Posts Tagged ‘baby learnin’’

At least I won’t set off the metal detector at the prison anymore…

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

I’m just kidding, I don’t go to the prison, nor have I ever been through a metal detector, believe it or not. I did, however, get my staples out on Wednesday. It pinched a little bit, but that was it and now I’m metal-less. Matt got me re-bandaged with the giant corset that I was given to hold my guts in last night (since he leaves before 5 am I just shower at night so he can do the bandage) a little tighter and it seemed to help a lot. I did laundry, made dinner and picked up stuff off of the floor without using my toes. It was still tough to get down, but I managed it and the place was semi-clean when he got home.

He’s gotten home late as of late because he’s been working overtime, that and trying to catch up for being late with my doctor’s appointments (don’t even get me started). It means some pretty long days for me and some really short nights for him to have time with Keeley, which is kind of sad, but by then she’s not in the mood to do much other than fuss or slap the glasses off of his face after the first half hour or so. She wants to eat, bath, nurse and bed, or eat, nurse, play and bed depending on if she had a bath the night before. She has, though, progressed to falling down on her butt from a standing position instead of falling all the way down and thumping her head. This happened, oh today I think, which is good. Her butt is very padded, see. Also that is the next step for walking. As such, I scheduled her 12 month check up and immunizations. I will probably skip the H1N1 (oink oink) shot for her. It hasn’t been tested very much and even though she’s young, she’s not in day care and very rarely makes contact with other kids or people who may not cover their mouth/wash hands, etc. The worst thing would be the grocery cart, which I can wipe off before putting her in. After her birthday, though, we can put her in her new car seat, which will be nice. She’s definitely almost there in height AND weight of outgrowing the old seat, but the new seat mandates her to be 1 year exactly before putting her in it for safety’s sake, even though she meets every other requirement (it can’t be rear-facing, which we didn’t realize when we bought it). It did have VERY high reviews from the Consumer Reports people, though, so we’re happy about that. Lots of changes going on around here.

Overheard in our house

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Oooh, ouch, honey go make faces at her in the mirror to make sure her mouth is okay..

Jeez.

11 months old

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

HPIM0974We’re practicing for potty training already. Ha! This is a 10 month picture, but as I wanted to post and our 11 month pictures won’t be taken until this PM, this is the one you get! After several weeks of struggling with keeping Keeley on the changing table, I moved her over to the guest bed for diaper changes. Almost immediately the issues went away. Once we supplied a book, toy, or asked her to help by pulling out a wipe (yucky, don’t eat it!), it helped a lot. We had tried giving her toys on the changing table, but I guess she was trying to say she’d outgrown it! Occasionally she still turns around on me, but for the most part, at least she’s on something soft, and here we go with a fine example of what the beginning of a diaper change might look like. Although by the end, she’s usually dropped the book, after having chewed on it. The changing table now holds diapers, toys, and we may move books over soon as well. At least a few of them. For the next couple of weeks I won’t be doing much bending, so she’ll have some limitations on toy and book usage while it’s just the 2 of us at home, otherwise it will be a hazard.

11 months, though, kind of hard to believe. However, she’s crawling, pulling up, standing and letting go for a couple of seconds, able to get back down to what she pulled up to (new this week!) and also babbling a lot more (new this week!).  She’s showing a lot more interest in books (one  hand me down needs a cover  glued already, although since they’ve been through a minimum of 4 kids, I’m not surprised), and notices things like the air conditioner kicking off, and squeals at the blue light over on the wall (temperature panel). She’s observing more, eating more, and all in all, just growing up. Matt seems to not be taking it as well as me, I guess with the surgery I kind of have to take it all in stride. I can’t be worried about things like that! I have to enjoy every minute and little new thing she does! I fully have, too, then again I’m home all day. I keep most of the ‘new’ stuff to myself and let her daddy see them unaided on his own. He’s pointed out stuff to me a few times as well that I didn’t notice (like getting down from pulling up), so it’s pretty interesting.

Well enough rambling, let you get back to juicier things!

Baby, baby

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Keeley loves any song with baby in it. Baby, baby is fine. You can sing baby baby over and over again and she loves it. Today I opened her door and sang ’stand by your maaaaan’…. that was a kick. I think she was mostly glad to see me, because she was hungry, but still, hilarious! I think her sense of humor is finally starting to kick in. I put her (clean) diaper on my head and that made her laugh. I played the ’sailor went to sea sea sea’ game with her and that was a great giggle. Patty cake even almost got a snort, and she hasn’t liked patty cake for a few months. Go figure. Anyway, I guess that’s her prerogative. Here’s the 2 of us getting a good laugh at daddy.

HPIM0961

Life with a 10 month old

Friday, August 28th, 2009
  • Crawl everywhere, particularly everywhere mommy doesn’t want you.
  • If she sees you, giggle like crazy and hurry up.
  • Stop, to be sure she will catch you.
  • Whine a little to protest being caught and then happily wiggle legs.
  • Scream randomly during diaper changes.
  • Try to touch the doodie.
  • Pat at yourself to see what’s down there.
  • Scream if mommy doesn’t want you to touch the doodie.
  • Pull out a wipe for mommy.
  • Try to eat the wipe. Pull it in 2 so you can try and eat the other part when mommy is busy with the other piece of it.
  • Cry if mommy takes it away.
  • Ignore all your toys.
  • Play with everything potentially dangerous you can find.
  • Bounce in your jumperoo. Scream while bouncing in your jumperoo.
  • Accidentally bite with your 3 teeth.
  • Chew on water bottles instead of real cold teethers.
  • Check out what’s on your shirt, on daddy’s shirt, and pull mommy’s neckline down.
  • Giggle and go after any toes you can see.
  • Cry when no one will ‘help you’ pull up, even though you are capable.
  • Bang on high chair to indicate that you would like another snack, please.
  • Nap and nurse every 2 hours and then conk out for the night around 8.
  • Bliss!

Things Keeley likes…

Monday, August 10th, 2009
  1. The bright red and blue flashing lights on daddy’s computer (drag away from computer and redirect with a toy).
  2. The cord under the table (and now BEHIND the fan AND the playpen) that the fan, lamp, cell phone chargers and night light are plugged into (drag away from cord and explain how cords are dangerous, for the 600th time and redirect with a toy).
  3. The bottom drawers in mommy’s desk (close drawer and prop foot against).
  4. The bathroom (obvious, close door, drag back to LR and redirect with toy).
  5. Anything non-edible that ’seems’ edible on the floor (that’s icky, and it’s NOT food, don’t eat that, throw item away and vow to vacuum, fail to do so for another week, minimum, redirect with toy).
  6. The tv, even if it’s not on, she can see her reflection (DA,RWT).
  7. Mommy’s hair (see #5).
  8. Water bottles, especially empty ones (oh hell, make sure the lid is on tight and let her have it).
  9. The remote control (denied, repeatedly, RWT).
  10. Mommy or daddy talking on the cell phone (hide in other room).
  11. The laptop, especially if mommy is trying to get some peace and quiet once daddy is home, she MUST! MUST! see what mommy is doing (redirect for the 15th time and scowl at husband).
  12. Her hairbrush (chomp away :-) )
  13. The bottle of lotion (wave away, retrieve when dropped.)

Notice that basically none of these things she likes include toys. She does kind of like some of her toys, but I actually spend 99% of the time she is not sleeping dragging her away from #s 1-5. Sometimes, I admit I give up and turn on the tv. Usually, it’s game show network, so it doesn’t make her stare at it, but she is entranced for seconds by a flashing light or clapping audience, and then sits and plays with her own toys for a while. If it’s particularly interesting to her, I turn it off or turn on the music channel, which goes to a simple bouncy directv logo after about 5 minutes. Then, she tries to eat THAT. Good lord. Yesterday, I had Matthew bring in the playpen. I put her in it this morning for a good 20 minutes to play. She didn’t even realize I had come back into the room from washing my hands and getting a drink, thereby allowing me to read a good 15 pages of a book, and actually rest my weary body, before chasing her again. By bring in the playpen, I mean I have never used it before. Her smaller ‘captures’ I hardly used before anyway, unless she was super fussy (swing, anyone?) and for the last 3 months, she has been at least partially mobile and I have chased after her every 2 minutes that she was not sleeping or trapped in her high chair eating. I should have lost 20 pounds with all the moving around I’m doing. Apparently, my scale doesn’t agree.

The mysterious crawling baby

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

Why mysterious? You put her in shorts, tshirt, onesie, or pants, or any combination, and she will flop like she’s doing ‘the worm’. Put her in long sleeved/footed pjs and she can use all her limbs and trounce across the floor. What the heck?

What she’s doing now…

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

Peek a boo is not necessarily a ‘cover your face with something’ game around our house. We also play peek a boo (the only way she will start it herself), by holding something you can see through, like a teething ring, up to her eyes and then looking at you and grinning. Are we messing her up, or what? She still hasn’t put anything over her face and then laughed about it or anything. Now, if we put say her shorts over her face while we are changing her diaper, she WILL pull them off, laugh hysterically, but that’s it. No repeat unless we put them back over said face. Sigh. She originally started playing peek a boo by looking back and forth around the car seat handle when I would lean up or back to change the radio station. Now she grins when she does it, like it’s a big ‘ol game.

Most of the time we can get her to wave at someone now, if we prompt her and get her arm up and going a bit. We swear she said hi or something like it as well the other day.

New sounds are OH and WHOA! Although I doubt she understands the significance of either one.

Several months ago she started helping by lifting her head up to put her onesies over them. Now she helps with her arms as well, and the last few days, after some big praises for ‘me’ lifting her hips, she will hike her heinie up to slide the new diaper underneath her. Seems like she responds to praise, which is good. She also seemed to react in a “negatory” fashion to me shaking my head and giving her the mommy look, which I also hope is very good. Can you hear me knocking wood over here?

9 month check up is the 23rd. Crossing fingers it goes well!

Weekend update

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Our 4th of July will be covered in Fun Monday tomorrow, but just wanted to let you know how things are going otherwise. Here’s an update not of just the weekend, but of new accomplishments on the home front.

  • Keeley waves ‘hi’ to the baby in the mirror and more recently, to real people instead of our reflections as well.
  • We had to move her jumperoo up to the second level so she’s on her toes to bounce again, instead of flat footed, that’s how much taller she’s gotten.
  • Crawling, well, ALMOST. That is, on knees, flopping forward, then squishing ourselves back up by pulling with our arms. We’re 3/4 of the way there. She can also do a ‘plank’ with just her hands in push up position and her toes on the floor. One of the girls I knew from high school was saying how she got down and showed her baby how to crawl. I thought she was nuts, my baby was learning fast enough for me as it was! Her baby is younger by a couple of weeks and already standing up in the crib, too. Not sure I’m ready for that.
  • Sippy cup, check. Today, we even picked it up, took 3 swallows (as on the 4th she typically spits, so that’s been the pattern) and set it back down.  Yeah! She did this several times today, no help from either of us.
  • We added in breakfast the day before she turned 8 months. Mostly it’s baby rice cereal.
  • So far what we’ve eaten is: banana, sweet potato, rice cereal with a liberal amount of cinnamon, peach, nectarine, apricot, mum mum cracker.
  • We have tasted/sucked on: pepperoni, green olive, dill pickle, lemon, mashed potato, meatloaf. Grilled chicken was completely ignored.
  • Today we had a late breakfast (she slept til 830 after our late night), including those gerber puff thingys in peach, a mum mum cracker, and a taste of applesauce, no sugar added. The applesauce lasted for a while and then she turned away. We were surprised at the gerber things, I had a coupon so I used it, we bought the mum things because they were for all ages of babies versus just a ‘crawler’, we figured if she couldn’t handle those puffs at almost crawling that we’d sweep her mouth out and try again later. Well, they were easier on her than the mums were. For those of you that don’t know, they’re kind of like star shaped cereal a little bigger than a cheerio and a little easier to soften in your mouth, she still had to ‘chew’ them, though, so it was good practice.
  • Ma, da, ga, ba, nigh, aye, wah are her sounds. She indicates more to eat by banging on the high chair. We are trying to teach her drink, more, and thank you as signs. You know, the important things.
  • She also responds to ‘are you hungry, are you ready to eat’ with an affirmation of hands flailing, a big bounce, and a giggle. Repeat giggle and bounce for asking about taking a nap when she really is tired.

Why do they do that?

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

Why do ‘they’ make books that crinkle and wrinkle up like a plastic bag, so kids LOVE the sound? Then all the sudden they reach for a plastic bag because it crinkles, and we all scream NOOO!! You can’t have that. Can you imagine what the heck they must think of us at that point?