Kicking and gurgling

This is how she entertains herself.

Morning Pictures - Nicole

I realized this morning that the photo shoot I did of Allison a few days ago is similar to photos I took of Nicole one morning four years ago.  In my mind, they also seemed to look to be around the same age.  I looked it up, and sure enough, Nicole's photo shoot was 2/12/14 - five days before she turned 8 months.  Allison's pictures were taken on 4/27/18 - four days before she turns 8 months.

"D" Pizza

We made pizza today, and Nicole was very excited that one of the pizzas happened to be shaped sort of like the letter, "D."  She called it a "D Pizza."  Then, I made another pizza.  I asked her what letter that pizza looked like.  She said, "P?  No, not P..."  She decided it looked more like a puddle.  So she called it "a puddle pizza...a P puddle pizza."

Right before I cut up our "D" pizza, Nicole insisted we must take a picture first.

Banana

So, a few days ago, when I was spoon-feeding Allison, I told her (as I often do) to "say, 'Aaaah.'"  To my surprise, she responded in a tiny, high squeak, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh."  To test whether it was a fluke, I asked her three more times when I was feeding her to say, "Ahh," and two of the times, she said, "Aaaah."

So today, she tried banana for the first time.  Anyway, she was feeding herself, and I was out of the room, and she was having a fit, probably because she was having trouble picking up the banana.  So I picked up a piece of banana and said, "Banana?"  She stared at the banana with her laser-focused scientist eyes, poked it with her index finger, and said something that sounded like, "Buh-lud-lah."  At the very least, it sounds like she's starting to imitate!

Morning pictures - Allison and Nicole

Allison growling

Allison exploded into baby babble tonight!  Allison has been very vocal, but it's mostly been gurgling, squeals, and no "words."  For the past week or so, Tim and I have occasionally tried to encourage Allison to start saying, "Mama" or "Dada," and this morning, when she was on the floor, I thought I heard her say, "Mama."  Then, tonight, she all of a sudden started babbling on and on, "Dada," "Ah-dah," "Blah-blah" - saying long strings of the same word, or combining them into "sentences."  Apparently, she's discovered these words are pretty fun to say.  I took a video of her babbling, but the file was too large to post.  Instead, enjoy this video from tonight of one of her other favorite noises!

Pictures from the past couple days

Allison started getting into the "crawl" position about a week ago, but she has yet to crawl.  She is a very mobile army crawler, however.

Nicole kisses

Nicole attacking Allison.

Allison doesn't mind in the least.

Our smoothie today was a fascinating fuchsia, nearly the same color as Nicole's dress.

Nicole wrote out the lyrics to, "I am a child of God," of her own initiative, and all by herself.  (The only input I gave her was, yelling from the other room to help her sound out the "A" in "parents" - written on the next page.)  She accidentally started from the bottom and went up.  To translate part of it, she wrote, "He have sent me there."  Apparently that's a picture of herself singing the song.

I corrected her, and she wrote from top to bottom here.  This is the most she's ever written.  I congratulated her and told her it was "amazing!"  And she was like, "I'm the best!"  Hahaha.  Later, she tried to be more humble so other people wouldn't "feel bad," so she said, "I'm not the best."  How modest of her, haha.

Army crawler

When Allison army crawls, she seems to forget about her left arm, dragging it along underneath her, which sort of has the effect of looking like she's limping.  So when we put her on the floor and she is angrily crying and limping toward her mother, because she's furious that her mother isn't holding her, it is a truly pathetic sight.

Church building by Nicole

Nicole made a church from her Duplos today.  I asked her to tell me about it, and she proceeds to point to each person in the audience and say, "This is a poor person, this is a poor person, this is a poor person...and this is a poor person."  Don't know why they're all poor.  Apparently, she wasn't able to build cars, and she only has "one car," so she gave them unicorns instead, and the unicorns are parked in the "unicorn parking lot."  Apparently, their names are Barka, Luva, Mona and Ugluva.  I thought the eye on the side of the podium was very deep and symbolic...

Art

Let's play a game.  It's called, "Interpret Nicole's Art."  Answers will be in the "comments" section.

This is a baby

On Sunday, after Tim came home from work, he sat Allison on his lap facing him, and she exclaimed, "Ah-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..."

It sounded so much more like a mature vocalization than her typical baby squeal, and was so extended, that all three of us (who were surrounding her) laughed big belly laughs, and because her exclamation dragged on, we continued laughing.  Then, Allison slowly looked around at our three faces, with huge, wide eyes.  Her eyes seemed so big, and seemed to get bigger, as she turned her head from side to side, looking between each of our faces, taking in the noise of our laughter and our giant, attentive eyes and smiles.  Gradually, her eyebrows furrowed as we watched her face turn to concern, then fear, and then pure sadness, just before she let out a cry, which straightaway turned to an inconsolable wail.  Our happy baby was now a sad, crying puddle.  I eventually had to take her in my arms and nurse her before she would calm down.  I don't think I've ever witnessed something that illustrates so appropriately that Allison is, at this moment, just a genuine, innocent baby.

             

Fighter

The other morning, Nicole came to me and told me she had had a scary dream, where she was chased by a mean animal, and so she killed it.  I was pretty impressed.  It took me about twenty years before I started fighting back in my dreams.

Allison in a basket

1 week

2 weeks

1 month

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

6 months

7 months

8 months

9 months

10 months

11 months

1 year.  Happy Birthday!