13

I’ve been blogging ahead for a while now (at this point I’m writing one day before it posts, so not too far ahead, but one day I wrote four or five posts and was way ahead for a while there) so I missed blogging about this one milestone: single-digit weeks left in this pregnancy! As of Thursday, which is yesterday as I write or two days ago when this posts, I am 31 weeks pregnant. I have 9 weeks left. All those nesting things I mentioned in the last post? That makes those seem so much more important, and so much more stressful, because I have SINGLE DIGIT WEEKS to get them done in! In fact, really, I guess, you could say it’s just 8 weeks and some number of days now. Yikes! So mentally ready to meet this little boy! And so physically unready! It’s coming so soon!

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A couple of days ago we were at the house of some family friends, Donna and Ross, to pick up a big girl dresser for Jacey Dae. While Kellen was out in the garage with Ross, getting stuff out of the attic, Jacey was climbing up and down the stairs inside. She got to the top, and I told her to hang on and come back down.

“Ohtay, Mama,” she said. Gripping the banister, she stepped down one step. “Duh,” she said.

Another step. “Doo.”

One more. “Dee.”

And then I realized–she’s counting! How cool, I thought, that she’s picking up on all the counting we do at home and school, to the point that she’ll start counting all by herself. So I started counting after her. “Three,” I said, smiling.

“Doh.” “Four.”

“Di.” “Five.”

“Dis,” she said, and I thought, wow, I usually don’t count past 5 at home! Who knew she could keep going? “Six,” I repeated.

“De-den.” “Seven,” I said, even more impressed.

“Day.” This was the landing. She turned the corner and kept going. “Di. De. De-den.” I wasn’t sure past 7 if she knew what she was saying or not, because her vowel sounds, while differentiated from one another, still didn’t quite match up with how I hear the numbers. But eleven? It had two syllables, and it definitely rhymed with how she said seven. She actually knew what she was doing!

I was shocked. And then even more: “Delf,” she said, or something like it–the right vowel sound and a v/f sound at the end. And then “Deh-dee.”

WHAT?! My daughter can count to 13! And I had no idea! I don’t really work on counting or the alphabet with her at home very much. A little bit, of course, and we read books and do puzzles with numbers and the alphabet in them, but I don’t really expect that she’s learning it. I know that makes me sound like the world’s best mother, but I always figured, as long as she couldn’t say the words back to me (because I still think she’s a little behind in her speech as compared to the other kids in her preschool class), it’s probably going in one ear and out the other, and even if she does say them back to me, I won’t know if she’s right or not.

Well, that’ll teach me to doubt my toddler’s learning capabilities.

When Kellen came in with Ross, I asked Jacey to show Dada what she could do. She immediately got shy with Ross watching, but I helped her get started, and she made it up to 13 again before I had to tell her the last three numbers. “Since when can she count to 13?!” he asked me. Well, at least I’m not the only one who underestimated her!

So, because I never count that high with her at home, I know some learning is happening somewhere, either at school or from Sesame Street. It’s funny–I never knew how proud I would be at hearing 13 little numbers come from a little mouth!

Mischief

Here are some things I’m thinking about now that I have a toddler around.

First of all, maybe I should get a purse that zips closed….

And maybe we should fasten the belt when we put Jacey Dae in her high chair….

Also, we may want to keep a cover on our dog door….

Finally, we should probably remember to close the diaper wipes after we change Jacey’s diaper….

She may be mischievous, but, goodness, she’s so cute while she’s doing it!

Soothing a 1-year-old

How do you soothe a baby after she has had tramatic shots on one day and then had to go have blood drawn the very next day?

First of all, you don’t let her mommy go to the lab with her.  Yes, that’s right, Kellen took half a day off work and took her to the lab, because I cried so hard the day before just thinking about it that he didn’t want me to go.  I kissed her and got all teary-eyed as they left for the lab.  She was so happy before they left!  In one of her “I’m the sweetest, funniest, cutest baby in the world” moods.  I felt so bad that I was sending her off to be restrained and and poked and drained.

Kellen was smart, though.  Before they left, he got out a sippy cup and mixed up Jacey’s favorite substance in the world- chocolate milk.  As soon as they were done with the blood draw (she got to sit in his lap for it, which I think is probably a good thing.  She usually just lays on the table at the doctor’s office when they give shots, but I’m going to ask in the future if she can be in my lap.  That has to be less stressful for her.), he gave her the sippy cup.

She forgot her tears pretty quickly when she had chocolate milk to drink.

Another thing to do with a fussy baby after a bunch of needle pricks?

Give the dogs a bath.

Yes, that’s right, just fill up the bathtub with water and stand just out of reach, so she has time to jump in the tub before you can catch her.  When we bathe the baby, we usually have her in a blow-up tub in the bigger bath tub.  When we bathe the dogs, we bathe them right in the tub- a much bigger expanse of water!

After we got Jacey out of the tub, the novelty of playing with her bath toys outside of the tub kept her happy long enough to forget that she had been fussy.  It’s magic!

So if you ever need to soothe a very stressed-out baby, remember this: chocolate milk and a bathtub.

Watch where you step

The time: Tuesday morning.

The place: Our kitchen.

The disaster: Forehead into island.  Hard.

The fault: Mommy’s.

Yes, that’s right.  I knocked my child head-first into the kitchen island. 

She was standing right behind me as I got the ice maker out of our freezer to fill it with ice (okay, so it doesn’t make ice right now… something really simple is broken on the freezer but Kellen and I keep forgetting to ask my dad or my grandad exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it, so we just load bought ice into it and it still dispenses.  So dispenser.  I got the ice dispenser out of the fridge.  And now, back to our story…) and stepped back to put it on the island and grab the bag of ice.  Little did I know Jacey was standing between me and the island, in a space of about 12 inches.  Of course, I stepped into her.  Of course, she was standing facing the island, so when she fell down, her forehead hit right on the corner of the leg of the island.  Of course.

Poor baby hit HARD.  Immediately started crying, and I couldn’t blame her.  I picked her up and kissed her and apologized and felt horrible.  Being a baby, though, she’s still easy to soothe over boo-boos, so she stopped crying pretty quickly.  But her forehead was dented!  There was a verticle line that actually was slightly depressed from hitting the island.  She started to bruise immediately.

Of course, she also went back to her usual cuteness of “Dada?  Dadada!” immediately upon ceasing crying, so I knew she was okay.  But I still felt terrible.

So when I take her to the doctor on her birthday, and then for her birthday party on Saturday, when she has a big purple line on her forehead, people will know: mommy has learned to watch where she steps.

A piece of advice

I rearranged our bedroom while Kellen was away (I didn’t tell him I did it, so I couldn’t post this until he got home- welcome home, honey!), and I learned a lesson I thought I’d pass on to you.

If you have dogs that sleep in the bed with you, even just occasionally, and those dogs shed, never move your bed.  Ever.  You might happen to look down and see the carpet where the head of the bed meets the wall, where you can’t really vacuum.  Trust me on this- you don’t want to see what’s down there.  It’s not worth it.  Don’t move the bed.  Just leave it there when you sell the house.

And there’s your advice for the day.

So not a Weeble

I don’t know how they do it.  Jacey totally falls down.

She’s oficially a “toddler” now.  No, it can’t be true!  Not my baby girl!  She’s a baby, a baby!  She’s only 11 months old!  But I have to face facts: literally, she is a toddler.  She toddles all over the place.  The most she’s gone without falling down is, generously, probably 10 feet, but that sure doesn’t stop her!

Back when she was 9 1/2-ish months old, she’d let go of the couch and take a step or two toward a Goldfish.  She really wouldn’t let go for any other reason, and then, all of a sudden, last week, she just started walking all the time.  She’ll let go of whatever she’s holding onto, walk as far as she can toward what she wants, then fall and crawl the rest of the way.  Sometimes she’s really good (walking from the couch to her activity table 7 feet away, grabbing a handful of Cheerios, coming back to the couch, then going back for more without falling down once); sometimes she loses her balance on the third step.  Rarely does she get mad about falling, and she’s always willing to get up and try again.  Ooh, teaching moment- shouldn’t we all be like babies as far as that goes?

The best form of Mommy Kryptonite yet is when she lets go and walks to me, arms held up the whole way, to be picked up.  She looks so pleased to be coming to me and so proud of herself for doing it walking that I just can’t resist.  I have to pick her up and hug her.

As long as I’m talking about this new accomplishment, I ought to mention some other things my baby girl can do now.  She’s “talking-” or, at least, I can understand her sometimes!  She’s had a few words for a while now- Mama and Dada being the most obvious and most easily understood, and she’s said “ma” for “more” when we’re feeding her for a couple of months.  But in the last several weeks, we’ve added some new sounds that mean certain words: “ba” for book and for bird, “deah” for yeah, and “baba” for bye-bye.  She’s started playing with her N’s a lot since we got home from Bonham- probably from hearing “Nunu” so much- so I expect to get a “nono” any day now.  It’s thrilling to me that she’s learning to communicate.  She brings me a book and says “ba” and I know she wants to read!  Oh, and, once, she told the dogs, “Hus!” for hush when they were barking, which was hilarious, but she hasn’t kept that one up.

Clapping.  Since she was 8 or 9 months, she tried to clap by waving her hands around in front of her and hitting the front of one to the back of the other, and then around 10 months she figured out the real thing and claps correctly.  But lately, she’s been associating clapping with more than just random noise.  If I say, “Clap, clap, clap!” or “Yay!” or “Good job!” she claps.  I think that’s pretty adorable.  When she walks really well and I tell her good job, she’ll applaud herself.  She also claps when she hears people on tv clapping, so now I know she really does pay attention to that thing and I need to try to keep it off.

Sharing.  For a month or so, Jacey’s been big into sharing.  She’ll eat half a Goldfish and then offer the rest to someone else.  She’ll share her sippy cup with you.  Once, she reached all the way in her mouth and fished out a piece of chicken to give to my (vegetarian) sister.  That one was extra nice.  She’ll also share with the dog.  Shelly appreciates that.  I don’t.

Frame a Pretty Girl.  My grandparents have done this with all their grandkids, and I’ve continued the tradition with Jacey.  I don’t know if it’s a normal thing, or if it’s just my family, but I think they started it because they think it’s funny that babies can barely reach around their own heads.  You say, “Frame a pretty girl!” and the baby reaches over her head and holds her own hands, like she’s making a frame around her face with her arms.  Jacey Dae also frames a pretty girl when we play Pat-a-cake.  She’s a little confused- she thinks “Throw it in the pan!” is the same as frame a pretty girl, because your arms go up for both things.  So we play Pat-a-cake and then she proudly frames a pretty girl.

So, although this was supposed to be a quick, cute little post about how my little girl is learning to walk, it’s turned into a short catalogue of some of her new accomplishments.  I love watching her develop a personality and learn what we expect when we do or say anything to her.  She’s growing up and changing every day, and I can’t believe how fast it’s going!

Of course, I’m sure it’s going so fast because my child is the most brilliant little baby ever born and she’s smarter than any other kid out there, right?

Hey, I’m her mom.  I have to think that.

Good to know

It’s always helpful to be aware of the fact that your dog is tall enough to stand up and eat the chicken off the cutting board sitting on the counter.

I’m so glad I found that out.

Laundry Day

Yesterday, I was out of the house for a couple of hours (a play group lunch, to which only one other family showed up, but the 8-year-old girl in that family is a born baby sitter so I got to sit and talk to the mama while all the kids went and played; then a trip to look around at Target, my favorite place in the world). I taught lessons for a couple of hours (it’s usually 3 hours on Tuesdays, but two kids were out of town so it was an easy day). And I had to make the Amish Friendship Bread I’ve been keeping up with for 20 days now (I showed Kellen how to do it.  Because he wasn’t sure he could follow the recipe).

In and amongst all that, it was laundry day. When I realized that I had no clean clothes, few clean towels, and only one pair of hard-to-put-on pajamas left for the baby, I knew I had to actually do the laundry.  Now, I am really usually pretty good about keeping up with the laundry.  I don’t like to see the hampers overflowing and have to wonder whether or not I have a baby towel to dry Jacey in at the end of the day.  I usually wash, dry, and fold on the same day- although I do tend to put off putting them away, because I’m just burnt out by the time the clothes are folded.  So they sit around in a laundry basket for a day or two till Kellen or I finally put them away.

Recently, I haven’t been so good at laundry.  It’s been a busy month, and the house has been a mess, and I just haven’t felt like cleaning clothes.  So the last couple of times I did laundry, it was rather half-hearted, and one basket of our laundry and one basket of towels didn’t actually get folded, and a basket and a half of Jacey’s clothes didn’t get put away.  (Jacey’s room has been a wreck for a while now.  It’s a long story about how it got that way, but suffice it to say that I don’t even want to be in the room long enough to put away clothes because it’s just that messy.)  And if those things never got folded and put away, why should I do more laundry?  It would just get piled on top.  And I don’t need a man-made mountain of laundry in my floor.  At least as they were, the clothes were neatly in a hamper.  Mostly.

That was my reasoning in letting it get this bad.  Finally, I had to face facts: you even run out of the uncomfortable, bottom-of-the-drawer, wear-only-in-emergencies underwear eventually.  As I was getting close, I decided it was time to get something done around the house.  I washed, in our super-capacity washer:

1 tiny load of handwash-only stuff
1 load of adult whites
1 load of adult colors
1 load of bed linens
1 load of Jacey’s clothes
1 load of towels and jeans

Yes.  I had that much laundry to do at one time.

And get this- all of it, except for Jacey’s clothes (because she was asleep and I didn’t want to wake her) and the towels (because they were drying when I went to sleep) got folded AND put away.

The moral of the story?  Keep up with the laundry.  It seems like a much smaller job if you do it in pieces.

I didn’t even know I owned that many things to wash!

Note to self:

When nursing the baby while eating a handful (or two) of chocolate chips, be careful not to drop any.  They will inevitably fall between the baby and you.  Body heat + chocolate + a baby who hasn’t had a dirty diaper yet = panic when the goo is later spotted on baby’s foot and mama’s shorts.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

It was almost 10:00 this morning.  Jacey was getting fussy, but she slept late this morning so it was too early for her nap.  I decided to take her for a walk, which she always likes, and, hey, it’s got to be healthier for me than sitting in the house, right?  I thought I’d go to the library.

I’m not really a library sort of girl.  I read books over and over, so I don’t like checking them out from the library because then I think, “What was that book about the girl with the chickens?  I liked the guy in that book.  What happened to them?  I know they went to Maine, but why?” and so on, and then I can’t go pull it off the shelf and re-read it and get re-acquainted with the characters and be re-surprised by the funny things they say or the sweet situations they get in or the big twists in the stories.  I literally read books to tatters, so I prefer to own them, and I prefer to own them new, too, because that’s a few more reads I’ll get out of them if nobody else has read them a few times first.  I’m kind of a book snob, I guess.

But lately I’ve been trying to keep the tv off as much as possible.  I’ve read that starting from an early age, kids don’t play as well if the tv is on, even if it’s just a game show or something they’re not watching.  I totally believe it, too.  Every time the Gilmore Girls theme song plays, Jacey stops whatever she’s doing- fussing, playing, eating, even nursing- and whips her head toward the tv and laughs.  It’s pretty funny, actually.  She also watches the Weight Watchers commercial with the orange “Hungry” puppet whenever she hears that little trumpet ditty that plays over it.  

So if the tv is off, and I don’t want to play with her every waking hour because she needs to be able to entertain herself, what am I supposed to do?  I read, as long as I’m not folding laundry or doing the dishes or something else useful.  And I don’t read slowly, either.  I checked two books out of the library last Monday and was finished with them both by Saturday.  I bought three bargain books from Books-A-Million on Sunday and finished the second one last night, even while taking care of the baby and doing the laundry and the dishes during the day.  Really, I just need to set myself to reading War and Peace, or something crazy long like that.

All that said, the library seems like a pretty good idea right now, so I don’t read us out of house and home by buying too many books.  I packed the baby up, grabbed my books to return and my library card, and checked the forecast and the radar.  See, at least I learn from my mistakes!  I walked all the way there, sweating like crazy because there’s 80% humidity today, and there were two cars in the parking lot.  Two.  Uh-oh.

The library doesn’t open until 1:00 on Friday.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I walked home, got in the car, and went to go drown my sorrows in a nice, tall glass (okay, Styrofoam cup) of Chik-fil-a sweet tea.