Monaloca

Last weekend we headed to the snow with the Hams for some sledding and snow-person building. With all our wonderfully warm weather the snow was a bit too hard-packed and icy for snow angels and snow-creatures, but we all had a fabulous time sledding and saucering down a small hill at Yuba Gap.

Melina also decided it would be fun to collect snow things along the way – and couldn’t understand why she was having a tough time balancing while walking up an icy hill with an armload of snowballs, pinecones, and sticks. Luckily she left them on the sidelines when she jumped on the sled.

We attempted to have her leave everything behind for good when we left the woods but somehow ended up with a stray pinecone in our bag when we arrived home. Melina’s response? “We can take it back when we go back next year.”

Perfect!

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Move. Our little girl is crawling all over the place, but not very quickly – yet. Already a pragmatist, she’ll play with whatever’s closest and coolest looking, unless there’s something brand new across the room. Favorite no-no’s so far include my laptop and more specifically the power strip, any plastic bag or shiny new package we put in eyesight, and any book her sister happens to be reading, especially an exquisite Reinhart and Sabuda popup book on fairies.

She is also keenly interested in following us around, even when she’s not yet able to. The three steps between the family room (her main play area) and the kitchen are a particular challenge. So far she’s only able to crawl up to the bottom step and start banging on it, or try to pull up. Luckily it’s such an open space that she can keep eye contact with us from below, but usually that’s not enough and she’s pretty loud about how she wants to be one of the big kids upstairs.

Outside that single step, Nalani doesn’t exert a whole lot of effort trying to pull up on furniture. Instead, she tries to stand, all by herself, in the middle of the room. Better yet, she loves pulling up on a person – usually mama or dada – who’s seated next to her in the middle of a room. She also likes doing a sort of push-up excercise with the base of our desk chair, or on the rod iron of the desk itself. I’d feel much better if she was over at the coffee table and not surrounded by really hard metal, but hey, whatever works.

Schmooze. She loves watching bro and sis take a bath but doesn’t love getting in the tub with them. Could it be that they’re just a wee bit too crazy and loud? Her siblings still make her laugh more than anyone (include dada, shhhhh….) but for the past few weeks her face has really started to light up for mama. (I may be biased, but I swear there’s been a visible shift.) She crawls straight to me when I pick her up at daycare, and turns immediately to me whenever she hears my voice across a room. Yay Nalipop!

She’s been saying the mamamama and dadadadada sounds for over a month now. Twice now she’s looked at me and yelped out “MOM!” and “MAMA!” She also loves her friends at daycare, and her little buddy Maya (baby sis of Melina’s friend Emma). At our New Year’s Eve party, she literally tackled Maya over and over again for a good five minutes straight.

Play. As much as people, our littlest girl loves to play. And play, play, play. Whenever either of us drops her off at daycare, she immediately goes to work on whatever toy we set her in front of. And she barely looks up (ok, she usually doesn’t look up) when we say good-bye. She’s often equally engrossed at pick-up time.

At home, her absolute favorite toy right now is Melina’s wooden block puzzle, or a sheet of 16 colorful wooden cubes with partial pictures on each side. She loves to pull the pieces apart, put them in her mouth, bang them together, and knock over little towers we build with them. She also loves a small play kitchen Grandma Rapoza got Kai way back when he was a tot. She’s definitely grown bored of “old” toys and loves anything new best.

Eat. Nalani loves food, but not the same way Melina did from such an early age. She’s happy to be fed just about anything (especially bananas!) but still hasn’t figured out how to get finger food into her mouth. Her newest favorite is salmon. She can’t get enough. This officially makes salmon the one meal every single person in our family – even the cat – loves.

Chill. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but Nalani is one super chill little girl. (This has us wondering about how she may shift in toddlerhood, or more likely, her teenage years.) Teachers at daycare call her a model baby – she only fusses when she’s hungry or tired. I know it’s true because she’s the same with us.

Funny thing is, she’s LOUD about these two things when they hit her, and they sometimes come on very suddenly, almost as if she’s so super chill that she doesn’t realize how tired or hungry she is until it’s really intense and feels too late. She’ll learn to read her own cues better soon enough. For now, we’re just happy that she’s sleeping so well at night, most often straight through from 7:30 to 5:30, then again til 8 after a quick snack. She’s clearly not an early morning person. Phew and yay for the rest of us non-early morning peeps.

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This’ll be great to show Melina when she goes through her vegetarian phase in about 15 years!

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