My baby's almost one year old!
Lilia is getting so big. Sometimes I'll be holding her in my lap and just be amazed at how long and big she has gotten. This month she has gotten one new tooth coming in on the top. I thought the other bottom tooth would pop through, but it's still a no show. She doesn't seem to be showing any signs of teething as far as fussiness goes so I'm really thankful for that. She's been standing for 10 seconds at a time lately with no hands, but no walking yet (really grateful for that too!). She claps her hands all the time now. I love those chubby little hands! Lately to get my attention she will look at me and start laughing. She knows I'm a sucker for those laughs so I immediately look up from whatever I'm doing and start playing with her. She is also sleeping through the night at least for the past 5 nights. It's a step, but I'm not counting on this becoming a pattern quite yet.
Right now Lilia's got a really bad cold which she decided to share with me. We've both missed daycare/work to be home and take care of each other. She had a really high fever of 104.2 on Saturday so we took her to the emergency room, but she just had a really bad cold. The doctor who attended us was the doctor that brought Lilia over to Quique right after she was born.
I'm trying to plan her birthday party. It won't be too big, but it would be nice to have a few friends over to eat cake. December 6, 7, and 8 are holidays in Spain so it will be nice to have all those days off to celebrate with Lilia. We'll have to plan something special like a trip to the mountains to see her first snow or at least a trip to the park.
School is going well for me. I enjoy a lot of my classes and the days always seem to fly by. I just wish I didn't have so many levels of classes (15 different levels). I feel like I could do a better job if I just focused on three grade levels so I could follow exactly what they were doing in class and not have to refresh myself on what they're learning for the one or two classes I teach every week. One thing I really enjoy is that during any holiday (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.) I get to do lots of fun activities with my kids to teach about those holidays, especially the ones they are not familiar with). For Halloween, I did lots of different crafts with my younger kids like make a mask and make hand ghosts (trace your hand and then put it upside down. it looks like a ghost!). I also did Halloween Bingo with the 3rd through 6th graders and a lesson on the lyrics of Thriller with my high school kids. That week was a lot of fun and in just a few weeks I get to do it all over again with Thanksgiving! It really puts me in the holiday mood!
Below are some videos. The first is of Lilia and her friend Sergio at the park. She really wanted that ball! The second is of me trying to get Lilia to clap and then wave byebye. The third is me teaching a Zumba class! I did this about a month ago. The guy to my left is the instructor and the people are British travel agents. They were in Madrid for a conference and Zumba was on the agenda for their break time. I think I did a decent job considering it was only the second time I had done that song (I learned it two days before I had to teach it).
And of course some 11 month old photo outtakes:
