42 weeks!

I skipped last week's update {thank you inertia} so this is quite a list for our little girl considering just how much she has been up to {a lot!}...

***And my poor old computer is having trouble communicating with our camera so today's fun pictures are locked somewhere in limbo; hopefully I'll get them up soon!***




***Edited to add pictures!***

• Can do tricks! Will: "clap your hands"

         , "play the drums", "give a kiss" {open-mouthed}, and show you "how big is       
         Hanna Lu?"

         {"So big!}.

         This is amazing to us; in the span of a week or so she started to follow these    
         commands and we're trying to teach her a few new ones.

• Weighed in at a bit over 19 pounds and 27 inches long today, placing her in the 60-something percentile for height/weight. I'm guessing both her father and I are a bit lower than that.
• Baby happily celebrated her first Christmas with both families; we had the holiday a bit early in Arizona and flew to California Christmas morning to finish off the day with family there. 

Upside-down squirrel and drool on her father's leg; our first Christmas as a family of three.

The whole two weeks of travel were very exciting for her but perhaps a bit overwhelming. Her sleep wasn't great while "abroad" and the nights were hard for us considering what a great sleeper we had worked to teach her to be. The past few nights at home have also been kind of rough but we let her figure it out on her own tonight so we'll see how things go through morning.

• Our baby now points and points at everything; up until a few days ago it was just her hand but we now have finger action.
• She visited the San Francisco Zoo with her grandpa Jeff {my dad} {a favorite place of ours when I was a kiddo} and LOVED it. There was a lot of pointing and making sounds in reaction to the animals. She didn't care for the merry-go-round, though, so that's something we can work on.
• Hanna Lu also went back to the beach with Grandpa Jeff and was really apprehensive, especially about the sand...I put some in my hand to let her feel it and she warmed up to the texture.
• Spent lots of quality time with her Abuelita in California as well as her grandparents in Arizona; thank you to all of her grandparents and family who happily spent time with baby Lu...she loved it all!
• Was interested in opening her presents but really only until she ripped off a tiny bit of paper - which was good enough for her.
• Met Santa for the first time and was OK with the whole experience...photographic evidence forthcoming {see above complaint}...she even made the "nice list" in the long North-Pole-let's-see-how-many-chances-there-are-to-get-your-money experience that the mall offers.
• Did OK in all of the flying we did; four flights total including a red-eye just this past Saturday night.
• Began some teething which was confirmed at her nine-month well-baby check today; this explains some, ahem, behavior, that we'd been experiencing and I had chalked up to being out of her routine. 
• Wants to walk; is cruising up a storm and loves standing up.Loves her new baby doll but mostly because she can poke at the eyes as much as she'd like to, something we discourage because it hurts and is destructive but this is just a doll so it's OK and not creepy that our daughter loves poking eyes...right? I won't let her be alone with dolly until she's older for fear she rips out the eyelids or eyelashes and attempts to ingest them but it's adorable how cute she is with the doll, eye poking aside, because she'll give her kisses.
• Got her very own chair and is really appreciating sitting in it as well as climbing on it. 

Notice the finger in the eye.

         Thank you so much Grandma and Zaide for my fun chair!!!

• Is a wee low on iron, as told to us today during her check-up. This isn't something I like to hear, I don't want to worry about anything being amiss or as it shouldn't but her doctor wasn't alarmed and prescribed us some iron and told us to cut out the yogurt since dairy can inhibit iron absorption.
• Is not into drinking her milk, as she has always been, but it was tough because we were in charge of her every day over break {as opposed to our saint of a daycare provider} so I figured out the best way for her to continue getting the milk she needs is to spoon-feed our child her milk, usually mixed with some oatmeal. Talk about tedium but it truly was the only way to get in the milk that she needs. Who in the world ever would've thought we would have this problem and that this would be the most frustrating part of parenthood. It's seriously discouraging and that the baby's a bit anemic just adds to that discouragement.
• Is making a ton of funny new sounds, lots of goofy babbling, which is adorable.
• Will also mimic us if we make her "latte-machine" sounds.
• Does this funny thing with her hands; she opens and closes her fists and it looks almost like some type of sign-language; I wonder what it means?
• Is growing and changing every day and we just love this kid; we're so grateful for the time together over break!

xoxo, natty ♥