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 :)
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