she threw away some trash

I am so excited. You just don't understand how excited I am. :)

You may remember from my Big Organization pictures a while back that our bedroom has an extra sink, by the closet. It's about 10 feet away from the main bedroom door. I have a little trash can there. Lydia frequently likes to look in there and get stuff out of it. I stop her and tell her that it's trash and yucky and don't touch, etc. Here's a picture where you can kind of see the setup. You can see the light switch on the right, the main bedroom door is right next to that. The sink and trash can in question are in the background of the picture.



So yesterday, I'm getting ready at that sink for church in the morning, and Lydia is right there. She picks up a little piece of paper, and throws it into the trash. I said "Oh did you throw away the trash for me?" and went on.

About 5 minutes later, she's crawling around, and she gets to the bedroom door, and finds another piece of paper. I had also gone over to the bedroom door too, to make sure she didn't get into anything dangerous. She holds the paper up for me to see, and I say "Oh did you find another piece of trash? Can you throw it away like you did before with the other one?" That's all I said. I may have glanced in the direction of the trash can, but I sure didn't actively point at it or show it to her or anything. Then she brings it back down to her level, looks at it for half a second, and then she crawls RIGHT OVER to the trash can and throws it away! I was so excited. Hubby was in the shower and heard me squealing. LOL

Anyway I didn't know if this was normal/late/good/bad whatever, but it was exciting anyway. :)

she finally has independent steps

Today, Lydia finally started taking a series of independent steps. (Prior to today, she'd take about half a step before going back down to a crawl.) Also this morning, she figured out how to get to a stand just from the floor, w/o pulling up on anything. :) Here's a video of some steps. Look (and listen) to how proud of herself she is at the end.



Edited 3/17: here's a video taken today, during the daytime. (So you don't have to peer through the darkness to see it, lol.

so sad that it was just a dream

I've just woken up from dreaming. This dream felt SO real. I mean, I was IN the dream and things were happening and it was strange, but I totally felt like it was real. I've only been awake for about 5 minutes but even now, the dream is already fading from memory, so I'm going to try to type it out while I can.

I was in a school where my high school senior year English teacher was teaching a class. It felt like high school, in as much as we ran on a bell schedule and whatnot. I remember that the bells didn't work one day and I was late to this English class. She was just finishing up giving us an assignment on having us write a timeline of what happened in our lives when we were preschool age. I planned on calling Mom and having her look through my baby book to help me with those early memories.

Then the dream sort of switched scenes and I was on a college campus. I don't even know what classes I was taking. I lived on the third floor of a VERY co-ed dorm (you'll see just HOW co-ed in a minute... and I should have known it was a dream at that point, lol), and the stairs to get up to the third floor were more like a twisted ladder. I went up and down the stairs throughout the day, packing up to go home. My car was parked far away, but there was a closer spot. I got in my car and turned it on, and was going to use an assigned parking spot to do a quick u-turn. Well wouldn't you know it, the owner of that spot drove up right then in her big van, just as I was about to pull into it. She started to get mad, but I popped out and gestured that I was just going to use it as a u-turn and she was fine with that.

So then I get back to the dorm and I see a line of students in the teacher program lined up, doing some sort of teamwork activities outside. I thought I recognized one of the women there as someone I went to high school with, but didn't think much of it at the time. On my next trip down, I paused by all of them as the instructor was dividing them up into groups. She called the name "Amanda Allens." I recognized it as the name of the person I thought she was, though she'd gotten married. I dropped my next load off into my car, then went back upstairs to brush my teeth b/c I didn't want to talk to her w/ a bunch of bad breath. The bathroom was TINY, (think of the second bathroom in a 2/2 800 sq foot apartment) and I was brushing my teeth, and a guy was in there too, just talking to me. (See how co-ed it was? lol) So I finished brushing my teeth and then took another load down to my car.

On the way back to the gathering and snuck up behind her. "Amanda!" I whispered. Whens he turned to look at me, I asked her if she graduated from such and such high school in such and such a year. She said yes, a little suspiciously. Then I said who I was, and the light of recognition dawned. She got excited and I said I was going to be here for a little while, and asked her to call me after she got done w/ her activities. I went back upstairs to write down my phone number b/c I didn't have any paper with me (and strangely, neither did anyone else). The instructor of the group met me on the way back down and took the phone number to me, and asked me if I'd mention to the dean if they couldn't find somewhere more private in the future for the new-teacher workshop, b/c my actions had caused a bunch of disruptions. Everyone was asking Amanda who I was, etc. I said I would.

I knew the workshop was going to last a little while longer, and I was packed by now, so I thought I'd pass some time in the restaurant that was also on the third floor. It was full of predominantly guys. And apparently in my dream, I was very desirable. lol. Everyone was making crude suggestions to them, and I was making some very ego-deflating comments back to them. One of them was even wearing just a shirt and boxer shorts out in public, and I recognized the boxer shorts as being some of the same ones that hubby has. lol.

Finally I decided to go back to my room and wait for Amanda's call. I was so excited to talk to her, and tell her that I was a mom now and find out if she was one too. But the call never came. I woke up while I was waiting for it. :( This was one dream where I was actually a little sad to wake up and find out it was a dream.

Who does Lydia look like?

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Roots - Family search

Well here it is w/ "grownup" pictures, and it says that Lydia looks like us both equally.

I guess, really, that's what it should be. I mean, both he and I put equal parts into her, right? So it makes sense that she would be an even mix of us instead of an exact copy of one or the other. :)

Who does Lydia look like?

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celeb - Collage - Morph

WOW! I'm surprised at this. From birth, everyone's been saying that Lydia looks like her dad. When I used "adult" pictures, it says that she looks like us both equally. So I used baby pictures in this one and the one below, and it says she looks like me? I'm confused! I still don't think she looks like me yet, but computers tell the truth, right? :P

Lydia Mom and Dad

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

a sign and a dance

Lydia FINALLY has her first signed word. :D She started it in the past couple of days or so. It's "more." :D She doesn't do it exactly right, but it's easy to tell what it is. I'm very excited about this because I have signed with her for MONTHS and she's done nothing back to me. I thought she never would. You can see her sign in the first 4-5 seconds of this first video. The rest of it is showing how she likes to dance. :D



And then here's a little more dancing too (and eating some peas, lol). She actually lets go of the furniture in this one, which is what she usually does.

one "step" at a time

Lydia is getting stronger in her legs and torso. She'll pull up to her toybox and then grab a toy, then let go with her other hand to investigate the toy with both hands. Or she'll be pulled up to the ottoman or couch and she'll let go with both hands to randomly clap and grin.

Prior to yesterday, though, she had to "get" to a standing position. I couldn't just set her down in a standing position and have her stay there. But she had been bouncing and twisting while not holding on to anything, so yesterday I thought I'd try again to set her down in a stand... and she stood! She kept "squatting" like she was going to sit down but then she'd get back up again.

And she even tried to take a step. But only with her left foot, and only ONE step. After that first step, her feet would be so far apart that she didn't know what to do from there, so she'd sit down and crawl. Later in the evening after we got home from church, we tried to encourage her to walk again, and she took about a step and a half before falling. I'm pretty sure she'll be walking sometime this month (finally!).

Then once she's mastered that skill, hopefully she can concentrate on learning to talk, because we STILL don't have any words here, and she'll be 15 months on Wednesday.