Photo Session

I was saying to a friend last weekend at a GTG that it's so hard to get photos of my daughter now. You look in her gallery and I have quite a few for each much up to about Month Nine-ish and then it tappers off. It's not for lack of trying, I just have a very mobile child now who does not like to sit still for photos. As soon as she seems me with the camera out, she comes crawling at me and wants to see her photo in the viewfinder, so it makes for a lot of close ups of noses and eyes. heh

Today though, when I walked down the hallway she was sitting, back against the wall eating cheerios and it seemed like a good photo op. I ran and grabbed my camera and these are a few of my favourite shots out of about twenty or so that I took.

Owen says she looks like me in this photo.

I did not mean to cut off her part of her head she just leaned in as I took the shot. heh

Tantrum Anyone?

At just over a year old, Twitchit has decided that if she does not like what you are doing, what you want her to do, she's going to screech, loudly. Or cry, either one, it just depends on her "mood". I have to say that the first few times I was like "This is ok, I can handle this" but has the last couple of weeks have passed, it gets more and more frustrating for me. I'm wondering what happened to my loveable, sweet little girl! A good example is from this morning. She had yogurt for breakfast, then toast. I was trying to wipe off her mouth and hands of butter and crumbs, but instead you'd think I was wiping acid on her by her reaction.

She still has her sweet moments, but the tantrums seem to stand out more now. My husband's solution to the tantrum "phase" is to ignore her. Do not give her attention when she's standing there screeching and she'll 'learn' it's not a good method to get our attention or to do and stop doing it. In theory it's a good idea I suppose, but not very practical when your toddler is kicking and screaming while you try and wipe her bum and change a smelly diaper. I also feel bad to ignore her when she's trying to communicate with me but can't, bc she can't talk past dada and mama.

I wondered if it was an attention issue, maybe I was not playing with her enough? So I've increased our playtime dramatically, leaving barely any down time for myself. All this has done is wear me out and not stop the tantrums.

I really think it's a combination of - teething her eye teeth, growing pains, and her inability to be able to communicate her needs to us. So I'll keep struggling through and hopefully, the tantrums will be less dramatic at some point.

I had an idea for a photo montage for my mom today, but Natasha was not in the "mood" so I only got a few, which I'm not 100% happy with. I'll have to wait until Owen is home to distract her or try again after her nap when she's hopefully in a better mood. I'd like to get 1 more of her just sitting about to open the book. I fondly remember the 6-7m age when she was quick to smile, easily amused and patiently enjoyed having her photo done. :D

Happy Birthday!

My parents are visiting right now, so I'm a bit late in posting these, but here are some of N's cake pictures from her First Birthday on Saturday;







Those balls between each swag? Pure fondant and Bug ate about 2 of them before everyone was done with their party picture taking. Yummm pure sugar! :-P

The actual Cake itself;

And lastly, this is as messy as she got eating it. It's made of fondant on the outside but there was loads of buttercream icing on the inside. She was so cute, just nibbling away at her piece of cake. heh

Almost a Year.

Eleven more days.

The splotchy parts are my address and such. Not really comfortable having that info out there.

Eleven more days and my little girl will be a toddler. I almost tear up just thinking about it. It does make me happy though that my parents will be here for her first birthday. They miss a lot of stuff because they live so far away, so it's nice they get to help celebrate her turning One.

Standing on her own!

She's been letting go of stuff for a few weeks now and standing by herself for a second or two, but I've noticed in the last few days that she's been letting go more and standing for longer periods without holding on to anything. She still won't take any steps, but I think she's getting closer! We went to a play date yesterday and 3 of the babies there were walking, all within a few weeks of her age. Maybe she saw them doing it and was encouraged a little bit?

Little Miss Stairmaster.

I came upstairs yesterday to grab something and left Natasha in the kitchen. Any other time she would play contently on the floor and wait for me to come back. While I was up here to grab the item I decided to use the bathroom. I guess I was taking too long because before I made it back downstairs Natasha showed up at the door of the bathroom. I have to say it scared the crap out of me. I started second guessing myself if I had really left her in the kitchen or brought her upstairs. I guess it's time for a baby gate for the stairs.

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We had Natasha's One year photo session as well as christmas photos done this past Saturday. I won't show the Christmas ones but I'll share some of the regular poses and her cake ones. :-)

Wow we are behind...

I did not think it had been since Oct. 10th since my last post! The bug is growing like a wild weed, she's already 30" in length and 26lbs. I have fears that she will outgrow her carseat for RF (30lbs/32") before her 1 yr birthday. My husband tells me to stop fussing, but I can't, it's my nature. Apparently, my friend's little boy is 31" and 26lbs and her doctor advised her that if her little guy hit the 32" mark before his first bday (Dec. 6th) she had to switch him. I had always understood it that it was min. 20lbs and 1 year. We bought the Britax seat because of it's high restrictions with the thought that she'd be RF for a long time.

She can't possible grow 2" and gain 4lbs in 3 weeks right? Everyone keeps telling me that she will start to slow down in her growth, I'm hoping it happens soon. Again, O does not see the back deal of turning her around at a year old. I guess for me, it's just been drilled in my head so much from the parenting boards that RF is the safest position and you should keep your child that way for as long as possible. I had visions of her being that way until she was almost 2. I guess if she meets the restrictions for turning her around she'll be safe right?

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We had her Halloween pictures done last week, I'm very happy with how they turned out;

She had a special of 5 for $25, but as usual she tossed in a couple of extras. She does the same when we do N's regular sessions. When we chose the 36 photo pkg, we usually get 4-5 extras if she has a hard time choosing which ones.

We will be going back this Saturday to have N's christmas + cake Smash/birthday + 1 year photo session done. This will be the last set of photos (which kind of makes me sad :0( ) until we do family photos next yr for Christmas and then eventually (I hope anyway ha!) maternity photos.

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Her One year Birthday is coming up and just the thought of it makes me tear up! Everyone says it, but I can't believe she's almost a toddler! Our house is going to be a zoo come Dec. 1st when we have her party. My parents will be here, plus all O's Aunts/Uncles, plus some friends. We wanted to have something small and quiet, but then realized we can't invite couple of the relatives and not invite others, so about 4 weeks from now my house is going to be busting at the seams with 30ish ppl. Luckily we went to her playgroup's birthday party this weekend, so we all had a big party then and I won't feel quilty not inviting them. It's kind of nice how all our kids in the group are within a few weeks apart in age.

To try and limit the amount of people in the house at once, we've decided to do an open house 1-4pm and are **hoping** that people will come and go. So as 2 to 3 leave, say 1 shows up. I can only hope right?

A few of her photos from this past month;




I love this one, it looks like she's twirling with Daddy. :0)

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And lastly, we did her almost last Bear photo. I put her in a summer dress for it, as it was my favourite of all her dresses even though it was October. It's my favourite dress and I wanted a good photo of it.



I'll do a big final of all her Bear pictures at the end of the month. Which you all know is code for "I'm too lazy right now to find them and post the previous 10 months".

Standing on her own!

She's been pulling herself up and furniture walking for a bit now, but last night she started to let go of the loveseat and stand without holding on to anything. Earlier in the day when I was laying in bed with her (we're both sick, again) she pulled herself up using my hip and then stood on her own without holding on to me for about 20 seconds.

I do not have any photographic proof, yet...but when she starts doing it more regularly I'll take some captures. I'm a bit excited over it, but a little nervous at the same time, I think it's going to be soon that my little baby will be walking!

Teething Hell...again

The bug has 8 teeth so far and on Sunday night she was working on another. Usually when she is teething she gets really thick drool, a diaper rash and her cheeks get all rosy, there is only a mild amount of fussing. Well, what I'm now calling a mild amount. She was fine all day Sunday but then around 8pm she started screeching. It's not just your regular crying, that I can handle to an extent, it was borderline hyper-ventilating. Those deep gasping breaths in between cries and eventually between the breaths and the cries, yawns.

Two point five hours of straight crying. Nothing would comfort her. I held and rocked her, O did, favourite stuffed toy, pacifier, frozen yogurt to numb her gums (she wold not suck on it), anbesol, a dill pickle, formula... Finally we put her in the truck and drove around our neighbourhood for an hour to calm her down and hopefully get her to sleep. Another 15 mins of her crying and finally she fell asleep. Normally I'd use Camilla, but the leftovers of a package my sister had given me was gone and of course being thanksgiving weekend we did not expect to find any late night pharmacies. We did make sure to pick some up yesterday grocery shopping though.

The other wonderful thing, is that on top of the teething, she's caught another cold, so runny nose, slight fever, cough and a bit of congestion. Children's Tylenol took care of that, but it definitely does not work on teething.

A pic of the little darling. I can't believe at the end of November she's going to be a year old!

Month Ten (September)

How you have grown Bug. You are now 23lbs, 28.5" long and are definitely showing your independence! You've learned to pull yourself up on furniture and anything willing to stand still or stay put long enough for you to do so. You can also stand balanced on your own for 10-20 secs at a time, and "furniture walk". Your doctor tells me that before I know it you are going to be walking and racing through the house! You are also up to 8 teeth. The bottom two on either side of the front bottom two have slowly been working their way up for about a month now.

Oldest to Youngest.

Her first real cold.

:-( Poor bug is sick today. It hit her late afternoon yesterday. She's miserable, I'm miserable and O has escaped the house by claiming it was his company's Golf Tournament today. Bug has nasal congestion, a bit of a cough/sneeze and was running a small fever last night. I had some Children's Advil on hand but it's just a fever reducer so this morning I bundled her up and went to the drug store for some dye free children's Dimetapp. It seems to have cleared up her nose and at least now she's napping.

Last night we were having such a tough time getting her to sleep we did something we had never done before, put her in the truck and drove around for an hour to get her to sleep. I was scared once we got home she'd wake up during the move from her seat to her bed, but luckily she slept until around 5am. I went in and got her and brought her to bed with us. She ended up flopping on her tummy, bum in the air, head on O's chest. It was rather sweet. :-)

Teething...

Gaahhhh!! We thought she was teething again last week at her photo session, and our suspicions were confirmed today. This afternoon while she was letting out blood curdling screams in my face I saw 2 more teeth had broke through her comes, one on either side of her two front bottom teeth. I've been miserable all day, she's been miserable all day and we both just want the teeth to finish coming in so we can have a break.

I suppose, two coming in at once is better then the six that broke her gums all at once while we were on vacation. For some reason these ones seem to be hurting her a lot more though. :0(

Standing

Last night, O and I and N were in the basement watching a movie. N was sitting on the floor playing with her toys when the next time I looked down at her, she was standing upright without any assistance. I was so surprised I squealed "Natasha!" and she wobbled her last wobble before falling on her butt. heh We can only guess she used her drum to pull herself up and stand, but it's pure theory. :P

She's been sitting up from laying on her back for a couple of weeks now, and will stand up if we give her our hands to hold on to, but this is the first time she's used another object to stand. On top of that she has yet to stand up and balance herself w/o holding one of us. I'm all excited for her to do it again (sort of) but I think we have some time yet before it becomes a regular occurrence.

Little Miss Ladybug

Several weeks ago, as I mentioned in the post below, I ordered a costume from babystyle.com. Now, it was relatively inexpensive ($25), so I was a bit leery of just how high quality it could be for so cheap when I was seeing other ones, that were not even half as cute for $50USD +, but I ordered it anyway, figuring she is not really going to be in it that long, just for photos and certainly not trick or treating, so what the heck.

It finally arrived this afternoon and of course I had to try it on her and take some photos. I'm really glad I ordered the 12-18m size, as I also ordered the 6-12 for a friend's daughter and I don't think it would fit her in 2 months. The big surprise was that O was even excited to take some photos of her in it. He is normally not into this type of thing at all and laughs at me when I 'stage' photos of her.






Hopefully she'll like the costume just as much come Saturday morning when Rosie does her Nine month photo session. She seemed really happy in it tonight. Of course I've not jinx'd myself and she will probably cry when we try and put it on her on Saturday.

Little Fairy Princess

We did her nine month photo shoot at Riley Park this past Thursday, unfortunately by the time the photog got to doing the fairy costume pics, Tash was a tad grumpy (she was actually grumpy most of the shoot, I'll be surprised if we receive any good photos), so this morning before her nap I decided to try my own version on our front lawn. The things we do to our kids..she is going to kill me one day when she sees these.






Of course the one of her with her best smile the wind blew the tutu up, but meh, I still like it even if it's a bit distracting. I think I've taken way too many photos of her, all my tricks to get her to smile are no longer working. heh

We have a studio photo shoot for Saturday (we decided on a back up plan in case the Riley Park photos did not turn out) so hopefully she is in a better mood. She seems to just love R, so I'm hoping they will. R also has tons of props, including tutus and fairy wings, so we'll try again.

I'm also crossing my fingers that her Ladybug Costume will arrive in time (R has halloween props too hehe). My friend who received it (stupid no shipping to cda) said he sent it off 2 weeks ago now, so this would be week three. He sent it UPS, but they transfered it to the mail service. It's only coming from Georgia, I really hope it arrives. I can take her back to Riley Park for pics in the leaves, but I'd really like a couple of professional ones done.

I'm at worry mode now that it got lost in the mail!