Mom's fallen a bit behind these days! Lorelai is a tough cookie to keep up with! Her vocabulary has grown by leaps and bounds. I love how she will spontaneously say "tank you" and "pease" and "nigh nigh Daddy". She graciously obligues requests for kisses and hugs. Every day she seems less and less a baby and more and more like her older siblings. As she is the youngest, I feel reluctant to lose the "baby" in her. Well, she still loves to nurse...completely weaning her will be an interesting challenge, when the time comes. She still sleeps in her crib and has not made an attempt to fly the coup yet. This is surprising, because she is pretty adventurous, fearless, and limber. We are almost ready to take the gate down (at least from the bottom of the stairs), as she independently goes up and down, with no accidents. She is familiarizing herself with the potty. She tells us often she has to go "poopie" and wants her diaper off and plops onto the potty happily. She never actually goes but loves to sit there, get toilet paper, flush the toilet and wash her hands. She continues to eat well. She loves to eat the samples at Good Harvest Market. She understands most everything and has a definite opinion. "Should we go to the beach?" I ask. "Yeah! Yeah!" she will reply enthusiastically, waving both arms up in the air and jumping in excitement. She also gets very frustrated when we have difficulty understanding her and she cannot get her message across. Some of her food loves at 21 months include raisins, walnuts, cantaloupe, raspberries, yogurt, beets, GF crackers, broccoli and dried cranberries. She still doesn't like hard cooked egg yolks, but will eat them scrambled or the hard cooked whites. We took our first week-long family vacation together at this time and Lorelai did well. We stayed in a cabin (no AC) for a week in 90 degree weather, although it was not bad- we had box fans and the breeze from the lake and we swam most of the time. Lorelai was quite comfortable in the water. She also loved the sand. She took her first kayak ride and was practically face to face with some ducks. She slept in the pack n play. Lorelai sleeps about 11 hours at night and takes 1.5-2 hour nap. She is a cheerful gal and very social. She loves to follow around her brother and sister. She loves to give them hugs but is also quite fiesty and will try to hold her own in a fight already.
She has developed a bit of a biting problem- I guess her best weapon with the older siblings when she is mad...so she has been getting time outs for discipline ("do not hit...hitting hurts."). Lorelai looooooves babies and her stuffed animals. She will play Mommy and pretend to feed or change the baby's diaper. She loves to be read to and snuggle in your lap. She loves to sing and dance. She loves the next door neighbors and when she can hear their voices before she even sees them, she yells, "Hi Kate! Hi Kate!" in excitement, hopping and waving her arms in the air. Kate, a 6 year old from next door, loves to play Lorelai's Mommy. And I love to BE Lorelai's Mommy!
She loves to tell me "Poopy" and runs to the bathroom to go through the routine, but doesn't actually deposit #1 or #2 yet and we haven't pushed it. Lorelai weighs 21.5-22 pounds, depending on the day and measures roughly 33 inches tall. This past month, she has been particularly fond of sweet bell peppers, watermelon, and raisins. She spends most afternoons after naptime following the big kids around outside, particularly the girls- Abby and Kate (almost 7 yr old from next door). Lorelai plays well with them and they seem to enjoy directing her. Lorelai has not been consistently cooperative at church, as of late...and the few times I tried to leave her in the nursery did not go well. Although we do not normally watch TV, she loves watching movies with Ben and Abby (ie Toy Story). Lorelai's personality is cheerful, affectionate, feisty, enthusiastic, opinionated and friendly.
