The Independent Toddler

Anyone who thinks that attachment parenting only encourages a child to be overly dependent on its parents hasn't seen Gaz in action. Despite extended breastfeeding, never being allowed to cry herself to sleep alone*, and our family bed sleeping arrangements, when we went to the park last weekend she ran off to check out everything and everyone, hardly looking back at me once. She was happy to have help in navigating the slides, but otherwise she was all about doing it herself. I'm very proud of my little girl.

I know the way we are doing things isn't what everyone necessarily would (or should) choose, but I'm happy with how things are working out for us.

* The crying to sleep that has been done was always with a caregiver (Mark or Lisa, usually) at hand to provide what comfort Gaz would allow. There's not much than can be done about her preference for me (in fact, most days I wouldn't want to change it at all), so unfortunately sometimes someone has to get several earfuls in the course of minding her.

best Gaz-Grandma game ever!

We just bid adieu to Grandma Cel this morning, and that reminded me that I wanted to share this cool game that Gaz made up at breakfast Saturday morning. I call it foie gras, and to play Gaz sits on Grandma's lap and shoves all the food on her plate that she doesn't want to eat into Grandma's mouth as fast as her little hands can shove. Weeeee! It was amusing to spectate, but I don't look forward to my turn at the game.

Look out Grandma Judy!

Of toddler hysterics and lunatic Halloween costumes

If I were to write my will today, I would have to lie about that sound mind business for two reasons.

First, my mom and I took Gaz to Joann's AND Target. On a Saturday. Well after all the insane shoppers of the world are up and about and breakfasted. On the day after a rather late bedtime. Oh, the foolishness. I am now nostalgic for those care-free days of shopping with Gaz when the worst that would happen was that she would get fussy about being in her stroller, so I would put her in the sling and use the stroller as a shopping cart. Now she screams and throws fits when she's not allowed to pull all the patterns off the shelves or just run at shopping carts as they are being pushed around. Oh, the evil glares we recieved. You know, parents do realize how annoying that screaming baby is, because they have to deal with it on a daily basis! So get over your momentary inconvenience, 20-something hipster brats. I'm busy trying to corral my kid so that she doesn't grow up to be as rude as you. I don't always succeed, but I'm working on it.

Second, which directly contributed to the shopping trip to begin with, I'm making a Mothra costume for Gaz. Which endeavor is completely insane and will definitely keep me busy until Halloween, when she will wear the damn thing once and then I'll probably be really mad that I spent so much time making this monstrosity. But it's not like any of this is going to keep me from doing this, of course. I'm enjoying myself despite the general madness of all of this and the loooong, daughter-aggravating wait in line to get my fabric cut today.

It took two hours to get Gaz down tonight and now I think it's time for me to join her. We just finished watching Rebirth of Mothra, which was pretty lousy but it qualifies as reasearch. I will be drifting off with plans for constructing fuzzy moth wings dancing in my head.

Happy Birthdays Mom and Dad!

For our birthdays, Gaz gifted us with some good things (the following neat new tricks) and some not so good things (constipation and night terrors), but let's focus on the good:

* She's figured out how to go up stairs! And once she figured it out she wouldn't stop, so we ended up getting pretty tired. But still, we're half way to her mastering stairs!

* Yesterday was a banner day for thrilling acrobatics. Just as I was about to remove her from the rocking recliner because she wouldn't stop standing on it and bouncing around (see house rule #1: no standing on the couch), Gaz jumped and leaned forward over one of the arms at the same time, diving right over the arm of the chair. I caught the butt of her romper, narrowly saving her from a major head bonk. She did bump her forehead on the recliner lever in her post-surprise spaz attack, but after a few seconds of cuddling, she was fine. I needed a bit longer to calm down, but no one is any worse for the stress.

* Gaz was relatively well behaved at the museum on Sunday. The shoes we brought were a bit too slippery for the highly polished institutional floors, but it didn't take her long at all to figure out how to run around without falling to her knees every two steps. Huzzah!

And for anyone worried about her health, the night terrors haven't recurred and her young bowels are happy once again. Apparently apples can be a bit binding for young guts, which was news to me, but in any event we won't be letting her eat an entire apple by herself again.

cute phaser on KILL

I know. Lots of posts lately. It's because I've got the laptop on constantly for work. But on to the meat:

Gaz does two really brain-meltingly cute things lately. First (and she's been doing this for maybe a week now), she gives kisses now. And not the open mouthed protokiss that babies do, either. These are cute little kid kisses. She's yet to figure out how to pucker her lips, but she's most of the way there. Adorable.

But this morning really took the cake. I was laying on the couch after we got up as I'm completely wiped out from a very busy work week. (Maybe 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night, for reference, and that's about par for the course this week.) So there I was, all blah and mopey, when Gaz discovered a beam of sunlight coming into the living room from our dining room windows and then decided to try to catch it. She tried to grab it in the air, she tried to pick it up off the rug, but couldn't get a hold of it. She was a little perplexed, but still very amused. The sight liquified what was left of my brain and various other insides, but I still have enough grey matter left to proclaim that I will never forget that moment.

Auntie Angeli was dead-on when she described toddlers as cats with opposable thumbs.

The teeth, the teeth

I keep forgetting the teething update. (And I grow a bit wearing of today's editing job. This is the perfect opportunity for a break.)

Some days are worse than others, as always, when it comes to mouth pain, but we've got something to show for Gaz's trouble. Both upper first year molars are just barely peeking out, and the lower right is close. The canines have decided to be precocious and both right dog teeth are extremely close to cutting through. The upper will probably be officially out in a day or two, and the lower is not far behind. I wouldn't be surprised if either or both beat the molars to cutting completely.

That's all the news from Gaz's mouth. Pitty the poor child, always cutting eight teeth at once!

2T, kina

We just got her in some 2T jammies tonight. It was a bit of a struggle with the zipper. She looks a bit like 30 lbs. of toddler in a 20 lbs. sack made from one of those fuzzy hotel blankets, but at least we didn't have to pinch her chubby, chubby thighs to zip her in. That's a good thing. We don't have any long-sleeved jammies in 24 mo. size, so we are working with what we have. I suppose we could always put her in the 3T jammies and hope for the best if she doesn't stretch out soon. I might have to start making her some homemade pants that include plenty of room for a diaper in addition to all of her. Oh, how this post will embarrass her in the future!

Anyway, she's a healthy little girl, regardless of how clothes fit. Pretty happy, too.

Now with neck!

Grandma Judy and Grandpa Will were just up for a visit and confirmed that yes, Gaz has a distinguishable neck now. Huzzah! Seems like a silly little thing, but it's the first part of her to slim down and look more like a normal human body part (versus chubby human body part). She's playing with the cordless phone now, dialing randomly then holding it to her head and saying "Prutahn?" As Mark said at dinner tonight, "She's adorable and completely insane. It's times like this when she really reminds me of her mother."

Today we received her birthday present from her Aunt Llydie (a college friend of mine), comprised of a cute little crocheted afghan and a book. Keep an eye on my flickr site, as I'll be uploading pictures of the happy occassion soon. She had much fun playing with the box and book.

And now Mamama has a whole inbox full of work to do.

exploding vocabulary

Today I got a picture of Gaz doing the sign for "table," which she starting doing after a few viewings of the Baby Einstein "Baby Wordsworth" DVD. I was trying to get a shot of her signing "more" by telling her to "say 'more' with your hands." So naturally she looked right at me and said "more!" and then looked confused while I laughed myself half off my chair.

Other good, solid words lately are: cow and Proton (just this evening, instead of "tahtahn"). Anyone who spent any good amount of time with me in my youth knows how important it is that she can say cow early and often. :-)

Now she's walking around with a stuffed cow in one hand and a plastic cow in the other, saying "hi, cow!" to each in turn while she does laps around the dining room table. I think this sets the tone for her second year fairly well: lots of chatter, lots of parent-wearying scampering.