The Girl

Lia is learning so much as she gets older.  I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought I'd do a post about some of the things she's picked up recently, mostly for my own memories.

Words!  She has so many words.  She says "stinky" and "yucky," "milk" and "water," "orange" and "Kix" (the cereal), and she uses the same word for "open" and "lotion." She can point to your eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hand, and hair and say their name.  One of her favorites is "button," and she loves finding her belly button! She knows what a cow, dog, duck, monkey, and bird say.  She loves pointing out babies, but sometimes she gets "baby" and "Lia" confused, since most of the baby pictures she sees are of herself. One that I don't quite understand is her word for "diaper."  Whenever I say "Let's change your diaper" or "Go get mama a diaper" or anything along those lines, she responds with "ma-ma-ma!" every time.  How is "ma-ma-ma" diaper?  She is so consistent with it though.  I don't get it.
We tend to let her wander as she eats sometimes, and since I didn't want to find pieces of food all over my house, I taught her to "give it to mommy" when she's all done.  She is getting so good at this! I love it. She is also pretty good at cleaning up her toys when we help her. She likes putting them in whatever container they came out of, but usually she starts taking them back out before we're actually done cleaning haha.  She likes coloring, but is more interested in just playing with the crayons than actually making marks on the paper.
She just started climbing up on the couch all by herself, and I'm praying she doesn't start trying to climb on other things like the kitchen chairs and the counter. So far I've been able to use the table as a Lia-free zone, and I'd hate to lose that!
A few days ago I was helping her brush her teeth (which she loves) and decided I'd check to see if there were any new teeth starting to poke through.  Lo and behold, her top two molars are almost all the way through all ready!  How did I miss that?  It might explain the crankiness lately! So now she is up to 10 teeth!
At her 12 month appointment, she was about 1/4 inch away from being too tall for her infant carseat, so at the beginning of February we finally got her a convertible toddler seat.  She looks so big in it!  I love it because the straps are much easier to adjust. The only problem is, she is not as reclined so when she falls asleep her head falls all the way forward and it looks soooo uncomfortable.  Anyone have the same problem?  How do I fix it?

Dustin and I are also experiencing new things.  I am getting bigger and bigger and I feel like I'm bigger now than I was at the same point with Lia.  I am getting anxious to be done being pregnant.  I think I will be 30 weeks this week, finally!  The countdown begins! We still haven't picked a name for the baby but we're finally starting to narrow down some options.  Hopefully soon she'll have a name!
Dustin is getting more in depth in his major.  He recently started the process of interviewing for practicums, scary!  Next fall he will be a senior! He's facing some tough decisions soon, because he feels like where you do your practicum could have a lot to do with where you get your first job and could influence your life's career, so he's stressed about getting a good one he'll really like. We're also really hoping to be able to send him on a 2-week study abroad in the Dominican Republic this summer.  I think it'd be such a great experience for him, but coming up with the money has been challenging.  We'll just have to keep praying and have faith that things will work out the way they're supposed to.