L is for Lola

Lola turned 1 year old on February 13. We had a little celebration for her complete with not one but two pairs of matching sister dresses!

She got the birthday song and a cupcuke, what more could a little one year old ask for!

We have definitely noticed big changes in Lola in the past month or two. She is starting to play with toys (like Nina's tea set below) a bit more that just putting them in her mouth.

She can climb on Sassafras all by herself and rock looking oh so proud of herself.

Here is one from early on, but she is a champion walker now - or rather a champion drunken sailor walking. She still has that wide bow-legged stance, but she can walk a few dozen steps without falling.

Lola loves, loves, loves to eat. Anya nicknamed her "The Goat", and we all laughed out loud at how appropriate that was! She eats anything and lots of it.

Mostly Lola wants to do whatever one else is doing. She wants to feed herself (what a mess), she wants to brush her teeth when you brush yours, she wants to comb her hair. The other day, she tried to pick up Nina's scooter. She figured she needed to put on foot up on it, and she didn't even crying when it fell over on her. But she did get rather upset when Nina came to take it away from her.

She has definite opinions about what she wants and is not above pitching a ginormous fit if she doesn't get it. Even if you give in and give her what she wants, she will sometimes still burying her head on the floor and keep crying just to let you know how terribly you have offended her.

Whenever you turn on music she starts to bob up and down in a dance. She tried to copy Nina spinning in a circle the other day. She loves to wrestle and rough house especially with Nina, but you have to be careful as she had been known to fight dirty and brain you with a hard plastic toy.

She is still and probably always will be a bit of a delicate flower, but one flash of her smile and she steals your heart!

Christmas

In honor of Washington's Birthday, we'll post pictures from another holiday ... Christmas! Here are just a few lovely highlights from our bigger-than-life Texan Christmas.

Santa and Mrs. Claus drop in at the DeLuca's on Christmas Eve with presents and candy canes for all!

Bruno goes present diving.

Thelma and Louise on Christmas morning.

Child of the Week

A few weeks back, Nina was Child of the Week at her school. The main event is creating and sharing a poster with pictures of your family. Nina and I picked some photos from her Beach Birthday Vacation, and we painted up a poster board and glued on the pictures. Nina was soooo proud to bring it to school to share with all her friends. On Tuesday of that week, she made a special presentation, standing in front of the class and telling them about each picture, and then taking questions and comments from the audience. Needless to say she loved being the center of attention, but I was impressed how she thanked each of her friends after they made a comment on the poster.

This was the one that Nina was the most proud of. She told everyone about the baby in the bucket, and how Willie took her (but not Lola) for a ride around the block.

Walking on the beach the first morning.

The Birthday Girl posing with Marbella, Palapa Joe's morning cook and mother of 5 year old Anna who Nina played with on the beach.

Whacking the birthday piñata! It was filled with spicy chicken and beer flavored lollipops (not kidding)

Lola!

This one was Nina's school friends favorite. We heard "I like the one of you running out of the water" about 15 times.

Beach Palapa Restaurant

Crocodile! I expected more of a reaction from the kids on this one, but apparently everyone sees scary looking reptiles on their vacation.

And here is the final product!

Somehow none of these made it onto the poster, but they are just so adorable, I'll include them here!

First Steps!

Lola took her first steps over the weekend! We weren't sure if she was going to make it before her first birthday, but she snuck it in at 11 1/2 months. She is still rather nervous about the whole thing but is getting more comfortable with free standing. Of course with her being a second child, there are, as of yet, no pictures or videos of this event. You will have to settle for this shot taken right after Lola managed to climb up into the high chair all by herself. It was rather impressive.

Look at me!

Merry Christmas!

Post-Thanksgiving Adventures

The Friday after Thanksgiving we headed up north to Santa Rosa. A little wine tasting, a little Peanuts - fun for the whole family.

First, a stop in San Francisco for lunch at Fort Mason.

Break dancing?

When we arrived at our hotel, look who was there to greet us!

There are statues of the Peanuts all over town in Santa Rosa - the home of Charles M. Schulz. Nina's favorite activity was looking for "kids".

This was in front of the Schultz museum which was fabulous fun. Nina even took in a cartooning leason.

Lola enjoyed it too! This is, by the way, her favorite activity these days. If she sees stairs, she race crawls over to conquer them.

Post-dinnner kid hunt. We tracked all over town, but never did find Sally.

9 Months

Lola turned 9 months last week, and she is just the cutest thing imaginable! She is busy crawling around, pulling up on things, cruising around tables and standing and bouncing. She loves to shake maracas and generally bang things together. She is an expert at picking up cheerios with her little index finger and thumb, and even more fun is expertly picking them up and watching them drop over the side of the high chair. Cause and effect. She loves to play the head butt game and to try to eat your nose. She watches your mouth carefully when you makes sounds and will try to repeat them.

OMG! I am the cutest baby evah!

She is, at times, a nervous little baby. She cries when I sneeze or turn on the blender (or when Nina gets too close but that is probably for good reason). She would probably be interested to walk, but she sure isn't ready to let go of whatever is holding her up. Although she is starting to have longer stretches of independent play, she really just wants you to sit next to her. She plays for a few minutes then cries and comes over to touch you then maybe returns to what she was doing.

She is content to ride in the stroller watching the bigger children play and flashing big smiles at anyone passing by.