Lucia’s Monthly Photos: Eight Months Old

Dear Lucia,

You are pure joy, little girl. No matter what life throws your way (like a fourth cold in your short existence, wecannotevenbelieveit!), no matter how off your schedule is due to the holidays, no matter if your needs have to occasionally take a backseat due to your sister’s needs, you are always a pure joy.

Here are some of the exciting things you’ve been learning and doing lately:

• Your first word was Sirena!! You call her “Na” and it was the most heartwarming moment when I realized your “na, na, na” was referring to Sirena. You said this on Dec 11. Other new sounds are “bla” and “ma”
• Your tongue continues to be out all the time! We call you our little puppy dog. You have started to curl it up lately too.
• You’ve transitioned yourself to two naps a day which is so much better to work around. Luckily your second nap coincides with Sirena’s so occasionally we get a moment of peace when both of you are napping!
• You love playing “Where’s Lucia?” where we put a blankie over your face and you pull it down to show yourself, you get so happy when we “find” you!
• You are so close to crawling it’s not even funny. You get on your hands and knees and rock back and forth but always plop down on your belly after a minute or so.
• The most exciting thing this past month was celebrating your first Christmas! You had such a blast at all of the holiday activities (Breakfast with Santa at Rancho Los Alamitos, Christmas light viewing in Naples, Big Red Bus ride with Santa, not to mention the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day festivities).

I can’t help but compare what’s going on in your life at this age with what was going on in Sirena’s life at this age and a huge difference is that we moved from Oakland to Long Beach with Sirena when she was 8 months old. We feel that you are so lucky that you’ve had all eight of these months to build relationships with your family and friends down here whereas Sirena was really starting anew at this age (not that she didn’t quickly solidify those relationships!) It is so apparent to us that moving to Long Beach to be close to family and friends was the best move for us (even though we miss the Bay Area something fierce!) Your life and your sister’s life is that much more full of love because of the people we are surrounded with here. My hope is that these relationships continue to grow and strengthen as each year goes by and that you know how truly loved you are by everyone around you.

Love,

Mama

The Eight Month Rundown

Likes

• When you’re super happy you rub the bottoms of your feet together

Dislikes

• When you’re annoyed at something you’ll make a squishy, scrunchy face (not to be confused with “crinkle nose” that you do all the time which is usually when you’re happy) and you’ll made a screeching sound (lord help us)
• Being sick (again!!) We were dumbstruck when you started coughing and your nose

Monthly Photos

And here’s Sirena’s eight month photo in the armchair for comparison’s sake