My little baby is getting so BIG!

Quick Lilah notes:

- She's creeping along furniture and can balance and walk a few steps, but rarely chooses to.

- Her babble is starting to sound more like words

- When she shakes her head 'no', she actually means it (not just random silly movement)

- Lilah learned how to clap and can throw a ball better than big sister.

Highlights from her 1 year appointment:

- Weight: 21 lbs, 1 oz

- Height: 29.5"

- Head circumference: 45 cm

She's super healthy, very bubbly and active, but shy around strangers. She won't scream her head off anymore, but rather just prefers to check things out thoroughly before opening up. She is VERY observant. Lilah does seem to think she's just as big as Callie, and therefore should do all the things Callie does, but I do not see this changing anytime soon. As always, no news is good news in the our household, and Lilah is no different. She is growing and thriving, and has quite the personality.

Hopefully the next update will include pictures, and not be several months out!

The biggest new milestone she's had is crawling, though she does it a bit funny. She'll crawl almost pigeon-toed and with her legs under her bottom, so she can return to sitting at a moment's notice. She also tries to lift herself off the ground completely, moving from a crawl to a plank position, almost identical to the start of a push-up. She'll grunt and hold herself up on her little toes for as long as she can stand it. She's pulling up in her bassinet, which puts acquiring a big-girl crib very high on our familial priority list.

Overall she's doing very well for her age and will be 1 year old before we know it! She's still quite bald, though with a good downy blond covering over her whole head, and consequently despite any amount of bows and pink outfits the most common compliment is still "My, what a HANDSOME one you are! He just has the most gorgeous eyes!". I usually don't bother to correct them, but here's to hoping for hair. Bald babies are cute and all, but she'll have to grow some EVENTUALLY!

Lilah still has some major stranger anxiety, mostly when she is tired or needs to be babysat, but she's slowly getting over it (the screaming, shrieking jags are getting shorter). This doesn't bode well for VBS coming up, where she will need to be watched in the nursery for three or four hours during the day while I do snacks. Here's to hoping she decides to behave and not howl the whole time, otherwise I am screwed. Lilah is super cute as always, though, which assuages our damaged hearing somewhat. Both girls, in fact, manage to be just cute enough that we don't ship them off to relatives permanently when they decide to be obnoxious ;)

Hopefully pictures and more videos are coming soon!

Not much news here other than that Lilah has started dragging herself across the floor with great speed, and over this past week went from dragging hind quarters to getting up on all fours and rocking back and forth. She's extremely close to crawling, and I suspect her motivation for doing it earlier than Callie is an effort to try and keep up with big sister!

Lilah has proven a great fan of most transportation methods - from front pack, to stroller, to back pack. She also seems to love the infant swings at the park, and gives happy shrieks and two-toothed smiles when she gets in one.

She is also still a fan of all things Food. Turkey lunch meat, beans, cheese, peas, pretty much any leftovers - Lilah likes them all. I haven't noticed any allergies to things like eggs, but I am keeping nut products to a minimum as Callie is showing a mild allergy (rashes and bumps) to peanut butter and cashews now. Nothing severe, but if Callie has it and Peter's side is prone to it, in general, I'd rather play it safe with Lilah.

Pictures SHOULD be coming soon. So sorry for the lack of updates, we have been boring and crazy at the same time, if you can believe it!

Despite Lilah looking super chunky to Peter and me, especially compared to Callie at the same age, we still have a skinny girl on our hands. Lilah weighed in at 17 pounds, 2 oz, which puts her at the 35th percentile. She was 28 inches long and that puts her at the 75th for height (the first nurse measured her wrong and the second remeasured and got an extra half inch out of her). Her head is still fairly petite, at 42.5 cm or 20th percentile, so overall her basic dimensions have not changed.

Yay for the healthy big girl!

We're not nursing anymore, sadly, thanks to the trip to California, so she can't bite me... but she does try to bite everything else!

Lilah has her (belated) 6 month checkup tomorrow afternoon so I'll get some vital stats from that, but from all appearances she's happy and healthy. Within the past two weeks she went from topple city to mastering sitting up in VERY quick fashion, and she is also starting to babble with syllables, the current favorite being "bababababa... BA bababa.... BAAAAAAAAAA!" and variations therein. Her tuft of hair on the top is getting longer too, but the sides are still bald, and our term for the look is the "Reverse Monk".

She gives a BIG smile when Callie comes into the room, and Callie proceeds to give her kisses and then wipe the little sister drool off of her face. The two get along great thus far, no jealousy present.

And so life goes on. And YES, Peter still needs to update the baby pictures badly. Our apologies. Here's a quick and normal one of Lilah - covered in drool, food, and very curious. Oh yeah, and big blue eyes for the Grandmas to enjoy :)

But it's true, she earned it - Lilah is such a lovable, smily, sweet baby with the cutest little cloth diapered bum, thigh rolls, the whole deal. I may be partial but she and her sister are so beautiful and sweet, I am ridiculously and endlessly blessed to be their mother.

It's been quite a while since the last update but nothing of note to report - Lilah's growing and changing daily, and right now is having fun rolling all over the floor (and yelling when she gets stuck on her belly), trying to stay seated upright, gobbling solids as fast as we can give them to her, and showing *everyone* within a ten mile radius her happy shriek. Lilah doesn't really talk, per se, but she does regularly exercise the higher end of her range. Callie always preferred to yell loudly, Lilah doesn't care about the volume as long as it's a screech. She could probably shatter glass if we got her to resonate enough!

Some other points that she differs from her sister on is laughing. If you toss her up in the air or tickle her chin she'll chuckle, but Lilah is remarkably short of actual laughs. But what she DOES do is smile these beautiful, gigantic grins almost the entire time she is awake. She is such a mama's girl and a real cheese, she'll squeal to catch my attention and then grin big time, or start hyperventilating and crying until I come over, when she proceeds to give a HUGE smile through the (obviously melodramatic and fake) tears. She's an absolute peach and I adore her.

Fortunately for her, so does her sister. Callie is a very good helper, giving Lilah kisses, fetching her pacifier for her, patting her head and mimicking Lilah with her own baby doll. Lilah is fascinated watching Callie run around, as well, and I think they'll be very good, close sisters as they grow.

No crawling yet, though Lilah stands like a total champ, better than almost any baby I have seen around her same age. She's VERY long and still somewhat skinny, but healthy and bright. Perhaps her only downside is that she is the exact opposite of her sister in one key area - other people.

Callie never had much of a preference for me over anyone else - in fact she is a total Daddy's girl and Peter is her favorite. But she is great in nursery, with the grandparents... she loves other people.

Lilah, on the other hand, is a total mama's girl and has been wonderful with me from the start, but the very first time I EVER heard her shriek like she was being murdered was ten minutes into nursery. She HATES strangers and has horrible stranger anxiety, and has for months. She used to pull this with her dad and I had a hard time believing it wasn't him doing something weird, because she was always adorably sweet with me - but the bloodcurdling death knell from the nursery confirmed that she's very different with others than she is with me.

Now that she is getting older it is getting better - Peter has been forced into holding her more, so she has gotten used to someone's arms other than mine, and now she is good for him too. Now that her naps are spreading out more she is happier in nursery provided she has lots of toys to distract her. She's much more challenging than Callie (who is regularly reported to be the 'best' kid in nursery, in terms of being happy, playing contentedly, and not tantruming) but getting better with age.

I do have TONS of Lilah pictures from the past few months that need to be uploaded, please excuse the lack of updates. We have been very, very busy and the pictures have just been shuffled onto iPhoto and left there, but we DO have them and they WILL be up.

Lilah Loverbum is yelling from upstairs for her midnight snack, so this will have to be cut short. Updates are forthcoming!

We still have welts from the shots, but other than those Lilah is doing very well - she's 13 lbs 9 oz and 26 inches long, otherwise known as 40% for weight and 90% for height. Her head is 40 cm, or 20%. What does it mean that those are vastly different groups? Not a whole heck of a lot, it's her body shape and she's staying along her own curve quite well.

New pictures of the super cutie are up. She's happy and observant, often just looking around the room or babbling to herself for hours, and even with a growth spurt is still a very good sleeper. She's rolling over, but not consistently, and definitely hates extended tummy time, so no crawling yet.

Getting bigger every day! 3 months old and some change now :)

.... the little girls begin their Vitamin D supplementation.

Lilah had her first dose of PolyViSol today, which unfortunately contains iron. It's basically a vitamin/mineral cocktail that's been soaked in spoiled grapejuice and week old blood, and used to flush a radiator or two.... or so the taste would suggest. Her face was... interesting. She didn't cry, I don't think she wanted to open her mouth and let the waft of the vitamins hit her nose! The bigger problem with the stuff is that for a baby that spits up as much as she does this stuff stains like nobody's business. Let the clothes ruining commence!

Big sister doesn't need iron, as she can eat kale and steak if need be, so her supplementation tastes just like strawberry lipgloss. Lilah is glaring, she really is.