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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Julia

Last night, Julia decided that it would be fun to wake up at 2am, and not go back to sleep until after 4. Nothing was even wrong (at least nothing that was obvious) but if I even so much as tried to put her back in to her crib, she screamed. So, she came downstairs with me and crawled around the livingroom for two hours, happy and laughing.

At least she was laughing.

She was up for an hour earlier (sometime around midnight) hungry. I fed and changed her and she basically went right back.

Julia is definitely going through a "thing" lately. I call it a "thing" because I am not really sure what the hell is going on. She has been waking up a lot during the night, and usually waking up screaming like nobody's business. It's not the small little whimpers that turn in to the full fledged cry...she starts of wailing and yelling like she's violently angry. I am thinking it may be a combination of night terrors and the couple of teeth she has coming in but, either way it's a little disarming.

The other thing that has been going on is her refusal of just about every food imaginable. Things she used to love she won't eat anymore. The only way I can get her to eat anything is to give her baby food (mashed banana, apple sauce rice cereal etc). I used to be able to cook dinner, whatever it was and she would eat it (chicken, steak, pork, veggies of all sorts etc). She will eat grapes and bananas in their natural form, but that's about it, except for such things as crackers or cookies. Obviously, she can't eat those things all of the time. For someone who already has issues with putting on enough weight (she is 18 months old and hasn't even come close to tripling her birth weight (she was 9lbs 2.2 oz and weights 21 lbs 5 oz now), most kids do that within a year's time), deciding to be fussy about food is not a good thing. Dr B. said at her 18 month check up a lot of kids go through this at this age (or thereabouts anyway) so to keep trying and see what happens. He siad to call him if I am really concerned, which I probably will do if nothing changes within a few weeks.

Other than that though, she's been great. She seems to be saying a new word every other day (give or take), the newest one being "PT". When she said it,it was the first time she just said a new word without my encouragement. She just copied me and that was that. Once she gets the hang of a new word though, she says it for the rest of the day, most of the time out of context but it's still cute. She also said "Peta" the other day, I think in reference to my father (who's name is Peter). Right on with the Boston accent though, dropping the "er" and putting in an "a".

She stands with little or no effort on her own now (without pulling up on something)and has just started to cross between furniture (for example going from the couch to the coffee table). She still holds on to one or the other when moving between but she is definitely more comfortable with the whole standing thing. Her newest trick is to pull to standing at my legs or the table or whatever and pivoting around so by the time she is done, she is facing away from whatever she was originally hanging on to.

I have a strong feeling walking is not too far in the future. With just a little more balance and coordination, a realization on her part that she can actually move her legs when standing, and perhaps a little encouragement, in no time at all, she'll be walking all over the place like she's done it for a million years!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yay for walking!

Sadie hit the food fussy phase and it was really weird. It has already partially subsided, but not completely. Apparently this is a toddler thing. We just give her the opportunity to eat what we eat, and if we have to we give her what she will eat, as often a day as it takes, since she's like 6 small meals girl as often as not.

The screaming and waking thing is weird, though I think Sadie also did a brief bout of that, IIRC also near the time she was learning to walk. So maybe that's a good sign.

Mostly though she has always slept like an Ellis.