Xiaoniu 小妞

Our little Emelia is making progress by leaps and bounds. Or at least it seems like that. Her biggest achievement this week was taking a few steps independently. Amy stopped over to pick up some things and while we were all in the kitchen I was able to coax Xuemei into walking to me from the wall. She took about 3 steps before she fell into my arms. We were all ecstatic and Emelia loved it. She did it again from me to Amy, but that was her last try for the night.

We’ve been waiting for this day for a while. There have been plenty of times where she runs around the house with her ‘walking’ type toy and she always stands independently when she wants to use both hands, but this is first attempt at walking that did not involved falling towards her destination and catching herself just in time to keep from hitting the floor.

At daycare she no longer sleeps in a crib. As of this past Monday she now sleeps on a cot like a big girl should. She still gets a crib sheet and blanket, but we get to take her bumper home and the crib gets to be moved out of her room (at daycare). Emelia took to the cot like an old pro. She must have seen the other kids sleeping on their cots and felt right at home sleeping on her own. And she doesn’t fuss or want to get off it during nap time. Seeing as she is still putting in a solid 2 hours during her naps I don’t think the cot has caused her any trouble.

Starting yesterday she also no longer uses bottles. We finished up the last of her formula (which we’ve been mixing with whole milk for weeks) and cut her off from the bottle. She prefers a cup or sippy cup to the bottle so it wasn’t a difficult transition. Without bottles to clean and lug around we have less work on our hands. No more cleaning, sterilizing (actually I stopped that a couple months ago), making bottles or transporting them to/from daycare. Meimei now drinks her milk cold and out of a cup at daycare.

After a number of weeks Emelia has started to like the new girl that takes care of her at daycare. It was a very rough month, which happened to coincide with our moving her to her crib, but now she loves the girl. I hope it doesn’t take as long as a month for her to warm up to the next “teacher” when she moves to the toddler’s room at 18 months old. That isn’t long from now. Some time in August I believe she’s scheduled to move over.

At home we still have her sleeping in her own crib. We had two nights of her in our bed last weekend and let me tell you that nobody got any good sleep. With Meimei in her crib all three of us sleep great. She still makes a little fuss when she first goes in and maybe once throughout the night, otherwise, she sleeps like a log. Today she even slept until 6:45am when we had to wake her up. Not bad considering we had a few mornings of her waking at 5am.

Emelia is starting to do things that make us laugh and she knows it. When in the car or in the mall if she hears music she starts bobbing her head to the beat. It’s hilarious to see the first time. I’m not sure where she picked it up, but it’s inevitable that she starts to move when she hears a beat. So, we make sure to keep her surrounded with music. Strangely enough she still likes my music over the softer stuff. You’re more likely to see her bobbing her head to Korn than Celine Dion.

She took us by surprise when we were traveling last Friday. She just all of a sudden belched. It was the kind of sound that I would make after a big meal, but it came out of my little girl. Sue and I both started cracking up. Emelia had no idea what was going on, but enjoyed the fact that we were both happy and laughing.

Spit bubbles are another trick in her book. She spent about 10 minutes making noises and full mouth size spit bubbles. Another thing I’m not sure how she learned.

Our baby loves burritos. I’m not sure why, but she loves them. Sue has been stocking up on them since we heat up a couple just about every afternoon when we get home. A quick afternoon snack. She just gobbles them up and even though they are stuffed with beans she never suffers from gas.

She’s turning into a pretty amazing little girl. I’m sure she has more in surprise for us. We just have to wait and see what she gives us next.