I have read and heard people attribute both being very verbal and being non-verbal to having older siblings (either they provide a good example or do all the talking for the little one). I don’t know if it has anything to do with her older siblings, but Lori is one of the most loquacious one-year-olds I have ever met. Since this blog is basically her baby book, I’ll try to document all the words she currently says: Dada, Mama, uh-oh, dog, baby, cookie, hi, down, go, out, ow (both for when she gets hurt and for things that might hurt her, like a lit candle), yeah, and oh. “Oh” is my favorite because she says it when it’s conversationally appropriate, like she’s had a revelation. This morning she woke me up as she usually does: she put her hand gently on my cheek and said sweetly, “Mama.” When I didn’t open my eyes, she smacked my face and said, “Mama?” Then she peeled one of my eyelids back and said, “Down! Go!” I said, “Good grief, Lori, it’s not even 6:00 in the morning. It is NOT time to go.” She said, “Oh.”
Later, after Brian had taken her downstairs to let me get a half-hour of peace and quiet, she came up looking for me, calling Mama and banging on the door. Brian came up and opened the door for her, and she said, “Ti-ta!” in a very “thank-you” tone of voice. Lori will often try to repeat whatever you just said, and is a pretty good mimic (Andrea once speculated that Lori’s first sentence will be “I hate purple,” and Lori immediately said, “I-hay-pupu”). She also signs everything I’ve bothered to teach her, including: up, all-gone, all-done, more, and bird. She waves hello and goodbye, shakes her head no and nods yes, points, plays peek-a-boo, claps, dances when she hears music, gives kisses and hugs, blows kisses, and will drop to the floor and put her head down when I say the word “nap,” although she then giggles and gets right back up. She can find most parts of her body when you name them for her, and will indicate that she has a poopy diaper by patting her butt. Her fine and gross motor skills seem equally impressive, especially since she’s so teeny (people are so confused about her age when I put her down and she runs off). She finally got over the not-feeding-herself hump (a couple of months ago) and will now eat anything you put in front of her, except that she still has NO TEETH (which adds to the age confusion)!
Besides all that, she’s a joy to be around, loves her siblings, readily entertains herself, and giggles all day long. Now if we can just figure out how to get her to stop making that horrible screeching sound she makes for fun (especially in the car). We’ve tried telling her it hurts our ears (”ow”). She says, “Oh,” screeches again, and then giggles.

(The title is a play on an XKCD joke referencing Ender’s Game – sorry for the geek moment.)

We have dispensed with all the baby gates, both at the bottom and top of the stairs. Apparently, they were getting in Lori’s way. She has been pushing them aside and climbing the stairs anyway, so the gates were only giving me a false sense of security and getting in everyone else’s way, too. The only problem was that she could climb up, but not down. She would then teeter at the top of the stairs and make this awful screeching sound until someone rescued her and brought her back down stairs. So that she could practice climbing back up again. This past weekend, Brian and I tag-teamed Lori on the stairs; over the course of 48 hours, Lori spent roughly a quarter of that climbing up and then practicing backing down. She’s now completely proficient at both, and can come and go as she pleases. Which means that she will disappear up the stairs and return downstairs with Cara’s and Evan’s toothbrushes in her hands (and mouth) looking supremely pleased with herself. Now we’re thinking about putting the upstairs bathroom door back on it’s hinges…

Happy First Birthday, Lori!

Lori (at 10 months) has officially taken her first wobbly steps, after about a week of standing there thinking about it. She’s still not too sure about it, but I’m going to count it as walking. She still does this really funny half-bear crawl most of the time. She spent some time on the playground yesterday with Cara’s class at school, creeping around on her bare feet and hands (no knees) in the mulch and sand. She looked like a baby gorilla, and she loved it!

Another cute milestone Lori has achieved is giving kisses. She makes a smacking sound with her lips and then leans in with an open mouth to slobber on your face. If you’re really lucky, she’ll slip you the tongue. It is the sweetest, cutest thing in the world. My baby’s growing up so fast!

Wow, it’s already well into March, and all I’ve posted so far this year is a cornbread recipe. Sheesh, you’d think I was busy or something…

So, just in the last two months, Lori has made some amazing developmental leaps. When I visited my sister just before New Year’s, Lori was sitting up well and playing with toys. Now, she crawls around (using one knee and one foot), pulls up on things, claps, waves, tries to talk (she says “Dada” reliably), and is generally more like a little kid every day. Just the other day, she was playing with something in the middle of the living room floor, and she pushed up and stood up all on her own. She still had the toy in her hand, so I guess she thought she was holding onto something. It only lasted a few seconds, and then she plopped back down on her butt. Then she laughed and tried it again and again and again. I’m trying to discourage the walking for as long as I can, but I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to hold her off! If I set her down on the floor, she bee-lines it straight for something to pull up on, usually my leg. Today she stood at the kid-sized table in the dining room and “typed” on the unplugged keyboard for 15 minutes.

The only thing that’s weird about Lori’s development is her complete lack of interest in putting anything in her mouth. Normal children of this age put everything in their mouths. She very rarely mouths on toys. She won’t even put a Cheerio in her mouth. She can pick them up. She will happily eat them if you put them in her mouth for her. But she will not pick one up and put it in her mouth. I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have any teeth yet, but Cara didn’t get her first tooth until the day before her first birthday, and I remember her feeding herself well before that. Who knows what’s going on in that little head of hers, but perhaps she knows if she fed herself, she’d get much less personal attention at mealtimes. We’ll just have to give her time and wait and see…

Since Thanksgiving Day, Lori has been sampling solid foods. She loves pears. She likes apples and bananas. Brown rice cereal is acceptable when made with breast milk. Sweet potatoes are great. Carrots are yummy. She even scarfed down an entire container of green beans. But not peas. Oh, no, not the peas. Don’t try to feed her peas unless you’d like them splattered all over your face.

Lori is such a delight, and she’s getting more and more interactive each day. For about the first two months, babies are more or less on a seemingly endless loop of: sleep, eat, burp, poop, repeat. (Evan will recite this for you if you ask what babies do.) The periods of quiet wakefulness get longer and longer, though, and Lori will play happily on her gymini mat or in her bouncy seat for upwards of an hour sometimes. She’s been smiling since she was about six weeks old, and her laugh has grown from a slight gurgling sound to a full-blown belly-laugh. The kids are experts at eliciting her hilarious chuckle, and tonight Cara got her going like I’ve never seen before. Lori was almost snorting she was laughing so hard. If I’m lucky I’ll catch some video of it next time (and post it for all to see).

She’s getting better about riding in the car, which is good because with school and all the other activities we’re involved in, we’ve been in the car a lot. Liam and Evan take turns sitting next to her and putting her nuk in her mouth if she gets upset. They are very attentive big brothers. People keep asking how everyone has adjusted to “the new baby,” and I have to say, other than Cara being shy about the sudden increase in visitors at the house, the transition has been extremely smooth. The only problem I have with Evan is the same one I had with him when Cara was born: he loves Lori SO MUCH that he’s in her face (and therefore mine) from the moment he wakes up in the morning (which is usually before I do) until I shut his door at night. As another mother pointed out the other day, though, it’s certainly better than the alternative. Cross your fingers for me that everything stays even-keeled!

Knowing that with a new baby, we wouldn’t have a lot of time on our hands, and that people would want to be reading our blog and seeing new pictures even more than usual, we decided to re-do the whole website and then not post anything for a while. Sorry.

The new website is a work-in-progress. Each of the kids will have their own section of the site, complete with art galleries of their latest creations and photography. In the mean time, I hope to continue to get new pictures up for people. The July, 2007 album is now available with fun pictures of all the kids. We’ve been having a laid-back summer with lots of fun outside. Check out the new swing set and “watch tower.”

Lori is growing quickly – she’s six weeks old tomorrow! She’s an absolute delight and as easy as a baby can possibly be (unless we’re in the car). I bet if you used a stop-watch to keep track of how long she cried in a day, you’d barely accumulate five minutes (unless we’ve been in the car). She’s as strong as all the others were – holding her head up rather well and supporting her weight with her legs on my lap – kicking and squirming all the time like she did in the womb. She takes good naps throughout the day, and, thank goodness, also like Liam, Evan, and Cara all did – sleeps well through the night! Now that she’s starting to smile for real, we’ll be compelled to take more pictures of her, so stay tuned!