G'n'R Out West

We three had a very fun and relaxing weekend.  Greg and I both had Friday off and so we had a wonderful three day weekend together.

We had a busy day today.  Adelle and I attended a Halloween party.  We had to come dressed up and bring a theme based food item.  I get so stressed out at Halloween…having a kid and being invited to a dress up party puts on a whole new level of stress for the holiday.  Shan lent us Paityn’s chicken costume from last year and after a silly brainstorming session with Celeste and Lisa we came up with:  a farmer (me), a deviled chicken (Adelle) and deviled eggs (as our potluck food item).  She looked pretty cute as a deviled chicken…but she thinks wearing that costume sucks rocks. 

A farmer and her deviled chicken
 

A sad slumpy and very cute deviled chicken:

After the party we had a family dinner with the cousins and my aunt who was visiting from out east.  Adelle and Luca had a hilarious time together playing chase and goofing around, there was the odd incident…but that is to be expected with kids.

A quiet moment figuring out the fridge magnet farm set

Up to no good

Adelle directing Luca.  Apparently at one point in the evening she repeatedly told him to sit (I missed it).  Poor Luca, I get the distinct impression that Adelle will be bossing him around for years to come…or at least trying to boss him around.  Also, check out the pink hot pants!  They are a part of Adelle’s slightly undersized swimsuit…she LOVES wearing it!

My cousin Kathleen is 39 weeks pregnant…so likely the next time all of us get together, there will be three little ones….more chaos…more fun.  I love it!

Yesterday we saw some early signs of independence. Celeste and Adelle were playing in the living room…seemingly happily until there was a huge meltdown. It had something to do with a pair of Adelle’s pants and a doll. Both were being thrown across the room, retrieved and then thrown again. We both tried to help her by putting the pants on the doll. But that was clearly not what she wanted. After a good little while, it occurred to us that the issue was that SHE wanted to put the pants on the doll. She managed to do this once, but since the pants are about 4x the size of the doll they fell off (which did not help matters). She was unable to get them on a second time as it is a pretty tricky maneuver and requires a fair bit of luck and a whole lot of patience…neither one of them was present for Adelle at that moment in time. We quickly realized the only solution was a change in scenery…so we went out for a walk. That seemed to work well.

I imagine we are on the cusp of the toddler independence movement.

We have started to work with Adelle to teach her please and thank you. So far she just gives us a confused look…or totally ignores us when we do it. She has gotten very grabby and impatient with us. As it turns out, the please and thank you we are trying is both to help her and to help us. When she grabs and pulls at me to come somewhere saying to her in a calm voice ‘please mama can you come and help me’ relaxes me and helps me to realize she is just learning.

On a related note, if she wants you to do something with her and you are busy in the kitchen chopping veggies or something, she will pry her body in between you and the counter, grab your hand AND your pant leg and pull you by both to the desired location. It was funny the first time….but now we are trying to help her to learn a better way to ask us to play with her.

Adelle is already 14 months old.  It is crazy to imagine her as over a year old.  How did that happen?  She is such a little girl now.  Almost no baby left. 

We are in the middle of a very fun visit with Auntie Celeste.  It is very fun to have family in our house and to have another person to hang out with! We are having lots of fun together.  

Sleep:
Ah sleep…love it.  Adelle loves it too…it is awesome.  She goes to bed by 8pm and is up by 8 am.  So good.  She only wakes when she is teething.  The teething nights have been pretty hard on her.  But the other nights make it so easy to deal with.  I am so so so so so happy and feel very lucky about the sleep situation.  She still naps for about 45 min – 1 hour once a day.  The last few days she has been telling us she doesn’t really need a nap.  We aren’t sure what to think about it.   She has still been napping…but it has been a battle.

Eating:
We usually have to give her meals in stages.  Veggies first, they are great if they are the only option, protein next… also delicious, then bread and fruit are pretty much tied for first.  She always has room for bread and fruit. 

I do have one little confession to make about the bread.  I have been struggling with writting about it, because I think it might be one of those things that will come back to haunt me if Adelle ever reads this when she is older.  I have decided to write about it…because it is just a part of the whole bread expeirence for her.  So here we go: I am always worried about forming habits and keeping our girl healthy.  So I am careful about what we feed her.  I like whole wheat bread…but I also indulge in a nice peice of fresh white french bread…often with a little garlic butter.  When Adelle sees me eating it she indicates to me that she is interested (starts shreiking and pointing).  So I offer her a peice of dry 7 grain bread.  Not only is it dry 7 grain bread…I usually give her the bum ends of the bread because I don’t really like them myself.  She thinks that the bum ends of bread with no butter are the best thing she has ever tasted, she has no idea that I am not giving her the same thing that I am eating.  There I have said it…I am pretty sure I will pay for this one!

Getting Around:
She loves to play the running game.  I ask her to run and we run all over together.  It is a very funny game. 

Hair:
We just gave her a 3rd haircut.  Her hair grows so so so fast.

Eyes:
I don’t understand them.  They are a blue/brown/grey/green.

Language:

Adelle-English Dictionary
Da – this is said loud and forceful and is interchangable between mum and dad
Ga – this means bird (you can tell because she does the bird sign at the same time)
Ap-Ap – Apple
Ba-Ba – Baby, blocks, ball…depending on the context
No – this means no, it can be used very seriously or as a joke.  She also practices saying it a lot
Noah – Nose, she loves to point to our nose and tell us what it is
Woof – that one is pretty self explanatory.  She occasionally does the sign for dog, she has never tried to say the word.
Uh Oh – This means I just dropped something, or I am going to drop something.
Hehehehe – this means YES YES YES YES

Personality:
She is her same ridiculous self.  Stubborn and hilarioius.  She has taken to carrying around her push toys.  They are awkward and heavy…but she will not give in.  She will carry them over to you, grab your hand and get you to play with them for her.  Odd.  At our friend’s house the other day she was dragging around a doll in one hand and a kids chair in the other.  Seemed a little onerous….but apparently quite necessary.  She had some frustrations manoevering the chair up and down the stairs, but the rest of the house seemed quite manageble. 

She still loves outside and will go to her shoes and happily put on her coat at the promise of a trip outside. 

Stuff that happened this month:
- you got really old, really fast..I can’t hardly beleive it
- your Auntie Celeste came to visit
- you got your 7th tooth (bottom left of middle)…seems like you are working on more…but we haven’t seen them.

Adelle, pretty unimpressed with the required clothing for winter outings.

Yeah, that is right our girl is saying apple…or something like it anyway.  She is very proud of herself.  She tried to say bread tonight as well…but no-go.  I think the ‘br’ thing is just a bit too complicated…she sure tried though.

 It is such an amazing experience being a parent.  You have the biggest highs and the biggest lows.  Greg and I are enjoying some pretty luxurious sleeps these days.  A few weeks ago I was having some nursing issues and decided I just couldn’t do the night time feedings anymore.  After a week or so of discussions from Adelle on her feelings with my decision she settled into a good routine of waking for water and quickly falling back asleep.  Eventually she decided water wasn’t worth waking up for.  

Of course at the same time that we are getting some crazy great night sleeps we’ve also been having some real doozies with teething.  The good news is that on the good nights I am having uninterrupted sleep…so I am pretty well rested and able to deal with the shitty nights.  Adelle on the other hand, has had a really hard time.  Her days still seem to be pretty good when she is teething…but some nights she has been utterly and totally inconsolable…which is a bit odd for her, and so very sad. 

One of Adelle’s favorite new things is sitting on things.  She especially loves to sit on the bottom step of our stairs to, or on the fireplace ceramic tile.  She has this particularly cute way of backing into her seat.  However, the good always comes with the bad.  Today she was determined to sit on the front of her ride on toy.  It was about 6″ too tall to sit on.  It lead to a number of frustrating moments, which it seems I was mostly blamed for.  We were out at our friends house for dinner tonight and she tried to sit on their fireplace ceramic tile…it is about 6″ taller than ours and she was very confused by it.  She also tried to back into an adult chair at their house…apparently her height judgment is just a tiny little bit off.

 On Thanksgiving we were at my cousin’s house.  I snapped this shot of Adelle with her soon to be baby cousin…we can hardly wait.

At Thanksgiving we had a moment of thoughtlessness and forgot our daughter required a highchair. She did great sitting on a few blankets right at the table…she is so grown up.

Here is a funny video.  It shows both how hungry Adelle is after daycare and how much she LOVES chicken.  As per usual sorry about the sidways-ness..one day I’ll get smart and video them in the proper orientation.

We’ve just come back from a really terrific day.  We drove into the mountains to do a hike with our friends and their two kids.  It was planned to be a 14 km hike.  We only did about 10 km and then decided we were pushing our luck.  Our friends turned around a little before us, as they were having some issues that only parents of a 3.5 year old have the pleasure of dealing with.  The phrase ‘I want to go back to the car’ was ’uttered’ about 30 millions times…oh what joys we have to look forward too!!! 

It was a fun day, none the less, and any time spent in the mountains is always good, even if you don’t get to finish your hike.  Plus, as an added bonus, travelling with screaming kids means that bears are of little concern!!!

Adelle had an ok time.  She kind of looked a little comatose for most of the hike.  Except towards the end when she was ANGRY.  See below for evidence of the complete and total boredom/indifference she shared with us:

She did enjoy walking around in the snow for a while…although, it became a bit frustrating on account of the no hands rule…stupid winter.  She had a good laugh when we passed some dogs…but as can sometimes happen, it lead to tears since they didn’t stop to visit with us.

Since the hiking was in the snow and therefore lead to a signifcant amount of immobilization on Adelle’s part we decided to compensate for our hike with a swim for her.  She hadn’t been to the pool in months, so I wasn’t entirely sure how she would react.  She got a glimpse of the water from the change room and made a beeline for the pool.  That was a good sign.  We stayed in the water for about 45 minutes and I am sure she would have stayed longer if we didn’t have to leave for dinner.  It was nice finally have her in the pool again.  I think we’ll have to take her back to swimming lessons soon.

Check out this awesome profile.  I bought a two peice as I figured it would last a bit longer…it appears as though she has officially grown out of it! 

Adelle has a daycare backpack and she LOVES to wear it even though it is clearly too big for her. Today, after much discussion (read: screaming) she agreed to take it off to get in the car. She quickly put it on as soon as we got to daycare. I put her down on the floor and she walked through the older kids room on the way to her room. With her head held high and a huge grin she waved to all the kids and adults as if she were royalty. She is so proud of her backpack. When she got to her room she got even more excited to show off to everybody there. After spending a few moments making sure everybody saw her backpack she looked up at me and got off balance in the process. Then she over compensated and landed on her face (for some reason putting out her hands to protect against a fall is not always a natural reaction, so she often lands on her face). Anyway, she got all mad (and perhaps embarrassed) so she started screaming at me. She then stopped screaming for 2 seconds to catch the beat of a good song and started dancing, and then proceed to scream some more while bopping along to the beat. She then insisted on being put in a highchair for breakfast…which meant a higher intensity of screaming as I took off her backpack to put her in the chair. As I left she was wailing at the top of her lungs (on account of the face smashing and backpack removal episodes) however, that didn’t stop her from bopping up and down and clapping her hands to the music. Apparently my daughter can multitask. I can bake, while talking on the phone and tidying the house….. she can scream at me, while enjoying an intriguing piece of music…i guess we are all gifted in our own ways!

Sometimes I just have to laugh at how Adelle continues to be the same person we met on August 20 2006, with the same personality…only more so. We sure did get a feisty one! I think Adelle Verena and her Great Nana Verena have more than just a name in common….

Here is a shot of Adelle with her backpack…thought you might want to see it so you could get a good visual on how totally adorable she would have looked while parading around her daycare.

Adelle also is really into cleaning.  If she can get a broom or a sponge, even a diaper wipe she is on the job helping out around the house!

Yesterday Adelle and I participated in the Run for the Cure.  It was a really neat experience and it is very moving to be in the presence of so many people who have had their lives deeply affected by cancer.

We did a 5 km walk and Adelle did great.  She spent most of the time commenting on all the dogs we saw and eating crackers.  She was very cooperative.

We are starting to see the influence of daycare creep into our world.  It is so bizarre that Adelle is looked after all day by people we hardly know doing things we aren’t aware of. 

We were at our friend’s house the other day and Adelle spent close to 1/2 an hour bottle feeding a doll.  I have never seen her do this , as we don’t have bottles at our house for her to play with.  But she obviously has them at daycare given how much time and patience she was putting into caring for the baby!  

Today we were out at a restaurant and I gave her crayons and paper for colouring.  She had obviously done that before too!  Who knew she was old enough for colouring??  Guess I should get her some crayons!

I wonder how many other things she does now that I still don’t know about!