In addition to molars Kate has a small cold. The snot coming out of her is unbelievable, and so very gross. We’re wiping her nose constantly – but unlike previous times she hasn’t been screaming or yelling about it. I think she figured out what I’m actually doing and she seems to appreciate it. One time today when I moved towards her with a tissue in my hand she actually took out her paci and waited expectantly. I really am looking forward to the day she can actually blow, though… that would be very useful. (And no, I don’t do the snot sucker. She does scream at that, horribly.)

She doesn’t seem to be affected in any other way, just the snot and the snorking and not nursing much at all, except… oh yes… the sleep. Thankfully she HAS been sleeping through the night, but that’s only after refusing to go to bed until 11:30 at night. Agh! We are so tired. I don’t even know how she does it, since she’s up for the day at 7:30 like usual, takes only one shorter nap (that I really have to work for), but then all evening every time I try to cajole her into laying her head on my chest and getting comfy and maybe even drifting off she pushes me away, squawks angrily, and goes back to playing with her toys. Which wouldn’t be much of a problem if I could just do my own thing, but she comes over every few minutes, grabs my mouse (she can reach it now), climbs onto my lap and tries hitting all the keys on my keyboard, shouts and cries when I use my phone (because she wants it), etc. On normal days I don’t use my computer much during the day because of this, I just hang out with her and clean up and do other little things until she goes to bed. No bed? No me time. Right now I should be going to bed myself but I just wanted half an hour to decompress first!

I figure I should just be thankful it’s not worse, remind myself that this will pass, and just go with it. Though a part of me feels like a bad mom for just turning on cartoons and letting her watch for hours in the evening while she plays. But I tried to put her down multiple times, I reached into my nifty bag of mom-tricks, and nothing worked. The only thing that works right now is waiting until she is tired enough that she’s falling asleep in my arms. (I just wish that happened a little earlier than 11pm!)

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This is my absolute favorite song right now. (Adele/Someone Like You) It’s just so beautiful, her voice is beyond amazing, and I have been listening to it over and over again. Adele restores my faith in music – I feel like for so long I despaired that real talent was a thing of the past, usurped by the auto-tuned pretty faces that populate the charts nowadays. It’s so refreshing and uplifting.

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My laptop is upsetting me… it keeps overheating and shutting off. The power supply gets wicked hot too, so I don’t know if the problem is with the laptop itself, or with the power supply. I have a laptop fan pad underneath that is always on (because it’s always run hot… just never repeatedly shut off because of it!) I tried cleaning out the fans and making sure there is good airflow, but I’m at a loss now, other than shutting it off when I’m not using it to let it cool down. I like this thing, and I spend enough money that I expect my computers to last 3-4 years, so this is frustrating!

Very thankfully this recent teething episode was over as soon as it started, lasting only a few days of the worst of it – maybe a week of troubled sleep. Oh, and I was wrong about it being molar #2; on a hunch I checked her upper teeth and found little points peeking through on both upper molars, too. So now she has one fully erupted molar, and three just starting to come through. Which explains why she was not a happy girl. We resorted to motrin and orajel to get us through a few days, and the day she finally took a 3-hour nap again I danced with joy.

Other things she is doing now…

She can now climb into her car seat in the car. I’m sure this is in large part because our spare car seat (a second MyRide) is in our living room as her “recliner.” It was just sitting off in a corner of the house but she would climb in/on it and refuse to get off. Since we’re not using it in a vehicle I just put it in the living room and I swear it’s her favorite thing in the room now. She loves to sit in it watching TV, she puts her toys in the cup-holders, she stands on the seat to look out the window, she climbs on and off incessantly. So really it was not much of a surprise when I put her in the truck today, closed the door to affix a sticker to the window, and when I turned back she was already sitting in her car seat, looking at me expectantly. Unfortunately she’s going through a phase of protesting being buckled in, but it’s pretty mild complaints that cease as soon as I start the vehicle.

As I mentioned before she is climbing everything. Just today she started climbing onto our rocking recliner in the living room, which is not something she could ever do before (and not something I thought she could do – she’s still very short!). She likes to sit on our AC units, which are currently sitting on one side of the kitchen on the floor after being taken out of the windows. She climbs on the aforementioned car seat.

She’s picked up a couple more words and some signs as well. While we were away I borrowed some Signing Time DVDs from a friend and played them sometimes when we needed a break (which was frequently, given how horribly she was sleeping on vacation and how whiny she was). She LOVES those DVDs, holy moly. it’s the only thing I’ve found – cartoon, educational program or otherwise – that holds her attention for the entire thing… and in fact she wails at me when it’s over. (She gets REALLY unhappy when I turn off the TV and tell her it’s all gone.) I thought teaching toddlers sign language was a good idea anyways, but the fact that she loves them so much is a big bonus! So anyways, I didn’t really practice much with her, though I tried incorporating a couple of signs to our daily routine. She enough a week later she started mimicking three: milk, more, and done. She doesn’t do them unprompted, so right now it’s still not actually useful (she prefers the “screech until mommy figures out WTF is wrong” method), but I can say, “Want some milk?” and she signs milk at me. The signs for more and done she knows and does, but she doesn’t yet understand the concept of either. I say, “More?” she signs more excitedly. I hold out more food and she turns her head and looks at me with a disapproving frown. We’re working on it.

In general she understands a lot of what we say now. “Do you want to go outside?” gets her excited, and when I tell her to go get her shoes on she runs to find them, then either brings them to me or sits down and holds out a foot. Any mention of eating or food has her going over to her highchair and trying to climb in. She knows what certain toys are and will get them for us. Even simple directions, like, “Put your foot down,” which is especially useful when she’s frustrated and stuck on top of something – I basically just have to remind her what to do and she’ll stop whining and fix it. It’s really very cool to see her understanding evolve and grow!

She’s started yelling recently – not because she’s upset, just because it sounds interesting. We were at a restaurant today, she’s sitting in a highchair fidgeting around – she didn’t want her teether or pacifier and tried to eat the damn crayons so those were removed – and she just starts shrieking, “EEEHHHHHHH!” Loudly. And then cracking a big smile. Den and I looked at her, blinking, and we were all, “Where did that come from? And why did you have to start doing it in a restaurant?” Not that it’s brand new, she’s been experimenting with yells for a little while lately, but not quite like that.

I got her a wooden puzzle in the last month and she’s been figuring it out pretty quickly. She likes the overisize puzzle with wooden knobs okay, but she LOVES the chunky wooden melissa and doug one. She will spend a significant amount of time on the floor taking the pieces out and fitting them back in. She can’t do it perfectly yet, some are harder than others for her and she’ll give a short yell of frustration sometimes, but she knows where each one goes by matching the pictures and how to flip the piece over and turn it around until it’s the proper direction to fit in – I was actually quite surprised to see her deftly flipping them around to fit. So that was definitely a good purchase for this age! I’d like to get her a couple more.

The other thing which she just discovered is stacking cups. The only set we had was outside with the water table, but she used them as cups and strainers and never stacked them. Since it’s September now I brought them upstairs and cleaned them and she loves them! It’s really fascinating to watch her try fitting them into each other, she is still quite puzzled as to why some fit and some don’t. She’ll put the smallest cup in a large cup, then the of course the medium one won’t fit and she pushes and bangs and frowns as if to say, what the heck, I know these all fit together just a minute ago!

The other thing that has been sitting in our living room for quite some time without much use up until now is a bead maze. She never had any interest in it, and just last week she started pushing the beads back and forth and now thinks that is very interesting! We have a small one, which for her age is perfect.

I love Aunt Becky. Because who doesn’t love Aunt Becky?

However. If your husband does not read Aunt Becky it is probably not a good idea to be all, “Shut your whore mouth!” He is unlikely to understand how funny it is.

Just saying.

Before I had a child I don’t think I ever really thought much at all about the process of teething. I mean, people would mention it about their babies, “Ugh, she’s teething,” and I would try to sympathize. But it always sounded to me like this big event, a stage they went through, a finite, limited bad time.

I was so wrong.

Teething is a state of being for apparently the first 2-3 years. You get small breaks in between teeth that are either a really nice break or a taunting reminder of what “normal,” depends on the week. It seems like 1 week off and 3 weeks of getting a new tooth. Especially when your child gets them one a time, like mine does.

So we’re on molar #2 now, I could feel one sharp point poking through. The first molar didn’t seem to bother her, for some reason; just one day it was there, and I was stunned. I incorrectly thought that would be how the rest would go. Nope. As usual she is not really bothered during the day but is absolutely refusing to take naps. This makes her a little monster – a whining, crying, wanting-to-nurse-constantly monster that bursts into tears at every little thing. Foot stuck? Tears. Dropped toy? Tears. TV turned off? Massive meltdown. At least she is sleeping at night… once she finally goes down. Last night I kept trying and failing and ended up sitting in the living room with her as she quietly played with toys until 11pm. She just starts screaming when I take her near her crib – the teeth always hurt her at night.

I have not had very good sleep the past few nights, then with Kate refusing to nap at all during the day and being very needy and whiny and upset all day long? Oh, I am exhausted.

I used to love photography. I never had the passion for it that true photographers do, but I enjoyed playing with my cameras, learning, trying new and creative things. When I got my DSLR I was so excited. Den and I both agreed that it was an absolute necessity before we had any kids, so I could take some good photos of them.

And to be fair, I do have a lot of good photos of Kate. But I find myself reaching for my phone (droid) to take pictures rather than my very expensive, slightly fancy DSLR. For one thing I always have it with me. When juggling a child, diaper bag, stroller, and goodness knows what else, the last thing I want to do is be packing a big camera bag – not to mention risk getting water or sand or dirt in it. And the other huge thing about my phone is the one-touch upload to facebook. I LOVE that. I can share funny pictures right then instead of waiting until evening, downloading them to the computer, resizing them, and uploading them. Not to mention that when I use the big camera it’s never one or two photos, but rather 20 or 30 I need to wade through, edit, and cull. I can always manage to find 2 seconds to flick through photos on my camera and upload; finding an hour on the computer is much, much more difficult.

Some days I look at my camera sitting on the shelf and sigh in guilt. I ought to be using it more, it certainly does take better pictures. Though not that my droid takes bad pictures – it’s an 8 megapixel camera and the quality of outdoors pictures are really very good. It’s just, well… I feel bad for my big camera.

Kate is apparently going through one of those “mental leaps” where they start to process information in a different way, understanding some new concept of this world we live in. The current concept is familiarity. This is the stage when babies start screaming at bearded men when they don’t usually see anyone wearing a beard, or big hats when they don’t usually see hats. Kate? Screamed at a sasquatch. She was watching some TV with Den when a beef jerky commercial “messin’ with sasquatch” came on. I wasn’t in the room, but I heard a scream of terror and then frantic sobbing and walked in to find her clutching Denis and looking over her shoulder. Den was trying to comfort her without laughing and told me about the commercial. Not that I blame her, I mean a sasquatch is pretty scary. But she’s never reacted like that to anything before!

Then later in the evening we were at a party. Kate was getting tired, but as usual she was just kind of chilling out and enjoying the social atmosphere. Den was holding her watching a card came in progress when a beer was knocked over and everyone shouted and jumped up to grab it. Kate started screaming hysterically. She wouldn’t calm down, either… Den took her outside for a while and finally got her distracted on something new to look at. But holy moly, you would have thought the ground had just opened up under her feet and sucked her down into a pit of lava the way she was screaming.

She’s also really been fighting her nap and bedtime… acting like she’s not tired even though she’s exhausted and whiny (so SO whiny, OMG-shoot-me-whiny). I do all the normal things, I rock her and sing to her and she even relaxes a bit, I put her in her crib and… she doesn’t sleep. She throws everything out of her crib and then screams and screams. The past few days she had a 1-hour nap, a 30-minute nap, a very very late nap. So frustrating! If she wanted to be up and play, that’s one thing, but to refuse to go to sleep and then being a whiny mess is just not acceptable. Hopefully this phase passes quickly.

In addition to that she has started climbing everything in sight. Standing on things is her new obsession: standing on her pony seat, standing on the futon, standing on boxes and toys and anything else in her path. She’s had more than one crash lately – though usually from small things, and not the big climbs when we are actually expecting her to fall.

Unfortunately she’s also started some tantrums. I sometimes let her watch videos on my phone if I need to distract her for a few minutes, but she’s started throwing major fits when I take it away, which is not cool; I now avoid letting her even see my phone. She also has started getting very unhappy about my attempts to lead her away from things she wants to see. She normally loves to hold my hand and will proudly parade around with me, but if she gets the sense that I’m taking her somewhere she doesn’t want to go she sits down and yanks her arms away, and failing that will start making noise. (Not a scream or a yell or a cry, but a fake cry/complaining.) She’s getting good at the going limp thing. And of course as soon as she gets out of my grasp she gets up and runs the opposite direction. And that’s when I move from “trying to gently lead you” to “fine, I’ll pick you up and carry you while you squirm.”

It’s a good thing she’s usually in a good mood… well, when she gets enough sleep, at least.

Yesterday I went to Home Depot with the thought of replacing our toilet seat. It worked fine but was old and kind of beat up looking. New seats can be really cheap so it just didn’t make sense to keep staring at something so ugly many times a day.

There was a wall of toilet seats and I quickly perused for the cheap ones, then looked over the ones that have the soft close mechanism. $30? Awesome. Done deal, and no more worries about Kate smashing her fingers on the rare times she is in the bathroom.

But wait, what was that? A built-in toddler seat? That is perfect! Not of use just yet, but it will be soon enough – and our bathroom is too tiny for more clutter.

I cam home and installed it while Kate was eating dinner. But then she was done and I wasn’t, so she came to “help.” Let me just say one thing about toddler “help”: it’s not helpful. At all. Like when I was putting the groceries away today she slammed the fridge door on my back several times. And when I roared, “OW! I said stop!!” she laughed. Thankfully I managed to distract her with a ratchet as I finished cleaning up. (“Here, play with this heavy metal object!”)

Then she saw me opening the toilet lid.

Though she does accompany me every time I use the toilet (an unanticipated side-effect of parenthood: getting used to someone climbing under your legs and playing with your pants as you pee), I have been careful to shield the functions of the toilet from her view. She tries to play with the lid, but I am sitting there. (This does result in bruises on my back.) When I get up I quickly put the lid down, flush, and shimmy her right out before she can explore this big water-bowl-lid thing.

Yesterday I was careless. She saw it. Her eyes lit up.

She played with the lid, lifting the seat, putting it down, pulling down the toddler seat, putting that up, closing the lid, lifting the lid, closing the lid, lifting the lid…

When I was done, and had enough of watching the joy of toilet lids, I gently took her hand to lead her from the bathroom, like I do every time. She pulled away. I tried again. She cried. I tugged her towards the door and she fell into a limp heap, shrieking. Cries persisted after I carried her out and shut the door.

Much later in the evening, after Den got home and was playing with Kate, I slipped off to the bathroom by myself, shutting the door gently behind me. Kate apparently saw me leave, as she ran towards the bathroom, crying. She stood at the door, wailing. When I left the bathroom, slipping out quickly and shutting the door, she frantically reached around me, trying to get in.

I’ve awakened a monster. She knows.

Every night when I lay down to sleep I’m usually still pretty wired, my brain tossing over thoughts and ideas and composing blog posts. And then I get up in the morning all bleary-eyed, wishing I drank coffee, and those thoughts are gone. I stare at a blank page. What was I going to write? I swear there were like three or four subjects last night. They were even thoughtful and well-written in my head. I really miss intelligent posts.

I’ve been a night owl my entire life. As children my brother would be up and perky at 6:30am, but yet my mom routinely had to come in and threaten to dump water on me to get me out of bed. (Once I was awake and realized it was time for school I was happy and willing to get moving, but it’s the moving from asleep to aware that is the problem.) I’m a kid who used to sleep in on Christmas morning. Likewise at bedtime my mom was threatening me with all manner of things in order to get me to actually go to bed. And even then she’d walk in and catch me reading 2 hours later.

High school sucked with the early mornings. When I started college I did mostly evening classes, frequently getting home after 10:30 and then doing homework half the night. If I had no choice but to take on a class before noon I was very grouchy about it. I just don’t function well in the mornings and would typically doze off during class.

Everyone would shake their head at me and say, “Wait until you get a job and have to be up early!” or “Wait until you have a kid who gets you up early!” Which is not a sentiment I understand, really – I mean, why change everything to make it harder now in order to prepare for a maybe 5 years down the road? Regardless, I would just shrug. I’ll deal with that later, I told them.

Now I have a child who likes to get up between 7 and 8am – sometimes at 6. (I dislike the 6. Don’t even talk to me about 5.) You would think that I would be tired enough to sleep when she goes to bed, right? Well… no. I am tired in the mornings, so sometimes I’ll take a nap when she does. But in the evening I still perk up and get full of energy until midnight. I had to set a bedtime for myself of midnight or I would stay up later than that, which does not lead to fun mornings.

I’m just a night owl. It still works for me – although, I could do without Kate waking up crying half an hour after I finally fall asleep.

I am sad I didn’t even feel the earthquake yesterday. Granted here in MA we’re a long ways from the center, but some people felt it. I was sitting in a doctor’s office with Kate, reading her books waiting for the doctor, and didn’t feel a thing.

It was Kate’s 15 month appointment. She measured in at 29.5 inches long (around 20th percentile) and 20lbs 5oz (around 35th percentile – jumped up!). She looks fine, as usual, meeting all milestones and is healthy and happy.

He did agree with me that one eye of hers is a bit droopy. I’ve been looking at it for the last month. At first I thought it was a little swollen from a bug bite or something, but it didn’t go away. Then I was working on some older scrapbooking pages and realized that one eye was a tiny bit droopy even months ago. I went back even further and could see signs of it (very very slight) even at 6 months old! It’s been driving me nuts now, noticing it every time I look at Kate. I don’t think it’s a big deal – her eyes seem fine otherwise, it’s not obstructing her view, it’s very slight, and everything I have read online says that it’s somewhat common and just a congenital weak muscle that can be fixed by surgery when they are older. But just to be thorough the doctor is sending us to an ophthalmologist to get it checked out – which I’m glad for. It will be good to get reassurance that it’s just a small thing and not an issue to worry about.

This is the first appointment with the pediatrician in which Kate seemed to be a little reticent about him. Previous appointments she’s been all smiles and rolling and scooting (or walking). This time she definitely stepped back towards me, holding onto my leg, and then when on the table she held my hand and watched him carefully. She still smiled at him a little bit and babbled a little bit, but compared to her normal behavior it was reserved. It’s interesting watching her awareness of the things around her. This past month whenever other people try to touch her she grabs my leg and steps back, and sometimes even pushes the person away and whines a little. She is still an outgoing child, loves to walk around and greet people, but she now has a “bubble” of personal space that she doesn’t like intruded on.

I find it amusing how easily I can catch Kate unawares. I can see why kids think their moms have eyes on the back of their head, but they’ve got it wrong; it’s not another set of eyes, it’s really big ears!

Kate will sometimes wander into the kitchen and I will let her be for a few minutes as long as I recognize the sounds, which is how it went yesterday. That one’s her little kitchen; that one is the broom; that one is her climbing in the big canvas bag. Silence – that always gets my attention. Then little noises I am not familiar with. I get up and walk into the kitchen to check on her and I see her crouched down on the other side of the kitchen, staring very intently at something. She’s poking and picking it up. I see her stand up, take a couple of steps, then that hand with whatever bit of dirt or whatnot held in her thumb and forefinger moves up up to her mouth. I’m standing right there in the middle of the kitchen. She clearly doesn’t see me at all because when I gave a loud, “Uh-uh!” she startled so bad she almost fell down. There was a brief flicker of something across her face – maybe a “rats, foiled again!” – and then she walked over to me and held out her hand, smiling widely, as if this had been her plan all along.

I kind of enjoy my new superpowers.