Saying: Lark is continuing to babble more and more, and regularly shouts out nonsense words at me as though she’s saying, “Listen to me, woman! I have needs!” She seems to still know “all done” and “Dada,” but language at this age is so all over the place it’s hard to really be certain.
Eating: Lark still loves to eat and devours pretty much anything I make for her. She loves salmon with lentils (a staple in this house) and recently had Indian food, which she inhaled. The girl loves herself some curry spice, who can blame her? She is also very, very fond of what we call “cookies” in this house, which are really like less-sweet animal crackers. I try not to give Lark sugar, ever, (though KC introduced her to gelato in Italy while I wasn’t looking! Second kids, man. Haha.) but these cookies have only one gram per biscuit, so it’s a nice compromise on my part since the kids think they’re getting a treat but they actually only contain as much sugar as one serving of Cheerios.
Sleeping: Lark sleeps through the night like a champion still. I have no idea what I did to get this lucky (because Prim didn’t sleep like this until after 11 months, and I actually thought that wasn’t bad!) but it just goes to show that the whole good sleeper/bad sleeper thing might just be a whole lot more nature than nurture.
Doing: Lark is busy crawling, dancing, and getting into everything. She is at the stage where she loves to pull out all of the toys from inside the toy baskets and all the “groceries” from inside the wooden refrigerator. I don’t keep a lot of toys out for the kids (I have at least half of our toys stored in my closet at any given point and change things out periodically when I notice certain toys aren’t holding their interest anymore), but man, even with a minimal amount out for the girls to play with I still feel like I’m picking stuff up all the time. How do parents with tons of toys do it?? (Also, I have a serious love/hate relationship with Legos right now. I’m sure other parents know what I’m talking about.)
Latest milestone: Lark pulled up by herself for the first time on the last day of 2017 while we were in Rome. She isn’t pulling up and cruising all over the place like Prim was at this age, but she has figured out how to climb up onto things (the coffee table, into Prim’s bed) which Prim was not doing, so it’s been both exciting to watch and a little stressful for this poor mama’s heart (because my brain is always like, “she’s going to fall off onto her head for sure.”)
Favorite toys: Like I said earlier, she’s fascinated by objects that contain other toys these days, like the toy refrigerator. She loves pulling the magnetic doors open and pulling out all of the empty spice jars and containers.
Sweetest things: Lark is currently getting somewhere between 4 and 6 teeth (and Prim’s top molars are coming in too — we’re in full teething hell over here) so she’s been understandably extra crabby lately. While I don’t love the fussiness, all she wants is to be held and snuggled in the afternoons, which is so sweet. It makes cooking dinner quite challenging, but like everything with kids, it’s temporary, so I’m trying to take a deep breath and enjoy these little moments in between the trying ones.
Favorite thing about this age: Lark is getting very good at communicating what she wants now with her insistent babbling and body language. She will now crawl over to KC or me and lift her arms up to be picked up, which is one of my most favorite milestones of this age.