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Julia and I had a good couple of days together this week, although she has had a runny nose since Tuesday morning. We went shopping both days and bought her a new pair of shoes on Wednesday. While we were home, she spent a lot of time at the front door, looking out, as you can see by the pictures here.

Teeth numbers 7 and 8 have broken through, so she now has four on top and four on the bottom.

She has a new DVD that teaches numbers, and she has a bag of letters that she likes playing with. She pulls them out and we’ll tell her what the letter is. She seems to pick up on it pretty well. When she pulls out an ‘O’, she makes a circle with her mouth and whispers “Ohhh.” We also spell out her name with the letters, say “Julia”, and she seems to understand what it means. She’ll look at the letters and point to herself.

We’ve taught her to say “Me”. She says it when we look at pictures of her or with the letters.

Tuesday is another Daddy day. She’s with her Aunt Denise on Wednesday, and she gets a visit from her cousins on Thursday.

Not feeling any adverse affects from her first daycare experience.

Julia is 13 months and 20 days old, and until today, there hasn’t been an hour in her life when she hasn’t had a family member with her.

Melissa’s mother, who watches her the three days per week that Melissa works, is in Colombia for two weeks, so we’ve had to shuffle our schedules a bit. I am watching her 2 days this week and one day next week, Denise is watching her one day next week and the other Grandma will be taking care of her one day next week, but we have decided to let someone else take care of her as well.

My employer has an emergency daycare service that is available to all employees and one of the centers happens to be in the building in which Melissa works. The plan was to use this service on Thursday. Before that though, Melissa took Julia for a four-hour trial run today.

She dropped Julia off at 8 a.m. and Julia was very curious to see the different toys and different colors in and around the center. There was only one other child there at the time, which was probably good - enough to make her curious, but not too overwhelming. Melissa didn’t stick around as long as she thought she would need to, because Julia seemed to be fairly comfortable.

The rest of the morning went without any major problems. From what the daycare workers told Melissa, it seems Julia became a little bit overwhelmed once more kids arrived and stuck by their side. According to her report card, she had fun “watching the other kids play basketball” and slid down the slide “so fast.”

She probably didn’t eat as much as she would with family and it took her a while to settle down for a nap (she actually fell asleep sitting up in the crib), but it could have gone a lot worse. The actual anticipation of the day was probably a lot worse than the day itself for Mommy and Daddy.

It turns out Aunt Denise will be taking Thursday off, so we won’t be using the center this week.

Just a few new pics today. They can be found here. I really like the one of her looking out the back door from Saturday.

We’re not sure where she got it from, but Julia has this sneaky look that she does with her eyes. It started a couple of days ago while looking in the mirror with her mama, and now she does it on request. The photo to the right is the only one we have of it. There’s a larger version on the page linked below.

Julia now says “up” when she needs help to get up from a sitting position. Other than “Mama” and “Dada”, it’s the only word that she says completely. Everything else is just the first syllabol.

Some pics from Tuesday and today are here. I particulary like the shot of her brushing her teeth on Tuesday. There’s also a pretty good shot of her getting a few swings in on her tee before heading to bed.

Well, other than the fact that I threw my back out (still in a world of pain). Not sure what it was, but Julia was in an extra playful mood yesterday (Sunday). She seemed to have a permanent smile on her face (as can be seen in the super-cute pic to the right) and it didn’t take much to get her to laugh.

One of the things she started doing yesterday (and did plenty of today) was a little hide-and-seek game in the porch area. She’ll walk back and forth behind the wall that seperates the living room from the entry, and she likes to check that you’re still in the same spot that you were before.

She has also been playing a lot of soccer with her pink rubber ball. For someone who has only been walking for a little over a month, she’s pretty good at kicking the ball without breaking her stride. She claps when she makes a good kick.

Believe it or not, I am updating twice in the same week. And guess what, the photos are totally updated. Through today. This includes some pics of Trini in her last full day in the U.S. and some I took tonight after Julia’s bath because she just looked so cute as her mama was drying her.

Now, I still have a ton of video that I want to put up on the site, as well as a few more audio clips. I also need to add a ton of links to my writing.

Speaking of which, All-Star was great. It was a ton of work, but a ton of fun. We had great access. Check here to get an idea of some of the things I got to do down in Houston. I was standing right behind Dirk in that second photo. Also, see if you can find me here.

Getting this in less than an hour before I would have gone the whole month of February without anything new…

EDIT: Just realized that the blog clock was off an hour, so this post reads March 1st. I’ve fixed it, but the date sticks. :-\

I’ve updated the pictures through Julia’s birthday. Lots more to do and I hope to get them up soon, along with some video.

Julia is walking very confidently these days. Three or four times a day, she likes to just walk back and forth between the living room and the kitchen for about 10 minutes or so. She just walks back and forth, usually babbling in a language we can’t understand at this point. Just the other day, she discovered the other side of the dining room table, so she has started to walk back there a bit.

She understands a lot of words, although the only ones she actually says consistently are “MaMa” and “DaDa” (those are the most important anyway). You can ask her where certain people or objects are in the room and she can point them out with amazing accuracy. She also has several signs that she uses, the most important being “more” (bringing her two fists together) for when she wants more snacks, more swinging or more singing.

She loves music and often requests it by pointing to the stereo and saying “Muh”. Like I wrote last time, she says the first syllabol to several words.

She loves to look at pictures, on the computer, on the wall, or on the bulletin board in the kitchen. Whenever she’s in the kitchen, she points to the board and says “Pitcha, pitcha”. She’s pretty good at identifying her friends and family when you ask her where they are on the board. Of course, she gets the most satisfaction out of seeing pictures of herself.

Sleeping is still a bit of an issue. She sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and most mornings, she will wake up somewhere between 4 and 5 and won’t go back to sleep in her crib. So, she sleeps with Mommy and Daddy for the last hour-plus.

She has become a bit more picky with what she eats, but she is starting to eat some real (non-baby) foods like scrambled eggs and bananas.

We’ve been taking her out to lunch every other weekend or so in order to get her out of the house more. Last Saturday, she had a great trip to Applebee’s, charming most of the employees and patrons that caught a glimpse of her. She declined some ice cream though, so she definitely has some learning to do.

She has started taking classes at Gymboree. She’ll probably need a few more before she becomes comfortable though.