If it's not one thing, it's the dog.

Dave says, "If it's not one thing, it's the dog," because whenever we all get settled into something, she needs to play/potty/vomit/bark in the middle of the night; you get the idea.

Jewel E. Cat's half dollar-sized wound is now only nickel-sized with no help from me. As hard as it is to stand back and do nothing, sometimes that's the best way.

On the other hand, Georgia Brown starting hacking up a lung this morning. I can't wait and do nothing for her because she caught the upper respiratory infection from my mom's dogs, which they caught from the neigbor dog, etc. She has already had a dose of Children's Triaminic (incidentally, children under 4 are no longer supposed to take the Children's Triaminic but dogs can) and an antibiotic. The vet was already aware that she was exposed, so I didn't have to take her in to get the medicine. Thank goodness. That place is a zoo. Now I just hope the cats don't get it. I'm sure they will actually have to go to the vet if they do, because unlike dogs, upper respiratory infections can be life threatening for cats. Gah. At least the skin kid is well and this illness isn't contagious across species.

Ella is now saying, "Babababa" and "Mamama," and she is generally a Chatty Cathy these days. She's actually starting to consistently say, "Bababa" when waving bye-bye so that might actually translate to "bye-bye." Else, she thinks that's Uncle Rob's name because that's who she always says it to (and he's always leaving for class). She is developing an interesting pattern of behavior where she learns something from me, but demonstrates it for everyone else. For instance, when she goes to the bathroom with me, I always hold her up while flushing the toilet so she can see (because she's become very interested in the flushing). While we watch the water go down, I wave and say, "Bye-bye." Apparently, she has started doing this at Grandma's house when Grandma lets her watch the flush. Also, when Grandma tells her she needs to wipe her hands, she holds them out for her. I've never seen her do either of these things. I haven't been teaching her to hold her hands out for cleaning, but I have a habit of using the same words during our daily routines (thanks to raising a dog), and she is soaking it up and applying it. It's pretty cool.

While she's not crawling in the traditional sense, she gets where she needs to go. This week, she needs to get the dog food bowl. I think dog food actually enticed her to crawl a very short distance. Monday night she ate the dog food before I could get it out of her hands. Yesterday, she was trying to get the dog food that Georgia dropped while Georgia was trying to get a noodle out of Ella's hand. Georgia has already learned to hover around the high chair, and she tries putting her snout up there. That is a behavior I cannot stand and don't allow (she can sit beside me at the table, but I don't want her nose in my lap or near the table), but Ella thinks it's funny to see a dog snout sticking over the edge of her tray. I foresee the two of them ganging up on me in the near future. Add Jewel E.'s handy kitten paws, and there will be no hope for me. I have no doubt that Jewel will be in the thick of things because I've turned around a couple of times to find her nose to nose with Ella and loving on her like she does the dog. Ella, of course, loves them all.

Georgia is so very good with Ella. She's still a little jealous sometimes, but now she's beginning to understand the benefits of having a baby in the house because Ella always wants to pet and scratch her. This is allowed, especially if it's the back end she's scratching. Previously, Georgia wouldn't let Ella get too close, but now she's allowed to pet her and play with her feet. Before I could stop her, she stuck her hand in Georgia's mouth the other day. The giant, pink tongue was hanging out and it was just too much for her. George never flinched. I'm so proud of her.

Self-Feeding

Dave and I dropped Ella off at Aunt Becca's Saturday afternoon so that we could go to lunch for our anniversary. We both felt weird without her. It's so much fun to take her out and about. As it turns out, she felt weird without us, too, because she screamed nearly the entire time she was with Aunt Becca. When we got back to pick her up, I found them snuggled in bed, Ella stripped to her diaper and passed out whimpering in her sleep. Becca said she cried so hard that all she could do was hold her tight until she fell asleep. Twice. Generally she loves to see and play with Aunt Becca, but I think we should have had Becca come to our house. Live and learn.

After church Sunday, she helped me in the kitchen while I prepped the meals for the week. She worked on bowls and lids and impersonated a human dust mop around the kitchen floor. She scooted and scooted all over the room, providing unnecessary proof that my floor needed sweeping.

More than once over the weekend she decided to feed herself, and she did not need my help. This led me to start thinking of more creative finger foods to feed her. She had a bit of toast for breakfast both mornings and some Veg-All for lunch after church. (I'm not a big fan of canned vegetables, but the convenience factor won out this time.) Amazingly, only 4 or 5 of the vegetable pieces didn't make it to her mouth. I chopped up and steamed some pears for her to have through the week. That was easy, so next weekend I'll just add steaming to my meal prep routine. I'm very excited about this because it means I can buy less baby food, and it's really cute to watch her feed herself. She hardly eats baby food at all when she's with me now; I just feed her what I'm eating. In fact, even if I've already fed her baby food, she insists on eating what I'm eating, too.

Happy Anniversary!

Five years ago today, Dave and I were married in our front yard in Gardendale at 2:00 in the afternoon. I was a nervous wreck all day and he ran five miles that morning just to say he could.

We joke that we like doing things out of order because we bought the house, booked the honeymoon, and then he asked me to marry him. It was a given all along, but I did prod him a bit when I booked the honeymoon and told him we'd have to get married before May because we were going to Mexico.

I was living at our house in Gardendale and he was staying with his parents until we got married. When we talked on the phone in the evenings, I would tell him about this big spider that spun it's web on the porch every night. I think he started to worry about me being there all alone, because on the morning of September 13, 2003 he brought me two kittens. One of them had my grandmother's engagement ring on her collar. He told me he wanted to make all my dreams come true, and he named the kitten Jewel. It was perfect. The most perfect way he could have dreamed of proposing to me.

We debated about planning a big wedding, thought we were going to do it in Gardendale, and then decided the stress of it was too much. He called his childhood preacher and asked if he would come to our house to marry us. We had a wedding reception in April, and took our honeymoon in May, when we were both finished with school for the semester. We had a whole season of wedding events.

Since then, we both finished school (law school for him and grad school for me), renovated our house, added a dog and another cat to our family, sold our house, moved back to Montevallo, moved again, and added a baby to the family. Right this minute, my entire family is sitting in the same room with me. Ella is playing ball with Georgia, Jewel and Gypsy are hiding under chairs, and Dave is facilitating the ball game. I've been so blessed.

Dave and I met at the grocery store where we both worked. I was still in high school then, and he was in college. A few years later, after my first year of college, he asked me on a date. We drove to Prattville to see the House of Crosses. It was the most bizarre first date I've ever been on, but it was right. Within six months, I knew that I would spend the rest of my life with him.

I asked him the other night if he could repeat a phase or time in his life, to change it or not, when would it be? He pondered it, and threw out several ideas, but he came back to those first six months we dated. My answer was the same.

Happy Anniversary, love of my life. I can't wait to see what the years to come bring.

The Daffodils are Blooming

In the last two days I’ve noticed daffodils blooming everywhere. They might be my favorite flower. I love to see their bright, smiling faces. Their appearance means spring is finally on the way and they add a welcome bit of color to the boring, yuckiness of winter. I’m usually ready for each season as it arrives (such as they are here in the South), but spring is definitely my favorite. The days get longer and warmer, the world bursts into color again, and everything just feels new and ripe with possibility. I like it. It gives me hope.

Enough of my random rambling; the real reason you are reading this blog is to find out what the Tiny Bull Rider is up to this week. I’ve told her that her legs aren’t long enough to wrap around the back of a bull yet, but she insists on practicing anyway. I’m not sure if she’s trying to crawl or sit up when she does this, but she gets on hands and knees, then stretches one leg straight out to the side and puts the corresponding hand in the air while rocking back and forth. She looks just like she’s riding a bull.

The past few days have been a flurry of activity. Since Saturday she has started bull riding, pulling up, crawling backward, feeding herself (for real, not just puffs), sitting up from lying on her stomach, and saying “Dadadadada” constantly. She has tentatively crawled three “steps” forward, but we aren’t ready to say she’s really crawling yet. The backward crawling happens in the middle of the night, but it is actual coordinated crawling – in the wrong direction. She’s really working hard at it, but she just doesn’t feel confident enough to take the plunge yet. Sunday afternoon, I watched her scoot ten feet backward on her belly, all the while yelling because she was moving away from what she was trying to reach. I think the hold up is fear of picking up her hands and losing her balance. Not that I’m complaining because once she’s moving, life as I know it is over.

The first time she tried to pull up (on something other than me), she was in the bathtub without the bath seat, of course. I caught her before she slipped face first into the water, but it was a little shocking to see her just take matters into her own hands to get out of there. Saturday night, she sat in her high chair and ate corned beef and carrots for dinner. I put bites on her tray, and if I tried to put them in her mouth, she took them from me with her tiny pincers and did it herself (Canned carrots rock as a snack food, by the way). Sunday morning, I had to do some work in the fellowship hall during church, so I planted her on a pallet with a hand full of puffs for snack and some toys. She played and played. Then I looked over there to find her sucking on the plastic baggie the puffs had been in. No, I didn’t leave it out for her. She went digging in the diaper bag, found it, and ate the rest of the puffs. Last night she was gearing up for an all-out fit at church because everyone around her had a plate of food, and she didn’t yet. Mac and cheese stopped that one in its tracks. You’d think I was starving the child; she eats like a piggy.

Another major break through of a less exciting kind – Sunday she stayed with Dave for most of the afternoon while I helped with an anniversary party at church. She did great! There was no crying at all, not even when she woke up from her nap. He brought her to the party for a little while then took her home before I was finished. I was so proud of them. When I finally got home, I found them in the kitchen having supper and she didn’t even need to jump into my arms. I’ll admit I didn’t really know what to do with myself.

For Valentine’s Day, she got a new dress from Dave and I, a bouquet of suckers from Grandma and Grandpop, and a flower and stuffed bear from Grandmother and Paw Paw (Is that how you spell it? It looks so wrong it pains me.). She loved the sucker, and had that figured out right away. She picked out her dress herself, and really enjoyed wearing it. You think I’m joking. I am not. When I held it up she was totally excited about it – bouncing and grabbing for it. When she saw it lying on the back of the couch later, she was totally excited all over again. It’s pink with red polka dots and lady bug pockets – who wouldn’t be excited? I did not get the same reaction out of the green dress I held up, so we left it at the store. The bear from Grandmother is okay, but she really liked the ribbon that came on the flower. That will go into our ever-growing collection of ribbons.

Finally, and not kid related, Jewel E. Cat came into the bathroom while I was brushing my teeth last night because she needed a snuggle. I think what she really needed was to show me the half-dollar sized, gaping wound on the side of her back leg. I don’t know how long she’s had the sore, but it looks clean and it isn’t smelly so I’m just keeping an eye on it. I did pour some peroxide on it – which thoroughly ticked her off – but that was mainly to make myself feel better; she seems to be taking good care of it herself. For days my strange intuition has been pricking at me about that cat, and now I know why.

I’m ready for the weekend.

Backward Bye-Byes

Ella has been waving for a while now, but I don’t get to see it much because she has a habit of waiting until whomever she is waving at has already left before she does it. When Dave is leaving, I will tell her to wave bye-bye and she waits until the door is closed behind him to wave. She waves backward, of course, because most babies do when they first start waving. The other night, she was sitting on the kitchen counter with Dave, and when I walked away from her she waved bye-bye. Dave called out to tell me she was waving at me, and when I walked back in the room, I found him waving backward at himself. Then he made an observation that answered one of life’s puzzling questions. Babies wave backward, with their fingers facing themselves, because that’s what it looks like when we wave to them. Makes sense to me.

I think my favorite moment of the week happened at 3:15 Wednesday morning. She had been asleep for 4 ½ hours (woohoo!) when I heard her fuss. I went into her room to find her pushed up on her hands with eyes wide and bright. When I picked her up, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek! I think I might have melted into a puddle right there on the spot. Grandma tells me she did the same thing to her after a nap this week, too. She has also been kissing her baby doll. She started kissing several months ago, but now she’s better at it and it’s a lot more obvious.

I’ve started blowing kisses at her when I leave, and she finds this hilarious. Lots of things are hilarious in her little world. I’m glad I get to share it with her. It certainly makes the rest of life’s minutia melt away at the end of the day.

Super Duper Bathtub Pooper

In addition to her Mr. Miyagi impersonations, Ella G. enjoys a nice bathtub poop. The other night she was leaning over the side of her bath seat with a look of total concentration. Shortly thereafter, two perfectly round balls of poop floated out from behind her. This wasn't her first tub poop. No, it was actually the moment that I realized she has become quite accomplished at pooping in the tub. She did it with so little effort and production, that had I not been paying attention, I might have found her playing with the newly created balls before I had the chance to scoop them up (With my bare hands - when did picking up poop with my bare hands start seeming like a good idea?!).

She has been a pretty consistent bathtub pooper since she started sitting in the bath seat instead of her baby tub. I'm not sure why that is, except maybe that she's upright and she has more room to move around. And, tell me this, how is it that she times it so perfectly that Daddy is never there to clean up the poop? Granted, I do most of the bathing, but the night this happened he had actually started the bath and done all the scrubbing. Yet, she waited until he left to poop. I think they are conspiring against me. Well, that, and the fact that he flees quickly at any sign that the Poop Production Factory is up and running in the tub.

Since I'm on the subject of bodily functions, I think she has started using the "change diaper" sign. She was doing a funny new hand thing yesterday that resembles the sign, so I decided to check the diaper. Guess what? She needed one. This morning she worked hard on a stinky poot, then did the hand thing again. She didn't need a diaper, but she was smelly enough to make me think she did. Time will tell, but I think she has adapted the sign to her current abilities. The sign is made by rotating your fists together in front of you. She is definitely putting her fists together, but instead of rotating them she sort of moves them back and forth toward her chest. I wonder if her ability to communicate early that she needs a diaper change will have any impact on potty training in the future?

Clap Clap Clap!

I'm in Trouble

While we were at the game Saturday night, I noticed a very pretty girl sitting on the row in front of us. I’m guessing she was a freshman or sophomore, judging by her young face and the way she seemed to be trying just a little too hard to be confident. When she took off her coat, I could see a star tattooed on her left shoulder blade. It bothered me. A lot.

I kept thinking about was how upset I would be if Ella comes home one day with a tattoo on her perfect skin. I grew that skin and gave birth to it, and protected it from the sun and took care of it, how could she scar it with a tattoo?

Then I realized it’s not my skin. And when she gets old enough to get a tattoo, it won’t be my decision. Yikes.

I think I might have just had my first very real (and small) understanding of what it might have been like to be my parents, watching me make my own decisions to date, move out, pierce my belly button, buy a house, get married, etc. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so much like they were trying to control me when we butted heads about these things, but more like they were struggling right along with me as I became my own person. If I’m already thinking about how I might grieve for her perfect skin if she comes home with a tattoo one day, how much harder will it be for me to step back and let her find herself after I’ve spent 16, 18, 20 years raising her? Holy cow, I really am in trouble.

All I can do is what I kept telling my parents they did – raise her right and trust her to make good decisions. Somehow that sounded so much easier before I had a daughter.

I don’t hate tattoos. I’d be lying if I said I’d never flirted with the idea of getting one. It wouldn’t have been something I did to look cool or fit in anywhere. Those weren’t things I struggled with. I’ve always been my own self, not really fitting any certain mold or group. I would have done it simply because I wanted one. The reason I don’t have one has less to do with the parental threats of removal and more to do with the problem of figuring out where to put one that wouldn’t be viewable by the general public but also wouldn’t look absolutely hideous after a pregnancy or when I’m seventy. And, I just wasn’t sure I wanted to put something so permanent on my body. Would I get tired of it? Was there anything I wanted inked on me that I love so much that I could look at it every day in the mirror? In the end, I decided the tattoo wasn’t for me after all. But I’m still intrigued by them. I guess I did learn from my parents to think things through before making decisions. How will I be able to find fault in Ella if she thinks it through and makes a different decision for herself when she’s grown?

I digress; this post isn’t really about tattoos. It’s about my realization that there will come a day in my sweet baby’s life when I don’t get to make the decisions for her, that she might make different decisions than me, and my ability to accept the differences. I’m not raising her to be me. I’m raising her to be her own self, so I’ll have to let her do that even when I disagree. Yikes.

Is that Mr. Miyagi in my bath tub?

I started putting bubbles in her bath for the first time this week, and I was planning to stage this picture. I didn't have to. She was leaning over the side of her bath seat, fishing for Rubber Duck, and when she came back up she looked like this. I made Dave run for the camera. She loves having bubbles in the tub, and one of her fun new games is for me to scoop up handfuls of bubbles and blow them all over the place. She laughs and laughs. Oh, how I love that laugh!

This week she's clap-clapping about everything. It's so very cute. She claps when her toys play music, when I sing for her, when Georgia brings her ball back, while she's getting her diaper changed, and just when ever she feels like it. I think the cutest was the night that Dave came in late from work. She was already in the tub and when he came into the bathroom she clap-clapped at the sight of him.

Christmas holidays, when the sight of Daddy was enough to invoke fits of crying, are a distant memory now. Every day she is more and more happy to see him. She's starting to seek him out when she knows he's normally there, and she gets excited to play with him. Yesterday, I even got to nap by myself while they played on the front porch. I'm not sure I slept, but lying quietly on the couch, listening to the man of my dreams play with the our baby was very restful.

We tried the family date again yesterday and were much more successful since we went for breakfast instead of dinner. She had a blast at the Huddle House, flirting with all the men and playing in the middle of the table. I did have the waitress bring a high chair for her when the food arrived because she can quite literally dive into our plates, with hands wide open and grabbing. I didn't realize when I ordered the waffle plate that the eggs were for Ella, but she proceeded to gobble them up. We did our grocery shopping and made it home in time for the nap. Afterward, we trekked around town again with our dog and our baby. I wonder what people think when they pass us on the street? This time Dave wore her in the new mei tai carrier he gave me for Christmas. We turned it inside out so the girly flowers wouldn't show. Wouldn't you know that he got a compliment on his "man pack" as soon as we ran into someone he knew?

Because football season officially ended last weekend, we attempted to fit as many sports as possible into yesterday afternoon. We ended up at the intramural fields again to watch the UM baseball game from the deck behind the field. Shortly after we got there, the College Night soccer game was under way behind us on the intramural field. It was a perfect nursing situation for Ella. I sat on the deck watching the baseball game, and she nursed contentedly while watching the soccer game behind me (instead of popping on and off repeatedly to see what's going on around her). We later moved to sit on the soccer sidelines, and a lady who was taking pictures of the game ended up taking some of Ella while she sat in her sun hat picking grass and clapping. Last night we ventured (after dark!) to the basketball game. She slept through first half, but we had to leave about halfway through the second because it was bed time. I just needed to see some live basketball. I'm seriously hating that the NCAA tournament is not here this year.

All this work hauling our stuff around town tires out a dog. We put her in the kennel when we left for the basketball game last night, and she decided to just stay in there once we were home. I had to go down and get her so she would go out to potty before bed.

Define "Spoiled"

I’ll be the first to admit that the “s” word gets under my skin faster than anything when talking about babies (mine or anyone’s). I try hard not to react strongly because I think it’s one of those things that people just say without knowing what they are saying or realizing how it might upset someone (like the mother). During a conversation over the weekend, I came to the conclusion that whether a baby is spoiled or not depends on your definition of “spoiled”.

I happen to be one of those radical, liberal-minded, hippie nut jobs that believes babies (or kids) can’t be spoiled by love in the form of touch, time, and affection. Spoiled by money and things? Absolutely. Spoiled because I cuddle and nurse when she wants to? Nope.

People like to tell me that Ella is spoiled because she likes to be held, preferably by me but the grandmothers are good substitutes. The grandmothers have made excuses for her because she has reflux and she had to wear the harness. I don’t believe she needs an excuse. If she didn’t have reflux and if she hadn’t worn the harness, I would still hold her – and so would the grandmothers. I wish I had held her more when she was tiny and days old. She doesn’t need to be excused for being a normal baby. Babies aren’t born as tiny adults. They have a serious need to be held and touched, to be parented to sleep, to be comforted when they are upset.

You can call what I do spoiling if you want, but I call it parenting by instinct. Call me crazy, but I find it utterly ridiculous to expect a baby to come into the world ready to be completely independent after spending nine months being cuddled and rocked and having it’s every need met before it even knew it had a need. How shocking must it be to be to be separated from mom that first time? To feel cold and hungry? To be startled by bright lights and loud noises? I’m glad I can’t remember because I’m betting it’s pretty darn scary.

I do what feels right to me, and what feels right to me is responding promptly when she cries, holding her when she wants to be held, nursing her when she wants to nurse, playing when she wants to play, etc. Responding to her cues and cries validates her sense of self-worth and encourages her to continue trying to communicate with me. It’s important that she knows she can trust me to meet her needs, so I respond when she needs something. It’s that simple.

As she gets older, my response doesn’t have to be as immediate because she’s learning to wait a little longer and she trusts that I will take care of her. Often an acknowledgement of her is enough. Yes, sometimes I’m the only one that can comfort her, but that’s a normal part of infant development. No, she doesn’t respond well when strangers poke and prod at her and get in her face to talk to her – do you? I prefer for her to raise a fuss rather than go happily and willingly with anyone who would take her. It shows me that she knows what’s going on and even at 7 months she’s using some discernment about her surroundings.

I signed up for the long-term motherhood commitment, so I’m not competing in the race to have the baby weaned and sleeping by herself through the night the soonest. All that will come in good time, when she’s ready for it – and, what a short time it will be in the grand scheme of things. I’m more interested in raising a compassionate, confident, independent, successful child and I firmly believe that the way I treat her now (from birth) affects who she will become twenty years from now. How can I expect her to respect me if I don’t respect her very real needs now? How can I expect her to value herself and make wise decisions during adolescence if I don’t validate her self-worth now?

For years I’ve been in the business of building up rather than tearing down. For that reason, I’m making it my business to understand what normal and appropriate behavior is for her age. If I know what to expect, it will be easier for me to respond to her respectfully out of knowledge rather than out of frustration (and oh how frustrated I get in the middle of the night sometimes). I hope that you will never see me yank her by the arm and yell at her in the grocery store because she’s tired/hungry/bored and I never should have brought her there in the first place, but I am human and there is a lot of outside pressure for children to act certain ways.

Will I teach her how to behave? Absolutely. Is she spoiled? Not by my definition.

Beautiful Weekend

We had the kind of weekend that made me wish that stinking groundhog had not seen his shadow this morning. Do you think it matters that our southern groundhog couldn’t possible have seen his shadow? I can’t even find news that they scared him out of his hole in this nasty rain, so I’m betting we’ll have six more weeks of winter, too. Blah.

Friday morning, Ella had her first eye exam and she did fabulously. I was very nervous about her having her eyes dilated because I didn’t know what to expect from her. Aside from a little frustration when her vision went blurry, she took it all in stride. We got a good report that her vision is normal and her eyes are healthy, but she’ll have a follow up exam in six months because we have a family history of lazy eye (which, like everything else, is easier to correct while she’s a baby). I took advantage of a program I just learned about last week called InfantSEE, which allows babies ages 6 – 12 months to have their first eye exam for absolutely free. I’m glad we did it.

Ella and I had a lazy Saturday morning of playing in our pajamas while Dave worked on an appeal he’s writing. After her nap, we all went out to do some shopping. She loves to shop, and aside from when she’s sleeping, I think she’s the most calm when we are out and about. She just sits in the buggy or wrap and takes it all in. Even her hands are still, and that almost never happens.

In addition to the usual groceries, we also made a stop at PetSmart to purchase a backpack for Georgia to wear. I’ve been thinking lately about how my sister and I used to walk all over town before we could drive, and that it’s a shame that we don’t walk more places now. I mean, we live in a location where we can walk anywhere in town in 15 minutes, so why don’t we? I usually wear Ella when we walk because the stroller is too much trouble and it doesn’t go off-road very well. Carrying her things isn’t appealing to me, so I decided to put Georgia to work and bought her a pack to wear. Saturday afternoon, I loaded it up, put Ella on my back, and we did a test run around the neighborhood. She did great. Balance while pooping was a bit of an issue, but she worked it out.

Sunday morning we sent Ella to church with Grandmother so we could visit another church with a friend and hear Siran Stacy speak. That is a grace-filled man. Knowing his story, I never would have imagined I would leave there feeling so uplifted. Ella did okay at church, though I hear she did meltdown when left in the nursery. She prefers big church these days.

I met up with them after church and watched in amazement as Ella gobbled down a jar of turkey rice dinner, then proceeded to grunt at me for bites of my chicken quesadilla. When I signed food to her at some point over the weekend, she leaned into to me with her little bird mouth open. She knows the sign, and she loves food.

Sunday afternoon I brought out the dog pack, and Georgia went to the door to wait. I loaded it up with diapers and bottled water, tied Ella onto the front of me, and we all walked across town to the university intramural fields so Dave could play in a flag football game. It was a beautiful afternoon. Ella enjoyed her first experience of playing in the dirt and pulling up handfuls of grass. There was a race to keep the grass out of her mouth, but she had a grand time. Georgia was a little nutty at first because she wanted to play football, too, but she settled down and watched. In the spirit of convenience, we nursed right there on the sidelines and none of those boys even noticed. Back at home, Ella had a nap and Georgia passed out on the couch. Carrying our things all over town is hard work. I’m glad someone else can do it now. The pack was a success and I can’t wait to use it again next weekend.

Left Handed?

Since Ella first began reaching for things, she has used her left hand. I have watched this with resignation, reminding myself and others that babies usually don't display hand dominance until around 8 months or later. The more she uses her hands, the more I think she will be left handed. She holds the spoon in her left hand, reaches with her left hand, sucks on her left hand, etc. The picture at the top of this blog shows her eating with her left hand. Last night I had a realization when she was Johnny Jumping (did you know that was a verb?) - she always kicks with her left foot. At this point, I don't think I can deny that she's left handed.

When talking about this with other people, I invariably always say, "How am I going to raise a left handed child?" (I'm right handed, myself.) I invariably always get the answer, "Just like you raise a right handed child." Hmm.

Understand that I don't have any issue with the fact that she is left handed. There's nothing wrong with that. My concern is that I won't know how to teach her to do things because I'm right handed.

Me being me, I decided to Google it (another verb) and found that my concern is legitimate, and I am not the only right handed parent with this concern. There is a whole left handed world on the Internet that I didn't know about. I found tips for demonstrating how to do things, guides for teaching them to write, stores full of left handed products (even pens!), and information about challenges they face in this predominately right handed world. I was pleased to realize that I've already been accomodating her to some extent by standing in front of her to show her how to do things (courtesy of signing), rather than sitting beside her. Upon thinking about it, I also realized that a lot of the time when she's frustrated with what I'm trying to show her, it's because I'm sitting beside her and she's trying to imitate me with the wrong hand. Hmm.

It's very interesting to know that there are things I can do differently to help her learn, and when it's time to teach her to write she will definitely be getting a left handed workbook to show her how to form the letters in all her left handed glory.

Speaking of hands, this morning she started holding something in each hand at the same time. Until now, when she was holding one thing she would take something else with the other hand, then put down the first thing and switch the second thing to the holding hand. (Guess which one that was? The left.) This probably seems trivial to some, but I find myself more amazed at her fine motor development than her gross motor skills. Every couple of days she seems to be doing something new with those little hands.

Babies Don't Ride Well After Dark

Silly Dave and I. We decided to have a family date Friday night and go out to eat at the Olive Garden. We packed Ella into the car after picking her up from Grandmother's house, and away we went. She commenced to screaming and continued all the way to Alabaster. We made the rounds to Olive Garden, O'Charley's, and Longhorn in an attempt to find the shortest wait time, then decided it wasn't worth it. She screamed the whole time. We finally decided to eat at Firehouse Subs because I don't think either of us could face driving back home again just yet with the screaming baby in the backseat. We unloaded her and took her inside where she transformed into Happy Baby. She talked and smiled at everyone in the place, sat in the middle of the table and shook two bags of chips until I'm quite sure they were pulverized to bits, and generally just had a good time. We stayed there way longer than we needed to just to enjoy the peace, knowing that loading her back into the car would trigger another screaming fit. We weren't disappointed. I even rode in the back seat with her on the way home, and she still screamed the entire time. I told Dave that the next time we want to have a family date on a Friday night, one of us is bringing home take out. Do you know how long the drive is from Alabaster when the baby screams the whole way? It feels like an eternity.

Saturday we met Aunt Becca at the Olive Garden (no crying this time), and Ella had a grand time alternating between chewing on a breadstick and rubbing it all over her head and face. (She has a fixation right now with putting things on her head.) When it was time to leave, Aunt Becca picked her up and brushed the garlic crumbs off of her, and it became obvious that they would need to vacuum around our table before seating someone else there. I guess life will be that way for the next several years. We should probably increase our tip amount.

We also shopped for some new toys for Ella, since she has figured out how to work most of her old ones. We went to the consignment shop and spent $50 on what I feel certain would have cost at least $125 if we had bought it all new. She got some cars, pop beads (the giant ones), an alphabet puzzle, a nesting toy, a little truck tool set, a tap-a-tune piano, and a rocking zebra. The zebra might have been a bit of an impulse buy, but it was only $23 and it was so cute. It will be a while before she outgrows it, too. The nesting toy is great for stacking and kicking in the Johnny Jump Up. Her daddy taught her to hold onto the zebra while she rides him, and I taught her how to roll the cars and make car noises and how to use the tools to work on the little truck. Dave commented that I bought a bunch of boy toys for her. I did, I guess, but in my defense, I was looking for things to occupy her hands and there just weren't any girl toys that would. Besides, who really cares if she plays with tools and cars?

Sunday she fell asleep in church with no crying at all. I cannot tell you what a big deal it is for her to be able to fall asleep without crying or nursing. It amazes me that she does, and that I can put her into and out of the carseat without waking her up now. I never thought that would happen. I love it.

Piglet in a Snowsuit

I bundled Ella into her Piglet snowsuit yesterday so that we could have a walk in the very cold wind. I bought it on clearance last spring, before I knew I would give birth to a tiny, human heater. Considering the child almost refuses to wear socks and spends the majority of her days pantless because she’s so hot-natured, I decided that a brisk afternoon walk would be the perfect opportunity for her to get at least one wear out of it. I was surprised to see that it fit her perfectly. It must have been just cold enough, too, because she didn’t complain about it at all.

I’m thankful for the cold this past week because it gave her an opportunity to wear all the thick cotton and fleece outfits that everyone has bought her – all with the obligatory short-sleeved onesie underneath so that she can be stripped down to a comfortable layer while in the house. Everyone thinks a baby needs to be bundled and blanketed and kept in a stiflingly hot house during winter. This is probably the case for most babies, but nothing makes her crankier than being hot and overdressed. For this reason, I’m that negligent mom you see out with her barefoot, jacketless baby when the temperature soars into the sixties. They (the infamous They) say you are supposed to dress the baby in one more layer than you are wearing. Not so with Miss Ella Grace; I am usually dressed in one more layer than she is wearing. I constantly get (in that lovely, passive-aggressive, let me berate the mom by addressing the baby way): “Where are your shoes?!” and “Your little legs are going to get cold!” and “Why aren’t you wearing a hat?!” etc. I dare them to dress my child the way they think she should be dressed and sit in the too hot house with her for any length of time. She’ll be stripped to her diaper and sitting on the front porch with steam rising off of her sweaty little body in no time. I know; I’ve been there and done that.

All that said, I’m sitting here trying not to feel guilty because I didn’t realize the high today is only 37 degrees and she’s wearing short sleeves (but she is wearing pants and socks). She’ll be fine in the house, but I would have at least put a long-sleeved t-shirt on her if I’d realized it would be that cold today. Oh well.

She’s so close to crawling that I just know it’s going to happen this week while I’m at work. We practiced over the weekend and she is now getting onto her knees from her tummy, and she’ll rock and move one knee forward then stop and collapse again. We installed the baby gate at the top of the stairs yesterday and I put the little plastic thingies in all the electrical outlets, so we are ready to go. I feel certain that when this finally happens, there will be no containing her. As busy as she is while sitting in one place, I’ll be constantly running after her. It will be like having a puppy again – even the part about trying to eat everything, especially paper products.

Sometime over the past week without my realizing it, she started using her pincer grasp (that’s the ability to pick up small things with her thumb and index finger). I saw this for the first time Sunday night when she took a cherry puff from my fingers using only her thumb and index finger rather than the full fist like she normally does. I was shocked and excited for her.

After her bath last night, she insisted on playing the keyboard with Daddy. I got some good video footage of her banging away on the keys and looking very proud of herself. I’m really hoping we have a budding musician so we can steer away from the cheerleader path in the future (the future that seems so far away but will really be tomorrow at the rate she’s growing up).

Apple Bottom Jeans

Dave works with a couple of social workers who would repeatedly ask him what we were naming the baby while I was pregnant. He always told them we were naming her Shaquanella, and one of them always told him, "You need to give that baby a white name. Like Hope." They also always caught him singing the Apple Bottom Jeans song. So, for Christmas, they sent Ella a gift of her very own Apple Bottoms outfit.


This is the little desk that she fell off of twice on New Year's Eve. It belonged to her cousin, and Aunt Trisha passed it on to her. She's happy to finally have a place to do her work.
This is her pet lion. He earns his keep by riding her around the house so she can get all of her things done. He also likes to chase the kitties, but she's working on breaking him of that habit.

She can't ride it by herself yet because the tips of her toes barely touch the floor, but she knows how to prop her feet up for a ride, and put them down when we stop. She also gets off of it by herself, with me there to catch her of course.

Her newest chore is to pick the "dirty" spoons out of the canister and throw them in the sink for me. She works on it while I wash pump parts in the evening.

Once she's finished with all of her work, I let her have a relaxing bath before bed time. We just got the new bath seat last week because she's too long for the little tub. She likes it and gets super excited when I run water in the tub.

Baby Sign Language

We’ve been signing to Ella since she was about 5 months old. Dave bought me a baby signing book as a prize one day because he knew I was interested, and we started almost immediately. We use the following signs with her regularly.

Milk
Change diaper
Eat/Food
Cup
Cat
Dog
Fan
Up
Bath
All done
Soft touch

She understands all of them (maybe not “dog” so much because it’s a pat on the leg and she seems to miss that since it doesn’t happen in front of your face). The book says they usually start to sign back at around 7 months. She has been inconsistently signing her variation of “milk” for about a month now, but it’s suddenly become very consistent and clear. She signs while she’s nursing or drinking milk from her cup. When I dropped her off this morning, I was talking to Grandma about milk and she was signing it when I said the word. When I called to check on her a bit ago, Grandma told me that she was telling her she wanted to nurse this morning by patting her (Grandma’s) breast with one hand and signing “milk” with the other! Grandma told her that “Mommy does that,” and offered her milk in a cup. She didn’t want the cup. She continued to pat and sign. She was sleepy and wanted to nurse, so I think they opted for a cuddle instead.

Can I tell you how excited I am about this?! She is six and a half months old, and she just clearly communicated a want without crying or fussing – and she didn’t just say she wanted milk, she specified that she wanted to nurse rather than have it from a cup. Amazing. I had been wondering how that would work because the book says to use the same sign for milk regardless of whether it’s from nursing or a cup. Obviously, she figured out how to distinguish between the two. I’m inspired to start incorporating more signs into our vocabulary. I was sort of waiting until we had a breakthrough because I didn’t want to overwhelm her (or myself). I think we’ve had one.

Pearly White Chompers

Ella finally has teeth!! While I was bathing her last night, she smiled really big and I saw white spots in her mouth. I stuck my finger in there and I could feel both bottom front teeth! They have just broken through the skin, so you have to look hard to see them, but they are there. I stuck my finger in there several times just to be sure I wasn't imagining it.

Now she’s guarding them. She's using her tongue as a gatekeeper and she won’t let me feel them. We keep trying to make her smile really big so we can see them because she’s trying not to show them at all. Dave said she probably thinks I’m going to take them away from her. She's definitely using her tongue to play with them, so once the novelty wears off I'm sure we'll see more of them. She already tried them out on me - she leaned into me like she was snuggling and bit my arm. This is going to be fun.

The Piglet has also decided she is finished with bottles. The last time she was offered a bottle was December 22, but the last time she grudgingly took a bottle was the 19th. Since then, she has been drinking her milk exclusively from her cup when I'm away. I can't say I'm upset about this development, in fact I'm overjoyed because a cup is a lot less work than preparing and washing bottles after work every day. However, I didn't expect it to happen this soon or this abruptly; the child knows what she wants. I think drinking from a cup makes her feel grown up.

Her sounds are becoming more and more intelligible, so I don't think it will be long before she starts talking. According to Grandma, she clearly said, "Uh oh" on Monday when she was dropping toys off of the high chair. I haven't heard it yet, but I'm not at all surprised since we say that to her all the time. She's been making a noise that sounds like "Mama" for months, but she only does this when she's upset and crying so I'm not convinced that she's actually saying it. When I hear it plain and clear, I'll believe it.

I've been feeling guilty because I haven't updated her baby book since right after she was born. I just can't make myself fill in the blanks. I think I have issue with being so structured. Over the Christmas holidays, I re-read my blog posts about her and realized that I've captured nearly everything here. I've decided that I'm just going to take out the baby book pages that I consider crap and fill it with my own stuff. It'll be much more thorough that way, and I'll be much more likely to keep it up-to-date.

I realized that I have been blogging for two full years, and I've captured a lot of stuff that I had already forgotten. It was really interesting to go back and read from the beginning, to remember the things I had forgotten and to realize how much I've changed since I started keeping this thing.

Hello 2009

My new year officially starts today with my return to real life (i.e. back to work after my Christmas vacation). It was hard leaving the Little Lion at Grandma’s this morning. I have had so much fun playing with her for two straight weeks. She’s becoming a little girl right before my eyes.

Dave and I celebrated New Year’s Eve on Eastern time. At 10:47, he was one-eyeing the TV and I asked him why he didn’t just go to bed. He was waiting for the ball to drop at 11:00. I think we were in bed at 11:03.

New Year’s Eve 2008 was brought to me by the number 2.

Two is the number of times Ella fell of her little desk and hit her head on the floor.

Two is the number of times I bandaged Georgia’s foot and cleaned blood off the floor.

Ella and I were trying to nap when Dave came in to tell me Georgia’s foot was bleeding. I managed to extricate myself and leave Ella napping on the couch so I could see about the hurt paw. She must have cut it on something, and it was bleeding with every step so there was blood all over the living room carpet and the bathroom rug. Dave and I wrestled her to the floor so I could clean and bandage it, and in the midst of that the phone rang and woke up the baby, who started screaming. Getting the foot bandaged became a family affair as Ella had to be there to see what I was doing. Georgia is doing better, but she was styling with a pink baby sock for a couple of days just in case the cut opened and started to bleed again. The basement carpet still has blood on it, but I’ll get to that later.

Ella fell off her desk the first time because she sneezed and lost her balance. Of course I was across the room and didn’t have a pillow behind her. The second time, she leaned too far to reach her fuzzy cow and fell onto the pillow, and rolled onto the floor. It was a two inch fall, but it scared her. A little nursing fixed that right up.

We don’t believe in resolutions anymore, but we do usually set some financial goals for ourselves. We met our goals for 2008, and set a rather aggressive one for 2010 – contingent on both us remaining employed for that time, of course. I don’t discount the importance of tithing in our financial success. God’s math is always better than mine.

6 Month Check-Up

Christmas Day was Ella's half birthday. I cannot believe that my tiny baby is 6 months old already. I'm on vacation this week, and we are sitting in the floor together, playing on our respective laptops. Hers plays music and lights up, and the best game about it is to open and shut it. She's eyeing mine like she might need to upgrade to a more professional model.

We saw both doctors yesterday for the six month visit. She weighs 14 1/2 pounds and was 25 and 3/4 inches long. He said she's petite but gaining well (still at a rate of about a pound a month, which is pretty much what she's been gaining since birth). I knew she was petite; she seems to have a small frame like her Aunt Becca. She got her long feet, toes, and fingers, and it looks like her build, too. The doctor got a good understanding of what it's like to examine my octopus baby. Her hands were everywhere trying to grab his hands, stethescope and the thing he looks in her ears with. He kept having to trick and distract her to be able to look in her ears. She flirted with him, of course, like she always does. He says that she sits exceptionally well and has very good balance. When he put her on her tummy, she immediatley pulled her knees up under her, so he thinks she'll crawl soon. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, given that just containing her hands is a job by itself. What will I do when she's mobile? Probably lose more weight. He also said her bottom teeth look like they are about to sprout. We'll see. They've been looking that way for at least 3 months now. She got her four shots again, so now we are on puke watch. She's been gagging but happily playing. This time the shots just made her MAD. Previously they've hurt her feelings, but she was plain mad yesterday. She had the screaming fit like someone was peeling her skin off - holding her breath and turning purple - and she refused to nurse, because you can't scream and nurse at the same time. Once I got her calmed down, she nursed and the happy baby was back. She has quite the temper.

We also saw the orthopedic specialist and got good news there. Her pelvic x-ray looked completely normal and she officially doesn't have to wear the harness anymore. We will have to go back for x-rays periodically, to make sure that her hips stay normal as she becomes mobile. X-rays are fine, but I hope it's a long time before we suffer through another ultrasound. The tech actually remembered her yesterday because of the fit she had the last time, and she didn't disappoint us this time either. She hates being held down.

Oh, and the pediatrician said to keep her on stage 2 baby foods for a couple more months, then switch to stage three and maybe some soft table foods. It was a nod and smile moment for me since Ella has enjoyed Mexican and Japanese food this week already. She much prefers table food to baby food, and seems to be tolerating it just fine. She completely turned her nose up at the chicken noodle dinner yesterday in favor of my soup, fried rice, and zucchini. My worries about her eating too much solid food and not nursing enough are over. She's still nursing like a champ; in fact the doctor laughed when I said she still nurses 8 - 10 times a day when I'm home with her. As long as she nurses, I don't have to worry about making sure her diet is balanced.

Ella's First Christmas

These are a few of my favorite pictures from our whirlwind Christmas. There are more in this Picasa album.

I'm editing to add some details, now that I have a minute. Everyone kept saying that she wouldn't really get Christmas this year because she's only 6 months old. She obviously didn't get the anticipation of Christmas, but the child totally understands presents (as you can see from the pictures above and in the web album). After unwrapping her first present and realizing there was something under that pretty paper, she was all about it and she thought all the presents were for her. Granted, the bows and paper were still her favorite, but she took great joy in unwrapping.

She came home with two new baby dolls, a table with a laptop, phone, piano, and book, a lion she can ride, a lion that plays music, books, stackable rings, some clothes, and a frog that dances and sings Jingle Bells. There's more, but that's just what I'm looking at right now. Everyone was very good to her, and she's been having a blast with her new toys. When I bring her into the living room in the morning, she dives toward her toy basket. She's content to sit in the floor and play and play.

Merry Christmas!

Dave decided to teach a light lesson in Sunday School yesterday, so he did a sort of history of Christmas. I found it interesting, so I thought I would share it here. These are a few facts he found on the History Channel's website.

~ In the early 1600s, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans took over England and outlawed Christmas. Charles II later restarted the holiday.

~ 1659 - 1681 Christmas was outlawed in Boston and anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five schillings.

~ Christmas was mainly a party holiday until the early 1800s.

~ Washington Irving wrote The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon in 1819, which features a squire in England who invites peasants into his house at Christmas time. This was based strictly on Irving's imagination, but it changed the nature of the way we celebrate Christmas.

~ Around the same time, Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. Its message of charity and goodwill to all mankind was embraced in American and English cultures.

~ Christmas trees, cards, and gift giving soon followed, but Americans thought they were just catching on to the real traditions of Christmas. They had no idea that they were creating their own.

~ St. Nicholas was a saint in Turkey around 300 A.D. who gave all his possessions away and traveled around helping people. He came to be known as a protector of children and sailors. His death is celebrated on December 6.

~ 1773 - 1774 New York newspapers report that groups of Dutch families have gathered to celebrate the death of St. Nicholas. In Dutch, he is known as Sint Nikolaas, whas was shortened to Sinter Klaas.

~ 1804 John Pinter distributes wooden Sinter Klaas images at the New York Historical Society meeting. The images pictured fruit, toys, and a fireplace in the background.

~ 1809 Washing Irving claimed that St. Nicholas was the patron saint of New York.

~ 1820s - 1840s Stores began to advertise for Christmas presents, often using Santa Claus.

~ 1841 A shop in Philadelphia displayed a life size Santa and attracted thousands of kids.

~ 1890s The Salvation Army dressed up unemployed men in red suits and sent them into the streets to solicit donations.

~ 1822 Clement Clark Moore wrote a poem for his daughters, An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas. He didn't want to publish it because of his frivolous nature. This poem first presented the ideas Christmas Eve, a jolly round Santa, chimneys, a sleigh, and 8 named reindeer.

~ 1881 Cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa Claus with a red suit, white beard, and a sack of toys. Nast also created the North Pole workshop, elves, and Mrs. Claus.

~ Kris Kringle or ChristKind deliver gifts to well-behaved Swiss and German children.

~ In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten rids in a sleigh drawn by goats.

~ Pere Noel fills the shoes of French children.

~ In Russian legend, Babouschka gave the wise men the wrong directions to find the baby Jesus. Babouschka comes on January 5 and leaves presents for the children, hoping that one of them is Jesus and that he will forgive her.

~ In Italy, a kind witch named LeBefana rides a broomstick down the chimney to deliver toys to children.

~ 1939 Robert May of Montgomery Ward Department Store wrote the story of Rudolph. Two and half million copies were sold that year. Johny Marks wrote the song in 1949 and Gene Autry was the first to record it on TV in 1964. It has been translated in 25 or more languages.

~ It was originally believed that evergreens kept evil spirits away. This was seen as pagan in early America.

~ 1846 Queen Victoria was sketched with her family around a Christmas tree. She was well liked and this was considered fashionable. Trees then arrived in America and were primarily decorated with food (apples, nuts, berries, etc).

~ 1931 Construction workers placed a small undecorated tree in the center of a construction site a Rockefeller Center. The tree remains in the same location today and is decorated with approximately 25,000 lights.

~ Finally, the best bit of modern history, in 1914 Allied and German forces called a truce for the Christmas holiday. They spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together in no-man's land singing carols, playing music, trading desserts and cigarettes, and at one location, playing a friendly soccer game.

Ella's Theatrical Debut

Ella made her theatrical debut last night in our church production of A Night in Bethlehem. She is playing the role of a basket weaver's apprentice. This picture is courtesy of The Shelby County Reporter's photo website.

And this is the evil King Herod.

We've had some big happenings this week, in addition to our church events. She has spent the last three nights sleeping in her crib in her own room. Sleep has been such a sketchy situation lately with the cold and the teething and everything. She has regressed to sleeping like a newborn again and I have been on the brink of exhaustion. Our typical night time schedule:
In bed between 7:30 and 8:00, then up at 11:30, 1:30, 2:30, and 4:15. Then I get up at 5:15 to get ready for work. Most of the time, she is awake as well. It's been rough. I decided that maybe she would sleep better in the bigger bed, on a better mattress since she is heavier now. The first night, she kept the same schedule. The second night, she only woke up twice and I got four straight hours of sleep for the first time in weeks. Last night, she was awake three times and again at 5; I think her teeth woke her up because she was a grouchy, crabby baby that wanted to still be sleeping. Overall, I think the transistion to her crib is a success (so far) because she hasn't woken up any more than usual.

She seems to be enjoying the extra space, because she moves all over the crib. Once I went in to find her scooched into the corner, lying on her side, talking to the animals on the bumper pads. I haven't been putting her harness on her at night anymore because I think that might be contributing to some of the wakefulness. She gets uncomfortable and can't move enough while she's wearing it to get comfortable again. Since she's out of the harness, I often find her on her hands and knees when I go in there. I'm happy to see this, because the child pretty much refuses to play on her tummy - which is important if she is ever going to crawl. I've actually been convinced that she is just going to skip crawling, but now I'm not so sure. She has a play date after Christmas with a friend who is crawling already, so I'm hoping she will encourage Ella to crawl, too. The last time we played with her, she taught Ella about tags (on blankets, toys, etc).

I also started putting her in the end of the tub where she can sit up, instead of reclining. She loved it. She splashed herself in the face, acted shocked, decided it was okay, then proceeded to splash as much water out of the tub as she could. Toys were flying out, I was soaked, and she was laughing and having a ball. Bath time just became even more fun.

She is already a complete copy cat - taking in everything and trying to do it herself. When we got home the other night, before I could get to the backseat of the car to get her out, she was sitting up as much as the carseat straps allowed and working on the buckle herself. I guess I was taking too long, and she was just going to go ahead and let herself out. She gets mad at Georgia when she's trying to pet her and she walks away. We've started working on "soft touch" because she likes to grab handfuls of Gypsy's fur (it is very soft). Gypsy is setting her own boundaries with her. Ella grabbed her the other night while my head was turned and Gypsy slapped her. She didn't use any claws and there wasn't a mark on Ella, but her little face was priceless. She looked awfully surprised and confused, as if she was trying to figure out if it was a joke, then she gave a tentative little smile. Since then, she has been gentler with the kitty. The amazing thing is that Gypsy has NEVER EVER kept her claws in for anyone, except Ella. She was banished to the porch for the rest of the evening after this incident, but I'm actually very proud of her.

We go back the orthopedic doctor on the 29th for an x-ray on her hips. I feel a little guilty because I've stopped putting the harness on her, but she really isn't tolerating it well anymore. Plus, she's been working hard at getting out of it. She slides her feet out of the little stirrups, so I'm not sure how effective it is. The other night when I put it on her, those little hands immediately started working on taking it off again. I think we are about finished with this chapter in her short life. I'm interested to see what the x-ray shows, and even more interested in what my response will be if I'm told we need to continue with treatment. I'm skeptical at best.

That was a long update.

A Poopy Situation

I called to check on Ella this morning, and it seems that she had created a sticky situation for her grandparents. She was jumping along in her Johnny Jump Up (Please tell me you know what that is), having a grand ole time for about 45 minutes when her Uncle Rob came into the room and asked, "Dad, what's on her foot? It's orange."

That's right, technicolored baby poop was all over the hardwood floor. She was bouncing away, without any indication that her diaper was filled to overflowing and she was squishing out poop with every jump. Johnny Jumping is fun! When I got off the phone, they had discovered that poop was not only on the floor, but also on the toys near by. I am just picturing a happily bouncing baby splattering poo all over the living room. I could hear Grandma in the background saying, "Come home now - it's an emergency!" Ha!

I Spoke Too Soon

I guess I jinxed myself when I said that Ella's cold was mild. We were awake all night again Tuesday night because she couldn't breathe. I snorted out her nose too many times to count, and the alarm found us sitting up on the couch again. This time I stayed home to be with her. I knew the best thing I could do was nurse, nurse, nurse all day long, so that's what I did. Aside from pitching a fit and twisting herself into a pretzel every time I snorted or wiped her nose, she was in relatively good spirits. She was officially a snot-nosed kid all day. Her tiny nose was all red, just like her mommy's.

I gave her a little bit of chicken noodle soup broth in her bottle at lunch, and she loved it. I've relied on soup and hot lemon tea with honey to get rid of my cold, so I was trying for something hot for her, too. Since I cannot take cold medications while nursing (because it dries up the milk), I've had to rely on alternative methods. I have to say, I have felt better all the way through than I normally do with a cold.

Since I was home with her yesterday, I got to witness her FINALLY put her toes in her mouth. She seemed surprised to find that those little piggies really are attached to her body. She also picked up the pacifier and put it in her mouth, the right way, for the first time. I put it on her tray in front of her and turned my back. Then I heard a little slurping noise and turned around to see her in full-out Maggie Simpson mode. I was so proud.

The independent little imp is also demanding to feed herself with her spoon now. She was fussing and fussing at me while I was feeding her, and I knew she wanted a bite, so I finally gave her the loaded spoon. She put it right in her mouth and sucked the food off of it. Then she put it down, I loaded it up again, handed it to her - rinse and repeat. Is she old enough for all of this?

My Little Elf

Doesn't she look completely impish in this picture? All that's missing are the pointy hat and funny shoes. Grandpapa sent this picture today. She seems to be making a speedy recovery from the cooties we suffered yesterday. I wish The Mommy was recovering as quickly.

We've both had a cold - mine is nasty, hers has been relatively mild. We spent nearly all of Sunday night awake until I finally threw in the towel and moved us to the chair in the living room. We managed to sleep sitting straight up from 3:30 a.m. until the alarm went off at 5, when I made the executive decision to stay home. Last night I went all out with Vick's and the vaporizer, and I propped us both up as much as possible. We both slept much better, and she has had a great day today.

On top of that, she pooped! This event was worthy of a happy dance when I got the phone call this morning because we haven't seen poop since Friday night. I'm not ashamed to say that this is not the first time I've happy danced over poop. We've have many Poop Watches in Georgia's four years with us. I told you animals can prepare you for babies. :)

Ella Met Santa!

Christmas is upon us, and we have been busy little elves already. This morning, Ella had her 6 month pictures made and then she got to meet Santa! We took her to the Child Study Center at the University. I thought she might cry, because most kids do and we passed many blotchy, tear-stained faces on the way in, but she just seemed intrigued.

Then she decided he was pretty funny. She loved all the kids running around, and she laughed out loud when one little girl walked up and started playing with her. I think she liked meeting Santa. She would have been dressed up, but after her portraits she had a fit because she hates wearing tights (She's my daughter, alright), so she was in play clothes to meet Santa. I'm trying hard not to be bothered by the fact that she is wearing pink and Santa is wearing red and my tiny compulsive side thinks that doesn't match. The pictures turned out cute, and the program seemed really neat. Santa was there for 2 hours for breakfast, and we paid three dollars for a disc of pictures.

Last weekend we decorated the house. Tonight, I worked on my Christmas cards. I've already done most of our shopping and half the wrapping. I spent several hours at church painting the backdrop for our Night in Bethlehem production, but it isn't finished yet. I put out Ella's nativity scene tonight. It's a Little People nativity scene, made by Fisher Price, so it's all bright and plastic and non-chokable. I can't wait for her to see it in the morning. Thanks to Ms. Laurel for giving her that. It's even better that I first thought. : )

Now, my baby is sleeping and since she might be awake in 2 hours, I'm going to bed now.

Piglet Eats Food

I was dead set on waiting until Ella turned 6 months old to feed her solid food. However, she convinced me otherwise by consistently diving into my plate at meal times. The child is ready to eat what we are eating.

We started with sweet potatoes over Thanksgiving, then moved onto squash. Today she had peaches for the first time, and threw a little fit when Grandma stopped feeding her. Since she is new to this, we are going very slowly in the amounts and frequencies so that her little body can adjust to processing food. I also want to ensure that she drinks all the milk she needs because that should be her primary source of nutrition until 12 months. She likes to eat and drink apple juice from her cup. She seems very proud of herself, too, opening her mouth for more and reaching for the cup when she needs a sip. To quote her father, "She's an eater." As if there was any doubt.



We did the naked baby in the high-chair thing the first time we fed her and took video, but I had already cleaned her up when I remembered that I needed a picture. I'll have to restage it so I'll have a picture for the baby book. However, I received this picture via email from Grandpapa yesterday.

Ella enjoying squash.Notice the little foot sticking up? One of her newest tricks is to grab her feet. She hasn't managed to get them in her mouth yet, but she tries. She also floats herself in the tub now, meaning that I'm not only nursing an octopus, I'm bathing one, too. Her control of her hands gets better every day, so that she's now fairly accurate when grabbing things with one hand. She can sit in the floor without assistance, but she needs to be padded for the fall because she can't balance very long yet. It's incredible.

Kudos to My Husband

I am married to a fabulous man. Oh, we have our moments when neither of us can be considered fabulous, and bringing a baby into a marriage definitely throws a few kinks into things. But, generally he is very good to me, and I would be a lot crazier and more tired if he didn't do so much for me.


Upon returning to work, the delicate life balance I managed to achieve while on maternity leave got all out of wack. I guess being away from home for approximately 60 hours a week will do that. As a result, I had little time for him and even less for myself. Being a person who needs a bit of Me Time every day, I was on a fast track to insanity. After a few weeks and a particularly ugly discussion, we came to the realization that a little more help would make me a more pleasant person to be around. It's quite humbling for me to admit that I can't handle it all by myself, because that's how I try to do everything (a fault of mine, I know). I'm so very grateful to have Dave's help and I work daily on banishing the guilt I feel for relying on him to do "my" jobs.


How are we managing, you ask? (You probably don't care, but I'm going to tell you anyway.)


1. We hired someone to clean the house. Given that we can afford to pay for that service, I refused to be responsible for all the housework and work full-time and care for Ella.

2. We take turns doing laundry.

3. He exercises the dog when he gets home before me. Last night he picked Ella up from Grandma's for the first time so I got to go straight home since I was running late.

4. Several nights a week he washes pump parts and bottles while I pack the bags for the next day and reconnect with Ella. He also makes bottles for the next day if I don't get to it first.

5. He feeds us. If it were left up to me, we would have eaten approximately 10 meals since I went back to work in September. By "feeds us," I mean, he usually cooks and fixes my plate and drink so that I can eat while I nurse Ella to sleep at night. I love to cook, but I can't seem to figure out how to do that and everything else that needs doing in the three hours before bed time.

6. He carries my things for me. :) This doesn't seem like a big deal, but I love that he meets me at my car to carry my stuff so that I can carry Ella into the house. He also loads my bags into the car in the mornings.

7. In a recent development that made me fall in love with him all over again, he came and got Ella at 6 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving so that I could sleep another hour and a half. Then he did it again the next day because he wanted to. I told him that we should establish this as a normal weekend routine.

8. He generally follows behind me, picking up my slack (paying bills, taking out trash, putting gas in my car, feeding/watering the pets, etc).


I don't know what I'd do without him, or the rest of my family for that matter. I am blessed to have a very strong support structure around me.

Five Wide

Recently I wrote that if every being in our house is asleep at once, we are all in the room together. Cold weather makes this practice even more amusing because everyone wants to snuggle. When Dave turned out the lamp last night, our sleeping situation was as follows. Dave on the oustide edge of the bed, then Georgia, then me, then Gypsy, then Ella in her little co-sleeper. Jewel was asleep in the middle of the dog bed in the floor. I told him we were sleeping five wide.

Ella acheived a milestone I wasn't looking forward to this week. She managed to roll over during the night while wearing the harness. I was really counting on that harness keeping her less mobile for a while longer because I'm not ready to move her to her own room yet. She still fits in the the co-sleeper and is no where near the weight limit, but I won't be able to keep her in there once she's flipping and flopping because there is not enough room for that business. Sigh. She's growing so fast. Also, as a result of realizing she can roll over while wearing the harness, she's been waking up increasingly more often to practice this new skill. One reason the 4 - 7 month time period is so sleepless is because they reach a plethora of developmental milestones during that time and they have a tendency to obsess about them until they've mastered them. We had gradually gotten back to one waking per night after she finally rolled from back to tummy. However, since she rolled over in the harness on Sunday night, she has woken up two or three times a night and I firmly believe that it's just to practice rolling over because that's what she's trying to do when I wake up. I find myself reminiscing about the magical few weeks that she slept through the night, but I do enjoy the little bit of extra snuggle time we get when she nurses in the middle of the night. They are only little babies for such a short time, I wouldn't dare wish it away - even for sleep.

We had a very exciting happening this morning. When I left for work, she waved goodbye to me!! It was so cute. She is in the phase where she is trying to copy everything we do, and it seems she finally figured how to wave! We are also teaching her sign language, and I've seen her attempt to sign "milk" back at me. I know that she understands a few signs (milk, diaper change, all done, and cat), but I'm not expecting to see her sign until after 7 months or so when her hands are more coordinated. This is an exciting time period, providing even further proof that God is an amazing engineer of the human body and mind. If you doubt that, just observe the minute to minute transformation of a newborn baby into a walking, talking little person within about a year's time. It's astounding, and I know that science explains the working of the brain and child development and all that jazz, but even so, it took a master craftsman to create it.

Music Lessons

Last February, for a combination Valentine's Day/Anniversary/It's a Girl! gift, Dave bought a keyboard and a couple of books to teach himself how to play. He's wanted to learn to play an instrument for a long time, and he'd like to be able to teach the baby how to play. The whole time I was pregnant, I would sit in the chair beside him and read while he played, and Ella (then known as Timothia) would kick and squirm. There were certain songs she liked better than others, and Can You Feel the Love Tonight is still her favorite. Incidentally, that's the one he was practicing the most right before she was born. I passed by the dining room yesterday to find this scene. She sat there quietly watching him play for a long time. It's looks like he'll get his wish of teaching her to play.

Little Kisses

This has been such a fun week with Ella Grace and it's not even the weekend yet. I hope she's as happy tomorrow as she has been most of this week.

Monday evening was the first time she outwardly expressed excitement at seeing me when I got home from work. Her whole face lit up and she grinned and laughed and talked to me. Then she "asked" to go back to her Grandma for a minute and she initiated a baby kiss! That was the first time I'd seen her do that. She's starting to initiate kisses more frequently and it is so very cute. Of course, you have to be paying attention because it's the typical open-mouthed baby kiss. We know she's kissing because she opens her mouth and leans toward your mouth. She's also started hugging. I don't know if there is anything better than tiny baby arms wrapped tightly around your neck. It certainly makes it hard to leave for work in the mornings. I've decided that I really love this age.

She is becoming more mobile every day. This week she rolled from her back to her tummy for the first time. I haven't seen it happen yet, but I can attest to her squirminess. Changing her diaper becomes a bigger adventure every day as she twists her body in every direction to see what's going on around her. She also attempted to escape her bouncy chair. I don't know where she was going, but she had plans for something.

We've officially reached the point of not leaving her sitting anywhere without tying her down. I usually leave her propped against the pillows on the couch in the mornings while I run around doing last minute headless chicken things, but not anymore. Yesterday, I came back into the room to find her lying on her stomach on the couch with one leg behind her and one stuck under her. She was yelling for assistance. Now she has to wait in the floor, but that's fine with her, she just plays with her hands and talks.

It's Not Really About the Milk

I came across this article on the Internet last week, so I thought I would share it here. This pretty much sums up how I feel about nursing my child. These are not my own words; the article was written by Diane Wiessinger, who is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC).

It's Not Really About the Milk

You won't "get it" at first. At first it's all about technique, and position, and time, and swallowing, and soreness, and feeling as if your whole world has narrowed to Feeding The Baby. Those of us who have enjoyed nursing our children are on the other side of a great emotional gulf from you. We can't explain it, we can only try to help you across the bridge, to where you can see for yourself. If you stay caught up in this as a feeding method, you may never get all the way across the bridge. But oh, the view from the other side! Those of us who "got it" wouldn't feel guilty if we were prevented from nursing our next child. We'd feel anguished. "Guilt" means you didn't do something for someone else that you "should" have done whether or not you enjoyed it yourself. "Anguish" means great pain and grief, as if you've had a piece of yourself torn away. Imagine moving by shifting your weight left, moving your right leg forward, knee slightly bent at first but gradually straightening, right heel landing as you rise on the ball of your left foot, left arm forward in reverse synchrony with your right as it moves back, then performing a mirror image of the whole process for the next step. Not fun, not easy, not graceful, not something you want to keep working at. But imagine the ease and pleasure of simply... walking. Now imagine someone telling you that you have to give it up. Guilt? Or anguish? I wish I could convey to you the simple, thought-less, vast, delicious pleasure of nursing my children. Once I "got it," I didn't "feed" them, didn't worry about intervals, didn't hold back. We nursed when they wanted and when I wanted - even just to keep them quiet while I was on the phone. At night, nursing was a quiet mending of the day's disorders. Oh, not always, but as someone said, "Of course there's an inconvenience to nursing. But there's an inconvenience to being a mother." Breastfeeding was a fundamental, essential connection for us, and made everything else - from newborn diapers to two-year-old tantrums - far, far simpler. Then there's the ego-building experience of being the perfect center of another person's universe. Can you achieve the same bond through bottle-feeding? No. Remember that a breastfeeding mother is in a specific hormonal state. Her whole body responds to her baby in a way that a bottle-feeding mother's or a baby-sitter's or a father's cannot. Her infant receives all his calories in a full-bodied, full-mouthed, skin-on-skin embrace, always from his beloved mother. Her older child comes to her to have growing pains of all kinds soothed simply in a way unique to breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a newborn's first relationship, designed to continue throughout a child's early years. As a culture, we tell ourselves - without evidence - that the absence of this fundamental human relationship has no longterm implications for mother or child or family or society. I have enjoyed our children at every stage so far - and they are now adults. Their father and I felt as if we did no real parenting after the first ten years or so; we sat back and enjoyed them. This is unusual in America today. Is it partly related to our start in a long, luxurious breastfeeding relationship? I think so. And like every woman who has reached the other side of the bridge, I hope I can extend a hand back to help you across. The view is irreplaceable!

©2008 Diane Wiessinger, MS, IBCLC http://www.normalfed.com/

I couldn't have said it better. We have crossed the bridge. Nursing isn't just about feeding Ella; it's an elemental piece of my parenting style. It breaks my heart when I see a mother give up before the nursing relationship is established, or choose not to nurse altogether. She doesn't know what she's missing.

As with other personal decisions, I support a woman's right to choose to breastfeed or not. It's her body, it's a very personal experience, and if she chooses to bottle-feed formula, more power to her. However, I believe that she has a responsibility to make an informed decision based on research and factual information. In this day in time, there is a plethora of excellent information available, but you'll have to look past the formula companies' propaganda in your mailbox and the "breastfeeding support kits" that your doctor will give you. My go-to website of choice is http://www.kellymom.com/.