Wait... it's November already? Nooooo...
I've had intentions of updating my blog for the last month but lots of things happened all at the same time and, you know, I value my job and my two hours of relaxation time I get every night after crazy baby goes to bed.
Erm, crazy toddler.
I re-read my last post to see what my life was like when I left off on this blog-thing and my, my, how things have changed.
Oh, and remember how awesome I am at jinxing myself? Like, doing a hospital happy-dance when I made it to 32 weeks and pretty much publicly declared that I would make it to 34 weeks? And then my water broke that night. You'd think I would have learned the power that this blog holds, because I wrote that epic "I'm a mommy hear me roar" kind of post about how I was enjoying rocking my child to sleep with a bottle at night and I didn't care what anyone else said. So, clearly you know what happened next. Crazy toddler refused to let me rock her to sleep at night ever again. As in, the very next night she protested falling asleep in my arms. And eventually stopped letting me rock her to sleep for her naps. *sigh* So now we've stopped the morning nap bottle and I plop her into her crib and hand her Chubby Bunny. She actually does great with putting herself to sleep- I hand her the bunny and she flips over onto her tummy and wiggles her butt (we call it twerking herself to sleep) and if she's not fully ready to go to bed, she moves around and plays until she's ready for night-night. I was about to drop the afternoon nap bottle but realized the time change was upon us and changing her schedule and dropping another bottle may have resulted in full-on toddler warfare. And she just got a round of shots yesterday, so I'm just going to let it ride for a bit longer before I drop the afternoon bottle. The nighttime bottle will be most difficult, but I'm in no hurry and she certainly isn't either. She still gets a morning bottle after breakfast because she needs to get her dose of Miralax (yep, still has a broken pooper) and she won't drink enough liquid at one time from her straw cup to get her full dose that way. So I'm open to suggestions on that.
I was so fearful of the time change and did my best to adjust her schedule slowly leading up to it. Luckily, she also started adjusting her own schedule the week before and ended up settling into the time change flawlessly. Whew.
Before I get to the updates, I need to step up on my soap box because I've discovered that one thing irks me more than most things do. And also, I'm short, so stepping up on any type of platform is usually a good thing for me to do. Anyways. Ahem. Please, for the love of God and all things that are holy, do NOT call me ridiculous or give me the aww-bless-your-heart look for being a safety-oriented mom. Fair warning- the next person who does that will be subject to a verbal beat-down.
I like to play devil's advocate with myself but I just can't seem to wrap my head around this one. How on earth could someone think it's silly for me to be safe when it comes to my child? Or tell me I'm going overboard? Or say I'm being ridiculous? Is it because you turned your child forward-facing in the car seat exactly on his/her first birthday and ended up not getting into a front-end collision that could have killed your front-facing child? How about we talk to the thousands of mourning parents who will always remember that if they had just followed the safety recommendations, their child would be alive. Go on youtube, you'll find some videos that will make you cry and want to hug your child. And it's not a huge group of dumb-asses who just had no clue that you shouldn't let your young toddler play with an electrical socket. It's parents who thought they were being safe enough and the odds were not in their favor. Sure, there are plenty of parents who did follow the safety recommendations and still suffered a loss but, dammit, if something were to happen to my sweet little angel, I wouldn't want to live knowing that I didn't do everything I could have done to protect her. Even if I had a second child, I'd still do everything the same way.
I'll never forget seeing a facebook post from a parent who held her little 8- or 9-month-old child as he died in her arms from a brain injury that happened in the bathtub. A $10 faucet cover could have saved his life. And his parents were not neglectful in any way, but I have to think that they will always feel like they could have saved him. That thought would be unbearable to me.
Or the youtube video that told the story of a little boy who didn't live to see his first birthday because he was improperly strapped into a car seat. The video is complete with photos of this poor baby in the hospital, swollen, with tubes and wires all over him. And a photo of the mother holding her baby son as he passed away with a priest standing over them.
So yes. I have a $10 faucet cover in the bathtub. And an inflatable baby tub. I followed SIDS recommendations to the T. I watch her like a hawk at all times. And I'm keeping her rear-facing in the car as long as she can. She doesn't know any different- she's always been rear-facing. She can still see out the window and I give her a book to read to keep her entertained, and all is well. Sure, there are times when I wish I didn't have to turn into Stretch Armstrong to hand her something in the car at a stoplight. But the evidence on why it's better to keep her rear-facing as long as possible is enough to not make me at all tempted to turn her carseat around. It's also a great excuse to not have to drive people somewhere... "the car seat is still rear-facing so the front passenger seat has no leg room." Works every time.
So. Call me ridiculous about being safe. But brace yourself for the wrath that will ensue.
Heavy stuff over. Now onto baby updates.
And forgive me if I sound braggy... but my kid amazes me. I'll admit that I was very afraid of how she would develop after having such serious and frequent episodes of brady's and desats for the first three months of her life. But she's right on target.
She started walking on October 19th and luckily she did it in front of her mommy AND daddy, and mommy had the iPhone camera rolling to capture every wobbly step :) She's still quite wobbly but getting the hang of it. I sincerely debated dressing her up as a zombie or a drunk redneck for Halloween because she does the PERFECT zombie walk which also happens to look like an inebriated person. More inebriated than zombie, though, because she has a tendency to fall a lot or slam down on her bottom mid-stride. Hilarious.
Talking: There's no stopping her now. Here's her list of words, mostly in order because I've forgotten some of the order (And there have been many instances when I thought a word was a coincidence because I figured there was no way she had learned the word already, but over time realized that it was, in fact, a real word):
Puppy
mommy
bird
daddy
night-night
hi
bye-bye
baby
happy
more
please
uh-oh
That's 12 words. Possibly 13- I taught her to say "bubble" at the doctor's office yesterday because she was a horrible grump and rapidly approaching nuclear meltdown mode and I was trying to distract her. There were some decals on the wall of fish, a mermaid, and some bubbles. So I pointed at each of them and told her what they were, and after I said "bubbles" a few times, the darned kid said "bubble" clear as day. Not "buh-buh" but "buh-buhlll" And then proceeded to do it again. And again. And again. But now she thinks every picture on the wall is a bubble, because she pointed at hubby's Batman poster today and called it a bubble, which is nearly the same as Batman. Yep. Genius.
She also knows six-ish body parts. The 'ish' is because she has started getting confused and has temporarily forgotten where her ears are. She started with bellybutton, and now knows head, ears (on some days), mouth, nose, and feet. When it was just those, she did pretty well. Then I tried to introduce "knees" and she started confusing her mouth with her ears. Typical girl- knows where her mouth is, but forgets where her ears are.
About a month or two ago, she figured out how to ask for something by either pointing at what she wants, gesturing, or doing the ultimate rude-toddler method of grabbing an object and forcefully placing it into your hand. She sucks at being subtle. If I sit on the floor of her playroom, she'll grab a book, place it in my hand, and plop herself down into my lap until I start reading to her. She remains obsessed with books.
The latest development is animal noises. She knows cow, lamb, and lion. Yes, lion. She does this hilarious "roar" that sounds more like she's possessed by some evil demon or channeling her inner metal band singer.
I have no way to estimate how many words she actually knows, but I think it's far more than I realize. I sometimes experiment to see if she understands me and am frequently amazed when she does. In the bath the other night, I held out a ball in one hand and a small bottle of soap in another hand. I asked her to grab the ball, and she did. Alright, must have been a coincidence because she had been playing with the ball a few moments prior. So I held both objects again and asked her to grab the soap, and she grabbed the damn soap. So I started squealing and clapping like a total idiot because she really amazes me when she does stuff like that. She is pretty good at following directions too. She knows the difference between "Emma, say 'mommy'" and "Emma, where is mommy?" (or puppy, or daddy). She knows how to bring something to me, or put something inside of something else (i.e. "Emma put the ball in the bucket."). She gives the best kisses on demand, and now gives hugs (thanks to Pop Pop!!!).
And, of course, she's still a picky eater. UGH! For the last two and a half days, she's been on a hunger strike and has refused to eat much of anything. She refused toast yesterday, so you know it's bad... she pretty much ended up binging on graham crackers today. We're just going to keep trying in a calm manner without pressuring her to eat. I refuse to have a chicken-nuggets-and-macaroni-and-cheese-only toddler.
Her personality has remained mostly the same- rambunctious, easily irritated, incredibly goofy, and not at all snuggly. My little cheesy poof shows affection by smiling and flashing those beautiful, big, blue eyes that twinkle when she's happy. She laughs at everyone and everything (especially her Auntie Lauren. And naturally they are the best of friends). She loves books more than anything else and is a phone/car keys bandit. She loves it when I chase her around the playroom and has the cheesiest little laugh in the world. She officially hates sitting in a shopping cart for longer than about 15-20 minutes and then throws a complete temper tantrum when she can't walk in the store. She wakes up happy and sleeps a lot for her age- two 1.5 hour naps per day and about 11-12 hours of sleep (straight!) at night. In fact, she dropped her night wakings entirely at about 7 months of age and I didn't even realize it until a few months later because I assumed that she would start night-waking again.
Pretty sure I just jinxed that.
