Lucia Lately (8 months)

Lucia is 8 months old now and she just gets more and more fun as she grows. In an effort to record all of her stages of development, I'm going to try to summarize her current stage. She's got the crawling thing down now and she currently loves crawling around, crawling under things, trying to go over things (including a step or two) and standing herself up onto just about anything. She's been flirting with the idea of letting go while standing a time or two but she's not quite up for that yet. She is a busy little girl, always on the move. I can barely get her to sit with me for longer than a few minutes because she always sees something interesting and then once I set her down, she's off! This stage brings some new challenges but I enjoy it. She follows us around our apartment like a little puppy now that she can get herself where she wants to go. And it's fun to see where she chooses to take herself; usually she just wants to be in the action, where the people are. She loves to play with her cousins and it is so fun to watch her get excited to see them and play with them. She seems to love people in general, making eye contact with everyone, smiling and squealing at strangers that walk by her, and even waving a little bit now. But she is also starting to show signs of clingy-ness to mama around strangers.

Lucia is a great sleeper and sleeps almost 12 hours at night and takes two solid naps during the day. Man oh man, do we love getting good sleep again! Thank you, Lucia! We are also enjoying this new stage where she wakes up and talks to herself rather than screaming and crying until we ("we" meaning "I") get her. All of her little "talking" noises are just so cute and she is especially loving it these days when we repeat the "bas" and "das" back to her...she just can't contain her laughter, so cute. She still eats pureed foods and lets us know she's hungry now by making "mmm" "mmm" noises or crawling over to her high chair. On a related note, her first little tooth is starting to pop through...better late than never, right?

Here are a few pics from the last month or so...

She's practicing her standing up on everything these days

Enjoying one of our last 80 degree days of the season with a walk to the lake. I believe the next day was about 40 degrees cooler.

One of her favorite spots to grab some toys. Her favorite non-toy toys are this electronic catch phrase game and the remote control. She also likes being read to, playing with books and playing singing games like "this little piggy".

You can see in the background that her exersaucer has been converted to the final stage now that she can stand up on it.

With great-grandpa Ray

Showing off her skills: standing while holding onto something else with her hands.

We celebrated 8 months with some cheerios

She wasn't quite sure what to think about them

When I watch her sleeping like this, I just think to myself that I can't believe that I am so lucky to have this little girl as my daughter. We are so blessed.

And just for fun...here is a picture of my grandma with all her granddaughters at my cousin Beth's bridal shower.

We've been enjoying our fall and hope you have too.