Celia has started to imitate some of the things we do. She already claps and waves, but now she’s moving her hands like she’s washing them right after I wash mine (about 8 billion and 2 times a day thanks to eating, toileting, cleaning and laundry).

Also this week, while I did my best job trying to imitate a good parent while not further injuring my back by laying on the floor and playing with the girls, Celia learned how to give me raspberries on my belly. I’ve been doing them to her for a while now, but she is super drooly these days and I ended up a slobbery laughing mess.

Sorry I sacrificed your flowers to get pretty pictures of my girls.

I got to play with (read: try to eat) sand for the first time!

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!

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!

Look ma, no neck!

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

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.