Well, Look at Those Big Blue Eyes

I can't come up with the words to adequately describe the last few weeks of my life. Hectic? Doesn't even begin to cover it. Stressful? Close, but no cigar. The week before Easter will live in infamy in my life for a long, long time. It'll be the litmus test of any horrible week I may experience during the rest of my career- "this week sucks so bad... oh, but wait. It's still not as bad as that week." I'll leave it at that. Just know that my job has been beyond anything I've ever experienced and my confidence is shaken. Not a comfortable feeling for this gal.

It's absolutely absurd how much changes in such a short period of time with a baby. Emma's development kind of plateaued for a while, with her managing to learn to roll from tummy to back (out of pure necessity and her incredible hatred of being on her tummy. She still has yet to roll from back to tummy because she has no desire to do so) and then being content with her life from that point forward. Until the worst week of my life came around, when she decided that mommy at least needed something good to happen. She started clapping on 3/26 and babbling on 3/29. And, of course, both of these things happened while daddy was home with the baby and mommy was at work :( but luckily daddy was kind enough to video tape her clapping and I got to hear her babbling while on the phone with hubby. This weekend, she learned how to make kissy sounds with her mouth. Next up: cartwheels.

So let me just say that there is nothing more adorable than a fat little baby blowing raspberries, clapping her fat little hands, saying "dadadadada" and making kissy sounds with her mouth all in the span of about two minutes. Seriously- there's nothing more adorable. I assure you. She keeps me entertained, that's for certain, and the really big new development is that she actually wants to entertain us and tries to interact with us as much as she can. Blow a raspberry at her, and she'll blow one right back at you. Make kissy sounds, get kissy sounds in return. She also tries to interact with her toys and the dog. She'll sit in the bathtub and babble at her rubber duckies, or lecture the dog as she walks by.

And she still squeals. Loudly. Usually with a toy in her mouth, and mostly just for the hell of it. It's just as cute as almost everything else she does, except for when you're sitting in a restaurant and you clearly cannot communicate to Emma that she needs to be quiet. Because she's a baby. She doesn't understand. Luckily said restaurant was just Steak n Shake, so there were children everywhere and the only person who seemed to care about my screaming baby was some lady at the table next to us who seemed to just be miserable with her life in general. Yep. I had my first "I don't care if you're bothered by my child. If you wanted a quiet meal, you should have gone to Olive Garden, lady" moment. I mean, really. Emma wasn't that loud, and she wasn't upset either. She was just so excited to be sitting up like a big girl at the table while surrounded by a whole bunch of people and noise. It was her contribution to the ambiance.

I bought one of those fancy shmancy shopping cart covers so we could start taking Emma shopping sans stroller. I picked out the fanciest shmanciest one I could find, with little pillows on either side of her for maximum support and comfort. Our first trip with the cart cover was to Big Lots (yay.) and I couldn't stop smiling at how excited Emma was to be able to look around the store and see everything. She was the same way at JoAnn Fabrics. And today, she and I went shopping with her Grammy (my stepmother-in-law) and I was so proud of my sweet little Baby Bird and how good she was. I think we spent about an hour and a half to two hours in the store today and she didn't grump a single time. She just played with her toys, ate my hands, and watched everything around her. She just loves being in a shopping cart. I just happen to love shopping. Except for clothes shopping. Bleh. (because I can never find anything that actually fits me)

So now that she's been making appearances in public more often lately, I've noticed that everyone says something about her eyes. I don't need to point out that she has big eyes. It's obvious from her pictures. But in real life, her eyes twinkle with curiosity and happiness and draw you right in. The first thing that people say is along the lines of "look at those big blue eyes!" or "you have such pretty eyes!" It's always the eyes. People did that to me as a kid- I had bright blue eyes when I was little that slowly turned to green (fun fact! Green is the most rare of the common eye colors) so everyone was constantly commenting on my eyes when I was young and occasionally as an adult. But Emma's eyes are not only a pretty color, but they're huge. And huge eyes on a baby is the darned cutest thing ever. Google Kewpie Dolls. That's my girl.

Sleep: ah, sleep. She's been sleeping for 11-12.5 hour stretches every night for about a month-ish now. Maybe longer? I can't remember exactly when it started because I was in denial for the first few weeks and thought she'd revert to night wakings on any given day, so I wasn't counting on it continuing. But it has... and I'm so grateful, especially with the kind of weeks I've had recently (I don't think I've worked less than 45 hours per week in the last month and a half). So at an actual age of about 7 months and an adjusted age of about 5 months, I think that's a pretty good routine to have. With no parent-led scheduling! Well... mostly. We've tried to have a somewhat consistent bedtime for her since she was about three months of age, but that never actually stayed too consistent. My schedule is pretty erratic and she spends time with two different sets of grandparents during the week... and there was also a time change thrown in there. So she's been going to bed anywhere between 7:30 and 9:30 over the last month or so. But her own little schedule has emerged, with a wake up time of 7:30am, nap around 10:30 or 11 (if she spends the day with grandparents because she'll nap in the car on the way so her morning nap is a little later than normal) and another nap at about 2:30. She's a champ now.

The thing that hasn't stayed very consistent is the method of getting her to sleep. For a few weeks, she was finally letting me rock her to sleep in her rocker, then I could gently put her in her crib and sneak away while she continued to sleep. Then, suddenly, she wouldn't let me rock her to sleep and I had to put her in her crib and let her kick/fuss/grunt/babble/clap/break dance herself to sleep for her naps and at bedtime. I usually like to sit in her nursery until she's asleep but she kept turning herself in her crib so she could look at me, then she'd try to entice me to pick her up by clapping her hands ("see mommy, I'm cute! Come play with me!"). When that didn't work, she'd squeal a few times, When that didn't work, she'd start to get angry and cry and yell at me. Solution? Put a blanket up on the end of the crib to block her view of me. That worked like a charm... until this afternoon, that is. There I sat, getting my Pinterest fix for the afternoon while sitting in the glider listening to Emma entertain herself in her crib. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement, and looked at her crib in time to see the blanket slowly being pulled into the crib by none other than Emma. I tugged back so the blanket didn't actually fall into the crib, and she tugged harder. Fine. No more blanket. I pulled it all the way off and put it on the floor, at which point Emma saw me and smiled and squealed. So I left the room so she could calm down and sleep... after some anger and fussing, she finally calmed down and took a nap. Sheesh! But tonight, she let me rock her to sleep again :)

So the only thing that's predictable about having a baby is that everything is unpredictable. Every. Single. Thing.

Food: Of course, my fat kid is a finicky eater. She'll gladly have a full bottle of formula, but she isn't always the biggest fan of eating solids. Breakfast is usually better than lunch and dinner, so I guess she takes after me in that way. I love breakfast. Anyways, sometimes she'll eat like she's starving, and other times she purses her lips from the first bite and refuses to eat anything. We had some jars of stage 2 1/2 carrots that were a little more lumpy than stage 2 carrots, but she gagged every time I tried to give her some, so she has remained on the stage 2 foods. Tonight, I decided to break up a rice rusk death cookie* into small pieces to see if she'd eat it. She preferred to just pick up the little pieces with her fingers and examine them (I can't get over how good she is with her hands. When her Grammy picks her up, she zeros in on Grammy's thin white gold necklace and grabs it with a pincer grasp like it's no big deal) and then drop them on the floor. I put a piece in her mouth, expecting her to immediately gag, but nope. She chewed it like it was a piece of bubble gum and smiled at me. I gave her more, and she gagged a little on the bigger pieces, but she chewed and ate them with few issues. I then mashed up some of the sweet potato I had on my plate for dinner and gave her that to play with and eat. Again- much different texture than pureed baby sweet potatoes, which is one of her favorite foods. She ate that like a champ, too. She gagged a few times on them also, but overall she did a fabulous job with her first introduction to non-pureed foods. Hooray fat kid!

*rice rusk death cookies. Ugh. Someone at work showed me some rice rusks that her granddaughter was eating. They're basically a crunchy wafer-like cookie (? biscuit? apparently that's why they're called a 'rusk'- they're not really a cookie, but not really a biscuit. Just a rusk.) for babies that dissolve relatively quickly in a baby's mouth. I remembered a friend giving them to their child in the past, so I thought, what the heck, she'll probably love them. And she did. Until I ripped the rusk from her little baby hands after she bit off a piece and almost choked on it. Like a good mom, I decided to give her the death cookie back one more time because certainly that was a fluke. And she bit off another chunk, causing my hand to go flying into her mouth to wrestle the rusk away from her esophagus before she died.
Ok, that was a bit of hyperbole there. But she did bite the rusk a couple of times and I had to get it all out of her mouth before she swallowed and choked and she did gag once or twice too, which is nothing new.

Things Emma likes:
blowing raspberries
bubbles
red Solo cups
standing up
TV
tags
pulling grass out of the ground
ripping paper towels
slapping mommy
clapping

Things Emma does not like:
diaper changes (it's like changing a baby kangaroo)
having a onesie pulled over her head
being put in her pack n play when she's tired
having her head washed in the bath
having her mouth wiped after eating
having anything on her head- a hat, headband. etc.
sippy cups

The End.