Thirteen months old today, Lucy is growing in length, weight, and comprehension, much to our delight! And, according to our pediatrician, it doesn’t even matter that she won’t eat any vegetables.
At our latest well-baby visit, we learned that Lucy is just barely short of 20 pounds, 30 inches tall, and doing just great. When I asked Dr. Minkus about her somewhat unvaried diet of fruit, yogurt, and Cheerios, he said, “When you figure out a way to get children to eat something they don’t want to eat, let me know and I’ll make a million bucks.” I’ve decided not to stress about Lucy’s diet, especially after reading the side of the Cheerios box and realizing that she is eating the equivalent of a couple toddler multi-vitamins each day with her cereal intake. We do try to introduce some new foods to Lucy. Last weekend at “a great little Mexican restaurant”:http://maps.google.com/maps?sourceid=mozilla2&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&um=1&q=dona+lolis&near=Chicago,+IL&fb=1&latlng=42007318,-87673567,584696433164848058, she eagerly “sucked down some horchata“:/news/2007/yummy-horchata/ (a sweetened rice-milk beverage). But alas, the frijoles (refried beans) were violently rejected, with Lucy sticking her tongue out and practically gagging until we removed the offending beans.
https://boydsnest.org/news/wp-content/uploads/MVI_7266.MOV
When Lucy is getting a little bored at the end of a meal, Mama or Papa spice it up a little bit with a “feed your parent a Cheerio” game. Or sometimes we put a Cheerio between our lips and Lucy grabs it and eats it. Hilarious.
p{color:gray}. Video: Lucy makes Papa beg for a Cheerio.
In the oral arena, you’ll be glad to learn that Lucy is officially a five-tooth girl now, going on six-teeth. We are also introducing Lucy to the joys of tooth-brushing, which she finds pretty novel. Perhaps she will inherit Mama’s tooth-brushing obsession and bring a toothbrush with her everywhere she goes?
Lucy is so delighted by so many things, which you can probably tell from her “smiling”:/news/2007/big-brim/ “face”:/news/2007/ostrich-impression/ and “frequent”:/news/2007/mirror-image/ “giggles”:/news/2007/swing-shift-2/. Here are a few examples:
* Since late April, Lucy has been tickled by Papa rubbing his hands together to make a swishing sound. If she’s standing, she sits down to free both hands and try it herself.
* Lucy loves watching the tub drain. Or maybe it is the anticipation of getting dried off in a fluffy white towel. She rocks back and forth, looks up at her Papa (the Bathmaster) and squeals, splashes with her hands, and generally has a blast. Whatever the cause, the end of bathtime is a laugh riot around here.
* One evening in mid-May, we were surprised, after Lucy had been asleep for an hour, to hear a great chuckle and babble erupt from Lucy’s room, followed by silence. May 15, 2007 marks the first “sleep talk” from Lucy, a rich Boyd tradition.
We are on pins and needles waiting for Lucy’s first words. Here are a few tantalizing developments in the communication department:
* Could her first words be “cha cha cha”? Are these even considered words? Lucy has been experimenting with these syllables as a finale to our periodic choruses of “The Lucy Song”:/news/2007/cha-cha-cha/.
* It’s not a word, but a longing for connection: lately, Lucy has been known to stick her index finger out as an invitation to touch fingers in midair.
* Her little squeals and buzzes and chirps have made us start calling her “R2D2.”
* Lucy loves to put her wrist in her mouth to make a modified “ba ba ba.” Unfortunately, this particular consonant is not used in the English language (at least, not with this technique), or she’d be really onto something.
* Lucy is enamored with our cordless telephone. She loves to press all the buttons, so we have to watch carefully to make sure she isn’t dialing “911.” But her favorite trick of all is watching the red “line in use” light go on the wall-mounted phone whenever she hits the “talk” button on the remote handset. She could do this for hours (if we let her). Do you think she has a future in telecommunications?
All in all, Lucy is just a bundle of fun these days!
Oh Lucia,
I love the stories about you and of you and for you. You make me smile and sigh and laugh and realize once again how precious life truly is. I thank you – and your parents – and I send you my love…
Our pediatrician told us that we could count fruit as vegetables, and we’ve done that until about last year. Finally our 16-year-old is interested in salads and beans! By the way, Maggie just painted her new bedroom that same yellow that’s in your kitchen. So Marie Antoinette!
I think your doctor is right. Two things we found:
1. Maddy loved meat, chicken, steak, beef…MEAT and from there veggies really just happened
2. All though I wanted to give all home-made food, I have a food pantry at work and no one was taking the baby food it was just expiring so I tried giving her some of that with rice cereal add and she loved the junk…so we did that for a week and then started to add more of ours and less of the gerber.
Now her fav food is M&Ms!
R2D2! What a riot. We say that Mo is an Ewok. He sounds just like one. He has mastered dada and can be heard screaming maaamaaa whenever something is wrong. “All done” is his fav phrase, but he doesn’t just use it when he’s done, he’s found that it’s a good way to get our attention. On the signing front there is still no progress. I have successfully taught Kaia many of the signs, but Mo just laughs at us for making them.
check out the dvds at http://www.babysigningtime.com Maddy has learned 10 in one week and we were about to give up!
Thanks Katrina!
We love Signing Time and watch it every Sunday before church. I didn’t realize they had baby videos too.