Lyra Rose - 9 Months

Nine months alive! I count this a gigantic accomplishment with Lyra. She is on a constant suicide  mission. Last week she discovered how to go up the stairs and subsequently fall down a flight of them. It was pretty bad parenting on my part as I believed she was still a far way off from such a thing and was in the other room making dinner. I walked into the living room to watch her head fall down the last step. Luckily, she's all good. 

She also tries to ingest all hazardous material and choke on anything she can find. The other day she kept chewing on something and when I reached in there, I found Rowan's discarded gumball. 

We have a hard time describing her budding personality. She's for sure a goofball. She has recently started to laugh at jokes she doesn't understand. The other day at the store, we passed a group of laughing tweens and she busted up laughing. When I related the story to some people at church, they started laughing and she joined right on in. She's still extremely pleasant; slow to get upset and quick with a smile. Lyra LOVES facetime and giggles every time we do it with the grandparents. 

Lyra and Rowan share a sweet, almost magical bond. Rowan is usually the first to tell us when Lyra is awake before she even makes a peep on the monitor. The other day he hurt his head pretty bad and she crawled over and started kissing it. Normally she gives his head a few good slaps and pulls his luscious locks, but she seemed to understand he needed some love instead. Room sharing is not necessarily going poorly a much as our kids just. never. sleep. It reminds me of that scene from the Ring when the little boy goes "Rachel, she NEVER sleeps" with a very concerned face. The good parts have come somewhere around 5-6am when I force bubbly, babbling Lyra to go back to sleep and a miracle happens. Rowan will roll over and say "Sister. Go back to sleep" and SHE WILL (if he says it nicely)! She does so without crying too. It's unnatural. 

She's also a little nuts. She doesn't have a temper the way Rowan did (does), but she has a way of accomplishing what she wants done. The other day while in the tub, she was done.  I was in the other room, but Sel told me she reached up and pinched his nipple. When she gets really upset, she will also grab her own nipples and start screaming. Hahahah even typing it out makes me laugh out loud. She still gets REALLY excited about things and will faceplant/superman if she's laying down, will quickly rock back and forth if she's on her knees, bounces on her bum with her arms above her head if sitting, and kicks her legs like a frog if being held. She throws an epic party of excitement every hour and I don't know how anyone couldn't join her in the celebration when she gets that adorably pumped.  Lyra is also such a sweetheart. She is pretty cuddly and loves to give hugs. She adores her baby doll. Rowan was always really sweet with baby dolls and real life babies, but hers is such an inherent, instinctual love of nurturing. I'll find her patting her baby doll in the face or holding it's tiny baby hand in her tiny baby hand and my heart melts all over the place. Boys and girls are so beautifully different. I feel pretty lucky to get to experience both of them.

She has started to laugh at jokes. She obviously has no idea what they are about, but she'll just start chuckling if other people are. At the store, we passed some tweens busting a gut and she started chortling away. When I was relating the story to someone at church and they started laughing, she started right on in with them. I relate a lot to laughing when you don't quite get the joke. Sel and his brothers and close friends can go for hours cracking clever jokes and while I don't keep quite as quick of pace as they do, I still like to laugh at their hilarity. Lyra will do this weird thing lately. She has to take an item of clothing with her in the bath. We usually undress them downstairs and have them "race" upstairs. She won't let me take whatever article of clothing came off last. She will drag it with her upstairs and then slap it around in the bathwater and suck on it. Gross. Lyra will threaten to drown herself if you don't let her keep it, which is a little melodramatic to me, but I have strong feelings too.

I am so happy we found baby led weaning thanks to my SIL. Lyra still eats like a champ. She loves peas, potatoes, pasta, green beans, rice, beans, chicken, tomatoes, tomatoes, and tomatoes I definitely let Rowan gum a few of them before he got teeth, but I was terrified the whole time. We rarely worry about her choking on real food objects (opposed to things she's found on the floor). She'll seriously eat anything and eat it well. The only thing she usually snubs is ironically baby food. She'll eat applesauce sometimes and baby food from a jar ONLY if Sel does it.

She is getting better everyday with signing. We haven't had as much dedicated time as we did when parenting just one child, but she's catching on quick and communicating with us. She can sign flag really well, is close to getting light and is still owning more. Sel is better at getting her to sign than I am. In fact, Sel is generally at all parenting than I am. I'm not saying it to downplay my own parenting, but I am in constant awe of his abilities. He can get both of our kids to eat (imagine how much he would own nursing), he helps Rowan with his letters and numbers, Lyra with her signing, he cleans to perfection, and is always the prime-time fun guy. We are sure lucky to have that man. 

Lyra likes to feed us/share things with other people. Our kind Bishop will hold her when I teach the youth on Sundays and while holding her, she decided to share two very special things with him. She had a piece of paper she left very visible slobber on that she kept shoving in his mouth, then pulling back into hers. Her final kindness was sharing his lips with him. She kept pulling his lower lip waaay out, then sweetly giving it back to him. Over and over again. He's a good natured soul.


Lyra is happy to be along on the ride and we are happy to have her. Happy 9 Months baby girl!

Rowan protecting his baby sister on the swing

The new library off of King rd is AMAZEBALLS! The kiddos played there for two whole hours and both cried when we left. 

The black lagoon that poured out of her mouth right after this was thanks to the banana peel she tried to eat. The little black part on the bottom was sloshing around in that sweet, innocent mouth of hers. 

bahaha favorite. 

We had a dragon night to celebrate Row and I's most recent book for Mommy and Me "bookclub". I picked a Bailey School book called Dragons Don't Cook Pizza. Row really loved it and our party included these amazing flames Sel made (that Lyra was NOT feeling for a picture), an awesome cucumber dragon that Sel made, dragonfruit, pizza, and Mimi! We snuck down there to drag her along on our trip to Cincinnati to visit the talented Katherine Rose Bailey with my bestie Sarah. 

Reading Where the Wild Things Are at Imagination Station 

I feel sad I haven't posted as much this year about my sweet Rowboat. I made a baby book for him from his first year from all of the monthly blog posts and have vowed to do it for Lyra too. I need to post more about him for his next book (that will hopefully happen too). He is just such a good kid! Sweet, bright, empathetic, fun, and delightful. We have some pretty stellar kiddos.