Mommy Journal: Something Special Every Day

Every day Sophia does something new to surprise me.  Today was no different.  Every evening around 7:00 the three of us go into her room to start winding down for the night.  The first thing we always do is 'make it night time' in her room by closing her blinds and turning on her lamp.  This is especially important as we are nearing summer and the sun is staying up later and later.  Next we change her into her jammies, read books, and play with quiet toys.  Tonight daddy had a soccer game to play so it was just baby and mommy to do the bedtime routine. 

After reading a few books to her, I laid down next to Sophia on the floor.  I knew she was watching my every move like she always does so I closed my eyes and pretended to fall asleep.  Next thing I knew my little girl, who moments before was surrounded by board books, had leaned over and laid her head down on my chest.  She snuggled her face into my neck.  Then she adjusted herself a couple of times until she was more comfortable and we laid there like that for a while.  She breathing her tired shallow breaths on my face and me stroking her back with my hand.  I can't quite explain the complete peace I felt as we both laid there cuddling and enjoying each other's company.  We had a moment and what a sweet moment it was!  

Bath time

It was only four days ago that I was telling you that I have four teeth.  Well guess what.  I have  SEVEN now!  Three of my teeth poked through over the last few days.  My smile is getting toothier as the days go by.  =)  Sorry, no close up pictures of my teeth.  I hardly let mommy or daddy get a glimpse inside my mouth, let alone a picture.  

Instead, I will share a bath time shot.  I really like my baths.  Here I am posing with my bath toys.  I still have a little black eye in this picture because it was taken a couple of days ago, but I promise you it has gotten better.  You can hardly see it now.  I have a few more little bruises on my forehead, but no pain no gain, right?  It's all the price I must pay for learning to balance on two feet.  Mommy shot some videos of me walking over the last few days and daddy is showing her how to splice a couple of them together so you can see how fast I am improving.  We will get a combined video posted soon.  

It's official: I can toddle

I am through with playing around.  Well, with learning to walk that is...  (this is my friend Violet and I can play with her for hours.  She is the one with the ornery smile.  Her mommy has watched me a couple of times while my mommy has gone to some job interviews.  We have fun together.)  Anyway, I am in full practice mode.  I practice walking any chance I get.  Instead of playing with my toys, I grab on to the closest set of big person fingers I can find and make them walk laps around the house with me.  Mommy sits down on the couch:  I find one finger and then two and I make her get up and follow me around the house.  Daddy comes home:  I wiggle in his arms until he puts me down on the floor and walks with me.  Miss Meg comes over for a visit: first thing I do is find her fingers and drag her around with me.

Up until yesterday (April 1st... I didn't get this blog published until a week later) I have been toying around with one unsupported step here or two wobbly steps there.  Now I can practically make it across the room without help, although I prefer to hold onto someone's hand while we walk.  

My favorite thing to do is take a walk outside.  I like to walk all over our cul de sac.  We are one of the rare streets in our neighborhood that has sidewalks.  I like to step up on and jump down off of the curbs.  Mommy is afraid that one of these days I am going to fall down and skin my face on the sidewalk.  Maybe, but until then and probably even after, I am going to be a dare devil and push my limits along with mommy's buttons.  

Tooth #4

Quickly following my first upper tooth, my lower right incisor poked through yesterday!  I now have four teeth!

Guess what I found out I can do?  Now that I have both upper and lower teeth, I discovered that I can make sounds to drive my mommy crazy.  All I have to do is rub my lower teeth against the upper one that came in a few days ago and it makes a really cool sound.  Mommy called it 'grinding' as in "stop 'grinding' your teeth."  I don't make it so much any more, but that first day, boy, I made it any chance I got!

Toothy grin, here I come!

My top left tooth poked through today! Yippee!

Mommy Journal: It's been one of those weeks...

... and it is only Tuesday.

Yesterday my beautiful little girl, who is learning to walk, took a tumble in our bedroom while I was getting dressed.  She just happened to be a little too close to the side board of our bed and WHAM! Instant shiner.  Poor thing.  She is a tough little girl though because she only cried for a couple of minutes and actually enjoyed it when I put the frozen bag of peas on her eye to help the swelling go down.  Only half of the bruise is visible when she is awake.  Its when she is asleep that the full glory of her first black eye is evident.  I'm so sorry baby.

Then there was today:  What a poopy day this was.  And I mean literally!  We started out our day like usual.  We get up around 8:00.  Have breakfast.  Sophia eats Cherrios and a half of a banana while I eat sausage and freezer waffles with butter, syrup and the other half of her banana.  Oh, and don't forget the decaf coffee for mommy.  

After breakfast we get ready to go out and do our pseudo baby boot camp (workout for mommy, nap in the jogging stroller for baby).  On our way out, we pass some dog poop on the sidewalk that some irresponsible dog owner neglected to pick up.  Someone before us had obviously not seen it since it was smeared all over the sidewalk.  Luckily I saw it in time to be able to avoid running the stroller wheels through any of it.  (Note to self:  avoid this on the way home) Obviously the notepad in my head didn't take good notes because on the way home we drove one of the wheels right through it.  GROSS!  I found a patch of grass and cleaned off as much of it as I could.  At least we started our walk from home and that is where we were going to end up so I didn't have to worry about putting the poopy-wheeled stroller in the back of my car.  

We get home just as Sophia is waking up.  Now that she is almost walking she likes to take hold of my fingers... and I mean take hold.  She will walk up to me, reach for my fingers and pull until I go in the direction that she wants to go and then she is off racing around with me right behind her.  Now was time for HER outdoor walk.  She found a stick that was longer than she is tall and with it in one of her hands and my finger in the other we walked up and down the driveway until she was too tired to walk anymore.

Now it is time to go in.  With Sophia in one arm, I gather all of our stuff in the other and as I am taking it out of the handy-dandy basket on the bottom of the stroller, my thumb brushes up against the wheel.  UGH! right on the poop!  Now I have Sophia in one arm, our stuff in the other and poop on my thumb!  I have to find a way to open up the door of the house without dropping anything and without using my thumb.  Somehow I manage.  Luckily the door wasn't shut all the way and I just had to pull it open with my first two fingers.  Juggling everything, I manage to kick my shoes off just in case there was poop on the bottom of them so I wouldn't drag it in.  I got inside, dropped our stuff, set Sophia in her play pen and washed my hands.  Finally, done with the poop.  Or so I thought.  

A couple of hours later, Sophia was quietly playing near the stack of magazines in our living room.  All the sudden I heard the thumpety-thump of her speed-crawling towards me.  As I look at her I see she is grinning at me and rolling her tongue around in her mouth like she does when she has stuffed a wad of paper in there.  She is making a funny face.  I stick my finger in her mouth and instead of paper, I pull out a ball of...  what is that?  and the smell hits me!  She found some poop and she has put it in her mouth!!!!  Grinning as if pleased with herself she grabs for her sock and there is poop on her sock!  Horrified, I pull off her socks, clean off her mouth and her hands and... I wonder if I should call her pediatrician.  WHERE IN THE WORLD DID SHE FIND POOP?  We have cats, but she can't get anywhere near the liter box and I know I didn't bring any poop inside from our morning incident...  

I Google 'baby ingesting poop' to see what comes up.  And wouldn't you know it.  The second listing on Google was this blog entry that was written a few years ago.  If you haven't already, go on-line to read how she so elegantly explains her experience with poop.  I felt like she was explaining exactly what happened to me today, except I never found the source of our poop-culprit.

Then to top it all off, barely a half an hour later Sophia comes crawling up to me with a dirty diaper.  I've had enough poop for one day.  I am so sick of poop!