Feeling good about Homemaking

This article really backs up the way that I feel about being a full time mom and devoting the next several years to changing the world by raising an amazing kid. 

Hopefully...

I hope everyone who likes to read things over here has been keeping up with my day-to-day mini updates on Twitter and Facebook. It's so easy to get comfortable updating a "status" with moderately interesting goings on than it is to sit down and write a bunch about little things. I would like to take the time, though, to sit down and really iterate the wonders of having an 11 month old (this Friday), as well as talk about some plans for her BIRTHDAY!


She wakes us up each morning by happily exploring our bedroom and the scattered toys she left lying around the floor the day before. Sometimes she lucks out and there's a basket of folded, clean laundry that hasn't been put away yet that she can empty and fling about without us noticing.


If we stay sleeping too long before turning on Playhouse Disney, she lets us hear about it by climbing all over our heads and pinching our noses and/or pulling our hair. Also whining very loudly. (We can sleep again when she's in college, right?)


So many fun things she's learned to do recently:

• She'll touch your nose if you ask her to. "Where's Daddy's nose?"
• She knows the signs for dog, bird, and "all done".
• She turns off the light switch every night before bed.
• She loves to drop food on the floor to feed the dogs when she's not interested in it anymore.
• She "cruises" constantly, and has been walking behind her push carts.
• I can't leave the room without her yelling after me. She stands up at the closed door and bangs on it.
• She loves to roll the ball to us -- sometimes it even heads in the right direction toward us! Usually she waits for us to send it back to her, but sometimes she forgets and chases after it, even if we're trying to roll it back to her.
• She's learning better to put things IN other things. 
• She's able to point at things to tell us what she wants (usually she can't have it, but... sometimes she gets lucky).
• She recognizes these words pretty consistently: daddy, mommy, gramma, hello, bye bye, nose, Wonder Pets, Ming-Ming, fishy, monkey, love/hug, up, all done, banana, drink, down, come here, dog, Leela, Myles, kitty, bird, tweet, bite, shakey-shake, kicky-kick, sing, Jho, "whasat?", "can I have that"/"give that to Mommy", in, out, bouncey-bounce, book, page, look, "push the button", "roll the ball", "go get it".
• To "love" or "hug" her monkey, she just puts her head down on him. Also, she will only love/hug her monkey. Not sure why she hasn't figured out how to apply the action to anything else.
• She thinks that "where are you going?" means she needs to crawl away from us as fast as she possibly can. (While giggling the whole way.) 
• She'll occasionally get her groove on when the music hits her. Mostly by bouncing up and down, but sometimes she gets her head & arms shaking, too.
• She always wants to go to gramma so she can try to get her glasses.
• She's getting good at playing peek-a-boo on her own, and thinks it's really funny to see herself in the mirror. She seems to know that that girl there is "Calina." 
• She can see photos of us and recognize us and herself.
• "Bouncey-bounce" involves her throwing whatever is in her hands to the ground as hard as she possibly can to see if it bounces.
• "Kicky-kick" involves her riding around in her stroller and kicking the heck out of anything her feet come in contact with (bushes, racks of clothing, walls, whatever.)
• She basically goes around saying "whassat" in a whispered voice and pointing at things... I think it's because we inadvertently go around asking her "What's that?" in a whispered voice when she points at things. For example, she points her finger at the dog, we say, "What's that?" in a whispered voice, and then answer our own question: "Dog, doggy, Leela, dog, woof woof." Pretty much all she hears is "whasssat". So that's what she says to everything she sees.
• She lights up and immediately pays attention whenever she hears any of these songs: Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider, the Wonder Pets songs, Ants Go Marching; any of the songs from Playhouse Disney shows: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Hot Dog Dance, Hop up Jump in, Let's get to Work, Imagination Movers, the Paw Pilot songs from Special Agent Oso; the intro to Yo Gabba Gabba, ABC's, The Noble Duke of York, and whatever Colin sings to her. (He sings her to sleep every night, and I'm not sure what his current repertoire is...)

She is still nursing 6+ times a day, though she really loves to eat solid foods. More than half of her nursing happens in the middle of the night or in the early AM hours. She's very skilled at using her "pincers" and also taking little bites off a big piece of something like bread or crackers. She loves pretty much anything we give her, so far she's only objected to (read: HATED/refused to eat) mashed potatoes and boiled yuca (which are both pretty similar in texture). But any fruit, veggie, or grain... and she's totally into it. Gramma loves to make her oatmeal & applesauce. Yes, so far, she's a little vegan baby, and she seems to like it that way.


We're almost done with her helmet. We're pretty resolved with this one being her last, and we're pretty sure we'll let her stop wearing it after her 1st birthday.


Speaking of which!


We were considering doing a big park party, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to come up with something that SHE would really love. So I think we're going to book a party at Amaya Papaya on her birthday (March 19th). It's a really fun little spot where she can basically have the run of the place, there are more cool things to play with than she could ever get to, and we can have snacks and cake with a few of her "friends". In other words: not much of a party for the grownups, but it'll be WAY more fun for her (and probably the other kids, too). We'd really love to do a "book" birthday for her (while she can't be too disappointed with such a thing), to help build up her book stash. It's a little sad at the moment, and she love love loves books.


That's long enough for now, but, oh yeah! Check out Google Buzz. It's like twitter or facebook, but they fixed all the annoying bits of both and created one thing. This post will almost certainly automatically show up on there.

SUCCESS!

Calina is officially 9 months old today, so as a special monthday present, I decided to start working on getting her to sleep without nursing. Colin just so happens to be home and off work for more than 2 weeks, and Ben, Jhonen & Jess are away for the next 2 nights -- the perfect time for a baby to be super upset and crying... OR SO I THOUGHT.


Tonight, we gave her a bath, I fed her some, and she practically jumped out of my arms to get onto the bed. She crawled over to a few toys to give them a jiggle, and put her head down on a pillow. Colin laid down with her and I... left them to work it out. I was on the other end of the monitor if things got out of hand, but I wasn't really sure what would happen. Turns out the little lady was sleeee-py. She played for a little bit, but kept just putting her head down on pillows mid-play. So Colin laid her down next to him, cuddled her a little bit and hummed a song. She was o-u-t like a light in no time. And she's been down for 2 hours now! Now, I have no idea what the rest of the night will bring, but I thought I'd write a post about our incredible success, rather than what probably lies ahead of us tonight.


But I will say that I was rather pessimistic about how bedtime would go without mommy, and I was not just pleasantly surprised, but truly astonished with the results. So who knows? I could be blown away by the rest of the night.

Doing, not writing.

Darn.

I guess I've been so busy doing things daily that I don't often have time to get over here and write much about it. Either that, or I can't come up with much to say about what I do -- I usually only get a few things done each day on either end of baby-care.

Today, not too different from most days, went something like this:

• Baby woke me up at 8:30
• We played downstairs until 10:15
• At 11:00 she fell asleep again.
• I went to the gym while she slept, and got home around 1:00
• She had woken up around 12:00, and played with gramma for a while. When I got home, she was tired again.
• I fed her and tried to put her back down for more sleep, but she just wanted to play more in bed with me.
• We got back up, and came downstairs to find gramma ready to run out for some shopping.
• We went to Toys R Us, Target, Home Depot, and Borders (We only went to Borders for coffee because Calina was sleeping in the sling through Target & Home Depot, and it was in the same plaza.)
• We got home around 5:00
• I wrapped some Christmas presents while Calina played with Gramma
• Colin came home at 7:30.
• I made dinner while he played with Calina.
• We all ate around 8:00
• We watched half an episode of Wonder Pets
• Calina got cranky and tired at 9:00 and went to bed around 9:30.
• I got caught up on some computer chores, read my email, and sat down to write a blog entry. It's almost midnight now, so... time for bed?

I guess that's life right now. Gym, shopping, cooking. That's really all the time I had my hands to myself sans-baby. I did a bit of baking over the last week, too.

It's unbelievable how short these days are, really. I spend quite a lot of time right now putting Calina to bed at various times of the day... She's in a transition between needing 3 naps and only needing 2. If she only gets 2, she tends to be cranky, unless one was at least 2.5 hours long. And it's getting harder and harder to help her fall asleep for that middle of the day nap... So a lot of time is spent TRYING to get her to go to sleep until I just give up and decide she's not really tired enough.

I love her to pieces, but I'm really excited for her to gain a little independence. She's starting to show signs of getting good at playing by herself, but she's still super clingy and needs me on hand at all times -- just in case she needs me for something, I guess. :) It's super fun to watch her play, though, and to see what she finds amusing. Like picking at the carpet to find a speck of fuzz to put in her mouth. Or using both hands to shake a rattling object that's only in one of them. Or suddenly dashing off away from me toward a doorway she shouldn't go out. And riding in her stroller behind Myles's swishing tail.

She's stirring upstairs, and I have to run. That's all for now. ::sigh::

Calina can CRAWL!

Halloweenies!

Colin and I decided to head out to the Magic Kingdom for Halloween.

We didn't do a couple cool things today...

We hit up Leu Gardens for their "Free Before Noon Every Monday" deal, but discovered upon arrival (after getting there at 11:00, not wanting to wake napping babies, driving back out to Einstein Bros. Bagels to grab a picnic lunch for the Gardens, and driving back there) that it was no longer free on Mondays. Only FIRST Mondays. $7 per person? I don't think so. So we left.

And we had a lovely picnic at Loch Haven Park, letting Jhonen run around and play in a big field and on a big tree (though he still wanted to go right for the street), and Calina sat on her blanket trying to reach for big fistfuls of grass to taste. (Prettiest. Day. Ever.)

We wanted to find something fun to do, so Jack suggested that we go downtown (nearby) and check out the puppet museum, where he had some pieces on display. We were all for that, so we drove over there, only to find that - yup - they were closed. 0 - 2. Instead, we walked down to Bento to get some Boba teas: I had a passionfruit red tea with [slightly too many] pearls. It was yummy, almost up until the very end. :)

My good friend Stefany and her friend Chris are coming over tomorrow after traveling all over the country promoting Mona-vie, so I knew I wanted to make a nice dinner tomorrow night... I opted to wait to do the shopping until tomorrow when I figure out what awesome thing to make. So tonight was a "get creative with leftovers" night... again. It was probably the worst menagerie of ingredients I've ever had to deal with in this situation -- and I am usually SO good at it. But when you're really just out of everything, it's really, really hard.

I had a roll of premade pizza dough in the fridge, so I went for the make-a-flatbread-out-of-everything idea. 1/2 of the rectangle was turkey chili with cheese on top; 1/4 was hummus with breakfast sausage and baked beans with cheese on top; 1/4 was red sauce with chopped up fried chicken, buffalo sauce, and - you guessed it - cheese on top. (I knew if nothing else, Colin would eat the buffalo chicken bit.) For the most part, it turned out well. Certainly edible. If a little soggy under the middle chili pieces.

--

Yesterday afternoon, we went to our friend Bryan's house for a why-the-crap-is-it-still-so-hot pool party... except that we had our first cold front of the year this weekend, and it was freezing. Still fun. My now-famous chocolate chip cookies were a huge hit, and Colin got in some rock band, with baby strapped on an all!  (Thanks for the awesome pic, Bryan!)

My 1st Halloween - er, Calina's first Halloween.

So, Colin's grandma (Nanny) has a crazy Raggedy Ann collection at her house in Oregon. I wish I had a picture to show you because when I say "collection", you don't usually picture what I am talking about. She has an entire bedroom in their house covered - top to bottom - in Raggedy Ann & Andy stuff. Bedding, lamps, dolls, figurines, books, toys, stuffed dolls, hard ones... Really, in a nutshell, it's a masterful, crazy, incredible room to set foot in - let alone try to get some sleep with all those EYES looking at you.

Anyway, I was inspired by seeing her room, and I thought it would be a fun tribute to Nanny if I dressed Calina up like Raggedy Ann for Halloween. Naturally this meant that I would have to MAKE a costume, since nobody dresses up like Raggedy Ann for Halloween anymore. These days, with about 85% of our sample so far falling into line this year, little girls are all fairies/princesses and little boys are all dinosaurs/dragons.

It also seemed like a good excuse to flesh out my sewing skills, since, on a costume, you can be a little more "fudgy" than on real clothes. And I was sure I'd need some fudging. And I did, but not nearly as much as I figured.

I managed to pull out some sewing skills I didn't know I had, and Calina looks totally amazing.

So today, we went out to the Sanford Zoo here for their annual Halloween "Zoo Boo". Best part was, we not only had a trial run for the actual holiday, but it also made me finish it early so I could get a bunch of photos to send to Nanny before Halloween. Too fun. The whole album is here, but I'll give you a little taste:

Everyone was probably most impressed by the fact that she didn't rip her hat off. We seem to have found another added perk of her helmet! She didn't even notice that she had anything different on her head!

We entered into the Costume Contest, along with about a dozen other "under 3's".

3rd place: The Alligator Dragon kid!
2nd place: The Little Purple Octopus girl!
1st place: Our little Raggedy Ann!

And our prize? A monkey as big as she is. :)

Colin's worried I've set myself up for failure... Now every costume she wears has to be as awesome as this one. And has to win prizes. :)

Autumn

There is nothing like autumn to get the fiendishly ambitious kitchen goddess out in me.

Yummy autumn goodies thus far created in our household:

1. A pumpkin roll with cream cheese frosting. (Yummy, but not "the" recipe. Will try a different one soon.)
2. Curried pumpkin seeds, roasted. (Amazing.)
3. Jess put together a pumpkin pancake feast for us this morning, to which I added a hash brown potato with peppers & onions.
4. This is all after I discovered the very best chocolate chip cookie recipe and made 2 batches.

Also, I've been making Calina's baby food... steamed carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash, avocado, pear sauce. She is an incredible eater!!

Coming up:
-My first attempt at sewing baby clothes
-Halloween!
-A huge post from our Oregon trip with lots of photos & video
-Wedding planning!?! (Yeah, we're getting around to it, finally...)

What's happening?

I cannot believe so much time has passed since I've come over here to talk about life as mom. I guess living in my world makes it feel like time is moving slowly, but reading it back, I can see how it's actually flying.

Calina is joy and stress and laughter. Cuddles, squirms, and a bundle of emotions. It's strange how when she was a tiny baby it was easy to keep life somewhat normal, but now that she's getting bigger and getting a personality (she likes and dislikes things now) everything has become more about her and juggling things I would like to get done has become a lot more challenging. Back when she was 2 or 3 months old, I told Colin to enjoy that time, because even when things were difficult with her, I knew they were by far easier than they would eventually be. I don't think he believed me then, but I think that he's coming around. He told me yesterday that he was sad and surprised that he was more stressed out at home than at work. That he got to his desk in the morning and sighed with delight and realized how peaceful it was. I laughed and said I understood really well how that could be.

That's not to say that things are bad or even worse than they were - just different. I love that she is becoming a real character in our lives. It's so fun to sit down at the table with her in a highchair and give her spoonfuls of real food. It's amazing to know that if I try hard and push all the right buttons, I can distract her from being cranky or turn a good mood into laughter. I even love how difficult it is to get her to sleep because the payoff when she finally gives up is so incredible. Every morning she wakes up a little earlier than I'd hope, squirms, eats fitfully, and smacks me in the face/grabs my nose until I open my eyes. This makes her very happy, so I usually get a giant smile or giggle. She loves books and flinging/chewing on toys, loves her daddy and watching the dogs. She's become very fond of taking walks in her stroller, and will sit happily for an incredibly long time in the bath, as long as she has a couple of toys. She sings her "sleepy song" right before dozing off. She flails both arms madly up and down when she's excited and/or overtired, or when she's saying hello to someone.

She's over 16 pounds now and 26 inches tall (mostly looong legs!), perfectly average for her age. Her head is getting very nicely rounded out, but we're still not having an explosion of growth like we'd like to see. (Even though her head circumference is above average for her age, it looks like we still have some growing room with this helmet. Boo.)

She sits up incredibly well, pretty reliably without falling over unless she overreaches for something. She still hates tummy time (I think the helmet digs in to her neck), and though it's clear she wishes she were mobile, it doesn't look like crawling will happen anytime soon -- and other than the fact that I know she'd love to be mobile, I am enjoying every moment she stays put! She grabs and reaches for things constantly, one hand at a time, passes things from hand to hand to get a better look at something, and is doing less chewing on things and more shaking up and down.

She's eating solid foods like a champ - she eagerly eats everything I've given her: Mashed bananas, apple sauce, smushed pears, peaches, and steamed carrots (pureed or mashed, she likes either), sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and avocado. She doesn't care if it's lumpy or smooth or cold or hot, she likes it all. She loves sucking the juice out of big pieces of things: watermelon, pineapple, pickles. She watches Jhonen intently when he makes a lot of noise or plays with things or walks around. I love that he's right ahead of her in age - I think he'll be a good influence coming up. I'm hoping that his language skills will encourage hers.

I love that she's still enough of a baby to hang out in her wrap and fall asleep on my chest, but a big enough girl for me to sit her down and have her potentially entertain herself for a few minutes with a basket of toys. I think we've made it to the perfect age.