This last week was quite eventful for little Lydia. It started with a little wave and ended with a crawl.

Ah, yes. Lydia can now wave bye-bye, when it so pleases her. It has been something we have been working on for a while. Whenever she leaves her daddy, aunts, friends we would take her little hand “Say, bye-bye Lydia”. It wasn’t really catching on. She just thought it was funny that we were moving her hand about. However, we practiced at other times too.

If you don’t already know, Lydia practices what is sometimes called “elimination communication”. This basically means that I put her on a potty whenever I take off her diaper and she (most of the time) does her pee and her poo thereby saving lots of diapers and diaper rash. Anyway, after she uses her potty I take the potty to the toilet to flush away the waste with Lydia on my hip. So last week, I tossed her poo in the toilet and, as per usual, Lydia leaned in to look at it being flushed down. I said “bye-bye poopy” and, wonder of all wonders, Lydia gave the poopy a beautiful wave on its way!! Lydia’s first wave was to her poo! Nobody makes me laugh like Lydia. She is awesome. She will now sometimes wave at people. But she never misses for her poo.

If hand gestures to fecal matter isn’t amazing enough, a few days later she finally figured out how to crawl. She has been working on this for a couple months, but mostly ended in frustration. But then one day last week she decided to play a game with me. While sitting on the floor she would take a bite of my apple (yes, back to the apple) and then she would lean over and go on all fours and then lean the other way to return back to sitting just a few inches away. She would then take another bite, and then lean again over to all fours. This continued for around 45 minutes and she slowly worked her way around the whole room. Somehow this little game turned on a light for her, because the next day she leaned over onto all fours but she actually took a couple steps. Later that day, the whole thing took off when we visited my sister Maria. Maria placed a cheerio a couple feet away from Lydia and, bam, she was off to the cheerio. And so started another game for around 45 minutes. This girl loves her cheerios…I am thinking of putting a sign around her neck “will crawl for food”. Now, several days later, she is really able to get around. This makes me so proud, but also terrified. Already, I have turned my head for a second only to find out Lydia crawled over to the cord on my computer and is about to give it a good yank. And so begins a whole new phase of parenting…the mobile child.

Other notable developments this week? Yes, indeed. She has really started playing with sounds…the real beginning of language! The last few days has been an exercise in the exploration of sounds that end in ‘ck. For example, sitting in the bath cooing “gack, gack, gack”. Playing with a cell phone lauging “gock, gock, gock”. Or just plain “ack ack ack!” while pushing her vegetables around her high chair. Her big grin and full body kicks indicate just how proud she is of herself.

I am also noticing a big jump in her ability to understand the idea of peole leaving and coming back. Especially those she loves. At the end of the day, when I know Stephane will be home soon, we go sit on the stoop and play. When she sees her Papa bike up to the stairs, she starts laughing and cooing and her whole body shakes and kicks with excitement. It warms her daddy’s heart. For a while she has been showing clear signs of recognizing and preferring faces she knows, but it seems she is now understanding “ok, papa has been gone for a while. but now he’s back, back, back! woo, hoo! let’s play!”

And last, but not least, Lydia has finally pushed though all those teeth she has been labouring over for the last months. Four, yes, four more teeth, seemingly all at once. She is now just over eight months with eight teeth. Go girl!

What a week :) All of this happened during a week when Lydia and I hosted two parties and went to the Laurentians with my sister and family for a few days. We are both exhausted, but happy.

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