My lovely little lady is now halfway through her first year.
I can't believe how different she is from when she was a newborn. She's still my little fireball, don't get me wrong.
Every Sunday we have at least 6 people tell us, "Heard your little baby in there." But it's usually followed by some form of, "She's so cute!"
This girl has a voice, and she likes to hear it. At Fresh and Easy a lady stopped me and said, "You have a singer on your hands there." I responded that indeed Belen loved to be loud. She said, "But she's not like most babies. There's a pitch and melody in the sounds she's making. Mark my words, she will sing."
Alright.
It is rather adorable, providing I'm not anywhere that requires quiet. Like the library. Or a graduation. Or church. Or a meeting. Or book club. Or a restaurant. Or a movie.
But besides her noisiness, if she is full and rested, she is sweet as sugar.
She smiles at everyone.
This makes me very popular everywhere I go. People are so incredibly nice. I am losing count of how many times my bags have been carried out for me to the car. They fawn over her. Then Mac of course gets the, "Oh you must be the best big brother!" Which he usually either shies away from or smiles and replies, "Macky big strong boy!"
Belen basks in the attention of others. She loves people. Specifically smiling people. She also loves her toes. (I do too.)
She loves her toothbrush, we take it everywhere. She loves shiny beaded things, like bracelets or necklaces. She loves to blow zerbits and still chews on everything.
She loves having her crazy floofy hair brushed, and has no problem with me doing it. (And sometimes I pull hard ... sorry baby. Beauty and pain often go hand in hand.)
She loves other people's hair too. And she's quick. I feel I have to warn every small child who comes near her with, "Watch out! She thinks your hair is so pretty, she just loves touching it ..."
She sits up, rolls over, and can wobble back and forth in the crawling position for about a minute. She then ends up back in the superman.
She loves to eat. But only if she can feed herself. She does not like being spoon fed, and so all that baby food from WIC is just sitting on my shelves. (Anybody want it?)
But I found
THIS fantastic blog post from a friend of mine, and am thinking I will go this "Baby Lead Weaning" route. So far she loves grapes, avocados, bread, apples, bananas, sweet potatoes, mangos, blueberries, celery, and carrots. She does
not like broccoli.
She puts herself to sleep now -- heaven -- except for in the middle of the night. This is my fault. When she began teething, I had already put her in Mac's room. So she began waking up at 1 am and 5 am instead of just 4. In my desire to keep her from disturbing her brother, I hastily nursed her back to sleep, thinking that once those teeth were through, she'd go back to her regular routine.
But those two bottom teeth are through.
And she's still waking up twice a night. Sigh.
I could just leave her. Mac would just come crawl under our bed if she did wake him up.
I'll do it soon.
In the daytime however, these two just love each other.
Most of the time.
One minute, Belen will flap her arms and squeal just at the site of him, and he'll come close and hold her hands and say, "Hiiiiii cute baby stister! Silly baby!" And I am just thinking my family is divine.
But of course two minutes later, he'll swipe something out of her hands and growl, "Not for you, Stister!" And she will screech at the top of her lungs. And I am frustrated.
But I guess that's just siblings, right? Bringing out the best and worst in one another. Good to hammer out all those extremes at home.
I love my girl, she's an irreplaceable addition to our family. We love her. Mark said the today he couldn't remember life without her.
