A Julia by any other name...

Jonathan thought it would be fun to catalog all of Julia's nicknames. Hope you think so too. :-P (P.S. Who do you think is responsible for most of these?)

1. Julia (duh)
2. Julia Elizabeth (ditto)
3. Julie Beth
4. Miss Julia Wessler
5. Chick (probably used more frequently than #1)
6. Little Chick
7. Chick-Chick
8. Chickie
9. Chick(ie)/(a)-Boo
10. Chick-ums (anyone see a pattern here?)
11. Julia bird
12. Goo baby
13. Maa baby
14. Butt-butt
15. Chunk-a-monk(ey)
16. Cutie butt
17. Baby girl
18. Honey bun(ch)(es)
19. Lovey duck
20. Smiley Pants
21. Peanut (butter)
22. Snuggle Bear
23. Chipmunk

Giggling

Julia is learning to giggle! She has been making giggling noises before, but today is the first day that it seemed to be in response to tickling or general heckling.

In other news…

• Julia has developed a talent for audibly blowing spit bubbles.
• On Sunday, she discovered an appetite for her hands, particularly her right hand. Sometimes she misses her mouth and hits her face instead, but she eventually finds the target.

When we can grab pictures of these things, we'll put them up!

Rain forest mobile

Julia loves her rain forest mobile, which she received as a gift from Pastor Barry and Sherri Long. The Happy Baby Dance is especially evident about a minute and a half into the video.

Two-month update

These are all the interesting things we can possibly think of about Julia that have happened since we arrived home three-or-so weeks ago:

1. Julia's once-a-day, two-minute happy time has slowly increased into several stints of happy time lasting about a half-hour or more. In general, she has become a very happy baby!
2. That being said, Julia tends not to believe in naps; hence, her parents' favorite pictures of her (after the smiling ones, of course) are the ones of her sleeping, because it is such a rare and beautiful thing (in the daytime)!
3. Julia has a jungle gym! See the previous post for a picture. She absolutely loves to look at and hit things. She has almost figured out that those funny things waving in front of her face are attached to her and are called "hands."
4. Julia also loves her rainforest mobile. Words cannot describe how much she loves her mobile, so we will attempt to post a video soon. Seeing is believing!
5. When she goes for walks in her snuggly, she likes to stick her head out and take everything in.
6. She is learning the Happy Baby Dance, and she likes to wiggle around a lot during happy time.
7. Julia continues not to care for tummy time, but she loves to sit up and look around. She prefers to learn to hold her head up that way.
8. She likes her rocking chair.
9. She and Mommy have finally figured out the whole eating thing, which we have now complicated by introducing bottles so Mommy can go back to work. But she's a smart baby, so she'll figure it out.
10. Julia sleeps for six to eight hours at a time at night!!! However, she has not slept through the entire night yet (we are defining that event as follows: she's asleep when we go to sleep, and she's still asleep when we wake up—but maybe this is ideal and never happens).
11. She likes being read to: her favorite books thus far appear to be The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Philharmonic Gets Dressed.
12. She's learning how to splash in the bathtub.
13. It's been fun to see Julia take a more visual interest in colorful things on her bouncer or her swing.
14. Julia talks to us! Her favorite words are "a-goo" and "a-woo." She is very careful: she puts lots of conscious thought into what she says and how she says it. But she doesn't like to talk for the video camera. The minute we manage to grab a video of Julia cooing, you'll see it here!
15. We took her to practice with Daddy the other day, and as soon as Mommy sat her down on the organ bench to watch, she got huge eyes and a big smile on her face. Daddy was playing the end of the Vaughan Williams Antiphon from "Five Mystical Songs," so it was pretty loud and obnoxious.
16. She's a precious little baby!

Two months

We will post some updates of Julia's growth and development soon, but for now we'll give you a bunch of pictures of Julia at and around her two-month birthday. We start with her "jungle gym," which she got when we returned from the Midwest… it plays music and has lots of lights and things hanging to bat at. She enjoys it very much!

Holding Daddy's hand

A big smile!

This is Julia smiling with the doll she received from Marmee.

We usually don't like tummy time, but we did in this picture!

This is Julia sleeping soundly. She's so cute!

Julia's official two-month birthday photograph with Jamaica Monkey!

More cuddles with Jamaica Monkey

A picture with Mommy and Daddy on their anniversary

Cuddles with Daddy

More sound sleeping
Learning to eat from a bottle. She did great this time, but she's decided she didn't like it so much since then. We'll see how it turns out!

That's all for now… perhaps a video will pop up soon!

It's us!

Hi everybody… we decided that it would be easier on everyone to continue the Julia Chronicles through a weblog. This will allow us to send you more pictures (and videos!) of Julia at higher resolutions than through e-mail. More to come shortly!