So Kate’s birthday is still 2 months away. I know that, because that means I have less than 2 months to get her friggin scrapbook done and I am busting ass. Kate is helpfully taking 1 1/2 hour naps twice a day, which is letting me on it. I have… 2 months semi-done. Of 10. And some of the pregnancy stuff done, but not all. Aaagghhhh. I really really want to have it done to put on display at her birthday party! So I’m working feverishly on scrapping. Some of the local moms also scrap so we’ve been getting together one evening a week for a couple of hours. Which is helpful and yet more chatting than working on my end. I work best when I get all focused and silent in the middle of the night.

I’ve also been keeping my eye open for the toy I wanted to get her for her birthday. Kate has a lot of toys, and yet it’s still hard not to keep buying cute fun things. For the bigger items, however, I try very hard to find them second-hand. The Leap Frog music table she has and loves (her “big Christmas present”) was bought off a local mom for cheap. The exersaucer that gave us many months of hands-free time was given to me by a coworker. For her birthday I had it in mind to get her the Fisher Price Learning Home. My best friend Kel had one for her boys and I remember watching her youngest play with it for a very long time in terms of child attention spans. She, and several other friends, swear by that house. When I saw it on Craig’s List I snapped it up. And you know, she’s so young she doesn’t have any idea about birthdays… not to mention that she’ll be getting a ton of new toys and I’m all about spreading them out. Plus she was getting bored with the music table and really needed something to crawl on/around and play with.

And that is why Kate has been playing with her “birthday present” for the past week. The good news is that it lives up to expectations, she loves it! She very quickly figured out the different things on it. It’s now a common sight to see her toddle over to it and flick the light switch a few times, or ring the doorbell, or open and close the mailbox. Her favorite, however, is the radio. It’s really quite hysterical because she crouches down to push one of the four buttons to start a song (usually pressing it four or five times in a row just for good measure), then turns to play with something else. When the song ends she leans over to press another button (four or five times). The funniest is when she starts the song then opens or closes the door, because the sound effect for the door cuts off the song. She’ll sit there for a quite a while, starting the song and inadvertently stopping it, over and over again. You can see the frown on her face, like she just doesn’t understand why the radio is doing that. (I actually think that’s the reason she pushes the button so many times!)

… I just realized that the 3 pages I wrote in Kate’s baby journal document for her 10 month has magically disappeared. Son of a bitch, now I have to re-write it all. Ugh.

One of the most unexpected side-effects of having a live child has been making some local friends. I’m not really an outgoing person, I’m a techie and a home-body, I feel most comfortable interacting socially online. I have many, many online friends. But there’s certainly something to be said for being able to go grab a bite to eat with someone, to take a walk, or to just sit around and talk. Having a baby seems to be one of those universal social networking gateways. Suddenly there’s clearly common ground. And since your life does tend to revolve around your child it’s not just a common interest, you’re actually walking a similar life path, hitting similar milestones, dealing with similar frustrations. And the common ground is pretty much guaranteed to be for the next 18 years and more. Since Kate was born I’ve made an effort to join groups and go to open playgroups. I can be a little slow to extend friendship – not because I’m slow to like other people, but because I’m never entirely sure that the other person will like me! But now I find myself having actual friends.

Friends with kids a similar age is getting more and more a necessity if I ever want to get out because I’m realizing how exhausting it is to take Kate somewhere that isn’t baby-proofed. She does really well wherever we go but she wants to explore, and I don’t blame her. It’s exciting! She wants to climb things and pick things up and put things in her mouth. She wants to pull open cupboards and pull things off shelves. If someone has a mobile child chances are they are okay with things being slobbered on and banged around – chances are anything dangerous or breakable has been removed and gated off. Other places in public… not so much. Obviously I re-direct Kate and remove things from her and say, “No-no, that’s not yours,” but I try to limit the amount of time I need to do that. It’s so frustrating for her! She’s too young to really understand why she can have one thing and not another, and while she’s remarkably tolerant of my distractions and re-directions she does lose her patience after a while. Especially if I’m trying to get her to sit on my lap for any extended period. (Not that she’s ever been good about sitting still.)

But we still do get out a lot – I think other moms might be surprised at how much we’re visiting! Kate is a really adaptable child, she enjoys being out, she has no problems being in new places and meeting new people, her schedule is really flexible, and she travels well. It used to be easier when I was exclusively breastfeeding, as I never had to worry about having food with me or how to feed her… now she’s eating solids I find it’s a little bit more tricky. Three times in the past week we’ve found ourselves at someone’s house for dinner or dropping by at a restaurant. Today I ended up buying a travel booster (Fisher Price Luv U Zoo Booster) so that I can have her safely secured with a tray to eat off of. I find that most restaurant high chairs suck – they have no tray so she has to eat off the table, they have no back and are too big for her small body which makes me nervous, and half the time the buckles are broken! I’m going to keep the travel booster in my truck so that it’s with us wherever we are.

As for the food itself, well that’s becoming less of an issue now that she’s eating a lot of what I’m eating. She’s very good about chewing and we’ve had no problems giving her whatever foods off my plate – from the start I’ve offered her small mushy finger foods (since we didn’t start really giving her solids regularly until she started the pincer grasp). Today at a restaurant I ordered a side of zucchini and she gobbled it up! Another time we ate hibachi and she ate half my noodles (note to self: order extra noodles). She’s eating meat cut up or ground, she likes diced fruits and steamed veggies, she eats crackers, she loves yogurt and cheese. She’s had pancakes and french toast and scrambled eggs. (As an aside, did you know that the whole no eggs, no peanut butter thing is not the current recommendations? The AAP changed their stance on potential allergy foods back in 2008. I didn’t know that.)

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So I had that whole big plan for sleep and I was motivated. I was. And then there was sick, and then there was teething. And now that I’m getting some good nights again I just frankly don’t care where she sleeps or even what time she goes to bed.

I’m learning that her going to sleep at 8:30pm makes it highly unlikely she’ll sleep until 9am anyways. As much as I enjoy quiet evenings, I appreciate sleeping in even more. I still struggle with the feeling that I’m somehow doing wrong by her if I don’t get her to bed by x time. But then I think, is she overtired? Not usually. (Not unless she’s had a bad night or interrupted naps.) I think people hear that she doesn’t get to bed until 10pm some nights and think she’s getting only 8 hours of sleep. But if we sleep until 9 she’s getting 11 hours! Plus she’s been taking longer naps again, so 3-4 hours of nap time total per day. And she’s a really happy girl – I know it, and everyone comments on how happy she is.

And as for the where – well honestly I stopped sleeping well. I know that sounds ridiculous because most mothers can’t wait until their baby sleeps in their own room and sleeps through the night. I found myself laying in bed playing with my phone or just staring at the ceiling. Plus when I finally did fall asleep it really sucks to be woken up and have to get up. It sucks! Now that she’s back to sleeping peacefully beside me I have happily taken her back in and we’re getting some glorious glorious sleep. In fact she’s learned now how to wiggle and roll around and get herself comfortable. I have to make sure she’s very sleepy when I let her do it (if she’s not almost asleep and I let her roll around she suddenly pops to her knees and crawls away to play), but once I nurse her and cuddle her and she’s drifting off I can scoot away and get myself settled in, then she rolls and wiggles closer to me and gets herself comfortable, then we both fall asleep. It must be quite the picture, both of us side-by-side, both sleeping on our bellies in the same position.

We do need to take the fourth side back off the crib, though. It sounded like a good idea – a safe place to let her play in the morning, since she liked to play in her crib. Instead? I put her in it and she cries. Not helpful. I liked it far better when the side was off so she could crawl in and out of it at will.

Now if we could just get that second tooth we’d be laughing. (I thought it was through… but I STILL don’t feel it. I can see it right there! Last night between 2 and 3am was apparently a Bad Tooth Hour…. just tired, unhappy screaming and sobbing for an hour.)

I am currently working on a few posts – though I shouldn’t say it like that, it makes it sound like I’m actually sitting here writing things which is so not the case. Rather, at night when I’m supposed to be sleeping I have posts running through my head, until the morning when I wake up and forget until the next night when I lay down. Tricky things. But anyways, I feel like it would be helpful for me to write down some tips and tricks I’ve picked up along the way, in case it might help someone. And for when I have the next baby, by then I’ll have forgotten what it’s like to have a baby and will need a refresher, lol. I just need some time to write, and I may have that in the next few evenings after Kate goes to sleep. Mostly I just want to get all this out of my head so I can start sleeping again!

I don’t want to jinx myself, but the last two nights she’s slept well, no flailing and screaming, so maybe we’re getting into the lull between teething episodes. At this point I’m fairly convinced that I will never sleep well again and that anyone or book that says things like “minor sleep disturbance” is a liar liar pants-on-fire. I find myself fondly reminiscing to when she was a tiny newborn and slept all night long, sound asleep against me. Maybe that’s some twisted form of karma – the friends who currently have babies mostly sleeping through the night are the ones whose babies had colic for months as newborns.

Though that’s not to say we’re not making some progress. Now that Kate’s feeling better she’s returned to sleeping beside me, as in, I get to sleep on my belly. Which, now that I have started doing again, I can’t NOT do. She and I are both belly sleepers so I get her comfortable and then get myself comfortable. Just as I’m falling asleep she flops around like a fish until some body part of hers connects with some body part of mine (usually my face) and then she sighs happily and falls immediately back asleep as she presses herself against me. And then I try to wiggle around and move so that I can actually, oh you know, breathe. But it’s good. Once we’re both asleep the night is just fine and we wake up side by side and well-rested. Or she wakes up well-rested 2 hours earlier than usual and I try my best to convince her to go back to sleep, fail, and put her in her crib so I can sleep more. Whichever.

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It’s funny now watching Kate interact with people. She has developed a strong affection for kids, babies especially. She giggles happily when she sees babies in her books. But her favorite are other kids! We’ve had some playdates recently and she makes a beeline for the other baby, babbling and shrieking excitedly. Then she reaches out her finger and tries to touch the baby on the head, nose, mouth, and sticks her fingers in their mouth. She is obsessed with mouths. She laughs with delight as she does it. I generally have to spend a lot of time hovering and saying, “Kate, gentle!” and making sure she doesn’t pull someone’s hair or smack them in the face. The other babies, while they will smile at her and like to look at her, quickly lose interest and play with their toys. Yesterday the little boy started crying when she touched his face, which was sad and cute. She’s far more into them than they are to her.

Since learning to walk she’s really been developing her independence. For a baby who wouldn’t let me put her on the floor even, and who a few months ago was crying if I left the room and clinging to my lap, she’s now quite the independent girl. Yesterday she kept walking down the hall of my friend’s house and into their kitchen to try playing with the cat food, and once I found she had gone around to the stairs and was trying to climb (which, by the way, she proved she is fully capable of). She was a little overwhelmed one day when we had a bunch of people in our house, but when we go out to meetings and gatherings she just toddles off to grab some toys and shriek at other babies. I’m now having to do the “okay, where’d she go?” check frequently now.

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I’ve been writing this while Kate was napping, which thankfully she was doing really well today. I heard something that I thought for a moment might be her, but there was no cry so I didn’t think anything more of it. She always just sits up in bed and cries until I go in to get her, but the mattress is on the floor so I don’t worry about her falling off or anything. Then just a few minutes ago I heard a quiet noise…. scratch scratch scratch. On the door. I carefully go open her bedroom door and look at her bed – empty. Look down – baby’s standing there grinning at me. LOL! I totally busted up laughing. She’s now walking around the living room saying “AAHHHHH!” at the kitty.

Today I watched a little bit of Pregnant in America – I’d heard people say they didn’t like it as much as other birth movies but I wanted to see. I like it so far. It’s just got me thinking about having a homebirth. Before it wasn’t an option because we didn’t know what to expect, and because we were scared. It’s different now that we have Kate. But the main thing that makes me think that a homebirth would be really so nice is my tendency for very fast labors. I keep thinking about that damn car ride to the hospital and how horrible it was. Not horrible as in it ruined everything and scarred me forever or anything, but horrible as in wouldn’t it be nice to avoid that next time. Okay, yes, we plan to go in earlier next time, but that part scares me because it really was hard for me to know when I was actually in labor until right at the end. It would be so much easier to just call someone and have them come to me. Not to mention how nice it would be to sleep in my own bed. I hate sleeping in the hospital. Actually I don’t think I have actually slept at the hospital – I have spent a total of two nights in the hospital, one after Devin and one after Kate, and I don’t think I actually slept either time. I hate how alien it feels, how I can’t get comfortable, and with Kate I hated how far away she felt even though she was right beside me. It wasn’t until we were home that she felt real.

Not that I’m even pregnant, but something to ponder, I suppose. We’ve been talking about going back to do IVF again maybe in December or early next year, but we have to figure out how to accomplish that, financially. And I want to balance the timing between how we would like the kids spaced versus continuing to breastfeed Kate longer… I don’t know that she or I will be ready to wean at 18 months, but that is still so far away. Then of course there’s the nagging voice wondering if it will even be possible to get pregnant again but I’m choosing to ignore it.

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More radio silence because I think I can sum it up pretty easily: teething sucks. There has been a lot of crying on her end and not a whole lot of sleeping on mine. Recently she only will sleep comfortably if I’m sitting up straight or standing… not very conducive to me sleeping, too. Last night every time I tried to gently gently lay down and wiggle out from under her so I could get comfortable she’d start arching her back and screaming again. Ugh ugh. For her nap this morning I had to sit up holding her just so she’d get enough sleep. I’m tired of having a whiny cranky baby waddling around my house (and falling and crying frequently). When she has good naps she’s great but when she doesn’t she’s a very sad baby.

The cold is on the way out, she just had a tiny bit of a runny nose today and I have this lingering freaking cough just like last time.

Now I love Kate’s happy fun musical toys as much as anyone and have no problems having them in the house. But I do think it’s good to have a variety of different toys to explore, as well as just common household things. I really love watching Kate figure encounter new things and figure them out.

* What was my round metal trash bin is now a fun clangy rolling object. I can no longer put trash in it. Today I even caught her picking it up and carrying it as she walked, which was hilarious because it’s not light and it’s nearly as big as she is.

* She has a stacking toy that is made of wooden rings – they’re shaped like discs with a hole through the center. She couldn’t care less about stacking right now, but she loves those rings. She carries them around, bangs them together and against other objects, and her newest discovery is that when tossed on the hardwood floor they wobble and make funny noises. She has learned how to throw objects, which requires quite a bit of coordination to move her arm and let go with her hand all at the right time.

* Yesterday she discovered a small baby shoe that had laces – not something she ever wore, but it must have been in the shoe basket. She turned it over in her hands, she tossed it, she swung it around by the laces. She was fascinated for I think 30 minutes or more. Unfortunately when she was swinging it by the laces the shoe itself kept hitting her and she was crying and couldn’t figure out why it hurt.

* Laundry is a big thing with her right now. She learned how to pull open the bottom two drawers of her dresser and she just stands there and pulls every single thing out of it and tosses it on the ground.

* The laundry balls I have in the dryer caught her interest – they’re knobbly and make funny sounds as they roll. In fact, all balls interest her right now. Her current favorites are the Fisher Price Roll-a-rounds, as they’re just the right size for her little fists and she can send them rolling everywhere.

* Cables are unfortunately a huge attraction right now. I used to be able to distract her but for some reason this week she is insistent on getting to my power strip under my desk. Argh. I’ve blockaded the area off, but she’s trying to climb the blockade. I want to buy or build a little box or cabinet or something to put them all in.

* Books! She really loves her books, which thrills me. I never really “read” to her, but we always provided board books for her to play with. She still loves her “That’s Not My Dragon” (Usborne Books), which is a touchy feely book. Her other favorites are “Bright Baby Colors” (Priddy Books), which is very simple with bright bold pictures; Peek-a-Boo (Scholastic), which has pictures of babies faces and makes Kate giggle every time she flips through it; and the Sandra Boynton books (we have Snuggle Puppy; Moo Baa, La La La; Oh My, Oh My, Oh Dinosaurs; and Opposites). She has recently figured out how to use her thumbs to separate pages that are stuck together (before she’d just turn whatever pages she could grab with her fingers). I love watching her manipulate the pages, study the pictures, touch the shapes. She never eats her books anymore, which amazes me.

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Because of the aforementioned fascination with the power strip I have not been able to sit at my computer for any length of time, even when she’s occupying herself. (Soon as she sees me in this corner she makes a beeline for me and goes for the cables.) And with the cold I couldn’t put her down to sleep. Arg. I don’t mind holding her while she sleeps, I just wish she’d let me watch TV or play on my phone at the same time… but no, those woke her up every time. Thankfully today she sounds much better, the second tooth popped out, and she actually just fell asleep on her bed easy as usual! Yay!! Her screaming at bedtime was a bit frazzling. She had been sleeping well in bed with me though, even while sick… I’m just glad we at least got some sleep at night.

I had the intention of writing something but then I decided to take the time after Kate went to bed to update her “baby’s first year” calendar. I’m also realizing I have only two months left to get her scrapbook up to date if I want to have it available at her birthday party. Of course she didn’t give me much time to actually work on it, and last night was a disaster.

I am sick yet again and so is she. I swear this has been the most head colds I’ve had in one winter, ever. It’s always my damn sinuses. Kate brought this one to me, as per usual – no idea where she got it this time, though. She’s congested and it is making putting her to sleep really sucky… she’ll be almost asleep and then SNORT COUGH WAAIIIL. I have to rock her to sleep standing up, holding her in my arms against my chest, and only when she is *fully* asleep can I lay her down… and even then she was waking up screaming and snorting 5 minutes later. Boy does she get ticked off when she can’t breathe well. Naps are even horrible, if I can even get her to sleep; the last two days she napped very briefly in my arms. It’s been about 4 days of little to no sleep during the day and very crappy sleep at night for her, she’s been more or less a walking zombie. A clumsy, whiny zombie. And it’s not even that she’s congested really badly, when she’s awake and moving she’s fine other than a runny nose – it’s just when she lays down it drains and one snort and she’s a screaming banshee. Ugh.

I think adding to the congestion and runny nose is more teething… she’s been drooling a lot the last day or two and really chewing on things. I think that second tooth really wants to finally pop through, and I wish it just would. (Her first tooth is through and the second one is visible right under the gum, and has been since #1 showed up. But it just won’t come through! And/or maybe there are more on the way, who knows.)

(I wrote this last night and today I noticed that #2 is poking through. YAY! Maybe we’ll get back on track with sleeping!)

I know it’s a little late, but I finally got around to taking and editing her 9 month pictures.

Looking at the pictures compared to her 6 months I can’t believe how much her hair has come in. And see what I mean about the eyes? They’re still a funky in-between color. But man, I look at her pictures and my heart just thumps in my chest.

Things that Kate is now doing, most of which falls under the category of “ridiculously cute”:

* Giggling at herself in the mirror. She smiles coyly, giggles, reaches forward to pat the mirror. She also likes to lean forward to give slobbery open-mouth kisses to her reflection.

* Touching everything with her index finger. I remember a day when everything was to be grabbed with a fist. Now that she’s perfected her pincer grasp she’s moved on to a form of pointing. She loves little buttons to press with one finger. She’s obsessed with my touch-screen phone (though it’s more “I’m going to keep touching the screen because sometimes cool things happen when I do it!” than anything intentional). Today she was crawling around after one of our cats, reaching out to touch him in the whiskers, forehead, nose, belly. (This is an improvement over the fur-pulling, even if it still managed to irritate him after a while.) Last night she leaned over to touch her stick her finger in her baby cousin’s mouth. She really like mouths.

* With the babbling she’s doing all the time now I get the feeling she’s trying to imitate some words. Specifically, “Kitty.” While crawling around after the cat she’d sit beside him and babble away, with the “da da” turning to “di di” and the consonants pushing to a t/k kind of sound. Once in a while it sounds almost like “titty” or “keekeh”. It’s still more accidental than anything, but I can tell there is some intention behind the babbling. Very exciting!

* She flipped through the pages of one of her books, pressing her finger onto the picture on every page, babbling the whole time very quietly as if she was talking to the book. Den and I were trying to record it, while trying not to distract her with our stiffled giggles.

* She is walking more and more now. She’s letting go of her toys to walk several feet into the center of the room before she squats down and puts her hands down to move into a crawl. It’s all very controlled, if wobbly. It’s so bizarre to look up and see her just standing in the middle of the room, babbling and waving her arms around in excitement.

* We now have “shouting” matches. She was laying in my arms saying, “Aahhhhh!!” and I said “Aaahhhhh!” back at her, matching her pitch. Back and forth, with her getting louder and softer and higher and lower, me doing the same thing. She found it very amusing. (So did I.)

* When I’m laying on her bed while she plays with her books she likes to crawl up onto me and then roll over so that her head is right next to mine – and her cheek is right next to my lips. Then she lays back against me until I give her the requisite “MWAH!” on the cheek. Sometimes she then sits up and goes back to her books, sometimes she stays there for more kisses and “Nom nom nom!”s until she giggling uncontrollably.

* She shares her toys and pacis with me. She’ll hold it up to my face until I pretend to nom it, then she’ll take it back before holding it out to me again.

It was raining today – drizzly, cold, grey-skied rain. I don’t recall the weather three years ago on March 6th, but I do remember it was grey and raining slightly a month later at Devin’s memorial. This kind of weather makes me think of that day, makes me think of him. So very appropriate for today.

I was so crabby this morning. Everything sucked. There were dirty dishes and cat poop and clutter to clean and I just hated all of it. Den was ice-fishing this morning, which we both agreed was probably better for all involved, him being home would just have put him in my crossfires. Kate couldn’t understand why my mood was alternating between short-tempered and weepy. There was no sit down sobbing, just a few random tears, brought on by something else. Of course I knew why they really came. Thankfully by afternoon the melancholy had gone.

We invited a few family members over for dinner – nothing big, not the entire extended family, but just a few for a nice sit-down dinner, as has been our tradition every year. We cleaned, we cooked, we sat down with the babies and played. Every year gets a little fuller, a little easier. The first year there was just our little niece, so close in age to what Devin should have been. The second year I was pregnant with Kate and SIL was pregnant with her boys. And this year here she was, and so were the twins. So much noise! Musical toys and babies shrieking and kids talking. But you know, this year it didn’t feel like someone was missing. Devin was present, in memory, in spirit. And he was present in his little sister.

It was a good day.

So guess what… I put Kate to bed at 8:15 last night and she slept until 11:45. I shit you not. I sat in bed and talked with my hubby, then read for a while and played on my phone. I’m so happy those teeth came through!!! I fed her at 11:45 and then I think at around 2:30 she woke up again. I’m not entirely sure after that. At some point I stayed with her, as she was fussing through the early morning hours and I wanted us both to sleep until 8 if possible (and we did). I really really hope the 8-midnight thing sticks! Wouldn’t that be flipping awesome!

(Of course, then more teeth will come. But at least now I know what to expect!)

I just feel so relieved that there was some reason for the weirdness and frustration.

::

At Kate’s 9 month appointment I mentioned to the doctor how she still wasn’t using any consonants or babbling. She shrieked all the time, lots of vowel sounds, raspberries, and other various noises… but no consonants. I wasn’t concerned, just mindful. I wanted to mention it, just in case. He wasn’t worried either, just said we’ll check in again at her 1 year appointment to see how she’s doing.

Of course two days later something clicked and she started babbling. Just like that. One day she wasn’t, the next day she was. If I say “YA YA YA” to her she repeats it back to me. She’s also throwing in “b” “g” and “d” sounds.

::

Dearest child,

The reason I have left the room is because you are playing with your books instead of going to sleep. I will keep leaving when you keep trying to play. If you suddenly decide that sleeping is a good option I will be happy to lay with you and cuddle you.

Love, mom

(I made the mistake of letting her nap until 6pm. 9:30 and she’s still not tired enough.)