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.