Baby in the summertime

Miss Ladybug is sitting on my lap content to babble away about who-knows-what.  She sounds so matter of fact about her nonsense that I could easily be convinced that she knows exactly what she means to be saying.  My heart melts every time she says “mama” even though it’s pretty clear that she isn’t associating the word with me.  It’s just another fun sound to make.

Her favorite thing these days is catching herself in the mirror.  There is a small mirror that attaches to her playpad, and it is hilarious to see her smile so big at a glimpse of the baby in the mirror.  She’ll smile and talk to the baby for several minutes–an eternity in baby time.

It has been a busy summer with new jobs/new schedules, papa-daughter road trips, and more.  And this weekend is our convention!  Yikes!

10 Days shy of 7 Months….

Apologies for the recent infrequency of posts. This is Papa again. (i’ll probably be doing the majority of posts for a while. mom’s acclimating herself to a new job.)

Ms. Bugg is growing like a cooing, smiley, and very active squishy weed.

She’s on the cusp of crawling. She definitely moves, but it’s more a process of half hands-and-knees, half tummy-dragging army crawl-shuffle. Unfortunately she does most of her learning to crawl whilst crying. She’s getting better, but is still pretty needy and doesn’t like to play alone unless she’s intensely preoccupied.

She does, however, love her rolling walker and will zip across the kitchen floor for long periods all by herself. We initially had sworn to never use one of them as, Mom read, they apparently don’t encourage proper leg strength and development. But, since she’s been not only standing (with balancing aid), but actually pushing herself to a standing position on her own since just after her 3 month mark, we weren’t all that concerned with it inhibiting her leg strength. While I’m cleaning or cooking, she moves all over the kitchen in her little rolling ride. And, despite the carpet, she gets pretty far into the dining room as well.

She’s quite verbal. Usually rather content, if not bouncing and giddily grinning, she rambles and sputters and tries to emulate our speech. She knows her name–even the long form, not just the shortened form we end up usually using when talking to and about her. As a matter of fact, often she’ll respond to her real name before she does the nickname.

“They” say kids start to develop fear of certain people around 6 months. Before that, kids don’t really differentiate between new and familiar faces on a comfort level. Ladybug is either running behind on this milestone or is a born extrovert. You can tell she recognizes people and enjoys seeing them again, and you can also tell when she’s examining a new face of a person holding her for the first time. Either way, people other than mom and dad are a sure-fire way to brighten her up from a grouchy mood. My, that child loves people…

More soon, hopefully…

Kids are like….

Mom has been kinda camping on the ol’ baby blog, so this is Pops. (My narratives tend toward being more meandering and story-time-ish than Mom’s. Bear with me.  ;~)   )

Miss Bug is almost 6 months old now. She hasn’t started crawling yet, but she scoots around on her stomach, pushing with her legs and hands. She loves eye contact. She’ll hold your gaze until either you look away or when she smiles too big and just tithers into her shoulder. It’s terribly adorable. (her mom tithers in the exact same way. ha! it’s funny what things seem to be hereditary. )

Booger also babbles. A lot. (yeah yeah… we all know where she got that from. :~D  ) She does copy words we use, but it’s apparent she doesn’t really know what they mean. The other day during a particularly stressful drive she broke the bad vibe by finally parroting what I’ve been trying to get her to say all week. “MOMOMOMOMOMOMOMOMOMOM….”

Right at this moment she’s making silly excited cooing noises at herself in a mirror attached to her Play Pad. She’s smiling really big and her voice is very sing-song-y. People at the Kingdom Hall keep remarking that she’s such a happy baby. While she certainly has her less-than-content times, for the most part she does have a rather cheery disposition.

In slightly related news, I’ve heard two kid-related quotes that make me laugh:

-Having a kid is like having a dog that slowly learns to talk.

-Being around a baby is like being around your drunk friend; it’s funny for the first hour, but then you just get sick of taking care of them.

(mom doesn’t always appreciate those, but i think they’re hilarious. haha)

Walka-walka-walka

Walkers aren’t really “in” these days, and I admit I was skeptical about it when this was passed on to us.  But it turns out that Ladybug loves her walker. 

4 month update

Ladybug’s 4 month check up went well.  She is up to 13 pounds and 23 inches, which is on the short side and on the chubby side.  Developmentally, she’s on schedule and even ahead on some things.  Keep up the good work Miss Ladybug!

In other news, she has an increasing interest in books and toys.  But her favorite thing is her playpad with the light up star.  She’s still getting to know Buddy, the “lovey” we introduced as a sleep/comfort cue on advice from the No-Cry Sleep Solution.

A busy week

Last week was a big week for our family.  It all started Tuesday night when Ladybug’s Papa got very very sick with the flu.  The worst flu he’d ever had.  I won’t go into detail, but the point is that Wednesday he was way too weak to take care of a baby.  So Ladybug came to work with me! 

I love that my job was flexible enough for that to work out.  Ladybug and I only stayed at the office for a couple of hours, but I got so much done while I nursed at my desk and she subsequently fell asleep on my lap.  When she woke up, we went home, and I was able to get more work done from home when she took her afternoon nap.  It worked out perfectly, and I was able to get a full day’s work in due to the hyper-efficiency that has set in since becoming a mom (that’s a-whole-nother blog post).

Ladybug’s Papa was on the mend by Thursday which was good since I had a trade show to work on Thursday and Friday.  I am a crazy person who actually enjoys working trade shows, so I was looking forward to it.  But in addition to working the booth all morning, it also meant that I had to find a place to discreetly pump twice each morning in a crowded exhibit hall.  I wasn’t too worried about it though, and it didn’t end up being a big deal.  I used my nursing cover to be discreet and found a quiet corner where I figured I wouldn’t be noticed.  Thank goodness my pump has a battery pack, so I didn’t have to worry about finding an outlet.

Sometime between all that I managed to check out The No-Cry Sleep Solution from the library and read most of it.  Ladybug is a great little sleeper once she gets asleep.  But she fights sleep like no other.  We now have a bedtime routine that includes reading poems and cuddling in the rocking chair to wind down for the day.  We have also followed the suggestions to introduce a “lovey”—a stuffed toy that you place between you while nursing in the hopes that she will come to associate the toy with comfort.  I’m not sure she has really noticed the little stuffed frog we are calling Buddy yet, but these things take time.  And we have our keywords: It’s okay.  Time to sleep.”  We’ll see if bedtime gets any easier in the weeks to come.  If not, we may have to resort to the dreaded Ferber method.  Ugh.

This weekend we brought Ladybug to her very first wedding!  She was a hit in her cute little pink dress, but she got a little over stimulated despite the fact that we left the reception pretty early.  The whole family was pretty tired when we got home, but we were thrilled for our newly married friends.

What a week!

What being a parent taught me

I held my breath as the piercer held the gun to my little girl’s ears yesterday.  And when she cried, I felt beyond guilty into whatever is worse than guilt.  I was certain I’d never regretted anything more profoundly in my life than causing my daughter pain for such a vain reason.

Within five minutes, she’d stopped crying and was her smiley self again.  My regret dissipated, but I was still a bit traumatized by the whole incident.  Much more so than she seems to be.

A day later, I definitely don’t regret it anymore, but I am apprehensive about what people will say.  In my family, ear piercing is a non-issue.  I had it done as a toddler, and others in my family had theirs done young also.  But I know what a hot issue it is for some people who feel that it should be the individual’s decision or it should coincide with a significant event or particular birthday.  I completely respect that.  It’s very cultural and really just personal.

As is so much about being a parent.  At one of my showers, a friend asked what has surprised me the most about having a baby, and in retrospect, I really think the most surprising thing has been the realization of how personal it really is.  I had so many opinions about Good Parenting before Ladybug, and I was so completely certain that my opinions were fact that I was often looking down on people who didn’t share my opinions.  I hate to admit how often actually.  I’ll be honest: I didn’t limit my strong opinions to just parenting.  The most surprising thing about becoming a mom is that I (finally) learned that opinions are just opinions.  Even when they’re mine.  It took having a baby to realize how ridiculous it is to be judgmental.  I guess I need to learn things the hard way sometimes. 

But some people never learn that lesson, and I find myself struggling with a growing apprehension of the people who watch my family like I used to watch others.  Particularly with an issue like infant ear piercing.  For some people, it is tantamount to child abuse (a quick google search will reveal how common that sentiment is).  For me, it’s about mother-daughter bonding and sharing my culture’s idea of femininity with my daughter.  I like that making it a non-issue allows age appropriate adornment to be a part of her life from the beginning as a fun way of expressing herself like it was for me growing up.   I’m okay with that.  Now I just need to learn how to deal with the people who aren’t okay with it.

The demise of the pacifier

Barely two weeks into parenthood, we made our first big compromise.  The pacifier.  I never wanted to use one.  It seemed—in my idealistic days before becoming a parent—the lazy choice.  Just comfort the baby, I thought.  Don’t use a prop when all they want is your attention.  That was before I had a baby who seemed like she could suck endlessly.  Ladybug was a dream in her first months.  She only cried when she needed something and let us sleep most nights.  But she really wanted something in her mouth pretty much all the time. 

Enter the pacifier.  But not so fast!  I had specific restrictions.  First of all, we were going to call it what it was.  No cutesy names in our family.  A pacifier is a pacifier.  (Though as time went on we were lax and occasionally called it a nook or a paci.)  She was not to fall asleep with it in her mouth. (This lasted about a day.)  And most importantly, we were never supposed to just pop in a pacifier to make her be quiet.  It was only for the times when she wanted something in her mouth but it wasn’t time to eat.  Let’s face it, of course we used it more than we should have. 

But those days are gone.  Who needs a pacifier when you have fingers?  Sometimes the thumb, but usually the whole darn fist.  Part of me is glad that she doesn’t want the pacifier anymore.  But part of me misses the quick fix that always made her happy.  Now we’re back to running through the checklist of possibilities when she’s fussy with no back up when mystery fuss befalls my little ladybug.
 

A pajama weekend

After a week of feeling especially run-down and blaming it on not yet being used to working full-time again, I found myself with something that felt a lot like the flu Thursday evening.  Turns out it wasn’t the flu.  It was mastitis.

We spent the evening at Urgent Care waiting for a diagnosis, which is the last place I wanted to be with my increasing temperature and nausea.  But there I was.  Too sick to even be much of a help with Ladybug.  Her papa was great about keeping her busy and quiet in the waiting room (for two hours) and while we waited for my prescription, which was so helpful.  And he has been great about helping me to remember to take my antibiotics.  What would I do without him? 

It was a pajama weekend, but I’m back at work today.  Almost back to 100%. 
 

Twelve Weeks Old

Well, we’ve just about made it through our first week apart.  I’m back at work as of this week, and Ladybug is at home with her dad. It’s tough to miss out on her days, but we try to make the most of our evenings for nursing and cuddling.  Meanwhile, I am pumping four times a day at work and thinking about her a lot.

Here are some general updates now that she is a whole twelve weeks old:

She surprised me one day a couple of weeks ago by rolling on to her back while doing tummy time on her playpad.  She just… rolled over like it was no big deal and looked at me quizzically when I gushed all over her.
We’re working on setting consistent routines for her both during the days with papa and in the evenings with me.  It’s tough to stay on the routine, especially on the evenings when we have plans, but we’re working on it and she definitely seems more content when we stick to the routine.

She’s getting noisier and noisier in good ways.  She coos and “talks” all the time now, and sometimes I swear it sounds like she’s saying real words.  We predict she’s going to be a talker.

People are finally starting to say that she looks like me.  For the first couple of months, she resembled her papa very strongly.  But it seems like more and more of me is creeping into her face as time goes on.

We went on our first family road trip to see Gram and Grandpa down in Chicago, which went pretty well.  It took a little longer than the usual six hours to get there as we had to stop a couple of times to nurse, but it was definitely a learning experience.  The ride home went more smoothly than the ride there because we’d smartened up a bit.