Gaz sez, "One day when I'm bigger, but not as big as you and Dad, I'm going to have long, long hair and a long, long dress, and I'm going to sing a perfect song." This will, she says, take place on a stage upon which she has put up a lot of Christmas lights.

We've both been upgraded from "Mommy" and "Daddy" to just Mom and Dad. It seems too soon in some ways, but is perhaps evidence that she is thinking more about the things she says now.

She's also taken to saying "muh" instead of "my," as in, "Mom! There's poop in muh diaper!" It's funny the first five times, but after that just gets kinda weird. Are we the victim of a hillbilly changeling?

Last night she woke up and called for me, "Mom. MOM." Not panicked or whining, just insistent. I went in to check on her and found her sitting up in bed. I reached out for her and she grabbed my arm, held it close to her chest, and relaxed back onto the bed, face-first. I stayed bent over the bed rail (fun!), rubbing her back with my free hand, until she fell back asleep. From that vantage point, I saw that sometime before summoning me, she'd retrieved her sippy cup from the bedside table and had a drink of water. It was not so long ago that it took a lot of work to get her back to sleep if she woke up enough to call for me, and really not so long ago that she would thrash about in bed, crying for her cup of water to be brought to her. Now she remembers where the cup is, and she knows that I'll come, and she doesn't need quite so much to soothe her back down. There will be days when she does need more, but I do appreciate these days of relative ease.

I think 2009 is going to be a good year, full of lots of good new growth. Speaking of which, she's grown another half inch. Not much longer for some of those 4T clothes. And she wants everyone to know that she's "getting this snapping thing." Maybe for next Halloween I'll dress her up as a little Beatnik.

Monsters in the Bedroom Window

That's right, we've got monsters.

On Friday while the bath was running, Gaz pulled Mark and I into the bedroom and declared that there were monsters in there. We asked her to show us and she took us to the window, where she animatedly shouted "monsters!" and "rawr!" over and over and over again. That night when she and I went to bed, she insisted that the tap light be left on while she was drifting off because of the monsters.

Yesterday Mark and Auntie Angeli got out the big hairy spider that Ken gave her at her birthdaychristeningthang and did some monster slaying just before bedtime, and then when Gaz and I went to bed she said I could turn out the light. Progress!

I don't know where the scary-monsters-in-the-bedroom thing came from, but I hope the monster-eating spider keeps working.

In unrelated news, we bought a new car yesterday. All those visits that have been delayed by our unwillingness to drive a seriously bad car to far-off places will be getting scheduled as the calendar permits. :)

Recent Highlights

• Today Gaz asked to use chopsticks as we were eating our Thai noodle soup. Her skill level, of course, is nonexistent, but she tried and didn't get upset. In the end she let me feed her with my chopsticks.
• She's stacking everything in sight! Last night she protested sitting in the sitting part of the cart so we let her sit in the basket part where she happily stacked groceries.
• This morning she named her monkey (which has thus far been known as "Bed Monkey") Max, after a character on Dragon Tales.
• She also tries to recite rhymes from Dragon Tales, and she really loves Ord.
• Gaz has rediscovered Proton's tail, much to his chagrin. She likes to hold onto it, sometimes tries to lead him around by it, pretends like she has one of her own (which usually involves much bottom-shaking on her part), goes looking for it when she sees the telltale lump of cat under the blankets when he goes for his daily snooze on the bed, etc.
• Nap times are in flux yet again. This growing thing is taxing, trying to keep up with how much food and sleep she needs at any given time.
• Still playing "peeky boo" every chance she can get.
• "Pretty" comes out "pootee" these days. Insert joke here.
• The number of things that are coming to bed with us these days is growing: now besides Max, we are routinely joined by a bear ("Blood Bear," the bear she bled all over when she busted her face open in December), her baby doll (still nameless, as Gaz has rejected my suggestion of "Shirley"), and a hand towel. She's really nuts about the hand towel. You should see her try to make it out of bed in the mornings with this collection.
  

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.

Christened and Gifted

Well, I spoke too soon in my last post about her sleeping well on her birthday. Not an hour after she went down, she was back up and stayed up until nearly midnight. Next evening, almost as bad. The night before her big day, she was up until 2:00 AM. Not because we let her stay up, but because she could not be induced to sleep earlier.

So apart from the sleep angst, Saturday ended up being a very good day. In the morning we had her nontraditional christening down by the lake, and in the afternoon we had her local first birthday party. Gaz was fussy in the morning and didn't nurse well at all until much later. She was pretty difficult until things got underway. Our good friend Greg officiated and pulled together some amazing readings. The theme, inspired by a quote from Mary Popins Comes Back was remembering and learning, or maybe relearning. Everyone brought little gifts that were symbolic of a hope or blessing that was wished for Gaz, and they were wonderfully thoughtful and creative and I'm still completely blown away. I mean, not that I ever doubted the creativity of our friends and family, but I had no idea what to expect. A catalog of these items will happen one day.

I don't think I can offer a fair description of the, and the video is lovely to peep but has terrible sound. I guess you had to be there. When all the readings have been collected I'll put something up here. Or somewhere. It might end up being a bit long. The long and the short of it is that it was beautiful, it was everything we wanted and more, and Greg almost made me cry at the end.

Then mad rush to get home, get food, get Gaz to nap (didn't happen except for the bit she slept in the car), get decorations up, get cupcakes (red velvet and confetti) set up, and get ready for people and presents to appear. And so many of our friends stopped by to partake of the cupcakes and to help us celebrate (again) Gaz's birthday. Some truly amazing presents were received, among them a couple of knitted nautiloids, a ton of clothes (thanks Grandma Cel and Aunt Hillary!), many wonderful books, a doll she immediately took a shine to, numbers and letters to play with in the bathtub, and so many more things, my brain cannot think of them all now. A big giant blanket thank you to everyone for showing up, for being so generous, and for being part of our extended family. We love you all! And thanks to the tissue paper we wrapped our gifts in, there's glitter everywhere, including on Gaz. Even after a bath.

After such a long week (I was working through all the horrible baby-won't-sleep nights, in addition to party planning and ceremony pondering) I can't claim to be all that coherent here, so feel free to email or comment with requests for details and I'll try to either edit this post or do another, spiffier one. I can pretty much guarantee that there will be more details on the ceremony later, though. Greg is typing up the readings we used for us. Wonderful, nerdy readings. Ursula K. LeGuin and Mary Popins and some guy who's poem I call the space prayer, but that's not what it's really called. But it should be.

The Big One

Today is it, that bittersweet anniversary when we officially say goodbye to the baby days and hello to the toddler madness. Today it was too hot to do anything but lie around on the living room floor (okay, I laid on the floor, she did laps around the baby safe zone) and wait for the rain that has finally just come and brough some relief. Gaz and I took a shower to wash off the day's sweat (and the day's meals, in her case) and I was very pleased to see that she's figured out to close her eyes when I told her that I was going to rinse her head. No more freaking out when water falls on her head, no more flailing about when I try to wash her face. What a big girl.

We sat in the rocking chair nursing for a while, but when she was obviously done and obviously not asleep yet, I handed her off to Mark so that I could get out of my robe and into some pajamas. I expected protests from the other room, but heard only Bob Marley. I quietly came out of the bedroom, trying not to attract her attention as she was cuddled up against Dad's chest and on the verge of sleep. The creaky floorboards alerted her anyway. She turned and looked at me, then content that Mama hadn't gone anywhere too far away, she turned back to Mark's chest and promptly fell asleep. Amazing. Since she was out by 7:30 it's probable that she will wake up in a few hours, but that should still give me plenty of time to get some work done. I might even get an early bedtime.

The quiet momentousness of the day hit me this morning when I laid her down for a diaper change. She's been resisting anything but stand-up diaper changes ever since she figured out how to pull herself up, but lately (maybe the past week or so) she's not so violently opposed to it if I'm a) fast and b) generous with the comforting kisses and entertaining zerbets. So this morning I was changing her diaper and I looked at Gaz, her cherubic little face so different and still so like that little face I first met a year ago, and I had to cry a little bit. I quickly went to the diaper champ to dispose of the diaper so I could get ahold of myself before Gaz got concerned and started crying herself. We napped on the couch today and, apart from the blistering heat (yes, even indoors), that felt very much like those early days.

It has been a very good day.

Happy Fourth!

We've had a wonderful holiday--great weather and generally good baby temper--and now, somehow, our Gaz baby is sleeping through the insane fireworks bombarding the neighborhood skies.

I hope none of youse has grabbed the business ends of any sparklers! (And if you have, well you learned your lesson didn't you?)

pants and palabras

So here's an important note if you plan to buy anything for Gaz's lower half: she's now in size 5 diapers and she won't be wearing any denim/woven fabric pants any time soon. If you must send her pants, send her knit pants. She can't climb in pants with no give, and when she can't climb she throws a tantrum. I don't care for tantrums, so please, no jeans. You can buy them if you really want to, but I won't be dressing her in them. Thank you.

At long last I think we can identify a tie for Gaz's first word. After many almosts, it seems she actually gets "hi" and "tree." Why those two? No idea. But I do say "hi" to her probably hundreds of times every day, and we do look at trees rather often. Mama and Dada she can say, but I don't think she's figured out that those words are our labels, and while we were really optimistic that "Proton" might win out, she's only been teasing me with an occassional random "poh-twon." Nope. The winners are "hi" and "tree." Silly baby.

Insert the usual comments about how Gaz just won't nap or go to sleep when she ought to here. What else can I say? It's just a fact of life right now. Difficult as all get out, but so far as we have tried various tactics it can't be helped right this second.

Oh, the Cranky

Gaz has been on a hair trigger/not sleeping well/not eating as much solids the past couple of days, so naturally I start wondering What's Wrong With My Baby. I call the nurse this morning and she asks if she's running a temperature. Let me tell you about trying to take this child's temperature.

1. Raise Gaz arm; apply thermometer to arm.
2. Gaz starts whining and refusing to let me lower her arm over the thermometer.
3. I persist and she progresses to keening and twisting away from me.
4. I move the thermometer so that it's behind her where she can't see it and try to grab it.
5. Gaz howls and writhes, now crawling away from me while I try to hold onto her and the thermometer.
6. The thermometer has still not registered her temperature, after five minutes of trying to keep it under her arm. Mama gives up and calls nurse.
7. Nurse says "just keep her distracted."
8. Mama asks if this really is the best way to take a temperature; nurse suggests taking a rectal temperature while I'm changing a daiper. Clearly, this woman has not seen Gaz getting her diaper changed.
9. Mama ask when walk-in hours are tomorrow.

::headdesk::

Not to mention that Gaz did finally fall off the couch this morning while I was trying to contain her for temperature taking. But fear not: she was much more upset that I wouldn't let her chew on the cold pack I was trying in vain to hold on the back of her head than she was about bonking her noggin.

And after all this I still don't want to ship her off to the moon. I am a glutton for punishment.

Success!

After much thought, we solved our baby-likes-to-crawl-in-bed-after-a-nap problem by buying two more bed rails for Gaz's bed (a double mattress and box springs on the floor in one corner of her room). One goes along the foot and one goes along the side. This is now the Official Nap Venue. If she wakes up quietly and gets out of bed, she won't fall any farther than she would while standing up propped up by the couch in the living room. Maybe a little headbonk, but nothing as serious as is possible from our bed. Yay! Because the other option was to buy a crib, which we were trying to avoid in the first place for many reasons, not the least of which was cost.

Gaz is, as we speak, snoozing peacefully in her bed. For almost two hours now. I love it when a plan comes together.

Adventures in Breastfeeding and Sleep Conundrums

A little while ago, I decided to try an experiment with regards to pumping. Gaz only nurses on one side at a time, and drinks little of the expressed breastmilk (EBM for short) I leave for her while I'm at work. This, after six months and a freezer full of milk, led me to think maybe I was going about this pumping thing all wrong. I decided that instead of double pumping, I would pump on my usual schedule, but only one breast at a time, alternating. Long story short, the experiment has taken a serious toll on my milk supply and Gaz has taken a similar toll on me. I'm chafed and sore (still!) and not going to try to out-logic my body ever again. I'll just have to throw out the surplus milk. I've already thrown out close to 200 ounces of milk that's been in the freezer long enough to be considered past its prime. It's not been easy to let go of all that milk, but Gaz won't drink it and I'm apparently not a good candidate for donation. Oh, well. I tried. The important thing is that Gaz is still getting all the milk she needs and is thriving.

Sleep. It's been difficult lately. As I mentioned, the night terrors are mostly a thing of the past, but we have other problems that need constant attention. Things like Gaz resisting naps and being difficult at bedtime. Last night it took both me and Mark together working for a total of two hours to get her to sleep. There are many contributing factors to all this, one being that the bedroom CD player finally kicked. Gaz has always liked music, and there are a handful of CDs that soothe her to the point of easy bedtimes. For about a week now we've had no music and just the humidifier to send her off to dreamland and she's not having it at all. Tonight we're making time to go shopping for a replacement, and then hopefully everything else will fall into place.

We're still also trying to figure out a bedtime routine that works for all of us. Now that we don't have laundry facilities in the basement Mark has to run to the laundromat down the street. It's not far away, but it does take more time than we're used to and he can't go there until I get home from work, which is anywhere from 6:30 to 7:30, depending on when I got to work and how many hours I was supposed to log on that day. There are a billion little things that make sorting out when to do what tricky. This was all so much easier when she was not mobile and farther from asserting her will upon the world. Not that I'd go back, of course. We've just got more things to suss out now.

The good news is that today I got Gaz to nap for a solid hour before I went to work. She woke up just as Lisa was hanging up her coat. We heard her on the monitor and when I went in to check on her, the little minx was sitting on my pillow, trying to get the tap light attached to the headboard and smiling away at me. This would be the bad news, that now she a) doesn't fuss when she's fully awakened and b) goes right to crawling all over the bed to search out things to entertain herself with.

Yep. Lots of shopping tonight.

sleeping better, cat worse, jumping fun (for a while)

Nap time
Originally uploaded by georgiegrrrrl.

We're all sleeping better these days. Frequent or long-duration naps during the day have been the magic bullet for Miss Gaz, so the night-screaming-that-cannot-be-countered is at a minimum. Now that the settling is feeling more settled, we're all a lot less stressed. Which leaves only the usual stresses of work, trying to keep the dishes/laundry/etc. from taking over, and trying to keep the cat from breaking/ruining everything in sight.

As far as Gaz is concerned, he's a wonderful cat. He lets her grab big fistfulls of his face or back or tail or belly, sometimes even an ear, and only complains a little when she pulls with all her baby might (which is not an insignificant level of might, I must say). No, he's only a bad cat with the adults. Like today, when I finally get Gaz down for what I hoped would be a longer than average nap (average nap this weekend: 15 minutes) and he just can't stop screaming at the bedroom door or the hall door, which is right next to the bedroom door. I spray the alleged pet deterrant on both doors, and he looks at me, screams, and goes right back to screaming at the doors. So I confine him to the back bedroom and what does he do? He uses the playpen for a litter box, and Gaz's toys and a blanket as litter to cover his business. Then no sooner had Mark cleaned up that mess, Gaz had a little explosion in her pants. The poop bucket is full tonight.

So the cat is driving the adults insane. He still gets attention, just like we've been trying to do since Gaz was born. He was just fine for the longest time, but the older she gets, the worse he acts out. I don't know what we're going to do about that. Is there cat prozac?

But enough whining about the cat.

Right now Gaz is wearing some jammies that Grandma Cel brought up last weekend. Just a week ago she was routinely crawling out of the legs because while the top half of her is definitely 18 mo. size, her legs tend to be a bit shorter and her feet are definitely on the stumpy side so far. I'm sure that'll change once she starts walking and her little hams will become perfectly serviceable strolling apendages. But for now, ham feet. Ham feet that don't fill out jammy feet all that well. She's filling out the jammies so well, I can't believe it's only been one week of growing. Right now she's bouncing in her doorway jumper, but we've almost exhausted the fun of that. She's jumping wildly, which is soon to turn to jumpin maniacally, which then becomes jumping and crying hysterically. It's interesting to watch the progression. And she's still got a cat toy in her hand, so if anyone was wondering how long cat toys are fun for, the answer is "at least a month."

So we're okay, but now I definitely have to move her to another entertainment device.

Sorry this is so fractured and random. It's hard to be coherent while keeping an eye on her. More later, perhaps when sleep happens.

Night terrors

Bah. I've been reading about night terrors and that's what the little girl has, alright. And there's nothing I can do but pat her little head and make reassuring noises just in case she fully wakes up in the course of thrashing around. Which she never does, but it at least makes me feel like I'm doing something. She's been crying hard enough lately that even Mark wakes up. Then we've got a bed full of upset people and not much to do but hang in there and hope it passes quickly.

It's my punishment for not being able to maintain a normal bedtime with my goofy work hours. Okay, not really. But it feels like that now, when I'm awake-but-exhausted following a very sleepless night.

Think soothing sleepy baby thoughts for us. I hope with our continued settling in that all our rhythms will sync up and mellow out.

Update

Look to the right and you'll see that there's another Flickr account to peek at. I'm trying to keep overlap with Mark's Flickr down. I think I'm eventually going to move all the Photobucket pictures to Flickr because Flickr just looks nicer.

Gaz is snoozing in the living room. She crashed pretty hard around 11:00. Yesterday was a long day for her, with some sight-seeing downtown, catching up with the B-Festers up in Evanston, and more time than she'd like spent in the car. We had a pretty big meltdown yesterday afternoon. Now it seems that she's catching up on nap, and she's also got some unhappy intestines. Nothing a long afternoon nap and lots of breastmilk won't cure, though.

New thing for Gaz to laugh at: the word "cat." Any time I say it, she laughs.

Celebrate the small things

Success! Gaz took a bottle today, 4+ oz, and took naps with a minimum of fussing. It's a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. It was so nice to spend the day with the happy Gaz.

Finally

It's been a crazy week or so. We've weathered our first nursing strike, which we think was brought on by a combination of teething pain and achey, innoculated legs. There was some fun new night waking/hysterical crying too. It really wasn't fun, but it puts things in perspective. I'm sure one day I'll look back on these as the easy days. In the meantime we're still waiting for new teeth to poke out.

Let's see. . . At the four-month appointment height was 27" and weight was 18 pounds, 11 ounces. Less than I expected, but with the teething and holidays making feeding schedules wacky at best, I wouldn't be surprised if she lost a little bit. There's absolutely nothing to worry about, though, because she's still above the 97th percentile for both height and weight, and she's perfectly proportioned. She's a big baby, but she's in no way overweight. Her development is right on target for her age, too. All good. This was the first appointment where she didn't cry the whole time. Until the needles that is, and even then she was all smiles until she got stuck the first time. She quieted pretty quickly, too, and remained relatively calm on the drive home. She's getting to be so big.

She's much better at sitting now by herself. I stay close by whenever I've got her sitting (especially on the couch) but she keels over much less often and when she flops forward she either chews her toes a bit and rolls to her side or pushes herself back up. She's getting really, really close to assuming the position for crawling. Just waiting for those core muscles to firm up and then look out, folks.

The other new thing is grabbing. Grabbing at anything and everything: the colander, any thing on or comprising my face (especially my lower lip), food (she's totally uninterested once she's got a handful of rice & beans, but I guess that's not the point just yet), anything with words on it, cups I'm drinking out of, everything on the coffee table, and . . . well, anything within view. She reaches and complains if she can't get to it and/or if I interfere. We're learning the fine art of distracting her from what she wants to grab and substituting something that's okay for her to get her hands and mouth on.

In among all these things, we had a great visit from Grandma Judy and Grandpa Will, who did us an enormous and most appreciated favor in taking over day care duties while Babysitter Lisa was vacationing. Gaz is very lucky to have such great grandparents, and we're lucky to have so much support from both our families.