s learned how to start climbing now. Most kids get this a bit sooner from crawling, but she’s now learning how to use all four limbs to climb up onto the beds and stairs and the couch when the mat can be a step for her. She has just started to learn to notice the edge of things like steps and beds and show some caution around them. She still reaches out for my hand though instead of turning around and crawling down herself to get down.

Otherwise at the park she still is trying to put everything in her mouth, but she loves to swings so that works well for both of us. She will walk across Waldo park to get herself to the swings. Like Josie at this age, she loves to push her own stroller.

She likes to read some now but doesn’t have patience for long books. Her favorite is ‘Doggies’ By Sandra Boynton. She often throws it down in the middle for some reason, but occasionally will sit for the entire thing. She will also look at books on her own, turning the pages, throwing them all on the floor.

She’s vocalizing a lot lately, probably thanks to non-stop-talker Josie. I think she’s also trying to say the word Josie, kinda sounds like ‘dough-dee’, but maybe I’m just hearing things. She definitely says dog, sounds like ‘dah’. She repeats sounds right after we say them which makes talking on the phone especially difficult as I try to listen to one person out of the three that talk to me at the same time.

• Size/weight: size 12 month are getting short and some size 18 months are fitting, no ideal on actual measured sizes
• Favorite food: breastmilk, avocado, organic cheerios, cheese
• Favorite toy: ball, doll stroller
• Favorite book: Doggies
• Favorite activity: Pushing things, eating, being outside
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; one nap; gets up 6am (on the good days, 5am on the bad)
• New skill: demonstrating her listening skills and understanding
• Teeth: 8. holding steady but the doc says more are coming
• Vocalizations: screeching, saying what we just said back to us, ‘dah’ dog (used for any animal)

Way back in April, before Josie turned 3 the four of us went on a weekday outing to the Big Apple Circus when it came to town. We were in the third row right near the front. Celia was only about 6 months old at this time so she still napped pretty frequently (unlike today, where she napped only once). It was a great show with horses, clowns, stunts, trapeze, contortionists, dogs, and goats.

We all took public transportation downtown to Park Street where I waited with the kids and played while Jordi dropped his stuff off at work. We walked over to government center and quickly found our seats. We learned very quickly what Josie does and does not like. She loves the animals and the tricks. She did not like the clown that pretended to cry. She could sense the insincerity and just kept asking us to make him go away. I’m not a huge clown fan either so I can see where she’s coming from. The contortionists made me cringe, especially when hang all of their weight on the roof of their mouth. The animals were graceful and beautiful. The climbers were amazing, a group of men from Africa that could climb straight up a vertical pole.

Celia refused to face me. Instead she faced out away from me, and fell asleep. Somehow in the middle of all the flashing lights and crazy things going on in front of us. Now I have to get the timing just right to get this kid to fall asleep, ahh the good old days.

After we had lunch at quincy market and I took the girls to the aquarium while Jordi went back to work.

Today we had “hurricane” Irene which was downgraded to a tropical storm. While others we know lost power, we were mostly just subjected to doing lots of preparation and staying indoors while it rained and stormed outside. Our neighbors lost most of their tree, but our big one seems to be still steady thus far. We had to do some things to pass the time. We had waffles for breakfast, standard sweet ones. Josie started off by playing beach dance party at storyland. If one thing’s good, let’s combine it all to make it better!

Then after lunch of homemade pesto cream pasta harvested from my moms garden (the basil that is). Then we made some homemade bath paint. Celia and Josie had fun in the tub with that getting painted and then clean. After lunch we started making some Challah bread for the first time for both me and Josie. Challah is a slow to make bread requiring 3 rises, so it took the rest of the day!

Sadly the bread came out of the oven after Josie went to bed so she hasn’t had any. I’ll have to go try some. We had waffles again for dinner, but savory ones this time with black beans, cheese, scallions and spinach in them. They were delicious!

Celia has been working hard on her communication skills lately even if she’s a little confused at times. Today at lunch she did three signs immediately in a row for “all done, more, and wash hands” in that order. We were very confused, but highly enthusiastic of her making any signs. She waves at everyone and everything. We walk out of the house and she starts waving in anticipation of seeing someone, even if no one is there. If someone isn’t waving back or saying hi, she’ll often start making noising in combination to get their attention. She will do the wash hands sign when we turn on the water. Clearly I wash my hands a lot.

Yesterday she said one of her first attributable words. She often says ‘mama’ and ‘hi’, so maybe those are the first words. But this one was clear as day about her intention. She walked into the living room, pointed at the yoga ball and said ‘ball’. Jordi had rolled her around on it some the night before so she was excited about it. I also sometimes think I hear her say ‘thank you’ and ‘hello’ at appropriate times. She clearly is mimicking words we say to her as well.

Her receptive language is accumulating quickly too. She’ll bring a ball when asked, kiss me sometimes when asked, and go looking around when I say ‘where’s Josie?’ All of this development has of course come at a steep price of highly interrupted and resisted sleep.

Celia has learned how to blow kisses. Here’s a very short video of her demonstrating while swinging! She has to be in the mood to do it. She’s very happy in the swing. I bring her to the park and she immediate gets out of the toy car and just jets for the swing making happy babbles at it. Sometimes we’re confused if she’s trying to sign ‘food/eat’ or blow us kisses, she makes the same lip smacking noise for both.

I’ve written about our dance parties lately, but you really have to see them to experience it. Two videos, one from my parents house and one from ours this morning.

This one has costumes. Dedicated watchers can watch past about 45 seconds… the rest can skip it.

Celia’s first year continues to speed by. She’s a pretty happy baby these days but watch out if you do something she doesn’t want or try to take something away. She throws a full on head and body fling backwards. She has her own opinions and she’s not afraid to show them.

She has gotten pretty stable on her feet and I don’t worry too much about her walking around on concrete, except our driveway is so bumpy that it is tough. She does not understand the concept of stairs though at all yet, so I have to keep close to monitor anytime we’re near one. She can also climb onto Josie’s bed and doesn’t understand the drop from there either so I spend a lot of my day keeping her from too big of a fall.

She’s very vocal and always love to join in the conversation. Sometimes it really seems like she’s near saying words. She definitely says ‘hi’ back sometimes and it sounds like she’s trying to say ‘mama milk’ right after nursing, but we could be reading into things. Nothing is dramatically clear. She does seem to understand more of what we’re saying though. If we ask her for something she will give it to us more times than not, or at least put it in our hand but not let go. She continues with the sign language, but she drops it when she’s frustrated which is unfortunate since that’s the most needed time!

Something big is going on developmentally though because her sleep has been very disrupted again. She’s fighting naps too often and so getting her to sleep enough to be happy and fit into our daily schedule has been a challenge. It will be nice when she settles again into more of a routine, any routine would be fine.

Celia plays by herself amazingly well. She still always wants to see what Josie and I are up to, she must be in the same room, but she’ll do her own thing unless I’m trying to do something she can’t do (like coloring) and then she breaks it up. If shes fed and not tired she will explore her toys and do new things with them. She also likes to play with balls a lot. She tries to pick up the basketball in the park and kick it.

She has started to pay some attention to books other than chewing on them. She still chews a lot. She will listen to about 4 pages of a book before she just wants to rip it out of my hands and chew. She’ll touch the touchy books and flip the pages, even developing clear preferences for different pages. Celia is very jealous when I read to Josie and wants to be involved but then can’t tolerate sitting still, so it’s tough, we do a lot of reading while she naps. Celia is very interested in music though, she’ll dance to the kids music (including the tea pot) and always is bringing out the musical instruments. Each night before bed she sits down with Jordi while I put Josie to bed and plays guitar. She loves the nightly ritual and is constantly finding things to bang together and see what noise they make.

• Size/weight: size 12 and 18 month, don’t know exact other measurements probably 18.5 lbs
• Favorite food: breastmilk, broccoli, black beans, apples, avocado
• Favorite toy:  whatever Josie has, push toys, anything she can fit in her mouth
• Favorite book: baby’s first touchy feely book
• Favorite activity: walking around outside and picking up everything, eating 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: steady walking, throwing fits, squating
• Teeth: 8, four on top and bottom
• Vocalizations: very loud, ma ma, dada, hi, kah

I know I’m going to look back at these days sometime and say what did we do all day? Some of the highlights of today were making ice cream sandwiches from homemade chocolate chip cookies with homemade kit kat ice cream and teaching Celia to play fetch. It was raining and we were supposed to have had our storm windows replaced today so I had our schedule cleared. We were stuck at home with no car. So we:

• Woke up at 6:30, I got the girls dressed and took them out for my morning walk. In the rain, they were covered, me not so much.
• Came home and tried to stretch while they jump on top of me, nursed the girls, started making Celia’s breakfast.
• Woke up Jordi (he worked until the wee hours of this morning), started feeding Celia until Jordi was done with his shower and then I got mine.
• Cooked and inhaled my breakfast before Jordi left for work. Said goodbye to Jordi and got dressed while two girls again wanted to jump on top of me.
• Played and read to the girls for an hour. Tried to put Celia down for a nap, failed. Played for another half hour and got Celia down for her nap. We play a lot of ‘dance class’ which consists of pushing the music button on the tea pot toy and shaking around. Josie has some crazy dance moves. Celia mostly claps and does lots of squats. I read about 6 baby books at this point. Celia actually listens and looks at them now. That wasn’t the case even a week or two ago.
• Celia napped, I did a letter workbook with Josie working on her writing skills (this was her choice) and letter recognition. We made ice cream just out of the basics, cream, milk, sugar and vanilla. Chopped up some kit kats to throw in too. I read Josie a new magazine of hers and a long story, twice. We did some stickers as well and told stories about them.
• Celia woke up at 11:30 and I started getting lunch ready while they play. We ate around noon and then cleaned up.
• We played some more in the living room, building with mega-bloks. Celia rediscovered her ‘baby’ toy bin which has been ignored for a few weeks. I played catch with Josie for 5 minutes before she got bored and Celia took her moment to grab the ball and bring it to me. I threw it, she got it and brought it back. We did this for the next 10 minutes until Josie couldn’t stand watching anymore and started chasing the ball herself. We had more dance parties.
• I email out to other moms begging for a playdate.
• I try again to put Celia down for a nap and fail. She is very sleep resistant lately. I fold and sort diapers. We play some more and I read some curious george books for as long as Celia will permit (about half a story at a time). Eventually I get Celia back to nap.
• I fold laundry while Josie plays and then prep the food for dinner. It is apparent no one can come for a play date today.
• I bring out the mixer and Josie and I make cookie dough in the dining room without making too much of a crazy mess. Josie adds the vanilla herself for the first time following my precise instructions of just give it a squirt or two. She also put all the cookies on the pan for the first time herself using the cookie scoop, her hands are getting much stronger.
• I bake the cookies and start cooking dinner. Realize I don’t have enough of key ingredients even though I went to the store yesterday and had read the recipe beforehand. Find other stuff to improvise with.
• We made ice cream sandwiches from the cookies so they’d freeze together a bit.
• Blur of time from about 5:20 when Celia wakes up and Jordi gets home while I try to make dinner, set the table and pick everything up. Josie was exceedingly helpful today.
• Jordi is home just before 6, we eat, Josie anticipates ice cream and declares herself full after a few bites, but keeps eating actually as we all sit together. Celia eats her whole avocado, a few bites of corn, a pile of rice noodles and some cantaloupe. Dessert is “fantastic” in Josie’s words, she doesn’t finish it though as she was actually somewhat full.
• We clean up the plates and have some family dance party time. Get the girls into pj’s, teeth brushed, pottied and diapers. We read another Curious George story and I put Josie to bed (7:20). Celia had a late nap so we play some more fetch and catch with her before she again fights going to sleep (8:20), but I win this time through sheer determination.
• The house is somewhat clean as Jordi cleaned while I put the girls down, I am here on the computer, Jordi waiting for me to play a game when we really both just need to go to bed.
• Oh and somewhere in there I changed at least 5 poopy diapers from Celia and a few non-poopy ones plus 8+ nursing sessions. Somehow the time just passes so quickly when we look back, but the day is so long in the middle. I am very glad to have these days with my girls. I have to start deciding on preschool stuff for Josie in the next month for next year.