G'n'R Out West

If we could ask Adelle what she thought heaven was, I think she would answer ’Janet and Gareth’s house’.   Janet and Gareth have 4 dogs and three cats.  Between all those animals, usually one of them was up for tolerating her attention!

When we first arrived we were greeted by 4 big dogs who’d been alone all day.  So, as expected, the dogs were a little excited when we burst through the door.  They were licking and barking and running around.  Adelle was squealing and laughing and trying to get as many licks and touches in as she could manage.  I have never in my life heard her laugh for so long or with such intensity.  I wish I had gotten a movie of it.  It was unbeleivable.   That kind of intense happiness is so beautiful.

The dogs are all very friendly and enjoy attention so Adelle was just loving every second of it.  I think she got a bit gentler with them by the end of the weekend…but I suppose only the dogs could say for sure if she was tolerable!  We are working our hardest these days on teaching her gentle. 

Since there were dogs, and Greg was allergic, we decided to camp in J&G backyard.  Which just happens to be a stunning place to camp.  They are in the mountains right on the lake.  It was gorgeous.  We just bought a new tent. It is only a 4 person, but it is like a palace and could fit way more than 4.  It has both a front and a back door so you can actually get an incredible breeze going through it and it is like you are sleeping right outside (minus the bugs of course!).

We had no idea how Adelle would take to sleeping in a tent.  We zipped two sleeping bags together and Adelle and I slept together in them.  Greg described the tent as ’It is like living in a crinkle book’.  So obviously Adelle loved hanging out in the tent.  She probably would have wanted to spend the whole weekend in there exploring, if it wasn’t for the dogs on the outside!  We were never able to successfully put her to sleep in there.  But once sleeping she could easily be transported and slept well. 

I did attempt once to put her to sleep in the tent.  She was way too over stimulated to sleep.  She was obviously tired, but everytime she moved or twitched it was like a whole new sensation and she just got all excited.  After an hour of partying in the tent with Adelle about 2 hours past her bedtime, I gave up and brought her out.  Greg put her in the sleep hold (on her side facing in tucked into his arm) and she fell asleep in seconds.  We think she was almost releived when he did it.  There was just too much to look at and she couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes.  Poor thing.

Another big success from our weekend is canoeing.  We took Adelle out on one short canoe trip. It was only about 1/2 an hour, but it was a sucess.  She complained a bit, but didn’t freak out about the life jacket or being in the canoe.  I think the complaining was because her feet were cold standing on the wet boat bottom.  I am not totally sure what to do about that…but I am sure we can figure out a solution. 

Adelle and her dad on the ferry.  It was a bit chillier than expected so Adelle is warming up in my shirt

Adelle poises for some Koda affection.  She actually sticks her tongue out to try to lick the dogs herself.  It is totally disgusting, but it gives her shear joy to be licked by the dogs.  Check out how dirty her pants are!  Crawling around after dogs all day is a dirty job!
 

Adelle does some navigating.  We have a laminated map of BC…turns out it was one of the best purchases we’ve ever made.  Adelle loved playing with it.  Our drive was 8 hours, so it was nice to have a few new things for Adelle to keep occupied with.  As always, she was a great traveller

A few videos.  The first is of Adelle giving us a few peices of information about her weekend, or perhaps the blanket.  Hard to say exactly what.  The second video is a little something I like to call ‘ADELLE LOVES DOGS’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX88PvZRUuo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNzjNxzUPM

Where is the time going?  This month was an interesting adjustment for us.  Ok, really just for me.  Greg and Adelle are having a blast at home, I’m still feeling sorry for myself being back at work.  I’m only there 4 days a week, so it isn’t like I have much to complain about.  Of course, somehow I still manage to compain!

 I have found it very interesting to watch Adelle this month.  I often find that she changes so much from day to day.  I miss all the stuff in the middle, so often she is doing things I didn’t even know she knew how to do!

We have just returned home from a weekend in the mountains visiting our friends Janet and Gareth.  I’ll write another post about that later, as there is just too much fun stuff to share.

Sleep:
She is a fabulous sleeper.  She has gone from getting up twice in the night to usually just once.  I had been feeding her twice a night when I was still home.  I had tried a few time sto go down to once, but had just given up as I seemed to be feeling well rested and I was really enjoying our nighttime nursings.  Once Greg was off he took cuddle duty until 4 am.  Our strategy was to try to slowly ween her to one night time nurse.  Very quickly she let us know she only needed one feed.  So Greg is getting some pretty great sleeps and so am I.  Her new routine is to go to bed around 8pm and then she get up sometime after 4am for a feed and cuddle.   Ocassionally she gets up before then and Greg helps her get back to sleep. 

Napping also continues to go well.  She usually has 1 nap about 2 hours after she has gotten up for the day.  It is often about an hour long.  That is usually all she wants, but ocassionally she will take two naps. 

Eating:
She is exerting her independance at the high chair.  Adelle prefers to eat finger food.  This of course is a bit tricky in terms of nutrient content as she still only has 1 tooth.  We try our best to get something into her that is mostly mush, and then we give her some finger food while continueing to sneak mush in.  There are lots of healthy things she can eat as finger food, however, based on the contents of her diaper, I am not convinced she gets much out of the finger food! 

Getting Around:
She can crawl, she can cruise the furntiture, she can even do stairs!  What an amazing kid.  It seems like she went form being totally immobile to getting everywhere so quickly.  It is like it all just clicked for her.  I assume that is normal, but it is facinating to watch.  She often uses the traditional crawl to get from place to place, but for the more complicated manoevers or for one requireing superior speed she goes back to the old reliable leg and foot shuffle.  It is just so darn cute.   

She has been caught standing without holding anything, it might not be that long before she walks!  Although, she is quite content to cruise the furniture, then sit and crawl to a new location when she runs out of furniture.  So you never know, she might just be content to crawl and cruise for a while longer.

Hair:
We cut it this month, it was sad.  But she looks so cute with her little hair cut.  She actually could do with another cut, since her bangs are rapidly approaching her eyes again.  Unlike her cousins, Adelle’s hair grows like a weed!

Eyes:
I am convinced they are starting to change colours.  Greg isn’t, but he is colourblind, so he isn’t a reliable source.  I find that they change colours depending on the lights, but I often feel like I see some brown tints in them.

Language:
She still recognizes a number of signs, but no longer seems to show much interest in doing them.  I am not sure what changed.  Whatever, I don’t really care if sign language works, it is just fun to do.  She recognizes the milk sign, the water sign and ‘all done’.  She also knows the sign for puffs (we made it up).  When we make that sign she gets pretty excited.  Mostly because her dad started letting her serve herself the puffs.  She gets to reach her gooey little hand into the puff container and take what she wants.  Normally she gets a fist full and shoves it all into her mouth at once! 

She hasn’t really made any of the signs herself, although I still sometimes wonder if she is doing the milk sign…but I’m not convinced she really knows what she is doing.  It is so hard to tell.

It seems as though she might also be trying to immitate some of the things we say.  There is ‘uh oh’ as you know.  But there are a few others.  She makes a noise that sounds a lot like ‘Adelle’ and the other day I was saying ‘Thank you’ to her a lot.  She started saying something with the same number of syllabels with the same intonation, but quite the right sound.  It is hard to say if we are just hearing things assuming our child is a genious…or if this really is the start of her talking. 

Personality:
Still loves kids and dogs.  She also recently started pointing out every airplane that passes over our house.  Another favorite of her is flags.   I dare you to try to walk her past a flag without her noticing.   

She can often be found figuring things out.  The stroller, the vacuum, the straps on her high chair - all of those things have received minutes upon minute of intense scrutiny.  It is really cute to watch her try to think those things through.  She also loves a good cuddle with her stuffed animals. 

An interesting fact about Adelle:  she is not a big waver.  Instead of waving when you arrive she points at you and smiles or squeals.  It is like she is saying ‘hey, there you are, i love you’.  It is a nice way to be greated after a long day.

Stuff that happened this month:
- she got her first hair cut
- she started to cruise the furniture
- she started clapping this month
- she learned to climb up the stairs
- she and her dad started to spend thier days together - and they are having loads of fun

I fixed the youtube link from my previous posting.  Sorry about disappointing all of Adelle’s loyal fans with the promise of a video that didn’t end up working.  If you go to my previous posting the link should now work.

It is a whole heck of a lot busier being at work all week and still trying to enjoy family time.  How do other people do this?  What a balance.  I find Adelle often looks older from one day to the next.  I miss so much.

She did great all week with Greg and Greg was very happy to be home getting some time with her.  I found that she didn’t miss me quite enough for my liking, but I know it is better this way.  She did, however, have a half hour cuddle fest with me both weekend nights, which is unusual, so I guess she was just glad to spend some serious quality time with me.  It was wonderful, to feel so needed by her again.

Our friend Lisa, her 1 year old Blake, and Lisa’s parents, Marie and Roger, all came to visit us this weekend.  Lisa’s parents basically took care of me during university so it is always such a treat to spend time with them…and of course, Lisa was my roommate through most of university, so it was so cool for us to spend time with her and her baby.  Blake and Adelle are so different.  I am always so amazed to see how kids are the same and different.  Poor Blake was a little overwhelmed by Adelle and her antics.  But I think all in they did ok.  Although, we have yet to find a child (apart from cousin Lily) that can tolerate sitting next to Adelle in a chariot.  She just can’t help herself but to touch whoever is next to her.  Adelle has a lot to learn about giving other kids thier space….but I assume this too will come.

We had a busy weekend with our company. Enjoying the zoo and spending some time in the mountains.  It was so wonderful.  Although, it was only two days off from work, I felt totally energized. 

Adelle and Greg had yet another great day today.  Greg is getting convinced that Adelle has learned to say her name.  Or her version of her name anyway.  She also twice looked at Greg when I said Daddy tonight.  So maybe she is figuring some of this verbal stuff out.  She says mama when she cries and dada all the time…so I don’t think those count as words yet.  Greg has perfected her saying uh oh though…so maybe that is her first word?  Does that count as a word?  You be the judge….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_gbhUkL4fk

Adelle hanging out with our company, she seems to do much better with new people these days.

There should be some kind of law against little babies who do cute things when their mom’s aren’t home.

I think this picture speaks for itself

On a more positive note, I have come home two days in a row to two smiling, happy, family members, dinner on the table and a clean house.  Life isn’t really that bad, I guess.   I am a lucky woman.

Adelle wants you all to know that crawling is for babies. 

Greg’s cousin Katherine gave Adelle a little baby walker a few months back.  We’ve showed it to her a few times, and she has attempted walking behind it with mixed success in the past.  Tonight, she put together her days of study and was a walking machine.  Below is the link to a little video of her walking behind the walker.  It is amazing how fast they get steady with a little practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcz9HiA8MkA

She is also the boss of the stairs these days.  It is interesting to watch her learn.  Like most kids, I am sure, up is no problem.  It is when she gets to where she wanted to go and sits back that things get scary.  As a result, we are always sitting up on the stairs with her showing her time and time again how to get back down safely.  It was pretty cool how fast she learned the stairs.  She was frustrated stuck at the bottom one day and I showed only once to put her knee up, and that was it, she got it.  Now she is just perfecting the climb!

One final bit of exciting news is that my cousin Kevin and his wife Kathleen are expecting.  They were lucky enough to get our super amazing midwife and they are off on their own little baby adventure now.  They have also started a blog and I have added it to my blogroll!  Congrats Kevin and Kathleen…we are all so anxious for Adelle to have another playmate!!!

We had a fun busy weekend.  Last week our friends Roy and Shan added a second baby to their family.  Little Khali was born last Tuesday and we finally got to meet her on Friday.  She is such a little cutie.  They all seem to be doing amazing.  We can’t wait to spend time with them this summer and get to know Khali! 

Our friends Ahren and Katherine were in town for the weekend and brought their beautiful baby girl Mackenzie with them.  She is just 5 weeks old.  Adelle had lots of practice learning the word ‘gentle’ with her.  So far she doesn’t seem to have any idea what we are talking about when we say it.  Mostly she just wants to maul any little baby we put in front of her.  She just loves kids so much.

Tomorrow if my first official full length day at work (and Greg’s at home).  It will be interesting to see how we each do.  The good news is that there is lots of fun stuff to look forward to at the end of this week…so at least I can think about that if I get too sad.  Heidi (the woman who babysat Adelle for us last week) and her family are coming over for dinner on Thursday.  Adelle will be VERY pleased to see them show up.  Then this weekend Lisa and her family are coming to visit us from Cold Lake.  It will be a great time.

It is sad to be going back to work – but there is just so much to look forward to this summer, that it is hard to be too sad.

It was only 3 days, but it seemed REALLY long.  It was as good as I could have asked for.  It was odd to be trained by Greg all week, but it was really nice to get to work with him.  It was a nice easy transition that way.  If I had to be at work this week it was nice that I was able to have Greg support.  Of course it was peppered lightly by his sarcasm…but I’m used to that by now.

There were a few tears, but all in all not too terrible.

Adelle on the other hand was the happiest kid EVER.  She loved her time at Heidi’s and I think she will be disappointed to know that it isn’t going to be a daily part of her life.  She didn’t sleep all that well at Heidi’s.  However, like my sister days Adelle (like her mother and Auntie) suffers from FOMO (fear of missing out).  So it isn’t that surprising that she wasn’t sleeping long. 

After the first day she was crawling like a professional…no more of that foot and knee stuff.  Yesterday she waved at us when we arrived to pick her up, it was her first real wave.  It is amazing how quickly they pick stuff up from other kids.  I assume it was the kids, and not that Heidi was running some kind of baby boot camp over there!

Anyway, since I am not working Fridays I have today off.  I am on for real next week and Greg is off.  I am still really sad, but I am sure that will fade with time.