Time to bare my soul to the blogosphere for the 800th time...
I admit it: I'm a big-time flip-flopper of a mom. I've been repeatedly told that Geminis (which I am) are wishy-washy and, well... guilty as charged. Call it what you want, but I can't seem to make a major parenting decision without changing my mind a billion times. Why? After some soul searching, I realized... it's because my heart tells me one thing, and the interwebs tell me another. Solution? Go with the heart.
At one point, I identified myself as being a middle-ground parent... somewhere between parent-led scheduling and attachment parenting. But there's nothing like a training on attachment-based therapy to make you question every single choice you've made as a parent in an attempt to help your child be independent. Serious face-palm.
I found myself trying to figure out how to correct the bad habit of giving the toddler/baby a bottle and rocking her to sleep for every nap and at bedtime and then I caught myself. Bad habit?! BAD?! Lord, have mercy.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is in no way a bad habit. How on earth could it be bad that the last thing my little angel sees before her eyes grow too heavy to stay open is her mommy smiling down at her? The last thing she hears is mommy humming her some lullabies? The last thing she smells is my skin (and probably the milk that inevitably ends up on my shirt)? That the last thing she feels is my warmth, my touch, my love... HOW IS THAT BAD?!?!?!
I've always taken her lead. There was a point in time when she didn't want me to hold her at bedtime and she much preferred to wiggle herself to sleep in her crib. We did that for a while, until she had her sleep regression at about 11 months. That was when she impulsively rolled over, sat herself up, and wailed like a banshee because she was tired but couldn't stop herself from sitting up like a big girl. That's when I began my "bad habit" of rocking her to sleep and we've maintained that ever since, with a few exceptions. There have been a few nights that she is too wound up to be rocked to sleep, and she'd prefer to sit in her crib and play with her Chubby Bunny until she falls asleep. But that's not often.
But you know what? She's in bed around 7:30 or 8:00 most nights and sleeps until about 7:00 or 7:30 with barely a peep. Sometimes she'll wake up extra early, but will put herself back to sleep (like this morning, THANK GOD). So my "bad habit" doesn't seem to have any ill effect on her at all.
Babies are not meant to be convenient. In a world in which most parents work outside of the home, we've suddenly adopted a philosophy of trying to have these little independent mini-adults running around so that we get our precious sleep and don't have to deal anything inconvenient. Pfffttt... that's absolutely silly. Bring on the full parenting experience- I signed up to be a parent, not a babysitter.
So I flip-flopped a hundred times about whether or not to start putting her in her crib awake instead of rocking her to sleep. My final decision is to rock her to sleep... she won't be in high school and need me to rock her to sleep. And when she's in high school, I'll so sorely miss these times.
My latest flip-flopping is about her bottles. She has finally (hallelujah) started drinking from a straw cup and still despises sippy cups. Whatever, I'll take what I can get at this point... but I've still been giving her milk in a bottle at nap time and bed time and for some reason this bothered me. Again, thanks to the interwebs for putting it into my mind that my child is supposed to be broken of the "bottle habit" at 12 months. Nah. She's fine... the only thing I do worry about is her teeth, but at least she doesn't fall asleep with the bottle in her mouth. She finished her milk and then drifts off to sleep... I brush her teeth every night. But I should probably give her a sip of water after her bedtime bottle for extra protection against bottle rot. Anyways... I read some stuff online today that made so much sense- why take away something that comforts her? She'll grow out of it and decide when she no longer needs it. I definitely trust that- she certainly tells us when she's had enough of something. She broke herself of the pacifier habit at only a few months of age. I found a pacifier and gave it to her to see what she would do, and she chewed on the plastic part and clearly had no idea what it was intended for. Then she threw it and moved on with her little life.
So that's where I stand- I'm going to continue to be the horrible mother who gives her one-year-old a bottle and rocks her to sleep every night. Jeez, someone should take away my parenting license pronto before I start getting really crazy and doing something like holding her when she's being clingy. The horror.
Alright. Moving right along...
New developments: Baby Bird points with her fat little index finger now. And her little thumb sticks out too (making an "L" shape) so I've been trying to teach her to say "pew pew pew" while she's pointing at things so it makes it look like she's shooting an imaginary gun. I should probably stop encouraging that.
She's been making strides with eating table food, and she apparently loves anything covered in tomato sauce, go figure. She ate veggie pasta with tomato sauce the other night and I couldn't give it to her fast enough. I'm not even sure if she really even chewed it... her days of gagging on everything are behind us. HOORAY!!! She ate tortellini a few weeks ago and I seriously thought I was going to do a victory lap around the house. I had the urge to call everyone who cared and tell them about my amazing child that just ate three tortellini. I'm so serious, too- I haven't been that excited about something in a very long time.
She's still not walking, and I don't even care. Really, I don't... she's doing it in her own time and is getting closer day-by-day so I'm not at all concerned. She recently started cruising on furniture a lot more, and letting go of one piece of furniture to switch over to another one nearby. She's also being daring and letting go of her support to stand on her own for a few seconds at a time.
She's talking up a storm now, too. She has little conversations with herself about whatever she's playing with and you can easily tell the emotion behind her gibberish- sometimes she's clearly happy, and other times she's a little peeved or confused.
Her favorite things in the whole world are birds. Specifically, big, black, loud crows. She was sitting in her highchair yesterday morning eating her breakfast and watching outside to see if one of the crows would land on the lightpost. I was in the kitchen getting everything ready for the day, when I heard her excitedly say "bird!" I looked over and she was pointing out the sliding glass door, and there was a giant crow perched on top of the lightpost. She also pointed at the dog the other morning and said "puppy." So stinking cute.
She's still holding steady at six words- puppy, mommy, bird, daddy, hi, and night-night. "Baby" may be the next one, but I'm not sure on that yet.
Her favorite person in the world is apparently her Grammy. She hadn't seen her Grammy in a week, and wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything other than her Grammy yesterday morning. I ceased to exist the moment she saw her and she wouldn't let anyone else hold her, nor would she let Grammy put her down. I'm pretty sure she made her Grammy's day. I happen to love her Grammy too, so we have that in common :)
She has also discovered how to put things into other things... like putting blocks into a bucket, and then dumping them out. We have this Fischer Price activity barn and one side has a cow's face with an open mouth and you can feed it little plastic veggies. She picked up on that and does it all the time (and it's really not that easy). The other side has a chicken with a little chute underneath it and a basket at the bottom. There are plastic slightly-larger-than-life-sized eggs that you can put down the chute so they land in the basket. She's mastered that too. She can work buttons, switches, and is starting to try shape-sorting, although she's a long way from mastering that.
AND. She likes me to hold her now. :) She gives lots of kisses, and clings to me at times.
So, yea. Life is wonderful... I've never felt so much love in my heart and I feel so lucky to have such a cute, sweet, beautiful, amazing child. When I'm being a horrible mother and rocking her while she sleeps at night, I remind myself how fortunate I am to have my little cuddle bug in my arms and to have had another day with her in my life. My arms were empty for years and I longed to hold a child of my own. Now I'm never going to let her go...
(holy sappiness.)
Saturday, August 24, 2013
Saturday, August 10, 2013
The White Flag Still Flies
It's 10pm on a Saturday and I'm blogging against my better judgment. But fear not, I've been doing lots of things against my better judgment lately and all has worked out well so far.
Apparently my last post was on Emma's first birthday, and much has happened since then.
For instance... I'm now the mother of a one-year-old. I hesitate to call her a toddler because she's not walking yet and I'm going to milk every last drop of baby-hood out of this kid. Heck, I'll probably not refer to her as a toddler until she's preschool aged. Or maybe she'll just be my baby for ever and ever and ever. That sounds better to me.
I made it through her first birthday with minimal tears, and most of them were from happiness at the fact that we made it through the first year and are still a family of three. Yep, we all survived those 365 days somehow and have some now-distant memories, like:
My extreme fear of SIDS. I forgot to mention this in a previous post, but we weaned ourselves of the motion-sensing diaper clip at about 10 months of age. Pathetic, I know. But it was a sincere God-send and the only reason I was able to sleep at all for those first ten months. I was ready to ditch the clip before hubby was... his philosophy was to keep it on her until she started taking it off in the middle of the night. I figured she was past the danger zone for SIDS but agreed to keep it on her for a while. Until I was woken up in the middle of the night to an obnoxious beeping sound, only to find my peacefully slumbering baby in her crib with her clip lying next to her on the mattress. So that was the final time we used the clip, and we haven't looked back.
The bradys. You know what's absolutely absurd? Sometimes I forget about the bradys, like it never happened. I realized that I told someone recently that she stayed in the NICU for three weeks but was a healthy baby, and only later remembered that she was not, in fact, healthy at all. She practically died in my arms on daily basis for almost two months straight. But no more of that!
Spit up. YES, I'm so glad to not be drenched in spit-up anymore. It did absolutely nothing positive for my skin or clothes and made me smell absolutely wretched. In fact, I recently pulled a shirt out of the drawer that I hadn't worn in quite a while and couldn't figure out why I kept catching a whiff of vomit stink throughout the day (luckily it was a t-shirt that I only wear around the house). Then I looked in the mirror, and saw the faint outline of a stain, and the memory of those awful nights of projectile vomiting from December/January came flooding back. When we moved from the old house, I could clearly see the stains in the carpet from the vomit puddles.
Being up all night. I was reading some old blog posts recently about the mommy meltdowns and sleepless nights and thought... jeez, I'm tired. I went to bed at 10:30 last night and got up at 7:30. YAWN. LOL.
Alright, There's so much more to the list, but I need to get on to the good stuff.
Food: That white flag is still flying shamefully high. I feel so defeated when it comes to feeding this kid, who still refuses pretty much everything that's not baby fruit. We've had some small victories, though, and now she'll eat small amounts of cheese, toast, goldfish crackers (the whole grain kind, of course), cold macaroni and cheese, and muffins. She may like bagels, but I'm not sure on that. And tonight, she actually ate some boiled carrots and leftover long-grain and wild rice from the other night. I was shocked at how much she liked the rice. But the issue is that she'll only eat small amounts of each thing before she loses interest and starts grumping. Except for toast, because she'll sometimes eat almost half a slice of that. The last few days have been tough because she hasn't wanted to eat much of anything (even a sweet potato!), likely due to her teething. The gagging has subsided a little bit, but she still doesn't want much to do with anything I've tried giving her. UGH. I also struggle with finding the time to prepare table food for her. I try to give her a sample of what we eat, but she usually wants nothing to do with it. I even bought some fancy-shmancy Gerber toddler entrees, and she thought I had lost my mind when I tried to get her to eat them. In her defense, the texture of the "ravioli" was a little off-putting. So, as always, I'm open to suggestions on how/what to feed her. Everything I've read has suggested repetition and gentle encouragement. So, onwards I march.
We're weaning her from baby formula! And the bank account really appreciates that! I figured my super-picky kid would take issue with transitioning from formula to cow's milk and that we'd slowly transition her from one to the other. On a whim, I gave her some milk in her bottle and she clearly loved it. She's a milk fiend... we're still finishing up the last bit of baby formula we have, and then we'll keep some toddler formula on hand while she's still being such a picky eater. I want to make sure she's getting the nutrients she needs, even on her fussy days. Now to wean her from her naptime and bedtime bottles.
Speaking of bottles. She hates sippy cups. And straw cups. And training cups. And basically anything that's not a bottle. UGH. I just have to keep reminding myself that she's technically only 11 months old still.
Teeth: SIX! And numbers 7 and 8 are making their triumphant (and grumpy) debut. She likes brushing her teeth at night before bed :)
Sleep: Still going strong! She has had a few short-lived sleep regressions but is still sleeping about 11-12 hours straight at night. She'll sometimes wake up around 6 or 6:30 in the morning and talk to herself and stand up in her crib, but she falls back asleep for another hour or so. At night, I get her fully asleep (most nights) before I put her down, and still put her on her back because it's the easiest for me to do. At some point, she flips herself on her tummy and remains in some sort of face-down position throughout the night. Most of the time, she looks like a drunk person who's passed out on the floor. We keep her "Chubby Bunny" in her crib with her and sometimes she'll sleep with her arm around it, although apparently the two of them are not on the best of terms because the bunny has ended up on the floor at some point in the middle of the night.
Words: SIX!!! Yes, SIX!!! In this order (I think, sometimes it's hard to tell when a word is a coincidence or a real word until after she's said it a few times):
1. Puppy
2. Mommy
3. Bird (yep. BIRD. My child is so strange)
4. Daddy
5. Hi
6. Night-Night
She speaks some crazy version of baby gibberish and I swear it sounds like she's an Indian rapper most days. She uses all kinds of inflection and expressions and tells some really interesting sounding stories, if only I could understand what she's actually saying.
Development: She's pretty much on-target for her actual age with the exception of walking. But she could care less about walking- she's far too content with crawling. She pulls herself up on everything but isn't yet standing without support... she can take her time on that. I'm in no hurry ;) Her language development is amazing and her little hands are still really agile.
Growth: My miracle-gro baby has grown less than a half pound in the last four months. The doctor isn't worried and she's still healthy, but I guess she decided to take a break from growing. That's fine with me, too, because it's been nice to have her stay in the same size of clothing for longer than two months.
This kid can certainly dazzle an audience and I think we have a pop star in the making. She can sing... I kid you not. It's the darned cutest thing ever- I'll walk around and sing or hum to her and lately she's been humming right back at me. It usually just consists of repeating one high note and one low note back and forth, but I'm blown away that she can do that. She also "beat-boxes" when she goes back and forth between clicking her tongue on the top of her palette and popping her lips... I'm inclined to think that it's some sort of highly advanced skill for a one-year-old, but I could be wrong on that.
Oh, and she has finally realized that she needs her mommy and daddy! FINALLY! If she's scared (usually of thunder or the vacuum cleaner), she'll hurriedly crawl over to me and climb into my lap as quickly as possible and proceed to cling to me like a baby koala. She's starting to cuddle a little, too. Woohoo!
Her current favorite thing to do is read books. Well, sit in mommy's lap while mommy reads a book and Emma interacts accordingly (like on the page in her elephant book that shows an elephant stomping... I taught her to stomp her foot when we get to that page, and to nuzzle into mommy when we get to the page showing elephants nuzzling. so. cute.), then she'll proceed to go back through the book and "read" it herself. She uses her little thumbs to open up the pages and helps me turn them when I'm reading her the book. All I have to do is tell her to get a book, and she'll climb into my lap and wait for the fun to begin. I really cherish those moments :)
Apparently my last post was on Emma's first birthday, and much has happened since then.
For instance... I'm now the mother of a one-year-old. I hesitate to call her a toddler because she's not walking yet and I'm going to milk every last drop of baby-hood out of this kid. Heck, I'll probably not refer to her as a toddler until she's preschool aged. Or maybe she'll just be my baby for ever and ever and ever. That sounds better to me.
I made it through her first birthday with minimal tears, and most of them were from happiness at the fact that we made it through the first year and are still a family of three. Yep, we all survived those 365 days somehow and have some now-distant memories, like:
My extreme fear of SIDS. I forgot to mention this in a previous post, but we weaned ourselves of the motion-sensing diaper clip at about 10 months of age. Pathetic, I know. But it was a sincere God-send and the only reason I was able to sleep at all for those first ten months. I was ready to ditch the clip before hubby was... his philosophy was to keep it on her until she started taking it off in the middle of the night. I figured she was past the danger zone for SIDS but agreed to keep it on her for a while. Until I was woken up in the middle of the night to an obnoxious beeping sound, only to find my peacefully slumbering baby in her crib with her clip lying next to her on the mattress. So that was the final time we used the clip, and we haven't looked back.
The bradys. You know what's absolutely absurd? Sometimes I forget about the bradys, like it never happened. I realized that I told someone recently that she stayed in the NICU for three weeks but was a healthy baby, and only later remembered that she was not, in fact, healthy at all. She practically died in my arms on daily basis for almost two months straight. But no more of that!
Spit up. YES, I'm so glad to not be drenched in spit-up anymore. It did absolutely nothing positive for my skin or clothes and made me smell absolutely wretched. In fact, I recently pulled a shirt out of the drawer that I hadn't worn in quite a while and couldn't figure out why I kept catching a whiff of vomit stink throughout the day (luckily it was a t-shirt that I only wear around the house). Then I looked in the mirror, and saw the faint outline of a stain, and the memory of those awful nights of projectile vomiting from December/January came flooding back. When we moved from the old house, I could clearly see the stains in the carpet from the vomit puddles.
Being up all night. I was reading some old blog posts recently about the mommy meltdowns and sleepless nights and thought... jeez, I'm tired. I went to bed at 10:30 last night and got up at 7:30. YAWN. LOL.
Alright, There's so much more to the list, but I need to get on to the good stuff.
Food: That white flag is still flying shamefully high. I feel so defeated when it comes to feeding this kid, who still refuses pretty much everything that's not baby fruit. We've had some small victories, though, and now she'll eat small amounts of cheese, toast, goldfish crackers (the whole grain kind, of course), cold macaroni and cheese, and muffins. She may like bagels, but I'm not sure on that. And tonight, she actually ate some boiled carrots and leftover long-grain and wild rice from the other night. I was shocked at how much she liked the rice. But the issue is that she'll only eat small amounts of each thing before she loses interest and starts grumping. Except for toast, because she'll sometimes eat almost half a slice of that. The last few days have been tough because she hasn't wanted to eat much of anything (even a sweet potato!), likely due to her teething. The gagging has subsided a little bit, but she still doesn't want much to do with anything I've tried giving her. UGH. I also struggle with finding the time to prepare table food for her. I try to give her a sample of what we eat, but she usually wants nothing to do with it. I even bought some fancy-shmancy Gerber toddler entrees, and she thought I had lost my mind when I tried to get her to eat them. In her defense, the texture of the "ravioli" was a little off-putting. So, as always, I'm open to suggestions on how/what to feed her. Everything I've read has suggested repetition and gentle encouragement. So, onwards I march.
We're weaning her from baby formula! And the bank account really appreciates that! I figured my super-picky kid would take issue with transitioning from formula to cow's milk and that we'd slowly transition her from one to the other. On a whim, I gave her some milk in her bottle and she clearly loved it. She's a milk fiend... we're still finishing up the last bit of baby formula we have, and then we'll keep some toddler formula on hand while she's still being such a picky eater. I want to make sure she's getting the nutrients she needs, even on her fussy days. Now to wean her from her naptime and bedtime bottles.
Speaking of bottles. She hates sippy cups. And straw cups. And training cups. And basically anything that's not a bottle. UGH. I just have to keep reminding myself that she's technically only 11 months old still.
Teeth: SIX! And numbers 7 and 8 are making their triumphant (and grumpy) debut. She likes brushing her teeth at night before bed :)
Sleep: Still going strong! She has had a few short-lived sleep regressions but is still sleeping about 11-12 hours straight at night. She'll sometimes wake up around 6 or 6:30 in the morning and talk to herself and stand up in her crib, but she falls back asleep for another hour or so. At night, I get her fully asleep (most nights) before I put her down, and still put her on her back because it's the easiest for me to do. At some point, she flips herself on her tummy and remains in some sort of face-down position throughout the night. Most of the time, she looks like a drunk person who's passed out on the floor. We keep her "Chubby Bunny" in her crib with her and sometimes she'll sleep with her arm around it, although apparently the two of them are not on the best of terms because the bunny has ended up on the floor at some point in the middle of the night.
Words: SIX!!! Yes, SIX!!! In this order (I think, sometimes it's hard to tell when a word is a coincidence or a real word until after she's said it a few times):
1. Puppy
2. Mommy
3. Bird (yep. BIRD. My child is so strange)
4. Daddy
5. Hi
6. Night-Night
She speaks some crazy version of baby gibberish and I swear it sounds like she's an Indian rapper most days. She uses all kinds of inflection and expressions and tells some really interesting sounding stories, if only I could understand what she's actually saying.
Development: She's pretty much on-target for her actual age with the exception of walking. But she could care less about walking- she's far too content with crawling. She pulls herself up on everything but isn't yet standing without support... she can take her time on that. I'm in no hurry ;) Her language development is amazing and her little hands are still really agile.
Growth: My miracle-gro baby has grown less than a half pound in the last four months. The doctor isn't worried and she's still healthy, but I guess she decided to take a break from growing. That's fine with me, too, because it's been nice to have her stay in the same size of clothing for longer than two months.
This kid can certainly dazzle an audience and I think we have a pop star in the making. She can sing... I kid you not. It's the darned cutest thing ever- I'll walk around and sing or hum to her and lately she's been humming right back at me. It usually just consists of repeating one high note and one low note back and forth, but I'm blown away that she can do that. She also "beat-boxes" when she goes back and forth between clicking her tongue on the top of her palette and popping her lips... I'm inclined to think that it's some sort of highly advanced skill for a one-year-old, but I could be wrong on that.
Oh, and she has finally realized that she needs her mommy and daddy! FINALLY! If she's scared (usually of thunder or the vacuum cleaner), she'll hurriedly crawl over to me and climb into my lap as quickly as possible and proceed to cling to me like a baby koala. She's starting to cuddle a little, too. Woohoo!
Her current favorite thing to do is read books. Well, sit in mommy's lap while mommy reads a book and Emma interacts accordingly (like on the page in her elephant book that shows an elephant stomping... I taught her to stomp her foot when we get to that page, and to nuzzle into mommy when we get to the page showing elephants nuzzling. so. cute.), then she'll proceed to go back through the book and "read" it herself. She uses her little thumbs to open up the pages and helps me turn them when I'm reading her the book. All I have to do is tell her to get a book, and she'll climb into my lap and wait for the fun to begin. I really cherish those moments :)
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