Saturday, September 30, 2006

Growing

Living with a one year old has been relatively good. That's what I seem to remember at the moment, since she's sleeping and I have some time to myself. No teeth coming in, everyone is healthy and the weather isn't bad. I did take her off Zyrtec for a week and she's been sleeping through the night - which of course she won't now because I've acknowledged the bliss. I'm fairly certain there is a direct link between the lack of Zyrtec and the understanding that humans sleep through the night. The saddest part of this post is that I had to break down and give her some tonight, although I cut the dosage in half. She's scratching a lot, and some of her rashes are starting to appear. Those red circles under her eyes have returned too. A woman in a store today told me she looked tired. I told her she wasn't tired, she just has allergies, and she felt horrible and apologized and made up some story about how everyone thinks her son is tired all the time too because his eyes slant?? I'm not even going there.

And I did forget that she is on some sort of liquid protest. At one point this week, she drank 1 oz. in a 24 hour period. I have every type of 'sippy cup' known to mothers, and yet she refuses to drink out of any of them. We are back to bottles in front of the TV and in the car seat. On a good day now, she'll drink almost 10 oz. But the food this kid is putting down on a daily basis - it's impressive. Remind me of this when she won't eat next week.

Other than sleeping through the night and not drinking, Lucy has been very busy flipping through her books, playing with dolls and pushing carts and baskets around the abode. The cuteness factor, at times, is unbearable. As is our groovy couch!

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Happy 1st Birthday Lucy!

Today is Lucy's real first birthday. If it seems like we've been celebrating for over a month, we have! This weekend we had another gathering with a few friends and Lucy got another birthday cake, sans eggs and dairy. She had no problem consuming large amounts of frosting.
















Lucy's second day as a one year old, today, Setember 20th, started at 4:30am. She wouldn't go back to sleep, so I took her into the family room to crawl around and do whatever you do with a kid at 4:30am. Immediately, Lucy crawled over to the DVD cabinet and started pounding, and I really mean pounding on the doors. She wanted to watch Baby Einstein at 4:30am. What the? How did this happen? Then, after we fell back asleep after 6am, the neighbors woke us up at 7, building their new garage. I tried to make coffee, but forgot to put in a filter. Lucy refused to drink anything until noon, which equals bad mood. We went to the Dr. for Lucy's 12 month appointment, where she had to get a finger prick and a shot. The finger prick bandaid came off (in her mouth) in the exam room. I didn't notice, but the doctor did and fished it out of her mouth. Lucy then bled all over my white shirt. The shot capped the rest of the day off with a fever and less than desirable mood. But here is the good news. NO MORE FORMULA! I don't have to feed my child powder out of a can anymore! Day three and soy milk, here we come!

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Potty mouth

Ken, left in charge of Lucy, quickly realizes how fast a baby can find the simplest of pleasures in the most mundane everyday items. Like eating tampons.














Things are spiraling out of control.




















She even climbed an entire flight of stairs this evening (with a spotter), in approximately 1 minute.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Getting My Drool-On

If this line of drool isn't a sign your baby is teething, maybe I should have considered that possibility when she was up for 4 hours in the middle of the night. As a result, the consumption of coffee reached an all time high today.















In other developments, she can climb stairs! Concrete ones at that!

Friday, September 01, 2006

Eleven and a half months

Lucy is more than 11 months old now, coming up on the big 12! Back when I was younger and single and childless and ignorant I used to ask people how old their kids were and they'd tell me something like 1,456 months. I'd roll my eyes internally and think, damnit, just tell me how many years because I hate math, especially dividing by 12 and carrying those extra numbers and why does it really matter anyway, just tell me 2 or 3 or 5 or whatever! But now I know. Everyone one of those months is earned and matter and are full of so many firsts and important learnings. Crawling, teething (and no one every fully prepared me for this milestone), disovering doors - slamming doors, standing up, throwing food, grinding teeth, snorting glees of hello and the list goes on. If you just said she's 1 or 2, you'd feel like you were cheating your child of hard earned life lessons.

We celebrated Lucy's 'first birthday' a month early with family. My parents were in town from Georgia and it seemed like the best time to get all the family together for the big celebration. My mom came up with the brillant idea of a rice crispy treat cake for Lucy, since she can't consume most of the ingredients in a real cake.

All going well, mom putting fire in front of baby.













Mom convinced she'll 'figure it out' and blow out the candle herself.













Quickly blow it out, but not in time. Baby's tender hand covering the flame burning her flesh.













Grandpa brushing the tears of pain away.













This is a might fine cake, even though my mother let me burn myself to get it.













The big first birthay is September 19, 2006. That's when she'll be 12 months old, and I'll say she's one year old for just that one month. After that, it's back to number 13.