Toddlerhood

Toddlerhood has been kicking my butt these past few weeks so I thought I would share this quote that lives on my bulletin board. I put it up there when Q was just a few months old and I was consumed with making all sorts of decisions about sleep training, breastfeeding, vaccines, etc.. but it really has helped me now as well when I am struggling with diet, discipline and routine.


Peaceful Problem Solving

There are no absolute rules about raising children and no guarantees for any parenting techniques. Raise your children how you choose to raise them and in ways that are right for you. Within the range of your comfort zone, modify your approach for each of your children based on their needs, personality, and temperament.

Address only those problems that are true problems to you, and don't create or imagine problems because someone else things you have them, no matter if that person is family, friend, or expert.

Keep your problems in perspective and take ample time to plot the best course of action. Solve your problems by analyzing possible solutions and choosing those solutions that are right for you and your family. Know tat there is rarely one right answer, and often it will take multiple routes before getting to the best destination.

React, listen, and learn constantly, but always sift what you learn through the strainer of your own personal beliefs and parenting philosophy.

- Elizabeth Pantley

All You Need To Have Fun Is..

water and a cup


Sometimes the simplest activities are the most enjoyable.

Truck Obsessed

So many developments with the little boy these days, it seems like a new skill, sign, or word every day. The newest word around this house is 'truck'. It comes out more like 'dtouck', a little d with the t sound and a little deeper in the middle, like 'truck' with a german accent maybe? So now everything is a 'truck', cars, fire engines, trains, tractors, really anything with wheels is a truck in Q's eyes.

Fortunately, a few weeks ago someone gave away a bunch of toys that had been outside toys for their twins and part of what we got were trucks! lots and lots of toy trucks.

Home Education Starting Early

We have talked about homeschooling, public school and various private schools in our area and they all have so many pros and cons it's overwhelming every time we talk about it. Thank goodness we still have years before we need to make a decision. For now, I find myself wanting to incorporate more education activities into our stay at home routine. I can see how much Q is learning at story time at the library and in classes we've taken and I want to encourage that learning as much as I can. I'm going to try to start sharing some of the things we're doing and if you have ideas for us of educational activities for a one year old that are appropriate and fun please share!

Here's one of our recent activities that was a big hit. Muffin tins + puffs. For counting, sorting, throwing, eating, making noise, dumping over and lots more.

I put two muffin tins side by side and only put puffs in one, he started putting a couple in the other pan but mostly ignored it, my plan had been to find another item to put in the other pan and let him sort them out and explore. I also put puffs in a small pile on the floor so he could be the one to put them in the pans, that was a big hit too.

Q was entertained for a long time considering a one year olds attention span.

Note To Self

Don't forget this. Q is changing so much these days and I don't want to forget.

He loves water - dog bowls, bathtub, the sink, pool, it doesn't matter.

He says Mama, Dada, Greta ('Deta'), and answers 'yeah'. It's so cute when you ask him if he wants to go outside and he says 'yeah' and goes over to the door all ready to go. He signs 'dog' and 'fan' more than anything else but can also sign 'work' 'more' 'cookie' 'milk'

He loves balloons and ceiling fans almost as much as he loves water. Getting the balloon at the grocery store is one of his favorite things. Turning the ceiling fans on and off can always cure a bad mood.

He points at things all the time and then he will take his hands and turn your face where he wants you to look. Having a 14 month old take your face in his hands and turn it and then point for you to show you something is the sweetest thing ever.

He loves to be in the garden with his bucket and shovel on his dirt pile.

He loves to watch the big kids on the playground or on playdates. He loves dolls, puppets or anything with a face - it always makes him laugh.

He's walking everywhere now and is so cute stomping around with his arms up at his sides, he gets more and more stable everyday but Greta still knocks him over a lot.

He is such a pro at stacking blocks lately, last night he got 6 blocks stacked up carefully before knocking them over. He enjoys the building much more than the knocking them over.

Besides Mama Milk his favorite food is still yogurt, but other recent favorites are oranges, crackers and cheese and eggs and toast. Eating solids are still pretty hit and miss, some days he eats three big meals and some days, nothing but milk.

The biggest heart-melting thing he's doing right now is giving kisses. Mostly to his Mama but he'll sometimes give them to others and sometimes even to his dolls or puppets

Decisions decisions decisions....

I know I'm a bit biased but everything Q does is amazing. I've been enjoying watching his personality develop since day 1, but these past few weeks are just amazing. He's crawling everywhere now and I love watching him have control over his choices about where to go, what to play with, who to follow (the dog!), etc. I just love watching his personality emerge.

Here's a good example of the budding decision maker
-
On the back porch blowing bubbles, Q decides to explore.....


the steps

exploring the edge. He would get up and rock back and forth like he was gonna keep going but stop short, go back to his belly and look at it, and start the whole process over again

decides to just sit and play with the leaves over the edge and forget about trying to go over. This is so his dad.


Stopped caring about going over the edge, watched the dog play, played with the leaves


and then... he slipped.


but recovered quickly. with a bonk on the noggin

8 Months

I simply can't believe my boy turned 8 months old yesterday, wasn't he just born?

I was just telling B tonight that in some ways I feel like mothering was harder than I thought and in a lot of ways it feels much easier. I still feel like me. most of the time at least. The hardest thing about parenting is that it never ends. I mean, that's great too, but there are no 'days off' and no sending the baby back to its parents, I can never ever walk away from the fact that I have a kid. It's frustrating because I don't want to be away from Q but sometimes I need to anyhow (for my sanity) and it just never ends. I miss being single sometimes, but I'm so incredibly grateful for an amazing partner and an amazing baby. I think I totally lucked out in both departments.

Q is as sweet as ever, and developing quite the personality! He's a very weird kid. He makes weird noises, does the funniest things with his body and really makes us laugh a lot. One of his new things is to get up on his hands and feet and walk his hands up as much as he can and then walk them back down, I swear he's gonna do a somersault one of these days. He's also really starting to show preference between mom and dad. Not in a bad way, it's actually really sweet how he'll reach for us and get insanely excited when B gets in the car when we pick him up from work.

He still isn't eating solids although we offer them occasionally. I figure he'll want them soon enough and I may as well enjoy the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding during this impending flu season. I would like to write another post about breastfeeding an 8 month old, more for my record than anyone else's interest but I need to read my last post to figure out what's changed. Mommy brain!

Q is so long and lanky these days, he weighs a lot though so I'm not sure where he's putting it, his hair has gotten longer and he's got teeth now too. What happened to my baby? Will I ever stop saying that? I can't imagine that I will

Our California family is coming into town next week and we're all looking forward to some cousin time. They'll be here for halloween too and we have plans for a big bonfire in the woods and some partying down. I've got a number of costumes that have come to me for the little one to wear so stay tuned for some cuteness during halloween week.

Breastfeeding a 5 month old

So this is a couple days early but we've had a bumpy couple of days and our breastfeeding relationship is constantly changing so I thought I'd put this out there.

When Q was 4 months old he started the whole distractable/looking around thing which really he's still doing just as much but now - we're teething (and some new mobility). I'm sure that's what it is but it's affecting so many other aspects of our life, most notably are sleep and nursing and not a lot of either.

All I can think about is today because so far it's the culmination of all these various new issues. He's been sleeping really crappy and not wanting nursing very well during the night, he'll refuse to nurse on one side and if I push the issue he will wake himself up fully and not be happy about it. If I get up out of bed and get in the nursing chair he'll nurse and we'll both sleep in the chair. He wants to sit so bad, it's pretty much all he likes to do besides stand up holding our hands. He would do these 2 things all day if we'd assist him in them. Sitting he does by himself but we have to be watching him very closely to pick him up when he falls over. He wants to sit up so bad that if he's laying down at all (while awake) he does baby crunches, craning his head trying to sit himself up, but now.. he does this while nursing and would seemingly rather do that than nurse except that it frustrates him so bad. Nervous momma's rambling here but basically today it culminated in the fact that he wouldn't nurse for about 8 hours. He's doing a little better at the moment (nursed a bit before bed) and I think we're on our way out of this little nursing strike, but it sucks and it took a lot of work to get him to nurse even the little bit that he did. I got some great advice from my mother in law and sister in law and we did lots of skin to skin and infant and breast massage to calm us all down and get the milks flowing.

I hope this weeks events and especially today's events are not a sign of things to come during the rest of this month.

Breastfeeding a four month old

Genius!

That bra is SO smart because my boy is VERY distractable. Apparently this is pretty normal for a 4 month old and it’s VERY annoying. What’s worse is when he wants to look around at the world WITH my nipple in his mouth. He’s trying to stretch me all around and then gets mad if the nipple comes out!

Conundrums

did I spell that right?

I feel like I’m not doing a very good job at all this mom stuff sometimes. I’m sure I’m doing fine and as my mom has reminded me - I am the best mom for Q. Whatever that means

I think we may finally be in the stage where I need to start putting the boy in bibs. I’m so sick of changing his outfits all the time because of one reason or another. I think sometimes I change them too readily because of being wet on the front or having some poop on them or something but I don’t know - is my child just more of a mess than everyone else’s? or am I just really bad at keeping him clean? He’s starting to outgrow his small diapers so I put him in a medium FuzziBunz this morning and it fit good around the waist but the leg holes were gaping open and of course I noticed but decided to just leave it. Well now I have peed on sheets and another outfit change. ugh.

So here’s a bib question for you - do I put him in bibs that came with the outfit he’s wearing? Do I try to make them match? or do I just give up caring (which will happen eventually I’m sure) and put him whatever bib I grab first. Speaking of which, I don’t think I have a lot of bibs. Nellie did give me a supercute one that says “bald is beautiful” that wasn’t really accurate for her read headed boy Kieran. Speaking of bibs though - I saw this tutorial for a bib and I really want to make it. Maybe I’ll just make my own bibs and make them solid colored or simple graphic patterns so they can go with most anything….

In other news, I’m going to be hosting a K14 Playdate at my house this month. I had fun at the last one I went to and it’s nice to see babies of different ages all in the same room and get some support from other moms and advice and whatnot. Spending time with these moms is helping me to get outside of my own world/head. Most of them are very mainstream in some things I’m not mainstream about but I kind of like that. I think I’m more mainstream than some people think I am (at least sometimes). At our last playgroup they were all about the moby wrap and we had fun playing with it.

OK, B has had Q for quite a whole now and I should go give him a break. maybe a nap? I took one today but it left me groggy and feeling guilty. Q and I were asleep in bed and he woke up and I wanted to stay asleep so I hollered at B to come get him and little did I know he had just laid down on the couch to take a nap when my hollering woke him up. I was groggy and out of it so I just handed him Q and said “take him” and he did. Poor guy. I think Q and I are gonna go out and buy an arsenal of teething crap - teething tablets, baby motrin, those squishy teething rings, boiron chamomillia, clove oil, orajel? What else??!

I really don’t know when teething starts, I read online all these symptoms and Q has so many of them but how do i KNOW?! Yesterday was the first time I really thought it could be teething because he woke up crying his “i’m in pain” cry and nothing would fix it. Finally the “geographical cure” worked (ie. taking him in the backyard) and I put him in the bumbo and gave him a cold wet washcloth to chew on. He was happier but still a little perturbed - is that teething? I’m not overly certain but I guess it sounds like it. right?