Baby

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I Feed Myself, Momma.

Check her out feeding herself with a spoon! This was about a month ago. I was thinking about getting her a toddler fork too. The other day I accidently left my fork in her reach, left to put the dogs away while we ate (they were being especially bad), and when I came back, she was trying to pick up her food with my fork! I mean, she was even doing it correctly, and I was like "huh, maybe I should get her her own fork."

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Life With A Toddler

Can I just say... HOLY SHIT!! Now that Cailin is walking my life is officially over. This is what just happened:

Went to Target, she was okay until we got to the register. Then started yanking on me and whining because she wanted down. We got away from Target without any meltdowns.

However, once we got to Trader Joe's, that's a whole other story. She did NOT want to go in the cart. She wanted down to walk. Um, sorry Charlie! So there was a whole fit about that. Screaming, and then crying because I accidently hurt her leg on the cart while trying to get her to sit down. Now she's crying, tears and all, so I am consoling her, apologizing and telling her that Mommy didn't mean to hurt her.  Once the tears dry up we struggled again and finally got her into the cart. This was all before we even entered the damn store. She was fussing and not wanting to be in there. Toys weren't working, my keys weren't even working as she kept throwing them on the floor. Ugh. I was seriously considering turning around and leaving, but then I got that little sample of coffee, and two cups, and gave one of the cups to her. Then I gave the other one to her once I was done drinking the coffee and thank all that is holy, that made her happy. She spent the rest of the time playing with the little cups putting them in and out of eachother.

Then we got to the register and there was this old Middle Eastern couple behind us. They were dressed in Muslim/Middle Eastern clothing. The woman wearing one of those dresses with the veil and all, and the man had a long white beard and one of those big hats ( please excuse my description and ignorance on this subject. I really have no idea what they're called. I even tried googling). Anyway, Cai sees them and start pointing and staring. Big time. I mean, she likes to stare at people, but she was STARING. And of course kept pointing. I kept bringing her hand down when she would point and tried telling her to say "hi", but no. How embarrassing! At least she's not old enough to say something about it. Oi!

Going out to eat is getting ridiculously hard now. She just no longer wants to sit still. I get it, she just learned how to walk and she's enjoying this new world of hers, but my goodness, it's almost impossible to take her into public now. Once she has food infront of her she's okay for a bit, but she will now throw food, yell, etc. We won't be going out to eat as much anymore that's for sure.

It's just different, I guess. She's always been such a good, easy going baby, and now she's done a complete 180. I mean, she's still good, as long as she's getting her way. Which about 95% of the time this spoiled princess is getting her way. We've officially reached toddlerhood, people. Yikes. Having a baby was so much easier than having a toddler.

Making Toddler Food

Once Cailin turned one, and also decided she was too much of a big girl to be spoon fed, I had a hard time figuring out what to feed this kid. Also because we weren't doing formula anymore, and aparently giving whole milk as much as she was taking formula is not ideal.

Now I think I got this feeding a toddler thing down. First of all, she is a FANTASTIC eater. I am so lucky. She eats pretty much whatever we're eating. She is just now starting to show a distaste in some things, and I definitely know what her favorites are. Her favorite foods are: avacado, mac n' cheese, cucumber, and sweet potatoes. She's not a huge fan of meat. She loves her vegis. If I only put meat on her plate, she'll eat it. But if I put meat, and vegis on her plate, she'll eat all the vegis and spit the meat out. Or feed it to the dogs.

Speaking of the bottle, we finally got her off of that. Well, sort of. We're using the Nuk Active Cup, So technically it's not a bottle, but it's sort of still shaped like one. The other tranistion cups with the nipple like spout she doesn't like. I think this is better because the nipple is smaller. She's also down to just 2-3 cups of milk a day. Morning, sometimes mid day, and before bed. I'm not exactly sure if she's taking her "bottle" during the day at my SIL's anymore, but I know on the weekends she's not really wanting it.


Anyway, I miss some of the convenience of making a load of baby food and freezing it. I mean, cutting up some fresh fruits and vegis isn't hard, but what about the cooked ones? So I took some ideas from Gerber.

You know those Gerber Pick Ups? Great idea. But what's not so great is food that sits on a shelf, AKA preservitives. I'm not a big fan of feeding her those things. Not that she doesn't eat anything with preservatives. She gets Cheerios, and Goldfish, and Puffs for snacks, but when it comes to fruits and vegis and such, I don't really trust carrots or yogurt that can sit on a shelf unrefridgerated. So, I made them myself. I cut up some carrots, sweet potato and/or squash into bite sized peices, steamed them and froze them. I put the chopped, cooked vegis in an ice cube tray just like before, froze. Then once frozen I put them in a bag. They stay stuck together in the cube.  Just like making baby food. Except I skipped the pureeing part. I also made a bunch of little baby sized whole grain pancakes and froze those too. Like homemade Eggos! I also added what I had left of my purees to those. So we had sweet potato and beet pancakes, yum! And one other time I added banana. Mmmm banana pancakes.  Aren't I smart?! ;p



Um... I swear I know how to spell pancakes. Derrrr.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

14 Months

Another month older. This month Cailin has started on perfecting walking. She's getting better each day. She's really started doing a LOT more walking, and a lot more on her own. She's still not 100% confident. She still likes to hold onto my finger and walk, but can TOTALLY do it on her own, she's just careful, this one. I think she holds back a bit at home because of the wood floors and the dogs that run past her and knock her down. She knows it hurts when she falls.

We're battling yet another cold this week, which turned into an ear infection and upper respitory infection. This is the first time she's ever had a cough. :( My poor girl just can't catch a break. She's been constantly sick since the weather cooled down in October. Sucks big time.

Loves: Singing, dancing and music. She especially loves when I sing to her. When she was real sick the first night this week, the only way I could get her to sleep was by rocking her and singing "Twinke Twinkle Little Star". She also LOVES Itsy Bitsy Spider. She does the movements, then signs "more" once it's done.  Music. Every time she hears some music she starts bobbing her head with a big smile on her face.

Hates: When I don't let her walk around in public. Going out to dinner has started getting hard. She literally threw the biggest fit of her life outside of Pita Jungle when it was time to stop walking around and go home. Oy.


New Words:
Bye (sometimes bye bye, but usually just one bye).
Book (boo)
Ow
Uh oh
Belba (as in her cousin, Bella)
Lily ( Wee wee)
Water (Wah)
I try to make her say "gabba gabba", but she just does a little dance every time I say it, or she sees her Foofa Vans, or her Foofa and Brobee doll. It's like her own little sign for Yo Gabba Gabba.

Signs:
I don't think she's doing any new signs this month. She's started using her signs to actually communicate with me, not to just do "tricks" as one of my friends calls it. She'll sign more when she wants more food, or for me to sing another song, or do Itsy Bitsy Spider or Patty Cake again. She's signing "all done" a lot more, when she's done eating. When she's cranky and hungry she'll sign "eat". So it's nice that the signs are starting to do what they're meant to do.

She's also very very social, this girl. Probably a little too social. I'm going to have to explain strangers as soon as she can understand. She waves and says "hi" to everyone that walks past her. She'll walk up to people and grab onto them. Which I have to explain that it's rude to just touch people.She'll kiss any random baby. I had to pull her away from a little baby at the dog park yesterday cause she's sick and doesn't need to be kissing strange boys anyway. She stares. I have to tell her not to be a stalker. haha!


Here's some pictures of her at the park last weekend. She LOVED playing on the little playground. She would step up the two steps, into the tunnel, climb up to the slide and wait for me to put her on her butt and hold on while she went down the slide. She would do all this (except my help with the slide) all by herself. Just a couple weeks earlier we went and she didn't do any of this, and was afraid when I put her on the slide. Crazy how things change so quickly.




This picture is pure joy right here. Love it. Love her so incredibly much. 

Monday, February 13, 2012

I hate being a working mom.

*WARNING* I'm about to have a pity party....

So have I ever mentioned how I HATE being a working mom? Like I really hate it. It sucks. Let me tell you why:

* There's not enough hours in the day. To work, to play with my child, to cook, to clean, to SLEEP.

* I hate that I'm not the first one to see her take her first steps, hear her first words, etc.

* I hate that I have to call into work every other week. If the kid's not sick, I am. This week it was me. I had a nasty stomach bug for a couple days. A couple weeks ago Cailin had her bazillionth cold. I was out a day and a half this week, last time I was out with Cailin for 3 days. It sucks that I have to use all my PTO for sick days instead of saving them and taking a vacation. It sucks that I have to worry about "OMG am I going to get fired? Written up"? It's never ending. It sucks.

... and the list goes on. It just sucks that I don't even have the CHOICE. I HAVE to work. We can't afford me not to work. I wish we didn't have car payments, and had a cheaper mortgage. But we need two cars, and would rather not live in a tiny apartment (not that our house is big by any means).

Also, I'm not saying that being a stay at home mom is easy by any means, don't get me wrong. It's a hard job. I can see that just by being home with her for a few days, and from my maternity leave (which I had to go back early because I ran out of pay). But when you are a working mommy, you have TWO full time jobs. I'd rather do the job that I love - being a mom. Most days I'm okay with working. I'm all about "you do what you gotta do, and deal with it", but some days I just get really depressed about it. I have a hard time focusing at work, because I just want to be home with my baby. And then the days that she has a cold or is teething really bad, I feel horrible that I can't be there with her. She's my #1 priority, my #1 concern.

My favorite part of the day is at 5PM, when I walk in the door to pick her up. She sees/hears me and lights up! She crawl-runs right over to me and I pick he up and I get hugs and kisses. The best part of the day by far. I know she missed me as much as I missed her.

I will say that I am EXTREMELY lucky that she gets to go to her Auntie's every day and hang out with her aunt and her cousins. She loves it. And I do love my job. My current job is the best job I've ever had(besides being a mommy of course), so I got that going for me.

I mean, who would want to be away from this beautiful face 8 hrs a day?



**update (because I wrote this a few days ago)**

Guess who's sick AGAIN? Yep, my poor baby. Actually I'm still getting over whatever I had last week. Was feeling better Thursday and Friday then feeling gross again since Saturday. Ugh. It's never.fucking.ending. So anyway, my mom is going to watch her tomorrow, because I just cannot miss another week of work. But I'm sure Cailin and I won't be sleeping tonight, so tomorrow's going to suck balls at work. :( Kill me now.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

My Kid Is A Bully

Today Husband got a call from my sister in law. Cailin was in trouble for being mean. My sister in law watches a few other kids, one being a little girl who is one month older than Cailin. Today Cailin not only bit her finger, but also threw her off of a car toy. Yep. Threw her right off and then hopped on herself. Bit her hard too. She left marks.  My sister in law even had to report the incident to her parents! Poor little girl!

So Cailin went in "baby time-out" aka the jumper for a while. My kid is officially a bully. :/

Is it bad that I think its kind of funny? Kind of...