Month 23, December 2006
This month Lily starting using the word "I", especially in the phrase "I did it!". I tried
getting her to recognize the word "you" by sometimes saying, "You did it!" afterward. The best part of these
new words is that while we were playing on Dec. 30th, she gave me a big hug and said, "I love you, Daddy."
Awww!! That really got to me. The next day I prompted her to say it when Michelle was around, and she also said,
"I love you, Mommy," so Michelle was happy too.
Another language development is that she's started using apostrophe-S's to show possession,
even where it's not needed. She'll say "Lily's computer", or "My computer", but sometimes she'll say something is "my's"
instead of "mine". Maybe because "mine" doesn't follow the pattern? She also refers to her pacifier
now with an S on the end: "fi's" instead of "fi". Is she saying it's hers? Or maybe it's plural? Hard to figure out.
She's also been using phrases she got from me, like "minute", which means "wait a minute",
and "I'll be right back" (it comes out more like "ah-be-ra-baa"). And when we were listening to
the Little Mermaid song "Under the Sea", she kept saying something over and over during the refrain,
which I eventually recognized as "under a sea, under a sea".
Lily's friend Caroline turned 2 on Dec. 9th, and we went to her party. Caroline's the
girl in the pink dress. The boys standing next to the snowman in the first picture
starting beating poor Frosty to death for some reason! Their mortified dad came over
and stopped them, but it was kind of funny. A music teacher came to the party (second
picture) and got all the kids to shake bells and hit sticks. Lily was shy but participated
a little. The last picture has musical notes that each kid was supposed to stick on the sign;
I let Lily do it and hers is the only note pointing in the wrong direction!
Our day care center had a holiday party for the kids, featuring the delicacy no
child can resist: Cheetos! Lily, Madeline, and Cailey gobbled them down
and walked around with orange Cheeto-residue on their faces.
The school party was a good photo-op: Madeline with her mom, Cailey with her parents,
and the three girls playing together,
Michelle's parents, a.k.a. Lola and Papa, came to visit for Christmas.
Lily hadn't seen them in five months but warmed up to them within minutes.
She especially clung to her Papa! She always prefers men, and poor Mommy
and Lola are second class citizens.
She got very mad when Papa briefly left her side
to go take a shower, and she wouldn't play with him for about an hour afterward.
The grandparents took Lily to the Children's Museum twice while they were here,
and also to Chuck E. Cheese's once. Both places are guaranteed hits with Lily.
This was Lily's first Christmas spent in her own house. It was relaxing not
having to travel for a change, and that freed up more money to spoil our
daughter with! It was also nice to start our own holiday traditions in
the kooky and informal way that suits us. We didn't have many ornaments,
so we decorated the tree with some of Lily's old toys and other knick-knacks.
You can see a macaroni necklace, a party favor, and a paper candy cane she
made at day care. If you look really close, you can also see Mr. Krabs and
Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants, which we watch every day.
Here are the stockings we picked out. Rudolph is Michelle's, Elmo is Lily's,
and Homer is mine. The other two we hung up for Lola and Papa.
Lily got a great haul this year, including Play-Doh, a toddler laptop, Tickle Me Elmo, and an
Elmo toolbench. The laptop is probably her favorite, because she's very possessive about it,
and she kept playing with it even when we were opening more toys for her. (Those are
my genes making her obsessed with cool computers.)
She also got a racetrack, some little toy animals, and the Lightning McQueen car from
the movie Cars. We opened all these presents Christmas Eve, except for the unwrapped
gifts in the fourth picture, which Santa brought. We didn't emphasize that
too much though, because Lily is deathly afraid of Santa. The last time I took her to get a shot
at the pediatrician, she barely cried at all; but when we tried
handing her to Santa at the mall, she screamed like we were boiling her in oil.
Papa and Lola opened their present from Lily: an original painting! (She painted one
for my parents too.)
Michelle bought Lily a pink Hello Kitty purse, which Lily just loves. She has to hold
her arm up to keep it from sliding off! I gave her a couple dollar bills and some coins
to put in it, and several times she's asked me for "More money! More money!" Luckily
she's content with quarters or one-dollar bills ... for now.
We went out to dinner at Huey's with the Peughs and Willises while the grandparents
were in town, so that one Michelle's parents could meet the other Michelle's parents.
Lily and Madeline had a good time. They're eating ice cream here. Lily's eating hers with
a plastic knife, having rejected the idea of using a spoon.
The two girls kept leaning their head way back at the same time, then both
sat back up, then both leaned way back, for several iterations. I'm not
sure what they were doing, but they got a lot of chuckles out of it.
At Wal-Mart we bought her a pair of glasses for $18 (just plain glass). She sees us
putting our glasses on and often asks "Lily's glasses?" Well, now she has some.
And unfortunately, since she's swimming in my gene pool, she's probably going to
need real glasses pretty soon.
The last night Michelle's parents were here, we went out to Applebee's to eat and took
these pictures. I was worried she would cry a lot when she realized they'd gone, but
she handled it well. We told her they had to go away to Virginia for a long time,
but then they'll come back. When they called to say they'd gotten home safely,
Lily heard them over the speakerphone and asked them to pick her up ("Papa, uppy! Carry!").
It was sad, but I'm happy she likes them so much.
Here are two outfits from this month. The first is a pair of OshKosh B'Gosh overalls that
Michelle always thought were cute, and the second is a black-and-tan outfit
that matched what Daddy was wearing to work that day.
She put her Play-Doh tub on her head and staggered around for a while. Hey,
it's not New Year's yet!
Okay, now it's New Year's. Mike and Susan Peugh (first picture) invited us over with
their son Matt and the Willises (second picture), so Lily got to play
with Madeline and Cameron again (third picutre). Any time the girls get together
is good, because they play with each other and the parents get a little break.
Here I am with the two girls. Lily seemed okay with sharing her Daddy with Madeline,
but when Madeline started playing with Lily's laptop, there was a lot of wailing!
Lily saw me holding some red champagne, and said, "Juice?" I told her this
kind of juice was just for Daddy!
Surprisingly, the girls stayed up playing all the way until midnight on New Year's.
These pictures were taken about a half hour after midnight.
Cameron, on the other hand, was wiped out. He tried to get some sleep
on the couch, but the girls wouldn't let him!
