Yay, Animalia!

The clapping! I love the clapping! She does it when she's excited, when we say "let's go Cubbies!" or "Tortillitas" or "Patty cake, patty cake." It's freakin' adorable. Oh yeah, she also does it when she's being cute on purpose. Those times she looks, waits til someone's paying attention to her, and then claps and smiles.

Locomotion, part more

The Animalia is an energetic type of baby.

Her latest things:
She pulls herself up ALL THE TIME NOW. She's able to "cruise" the couches in our living room, mostly looking for remote controls to chew on. She's also started to let go of the couches while she's standing for a few seconds at a time. She'll be standing on her own soon I think.

She's a fantastic crawler and loves to be chased.

SHE CLIMBS THE STAIRS. Her Nana and Ata have stairs at their house, crooked, dangerous stairs. She can climb all the way to the top. They make sure she doesn't fall and follow her all the way up but it is a somewhat frightening experience to watch. I get a small bit of anxiety. She's learning how to go down the 3 stairs from our living room to our dining room too. This is also anxiety inspiring, though I think she's finally starting to realize that she can't make it down headfirst. The last few days she's started to experiment with this a little more than before. It's pretty damn hilarious.

She drives. A toy car. She can definitely push herself backward. Forward is more of a mystery but she's starting to get the hang of it. This whole toy car thing is very very cute. I like it.

ENERGY!!!

The Animalia is an energetic girl who doesn't take as many naps (breaks for the rest of us) as she used to. She used to take 3-4 naps throughout the day. Lately, we're lucky if she takes 2, one midmorning, one midafternoon. She's wanting bedtime earlier though, to make up for the lack of late afternoon/early evening nap and she sleeps til about 6am. This can be difficult for me as I used to be a nightowl and my baby girl is, like her Da, a morning girl. Her favorite morning activity is crawling around the bed, crawling over me or Da for awhile til she feels the desperate need to pull herself up to the bedroom window and stare outside. She just stands there, looking, while I stay lying down, watching her, sometimes with only one eye open. She'll let herself fall from her spot sometimes, safely though, onto the soft pillows and then I attack her, forcing both eyes open and forcing myself awake before I tickle her and say "Buenos días, Amalia! Good Morning, Girl!" And then sometimes, not always, I scream "Pillow FIGHT!" and she giggles and I cover her with a pillow and she laughs when I pull it away from her. Then, we're officially AWAKE.

Strangle bunny.

So we're just odd all around.

Many months ago, after I came back from maternity leave, a coworker gave me a very cute Folkmanis bunny hand puppet. She explained that one day I would need some kind of distraction during diaper changes (ain't that the truth!). So there was this bunny.

The bunny ended up at my mom's house.

A few days ago, I was sitting there and she brought out the bunny. She told me it was the Strangle Bunny and liked to attack the Animalia. Sure enough, when the Strangle Bunny appeared, the Animalia squealed, not unlike a child about to be tickled. And then the bunny started to attack her and, yes, strangle her.

And that's just how we are I guess. Animalia doesn't seem to mind.

More tales of the breast.

Two things:

"Remember that time when Animalia pushed kind of hard on my boob and it squirted in the air."
"Yeah, it squirted me in the face."
"It did?! That's hilarious."

OK, that was one.

Two is this:
I was holding the Animalia while changing my shirt the other day (crazy, I know) and in between tank tops she threw herself sideways and latched on. While I was standing there. Yes, still just an udder.

LET'S GO CUB-BIES!

So Saturday we were at home. The Animalia was in her highchair. Me and Da were sitting on opposite couches. Her Da said "LET'S GO CUB-BIES" then clap clap clap-clap-clap. And the Animalia clapped. I looked at him. He looked at me. We both clapped some more. She clapped some more. I asked him if she'd done that before. He said no. We were both amazed and proud and giggly. It was hilarious.

But back to the Cubbies. They're having a fantastic season, the perennial losers from Chicago. The theory in our house is that the universe was waiting for the Animalia to be born. I mean, they did lose the second game in the NL Central Division pennant series the night before she was born. As I wrote in Animalia's birth story, I made her Da go to those games because there would be no way, with a newborn, that he'd be able to go to the World Series if they actually FINALLY made it. So he went, they lost, she was born. The Animalia is very interested in the Cubs. When they're on she cranes her neck to watch the games, even though she's not allowed to watch TV. She loves her Da's baseball cap. She has one just like it and I think she can't quite figure out why his is so enormous. So it's very appropriate that she clapped for the first time to Let's Go Cubbies. It just makes sense.

Oh yeah, the zoo.

A couple of weeks ago we (me, Da, Nana) took Animalia to the zoo. We went on a Sunday morning right after opening in an attempt to avoid the heat. I figured there wouldn't be much more time to take her until the fall since it's just a million degrees as soon as the sun comes up. This wasn't our first trip to a zoo, our first was the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago but we didn't get to see much there because we got there right as some of the exhibits were closing.

It was nice. I think we adults were very impressed by how much the zoo has changed and improved since we'd been there. I think Animalia was impressed by the water fall in the tiger enclosure and occasionally by the tiger himself. Some of the animals weren't as impressive as they could have been. Even in the morning it's a little hot and the animals are a little tired and not moving very much. She didn't seem to see the giraffes until they started moving, or maybe was confused by them. Even when they started moving she had no idea what to think. So we paid $2 for some giraffe biscuits and fed them. Her Da carried her really close. Her reaction was to stare. And judge. She was also interested in the otter, or maybe just in the water in his pool. The anteaters were another source of concern. The elderly lion, well, she didn't seem to see him at all. There was a bear pacing back and forth that she seemed to like.

It was certainly a succesful trip with us imagining that we'll become zoo members someday when we're taking her more often. As we were leaving she fell asleep thrown like a tiny potato sack over her Da's shoulder.

Next, the desert museum. I think she'll like it.

Happiness is good for stress.

So I'm tired again. I'm mothering through a slight (hopefully) lupus flare up and the last two nights Animalia has woken up at about 2 or 3am wanting to nurse like crazy. I'm thinking it's the 100+ degree heat. Maybe she's dehydrated. Or maybe she senses my lupus flare up and my tiredness and is really trying to torture me. No matter.

I'm actually not complaining. I think without her I would let myself feel much worse. With her I have no time to be sick. Besides, happiness is good for stress and stress is bad for lupus. What I'm saying is that I'm happy to have her, no matter what.

Naked baby emergency.

So. The naked baby emergency. As some of you already know, the Animalia, pobrecita, has some digestive issues. Again, pobrecita. Here's what happened on Saturday. Some of this is anecdotal, told to me by her Da, and some of this is my own observation.


I went to work on Saturday morning, leaving the Animalia in the oh so competent hands of her Da. She cried when I left and I was sad but there was no going back. Saturday morning I had a baby storytime so I had to be at work. I got to work. I set up storytime and a few other things. I waited. People showed up. Animalia was coming but where was she? I delayed another couple of minutes. Still no Animalia. I went ahead and got started.


Where was the Animalia? Well, she was fighting with her Da who was trying to get her dressed. They were finally ALL READY and at the car when her Da realized he'd forgotten the diaper bag. Back into the house and back out to the car they went. Then the dog escaped and the Animalia and her Da spent time chasing him. They got him back. They left for storytime.

I saw them walk in and head toward the back of the room. I saw her Da take her out of the carseat and say Hi to Animalia's Grandma and Animalia's cousins. I watched him walk out of the room with her.

I continued storytime. I looked at the door occasionally. No Animalia. No Da. Um. OK. I'm getting to the end of storytime.

And then she appeared. In her Da's arms. Naked. Well, wearing a diaper, not completely naked but certainly not wearing the very cute dress that I'd laid out for her. Hm. It turned out that she'd pooped all over the place and her Da frantically yet thoroughly cleaned her off but had neglected to pack an emergency outfit. And she stayed for the rest of the program. She stayed like that for playtime, she stayed like that for snacks. She was hilariously cute sitting in front of her tiny plate of Cheerios, naked, among the clothed children and babies. I said, "Pobresita, no tiene ropa, nadie le quiere" and another mom laughed.

Apparently her Da thought I'd send them both home. I didn't. She wasn't cold and seemed very happy to be there. The other kids liked her and she liked them. She even made a baby friend who kept trying to put random things into her mouth for her. She liked him for that I think. They'd end up in her mouth anyway.

Using her words

So, if you read my last post, you know that the Animalia is an incredible mimic. She just is, I think most babies are, but seriously, you do something at her a few times over the space of a day and the next day she'll just do it on her own. So it's no surprise that she's starting to talk a little here and there... she says "a-WA" for water and "bao bao" for dog. "Pío pío" elicits a "pah pah" and when she eats she goes mmmmmmmm. That one's a little insane. It's like this deep, menacing mmmm. Not the cheeful enjoyable mmm that we actually use when we feed her. El Perro Cupo is sometimes called Deh too and her Da is called Da and her Tata is called a-TA! She still only says Mama when she's crying or upset but I think she knows it's me because she'll reach out her arms when she does it. According to my parents she started doing the Mama thing when I was running late to pick her up the other day. It's her favorite complaint.

Very clever, only I can't be fooled.

Her latest thing, the Animalia's latest thing, is to say woo woo. I think she's trying to say "wow wow" for dogs. She did it last night when she saw Cooper, El Perro Cupo, and she did it today when she heard the neighbor's dogs barking. She does it in this low voice too. Very clever.

Even more clever: she's starting to cough sometimes. It's not a real cough. It's a fake cough. Like she'll make this big faker cough if anyone else around her coughs OR when you take something away from her OR when you try to put her to bed and she doesn't want to. She just looks at me and does this feeble, pathetic, BIG FAKER cough. I can't be fooled.