G’n'R Out West

We have had a very busy week.  So I haven’t been doing my job keeping up with my posting.

Our friends, Kevin and Alison, along with their little baby Aaron have come to visit us.  On Saturday night we hosted a big party with a whole gang from Waterloo.  It was a really fun reunion and it was nice to spend time with some good friends from school.   It seemed way too short and nobody was here long enough…please everybody…come back and visit us soon!

It has been  extra fun in the house all week because Aaron and Adelle are only 9 days apart but so very different.  It is really neat to see all the ways they are the same and different.  We hoped that Aaron’s superior rolling abilities would wear off on Adelle but she would have nothing of it.  She now officially resists rolling even if we try to encourage it.  She actually curls up her body and fights back.  It is pretty intersting to watch. 

We are having lots of fun with the kids this week and it is a fun break from our normal routine.  Adelle isn’t really into sharing so poor Aaron was constantly giving up toys, and his soother to Adelle.  She was just so quick at stealing whatever it is he had or wanted. 

This week Adelle also started swimming lessons.  She is doing so much better in the water than she used to.  I wouldn’t say she loved swimming, but she will give me a smile when I throw her up in the air, and she will often do some minor splashing.  I just started to put her head under the water and she is ok with that.  When she comes up she continues to hold her breath for a good few seconds while looking at me all wide eyed until she finally decides it is safe to breath again.  So far she hasn’t coughed or anything when she comes back up so I am guessing she hasn’t swallowed any water.

This week I had the opportunity to listen to Barbara Coloroso.  From what I’ve learned she is a very well respected parent educator, among other things.  Well, all I know is that she is really inspiring and so much of what she says makes so much sense to me.  If anybody has the opportunity to go and see her I totally recommend it.  She also  has a number of books, I haven’t read any, but have heard great things and sometime this week I will pick up my first one.  She has so much to say and it is all so exciting.  The talk I attended was about teaching kids to act ethically.  She has an interesting perspective and has lots of great points and advice for raising your children.

We’ve had some video requests.  Here is one of Adelle bugging Aaron.  Poor inocent little Aaron….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ2aTDWLNrY

Frig, I can’t even believe she is 6 months old.  I have been pretty emotional these days about how fast she is growing up and about going back to work soon.  It will be so hard.

I mentioned in the last update that Adelle was very inflexible.  I think the sitting up thing has totally rectified this situation.  She is a BIG reacher - although she won’t compromise her stability to get a toy.  Instead she will just ask me to get it for her.  She is so stubborn.  Right from the very start her sitting was quite stable.  I am not sure if that has to do with the abs she developed during her early crying months or if it is due to the fact that she is too scared to fall over to move too much.  Now that she sits tummy time or back time are basically a non starter.  She has no interest.  The other day she did fall onto her back while I was in the shower and after realizing I couldn’t come to her rescue she proceeded to try to sit up.  It was really funny, especially because she was grunting and everything as she did little crunches trying to lift herself back to sitting.  I tried to put her on her stomach the other day and she brought her knees in…apparently she will also be crawling before she ever rolls over!  There is now a running joke in our house that our daughter will never learn to roll.  We have visions of her calling us into her bedroom at 18 asking if we can roll her out of bed.  

Sleep:
AH, I don’t know what is going on here.  On a good night she goes down at around 10 and get up sometime after 3 but before 6 to eat.  She is usually up for the day after 8 but before 10.  It is a pretty good situation when it is good.  But we have more nights with lots of waking then we have with just one waking.  She spends lots of time in our bed.  The only problem with that is that it seems as though she wakes way more when she is in our bed.  But of course, maybe the nights she needs to be in our bed should would be waking more anyway.  What the heck do I know.  The good news is that it often doesn’t take long to settle her and I am totally comfortable nursing while lying down now.  So even when she is up 4-5 times in the night I don’t usually feel too bad in the mornings.

Napping is still just something other people’s children do.  Although, when my neice and nephew were here they tired her out a lot and she had many more naps with company around.

Eating:
We are into the world of solids.  She has eaten: brown rice cereal, squish (known to some as squash), zucchini, and carrots.  So far she loves to eat and her favorite is the rice ceral…likely becuase it is mixed with breastmilk.  We are having lots of fun with it.  I feel like I finally have a little freedom from her, but as is typical with me, I am saddened by this.  It just reminds me of how fast she is growing up.  The second day we fed her she was really thirsty after her meal, but would only drink from a cup.  She wanted nothing to do with me, and my feelings were really hurt.  I am so ridiculous.

This month she has also taken a bottle and drank from a sippy cup without much effort from us.  Weird…all that heartache trying to get her to drink months ago and this month she takes them as if they aren’t even worth noticing.  Next time around I don’t think we’ll bother trying to bottle train…more effort than it is worth apparently.

Hair:
Her mohawk is still long, new hair is still light brown or maybe even blond.  We haven’t done anything with it and it is unruly…even with hair clips.        

Eyes:
Still a greyish-blue.

Personality:
When you have met the 3 or 4 things that she needs she is a ridiculously happy child.  If you piss her off she will still totally freak out.  When we are around other kids she will often just squeal in delight looking at them, and especially if she is able to touch them.  Sometimes they are allowed to touch her, sometimes it is offensive that they try to touch her.  It is really interesting how social she is with other kids.  She is constantly reaching out to them. 

She is really physical and we have lots of fun throwing her around and getting some good laughs out of her.  She loves loud noises and seems to enjoy being on the verge of getting scared.  At a friends the other day they had a VERY large barky dog.  Every time the dog would bark she would squeals so loud she had us all laughing. 

When she isn’t squealing she is often talking up a storm.  For the most part it is just babbling, and squawking.  But she does sometimes start in with the di-di-di and da-da-da.  And today as a special 6 months treat she said ma-ma-ma for the first time.  I know it had nothing to do with me, but it almost made me cry.  I know it will be forever before she will actually associate that with me, but it still made me all weepy eyed.

The car is still going great.  This is now often the only place she will have an independant nap.  What a change from her early months!

She is getting into reading a bit more again.  Which is really fun, especially because she will actually sit and look at the book instead of just eat it.

Stuff that happened this month:
- she said ma-ma-ma and made her mothers day!!!
- she started eating solids and LOVES them
- she started not being indifferent to swimming: I can get her to crack a smile, touch the water, splash and she will even give a little squeal when I throw her up in the air…she doens’t love it…but I think we had a breakthrough this month
- she had an exciting visit with her cousins and it was made even better becuase she LOVES people now

According to Adelle Rice Cereal is more than just ok

It is hard to resist the lulling motion of a backpack walk

Day 2 on solid food.  I made the cereal substantially more thick today and she was just fine with it.   I thought she was going to loose it waiting for me to mix the cereal for her.  In fact it was actually hard to feed her because she was so anxious to get the food she kept sucking on the bowl I was trying to feed her with.  It was also difficult to feed her becuase she kept leaning so far forward to get to the food it was hard to find her mouth.  Funny girl.

Another funny thing - she drank from her sippy cup after her meal.  It seems as though feeding her makes her really really thirsty.  Interesting.

After she finished her cereal and sippy cup of milk, she was mad.  I thought maybe she was still hungry so I tried to feed her but she was just trying to paw her way onto the table.  I think she must have wanted to eat more.  I eventually got her to breastfeed, but I think she would have preferred more food.  I am going to do some more reading.  I don’t think you are supposed to feed them too much at first, so I will hold off increasing the volume just yet.

Well, Adelle has been telling us for weeks now that she would like to eat.  We held her at bay for a while by giving her milk in a cup, but this past week she has really wanted more.  One day this week she threw a fit because I ate oatmeal in front of her.  I would have fed her right away…except Greg was out of town. 

We decided to give her food for the first time on Friday night.  After we had made the decision my cousin invited us over for dinner.  So we packed up her cereal and Adelle ate her first meal in a room full of her extended family.  It was really nice to get to share such a fun moment with family.  We had been told not to get too excited for the first bites as often babies don’t really like it.  Well Adelle sure did.  Right from the very first bite she knew brown rice cereal was for her!  She strained her neck for every bite, and often in between bites she was doing her little hyperventilating breathing thing she does when she gets excited.   We fed her at dinner and she was happy all evening, went to bed at her regular time with no fuss and was up only once to eat in the night.  So far there are no signs of anything bad related to eating.  So we will plan to feed her again tonight.

I posted the video on You Tube.  I warn you all that this is a VERY boring video and may not be interesting to anybody but family…and even then they might find it boring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQPt8nqoKFc

Last night Adelle’s cousin Luca was at dinner.  The big joke with Luca and Adelle is that Adelle is in trouble now because Luca is so physical, but soon Adelle will get payback since she is so bossy.  We figure in another year she’ll be getting Luca into all kinds of trouble.  Well, it has already started.  With Adelle’s subtle powers of persuasion she was able to get Luca to copy her party trick.  In my many hours of stay at home moming I have worked with Adelle to teach her to flap her lips with her fingers while making noise.  This week she has really picked up on it.  On Friday, it seemed like every time I turned around she was making the noise.  Well, here is a little video of her and Luca making music together!  Again, the video is not really that good…unless you are me…or possibly some of Adelle’s family members.  I didn’t do the best job of capturing the moment…but here it is anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htAAQX4wCk8

Frig we have fun here.

It has been a while since I have posted.  It has been crazy busy, and I have been tired.

We had a fabulous visit with my sister and her family.  We really miss them now that they are gone.  Both Wynne and Noam were so gentle and wonderful with Adelle.  Adelle LOVES her cousins, she could often be heard squealing with delight.  Wynne spent so much time entertaining her it was such a great help to me.  Noam tried his hardest…and although Adelle was very interested in him, and he was gentle he still sometimes was a little too close for her.  Poor Noam he would look at her all concerned and sad when she would cry.  He is such a sensitive little dude.

We have also had the chance to spend lots of time with my Aunt who has been visiting my cousin and her baby.  We have had such great family time.  My cousin Luca is a little less gentle than Wynne and Noam, he is very busy and keeps us all on our toes when he is around.  He tested the acoustic quality Adelle’s skull for use as a percussion instrument on Saturday night.  Serene felt terrible…but I know Adelle will pay him back for the abuse once she gets a bit older and starts to really boss him around!  I think she’ll be the bosy type.  People are always commenting on how vocal she is.  Cute now, while I don’t know what she is telling me to do…

We went to swimming on Monday and she actually had fun…sort of.  It was great.  I think she is finally coming out of her shell in the swimming pool.  Normally in the water she looks sort of stunned and gets very uneasy if I do anything but hold VERY tightly facing out.  But this time she floated on her back, she touched water I was pouring near her and she even splashed a few times.  It was very exciting.  She starts swimming lessons in two weeks and I am very excited to see how that goes.

Greg has been out of town since Saturday.   We have really missed him.  Adelle has been on a special sleep schedule where by she doesn’t really do much sleeping.  So I am tired.  But he comes home today.  I am so excited to see him.  We are off to the airport in a few minutes.  I can’t wait to see Adelle’s reaction to seeing him.  I think we will spend a quiet weekend together catching up.

Here are a few of my favorite shots from the last week:

Amy and Wynne performing some bum bouncing…one of their AMAZING tricks

Big cousin Wynne taking care of baby Adelle

Beautiful Noam - he has such a neat personality, it is like he radiates love with every look he gives

Energetic Luca sits for 15 seconds…I haven’t the slightest clue how you keep up with him Serene!

Adelle, 5 months old and already in training…looks like she likes it Greg

Does it count if they roll from their butt to their face?

She still hasn’t shown any interest in rolling over from her tummy to her back or vice versa…but twice yesterday she did spectacular rolls from sitting up to lying on her stomach.  And then there was crying.  Pretty funny I thought.

It has been a while since my last post as I got the flu…or something like it over the weekend and it pretty much ruined me for a few days.  Today is the first day that I really feel better.  I thought Adelle might have gotten a little sick herself because she seemed to cry more.  But in retrospect I think it was just that I had less patience…oops.

In general Adelle was very accommodating of me and I was thankful.  She actually took a bottle while I was totally out of it the first day (that was a big surprise!).  She also had some great sleep filled nights so I was able to get lots of rest.

Yesterday we picked my sister and her kids up at the airport.  Adelle was VERY excited to see them , and they were excited to see her.  It was such a wonderful reunion.  They really tired her out though and she was ready for a good sleep at about 7pm.  However, since it was not technically bedtime she was not interested in sleeping by herself.  So she and her dad had a nice little cuddle.

It seems as though Amy and her kids slept pretty well last night.  They sure were tired at bedtime as they all fell asleep pretty early.  They were up at around 5 this morning…but I think she was thinking they’d be up at 4 so she was glad for that.

Our Aunt Jean is visiting our cousin this week too…so we are going to have a fun packed busy week!