Favoritism or ????

As I dumped this batch of pictures from my camera to my PC and clicked through them, my guilty conscience once again reminded me that Lexi needs a bit more "mommy time". She is constantly trying to fight for my attention and figure out how to share my time with Lillian. Quite frankly, I do feel guilty that we don't get more chances to do Lexi things together. She loves to play Candyland (hmmmm...where did that come from?), she loves to "perle" (place little beads on plastic shaped templates that you then iron to connect them together), she loves jigsaw puzzles, she loves to have someone color with her, she loves to work on her alphabet in some of her workbooks, etc. But...first child syndrome...she wants someone to do all of those things with her (still not sounding familiar?). Anyway, many of her "Lexi activities" are hard to do with Lillian around. Lillian either tries to get right in the middle of them or she gets mad and frustrated that she isn't allowed to play with the same. The result? We spend a lot of time playing things Lillian can play and don't spend enough time on Lexi's big girl stuff. This makes me sad and a teensy bit guilty. Anyhoo...back to the pictures. As I dumped this load of pics from my camera, they were primarily Lillian. Kick in the guilty conscience. Hmmm... this could be a result of being at home all day with Lillian while Lexi goes to barnehage or, it could confirm my suspicions that I am a bit to focused on our nearly one year old. Something to think about...

Here are the latest pics from this last week of random activites. Two princesses...

Lexi taking her first ride in our new fishing boat

Lillian and I in the fishing boat

Lillian at badeland (the indoor water park) in Lyngdal. She spends lots of time standing solo...
We visited Linn, Luna and Samuel one evening this week. Samuel is nearly 4 months old and will be Christened this Sunday.
Lillian didn't seem too happy to have her pic taken. It was nearing bedtime and she was getting tired.
Thanks Grammy and Pops! Lexi loves her new dance leotard and we had a little purple sweater to pair with it since it is cold in the dance studio! The toulle skirt twirls...that is the coolest ever!
Big sister ALWAYS tries to lend a helping hand... Little sister doesn't necessarily always want it :)
Posing for the camera in her new favorite chair
Eating her first ever hot dog at the combined 1 year birthday party for all of the babies in my barsel group. This is the group of local Norwegian moms that had babies in Oct/Nov 2010 and all live within a 5-7 minute drive from my house. She loved the hot dog...devoured it!

We started the pumkin festivites a bit early

I'm sad...the local farmer that had a small pumpkin patch seems to have not harvested this year. I drove by and she didn't have a single pumpkin on display. So, I bought a couple at the local store and we took a few pics.

Love this pic...

Happy 11mo birthday to Lillian!

Time continues to march on and sweet Lillian is now 11 months old today! She weighs 8.775kg (19# 6oz) and is 73cm long (28.7"). Basically, her growth has started to level off and she is tracking about the same as Lexi did. Here is a little snapshot of what she is up to...

As many of you know, she has been on her feet since June...desperate to run after her big sister. You can see how her balance and confidence has slowly improved over time. Over the last few days, I have seen several instances where she will be holding something (her push cart for example) and she will let go and just stand there without support for 30-60 seconds. Well, today. she decided that she would take some steps. So, she has taken 2-3 solo steps from point A to point B or point A to me or Tim. She did this multiple times today. She was a little wobbly, but was super proud. Quite the difference than Lexi's experience. When Lexi took her first steps at 17 months, she was a perfect walker. She perfected her balance and made sure that she knew exactly how to do it before ever trying to stand on two feet. Lillian just dives right in.

Which brings me to swimming. As I have blogged, Lillian loves the water. She is once again the opposite of Lexi. She seems to be way more comfortable in the water and getting water splashed on her face than Lexi ever did. We still go to Baby Swimming every Thursday. Among other things, the class teaches babies to "dive". This is basically imersing them in water, but they learn to close their eyes and mouth. The babies learn to "dive" with the parent just immersing them, "dive" from the instructor to the parent, "dive" from the pool edge into the water, etc. Lillian has learned that when I say 1-2-3, that she closes her eyes and mouth on three and she gets dunked under. She "hops" from the pool edge into the water (completely under) or from a mat into the water or last week, she "hopped" from the instructor's arms to me a couple of times...going under water. Needless to say, she must have more of Tim's genes than Lexi does. Lexi and I are both cautious and fearful of certain situations (mainly any situation where I can possibly injure myself) whereas, Lillian has already shown to be braver on many fronts.

This brings me to climbing. The pictures a little further down on this blog entry explain it all...

She is also a hair puller...and it hurts like the dickens. We have been trying to teach her not to pull hair, but haven't quite got the message through yet. Lexi and I are constantly getting our hair pulled. Tim doesn't seem to suffer the same problem :)

Of late, Lillian is a major cuddler. We get lots and lots and lots of hugs. She loves to come up and give a proper hug (head on one shoulder and then head on the other shoulder) and then go back to playing. We all love to get Lillian hugs.

She is also a puzzler. She loves wooden puzzles...mainly just pulls out the pieces and sometimes tries to put them back in. But, what we are most proud of is her Fisher Price piggy bank. It is this obnoxious pig that has a coin slot. There are 10 plastic coins of two different sizes. Lillian has totally mastered it. I sat in her room with her one day last week and I swear she put a coin through the slot 40-50 times in a row. Her hand/eye coordination is great in addition to her desire to "do it right".

The last thing I jotted down to write about was her communication skills. She has started shaking her head back and forth for no. We firmly believe that she know what it means. If you offer her some food or drink that she does not want, we get the head shake. On a couple of instances, I got the positive up/down yes head shake, but I think that was just fluke. The side-to-side no is definitely something she has mastered.

Oh, and... still no teeth :)

Lexi had her annual picture taken at barnehage last week. I had planned to take Lillian in and get a sibling pic of the two of them, but it didn't end up working out time-wise in our day's plans and Lillian's nap schedule. So, Lillian got all dressed up in her pretty dress (compliments of my work colleauges) and posed for me.

Pushing big sister's doll stroller

Fun with the eye glasses from the doctor kit

Climbing #1

Notice she is standing inside the cart whilst eating her toast (it was an evening snack)

And today...I found her inside Lexi's doll house...

Lexi is constantly finding new ways to play with old toys

Lexi's first ever trip in the hot tub

Lexi posing on the new fishing boat

Tim pulling the new fishing boat into the boatslip. It is a couple of feet longer than the other one and the engine has more horsepower.

Blue sky meets blue ocean...bliss!

We just got back from a two week holiday to Spain. It was wonderful. Blue sky meets blue ocean and much needed warm temps. Low of 23C (73F) at night and high of 35C (95F) during the day. We could not have had better weather, we were blessed!

It was truly a swimming holiday. We were in the pool or the ocean or both on a daily basis...I even think one day was pool in the morning, ocean in the afternoon and Tim and Lexi took another evening dip in the pool. We also hit a few playgrounds, ate our fair share of ice cream and lived in our swim gear. We did venture out of Santa Pola a bit since we had rented a car as you will see in the pics below.

Here is our one and only family pic taken on the boardwalk in Benidorm. Seriously, this is one pic out of 400+ pics... I think it turned out quite well :)

The pool (Lillian didn't last too long in her float...she kept trying to crawl out of it...)

Swinging is so much fun
Run, run into the surf as fast as you can...over and over again.

Walking in the sand with bare feet is the best

Lillian and I at the zoo in Benidorm (Terra Natura)

Floppy hat Lexi at the zoo in Benidorm waiting for the Birds of Prey show to start

Lillian isn't so sure what to think of the birds that fly around the stands during the show.

As part of the show, a falcon landed on my head. It felt like an intense head massage.

This is the annual pic of Lexi on Tim's shoulders...these days, it is Lillian that gets the priveledge, but I don't seem to have a pic of Lillian on Tim's shoulders. It's funny because she holds his ears to steer...

We visited the Aqua Natura water park after the zoo (they are conencted).

Slides are fun

A rare moment of tenderness at the market in Santa Pola

Sisters

Our beach set-up

It took a few days, but Lillian discovered the stairs in the apartment. We couldn't keep her off of them. Initially, the two empty suitcases that blocked them off served their purpose, but she quickly learned to slide the suitcases out of the way so that she could start climbing. Our little monkey.

Lexi became quite confident swimming with her arm bands and will "almost nearly" go under water. She is no longer afraid of water in her face, and will dunk her head up to her bangs, but won't go all the way under. Regardless, she made tremendous progress. We are so proud of her.

Trying on Mamma's sunglasses

Tradiotional Spanish paella

Waiting for sister to come back to the boardwalk from the beach

So close to walking solo...

The boardwalk in Torrevieja

Enormous sand castle in Benidorm

Lillian loved to play in the sand and only tried to eat it once (on the first trip to the beach)

Lajla and Tom joined us for our last three days. Lexi and Lajla didn't waste any time hitting the pool.

And the beach

Lillian was usually the first one up and she played with her toys and dolls before having breakfast.

Lillian's favorite thing was for us to dig a hole in the sand that she could climb in and out of - filling it with water makes it double fun.

Sand everywhere...

Lillian is almost 10 months old!

On Saturday, Lillian will turn 10 months old and I wanted to take a moment to share a little about her with each of you. On Thursday, I took her to be weighed and measured. She really hasn't grown much since her belated 9 month check-up. She was still 72cm long (28.3") and had put on a little weight to 8.620kg (19#). There is a very good reason for the "lack" of growth. Basically, she is on the move every waking moment. She is still desperate to walk (or run) after big sister Lexi; so, she pushes anything in sight. She gets frustrated with her cart as she can't turn it and it gets stuck in corners. She loves to push her activty table around. When she gets stuck, she just walks around to one of the other sides (it's square) and pushes in a different direction. She has also started pushing around the musical airplane. All of these "toys" are recycled from Lexi's day, but she will never now. In the mornings, in the bathroom, she pushes around this little basket that I keep toilet paper in. When all else fails, she crawls. She can be super fast to get from Point A to B and her crawl is a bit unique as she uses her right knee and left foot (left leg is at a 90 degree angle). I have some video clip, but will need to learn how to down-size an MP4 file so that I can upload it.

Lillian is also my little monkey. She tries to climb onto everything. I constantly find her sitting on our fireplace and she would gladly climb the stairs if we didn't have the gates in place. As you will see from the pictures below, she also tries to crawl up into her bed. I actually had to get the shoulder straps out of the cupboard and install them on the high chair as she tries to stand up and crawl out of it. Moral to the story: strap her in.

She loves to make noise and looks for anything to bang together. She also loves to dance...when the music starts, you will see her bopping up and down. Her favorite toys are her bells, her drum, some of the wooden puzzles, a basket of play food and some of the books that you can "feel" the different textures of things. Oh, and chew rings...she still puts everything in her mouth. A mouth which has no teeth. Some of her little mates have a mouthfull of teeth, but not Lillian. She seems to be advanced in all things, but is happy to wait for the teeth. She must know that I secretly love a baby's smile without teeth or a toddler's smile with a full mouthfull. I don't really like toothy grins :) I'm kind-of dreading when Lexi will start loosing her baby teeth.

Speaking of Lexi, Lillian loves her big sister. She looks for her first thing in the morning and lights up when we pick her up from barnehage. Lexi still smothers her and is a bit rough in her handling of Lillian, but I truly believe that she means well and is struggling to find her new place in this family (sharing my time with Lillian). Lillian is generally happy to let Lexi "hug" her, but does get a bit irritated if she can't play with Lexi's toys or if Lexi takes a toy from her. Who knew I would be refereeing fights at this age!

Lillian also LOVES water...her bath, the swimming pool, you name it. She is going to have so much fun on our trip to Spain. She is braver than Lexi when it comes to getting water splashed in your face. Her only problem is that she smiles so much, she constantly has an open mouth and swallows a bit of water. :) Oh, and she screams bloody murder when you take her out of the bathtub...

As for talking, she still babbles a bit. We are pretty sure she understands "no", but she has really started to say ma-ma. It is more often than not directly at me when she wants something. (Like right now, she is under the table, standing at my knee, saying ma-ma...guess I shouldn't be blogging during playtime).

Her favorite food at the moment is cheese sandwiches (toasted cheese or grill cheese) and blueberries. She is my little cheese eater.

So, I have said all of the things that she likes, but what she doesn't like... in fact, what she downright hates is getting her diaper changed. It is holy terror to her. To think...I make her lie on her back (relatively still) for all of 2 minutes. I have to muscle her down...she can flip onto her tummy and crawl off in 10 seconds flat.

Well, now that I have rambled on and made you read a little about Lillian, here are some pics. Like I said, I need to sort out the MP4 video clips my new camera takes. They are presently way too big to post. We are off to Spain for a two week holiday and will have little to no internet access unless we find a cafe with Wi-Fi. So, see you back here in two weeks time!

She was so happy to get to play with Lexi's dolls today...while Lexi was at barnehage. :)

Meet Charley. Charley was acquired (adopted) from the Ikea in Kristiansand when we stopped by in July. Charley sleeps with Lillian and she is becoming attached to having him in her bed. She still uses her pacifier, but likes to touch and finger Charley.

Here is the little monkey getting ready to climb up into her bed...she spotted Charley. By the way...he pretty much stays in her bed. He doesn't travel everywhere with us...yet :)

Here she is climbing...this is about as far as she can get.

Charley got to come out of the bed.

Lexi got her hair trimmed a couple of weeks ago and Mom has been after me for a picture. Getting colored hairspray on your hair afterwards is "the thing to do" for Lexi's age. She specifically wanted her hair braided and when the hairdresser asked her what color she wanted, she said pink. I said "I thought that you told me last night that you wanted purple.". The hairdresser offered to do one of each...a purple braid and a pink braid. She was so excited and even more excited that I let her sleep in her braids so that she could go with braids and colored hair to barnehage the next day!