19 months old
Mon 03 Dec 2007
As someone commented the other day, Lucy is ‘growing like a weed’. She is long and thin except for her cute pot belly sticking out. Her hair is getting long now and can almost be tied into a pony tail at the back. She can sit at a table to eat, instead of a high chair, though we generally still use the high chair to keep her contained. She also likes to have her toenails and fingernails cut – and to think that this was such a struggle for a long time!
She has a whole new wardrobe of clothes and shoes for winter as the last time she experienced the cold she was just 4 months old! Lots of trackies, jeans, cardigans, jumpers and a few dresses. Although with everything indoors being well heated the need to dress really warmly is diminished. Lucy likes to get dressed up and often goes into our closet to pick out a handbag and a hat.
In the last month Lucy has become more obsessed with books if that was possible! We are reading ‘The Magic Pudding’ during bath time (I brought lots of Aussie classics with us) We have bought lots of second hand books very cheaply so please don’t send her any books without checking first to see if we have it already. The new obsession to add to reading is drawing. You’ll see a photo where she got carried away with a purple crayon. She loves to colour in and will use any paper and any writing implement. In fact she coloured in some budget documents with a pen during a church meeting.
I know that winter is finally here because Lucy has a cold! I hope it is not one of many but it seems lots of kids are sick at the moment. She is not a complainer and it has not slowed her down much. She is still a busy beaver!
The big change for this month is that Lucy moved into her toddler bed. Of course this needed to happen when Andrew was in Australia! Not only was she almost climbing out but she measured over 34 inches which is apparently the recommended maximum for a cot/crib. I struggled with converting the cot for a while until I realised that there were some screws missing which Andrew had put into safekeeping in the garage. Once the cot was converted into a little bed the real work began of teaching Lucy to stay in bed.
The first night she was very enthusiastic about getting into bed and she went off to sleep no problem. When she woke up in the morning, she got up, opened her door, ran through the house and jumped on me in bed for a cuddle. I of course woke up to hearing little footsteps running towards me. It was very scary that she could get out of her room but it has since been discovered that her door handle is a little dodgy and adults need to take extra special care to close the door properly. Since then Lucy has learned to stay in bed when she wakes up, only getting up to get some books to read and then get back into bed. So no more footsteps and thankfully she still can’t open doors yet. But she has learned that if she doesn’t feel like going to bed in the first place she can cry and actually get out of bed as soon as she is put in. Thankfully 99% of the time she just needs one more book read by mum and she is happy to put herself into bed.
One of the only benefits of Andrew being away was that he brought back some awesome jumpers for Lucy that Grandma knitted. Here is the ‘bobble’ one (or as the Americans are calling it, the ‘air puffs’) and the cable knit with ladybugs is below. Thanks Grandma, everyone thinks they are beautiful!
Lucy missed her daddy a lot while he was in Oz. It was very cute to see her on the phone with dad even when the only words she could say were ‘dada’, ‘arro’ (hello) and ‘bye’, she did a lot of listening. She has taken quite a while to get back to normal with him since he went away. She became extremely clingy to mum and has been physically pushing away Andrew or screaming when he came in the same room. We have decided that we will not separate again for more than a few days as the aftermath is longer than the period of being away. We met Andrew at the airport with a welcome home sign and when Lucy spotted him in the crowd at the airport she ignored the ‘do not enter’ sign and ran half way down the corridor to greet him with a big hug. She has had lots of special time with her dad since he got back including doing some cooking together and a lot of reading.
Photos for the month:
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Videos for the month:
We’ve started our advent calendar and talking about Christmas. Off to Seattle/Kelso next week and then when we get back we are going to put up a real fir tree. Happy Christmas and New Year! We’ll be back blogging Lucy’s progress in 2008!
