Monday, February 15, 2010

Sticky Fingers





I was just being lazy, trying to get the job done in the shortest time possible. I sort of had to though as Bubba was getting into everything when she started crawling. I moved everything just out of her reach. Now she's started pulling herself up on anything and everything she can find (the coffee table, couch, shelves, tv unit, our knees, even the vacuum cleaner), which means everything I moved before is no in her reach again. We're running out of places to put things. Can't put anything on the coffee table or it will be pushed, pulled, or thrown off, then eaten, bashed or chewed on. I have to follow her around the house making sure she doesn't fall over when she attempts to "cruise" (pulling self up and then moving sideways along whatever furniture it was she pulled herself up on). She also seems to have this crazy notion in her head that she actually has balance and then lets go of whatever she is holding on to. FYI, she does not yet have balance. Luckily for her we are always there to catch her (hmm... maybe that is why she does it, she does love being scared, if peekaboo is anything to go by). I guess she can balance a little, she can hold on to stuff with just one hand and stay up just fine. She's just a little dare-devil!

How is it that babies wake up for garbage trucks, people who talk too loud, noisy kookaburra's, a loud fart, the front door opening, etc, but when there is a loud thunderstorm with cracking lighting overhead, nothing? Not even a little peep. I don't understand baby sleep even a little bit.

I'm going to be sore tomorrow. I used muscles today that I forgot ever existed. That happens every time I start doing tae kwon do again. Ok, so I haven't done it much since I was a kid, but a few years ago The Jess and I went for a while at the uni. I could hardly walk the next day. I'm sure I had a bit of a swagger, and goodness, did my body feel a bit special! I know I'll be feeling exactly like that tomorrow. It was fun though, and a really good work out. I really miss doing tae kwon do. I did it from 4th to 9th grade when I was a kid, then stopped. Everyone thought it was because I lost interest, but really (sure, I'll set the record straight even though it's embarrassing) it was because I started my women troubles and was petrified that it would leak through to my white tae kwon do pants. I saw it happen to one of the other girls, and I did NOT want it to happen to me. What if after sitting on the mat stretching, I got up, only to find I had leaked all over myself and the mat? How would I ever show my face there again? I know, silly, but this is what a 14 year old girl thinks about. So, when aunt flow was paying me an unwelcome visit, I would tell my dad that I didn't want to go, but I didn't say why, he thought I wasn't interested anymore (after this happened for a week straight for a couple of months), I was too embarrassed to tell him the real reason (you don't really talk to your dad about such things), he didn't want to pay for something I wasn't interested in, and that was that, we didn't go anymore. I always missed it though. You're laughing aren't you Dad? There is a place within walking distance to us that even has a women's class on a weekday morning. Apparently you can even bring your baby/child as all the ladies do. Can't go every week though, it costs too much. I'm very excited to get back into it though, even if I do look like I swallowed a giant coat hanger tomorrow.

Uh-oh, I could hear Hannah stirring. She had only been alseep for 20 minutes. She grizzled for a while, then all was silent. Success, she put herself back to sleep. Or so I thought.... After another half an hour, she was making protests, so I went to her room. She hadn't gone back to sleep at all. Instead, she had been plotting how to grab anything and everything, pull it into her cot, and then play with it until she got bored. And to think I thought I moved everything far enough away from her sticky little grip. Clearly I underestimated my cheeky little monkey. When I opened her door, there she was, sitting in her cot surrounded by her loot. Cheeky little monkey!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Communication station






Time since birth: 7 months

I think I should be grape scented. I wear purple all the time (my favourite!), my hair is purple, my earrings are often purple. Someone actually asked me why I have purple the other day why my hair is purple. I said because I like purple. I think it looks nice, but I'm sure a little purple haired Mommy looks a little funny (except that I don't care, if other people want to judge me by my crazy hair then I don't want to know them anyway). Apart from that one question though, no one has said anything about my hair at all.

Hannah crawled over and sat near my feet (I was on the couch). She looked at my yogurt. "Eh!!"
I looked at Grandma "I think she wants some yogurt."
I got up to go get her a bubba spoon. "Eh!!!Eh!!" She didn't like me going away. I suppose she thinks I carry spoons around in my pockets. Or maybe that they are just part of me and I can just whip them out whenever needed.
I sat on the floor and gave her some of the yogurt. She ate half and then crawled away quite happy and pleased with herself. Wow, she is learning to communicate better. She is amazing.

Last week I took Hannah to the Early Childhood Health Clinic to address her napping problem. They gave me a referral to Tresillian (a place that helps with sleeping problems with day stays, home visits, and if it's really bad, week stays), and told me that I need to stop feeding her to sleep. Oh that will be hard. She has always REFUSED to have booby unless it's right before nap/sleep time. I have tried and tried and tried, but she always refuses the booby until right before a sleep. They told me that at this point, her napping is more important then that milk as she is eating solids and has an over night feed. I took her home and put her to bed - without booby. To my amazement, she slept. And slept. She slept for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Turns out it was a fluke though. Sometimes she takes 1.5 hours to get herself to sleep (I'm also supposed to not go in there for a pat before 20 minutes), then she only sleeps for 15 to 30 min. Crazy baby, you'd think she'd be absolutely buggered from all that crawling, and then conk out for like 2 hours. She just seems to be a little bundle of infinite energy. She still won't have any booby when she wakes up, except for in the afternoon, so I have been pumping and putting it in her breakfast and letting her drink it out of a sippy cup while she eats her solids. I'm still waiting for Tresillian to call me and let me know when I can come in for a day stay.

Since I had to change the nap time routine to not include booby, I now give her some quiet time (put her in her cot while I do my daily bible reading out loud to her), put her in her sleeping bag, give her a cuddle, tell her it's nap time, turn on the sleepy music, then leave the room. The other day I was reading to her when I looked up and got a bit of a shock. Giving me a cheeky "look what I can do" grin, Hannah was standing there in her cot, holding on to the rail. Now every time I read to her, she immediately stands up, and remains standing the entire time, looking very pleased with herself, and giving me the biggest whole face grin whenever I look at her. She's so cute!!!

Monday, February 1, 2010

The super-cheekiness has begun

I finally did it- I told the people next door to shut up. At 10pm someone was playing acoustic guitar and singing. That wasn't a problem though, the songs were soft and actually lulled me to sleep. Then came the bongo (or similar) drums. They invaded my sleep and woke me from my wonderful slumber. Enough was enough. I pulled the blinds up and stuck my head as far out the window as I could, to see where the noise was coming from. On and on the badly played bongos went. Without thinking, I yelled. "SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Wow, I can't believe I actually finally did it. To my surprise, they actually did. They shut up almost immediately. But then I felt bad. I should have been a little nicer about it. I should have maybe said "could you please quiet down, I'm trying to sleep." Of course that might not have been so effective. Ahhh, I could go back to sleep. Or could I? Probable drunk and or high people had just been yelled at to shut up. Hmmm...would they try to do anything to me? I felt extremely glad at that moment that there are bars on all of our windows. I suppose they probably didn't even know from which apartment complex, let alone unit, the shut up came from, but that is not what you think about at 11pm after being woken from your deep slumber to the sound of horribly played bongo drums, possibly by psychopaths. This time I really would have called the cops to make a noise complaint. loud tv and or music (the recorded kind, not badly played live kind) is one thing, but bongo drums?

How do you tell a 6 (almost 7) month old that they can't sleep sitting up? Hannah will only breastfeed before she goes to sleep or has a nap. I know it's not ideal, but she usually falls asleep while I feed her (I have tried many many times to feed her other times, but she is a stubborn determined little thing, and will ONLY breastfeed before bed no matter what I do), then I put her in the cot, she rolls over onto her tummy, and that is how she sleeps. Now though, after about 2 minutes, she wakes up. I'm sure she always has, but then she just repositions herself and goes back to sleep. But now she can get to the sitting position all by herself, so what does she do? She wakes after 2 minutes and then sits of course. The sitting then gets her all awake again, she gets over tired, she cries, I go in, lay her down, pat her back, she sits back up immediately, I lay her down, etc. I've tried staying in there while she plays around in her cot to get herself all tuckered out again. She will get tired again, but of course, the whole process repeats. I've tried letting her cry for 10 minutes initially, go in, pat for 1 minute, leave her for 3, pat for 1, etc. Nope, that doesn't work either. As soon as I lay her down, pop! she's back up. I don't think she realises that she is only 6 months old. According to baby books, this whole sitting up from laying, crawling, etc. thing, is not supposed to happen until about 10 months. Needless to say, it's been a long, tired few days, with mommy (sorry, I mean me. Once you have a baby, you start automatically referring to yourself as "Mommy" in the third person in hopes that sometime soon, baby will call you that too) going a little insane. She did get to 15 minutes this morning before she woke up. I guess we're making some progress.

I'm glad Hannah doesn't yet have top teeth, otherwise I would probably be missing a nipple right now. I tried to resettle her with booby (I know, bad habit, but I was desperate, the patting/sitting up cycle had been going on for an hour with no progress), but she wanted none of it. Instead of sucking, she decided to clamp down and not let go. Once I pried my nipple out of her cheeky little mouth, I could see teeth marks. That is something one never ever wants to see on their nipple. Ever. Lucky for her she hasn't bitten me again. If she starts biting me regularly, or if she draws blood, I'm withdrawing booby from her permanently. I'm not totally cruel though, I'd still express and give it to her in a sippy cup. She would hate it though. She probably would refuse to drink it, and then after not eating anything for a while, I'd give in and she'd get booby again. Stubborn little thing (but oh so cute).

We have to find a new place asap. Hannah is getting into everything. She crawls all over the house, ripping everything off shelves, opening drawers and cupboards (and squishing her little fingers in drawers a few times. She is too fast, I'm right next to her, so I can see as soon as it's going to happen, but by the time I get my hand between the drawer and it's frame, she's already shut her fingers in it), trying to climb the dishwasher when I'm unloading it, trying to open doors that I've shut so she can't go in other rooms. The list is endless!! She much prefers random household things to her toys these days. At least she is easily entertained (even though it means I'm following her around the house, trying to make sure she doesn't get into too much mischief!). Oh, and she is still being super cheeky at meal time too, giving me food showers and/or refusing to eat. Oh the cheekiness... (but we wouldn't swap her for the world!).