Mr. Bear Month Nine (August)

Where or where has the month gone? In the last 4 weeks you have perfected your crawl, you can pull yourself up using our hands, wave, and learned to clap this month, which excited you to no end! You also can mysteriously sit up from laying on your back, but I've not seen you do it yet. I just know that I put you on your back for naps, only to check in on you later and see you sitting up banging on the rails of your crib! It's been a busy month for you, you've turned into a regular little monkey!

Luckily, even though you can crawl, you only seem to want to do so when there's something you really want that is out of your reach, like power cords, paper or cat food! Mommy is still proving to be faster though, and catches you before you get into too much trouble. I doubt it will be too much longer though before we'll be living in a gated community!





Order is Oldest to Youngest.

Nine Month Pro Photos

We had Natasha's photos done at Riley Park tonight. It was in a word, not the best. All week she has been fine napping at 6pm, but today, she was cranking 20 minutes into the shoot. It will be interesting to see how many photos turned out well. I doubt many family ones, as I was too busy trying to make her smile to remember to smiling myself. We have another session booked with another photog on the 8th of September, I'm hoping it goes better. I was just really hoping for some nice park photos.

I'm exhausted.

Teething + Frozen Yogurt = Happy Baby

I swear this stuff is like crack. I bought the yoplait tubes and froze them a few weeks ago. This past weekend when she was having a tough day of teething we gave her one and she was in heaven.

Little monkey is also now sitting up in her crib. I'm trying to catch how she is doing it, since we've never seen her sit up from laying on her back. I've went in the last 2 mornings after her nap to find her sitting up, her legs between the slats on the crib, hands on the rail, giggling away. I think the most logical explanation is that she has figured out how to roll from her back to her front, gets into her crawl position and then sits up. I've seen her do this a few times.

I told O that we need to lower the mattress, because before we know it she's going to figure out how to stand up.

Natasha Learns to clap

O and N were playing paddy cake tonight after supper in our room. Owen has played it with her for the last few nights, but tonight she started clapping with him. I thought it was a fluke at first, but when he stopped singing the ryhme and stopped clapping, she started. She was doing it all night until we put her to bed. She was so proud of herself for learning something new.

Please ignore my husband in his PJs haha. Seems to be a common occurance. He does get dressed, honest!


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Standing?!?

For about a week now, our little monkey has been able to pull herself up from sitting to standing if she was holding our hands. The first few times I showed O, he was like, um yeah, your helping her do that. I finally just told him to try it himself before he would believe me. She does it in a sort of a backwards kind of way, but she does pull herself up by herself without us pulling her. I tried to snap a photo of it, but as soon as I got the camera and came back she was back down on her bum again.

She's not managed to figure out how to do it in her crib yet, but I went in today after her nap and she had pulled herself up to sitting on her knees and was holding on to the railing. I think it's time we moved the mattress down, I'm worried that before long she's going to figure out how to stand up in there and just topple out.


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Now we're in Trouble

Umm yeah, so all that talk about how my daughter was not going to crawl and would go straight to walking? I was wrong. She was sitting on the floor by the bed this morning and decided she wanted wanted something out of her reach. Normally, she'd flop forward and just try and reach it with her little arms, then when that failed, she'd 'scoot/wiggle' to try and get it. This morning though, she pulled her knees under her bum and crawled to get it. Her Lamaze fish tank was in her way(it got stuck between her legs ) , but after I moved it she had no trouble at all. She still does not have it mastered, but is further ahead then just putting her knees under her bum and rocking.

She can also pull herself up to sitting if she is on her tummy, but not from her back yet. Rolling is also something that is still rare. She's much more interested in pulling herself up (or rather trying, so far she can't pull herself up in her crib or from sitting using chairs or whatnot) and doing mini nose dives move.

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Our BumGenius 2.0s arrived yesterday afternoon, but I did not have their pre-wash/dry done before bedtime, so I did not get a chance to check their obsorbency overnight, but I put one on her this morning and so far so good. I was not sure I'd like the velcro, but I really like how easy it is to adjust the size around her waist. Owen is on board with CD'n, but he's a bit skeptical atm as to them not leaking. I'm sure once he sees that they won't and gets his head wrapped around the whole thing he won't miss 'sposies at all.

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We are having some minor set backs with the whole solid feeding. She was doing great, but over the past week she has started refusing even her favourites after a couple of spoonfuls. Yesterday I gave her a spoon of her own, which seemed to help, she ate a lot in between chewing on the spoon. I'm wondering if

a) She's getting bored with her menu - there does not seem to be a lot of variety (various cereals, potatoes, peaches, pears, pineapple, yogurt, cauliflower, pasta, brocoli, carrots, rice) which is my fault, I'm running out of ideas. I have The Baby's Table book, which has a lot of ideas, but some of the recipes seem so involved.

or

b) She's teething again and her gums are bothering her? Normal teething for her is a diaper rash for 3 days, tons of thick drool and night sweats, which she has not had, so that's why I'm wondering if it's just a variety issue?

bah!

I think I'm set for a bit now. Between the 6 Bum Genius 2.0s I bought, plus 14 FBs, and now this one (Mommy's Touch one size pocket diaper), I have 21 Cloth Diapers.

Clothe Diapering re-visited

Before Tash was a newborn, I bought about 12 small size Fuzzibunz (used) off of I think the motherease.ca diaper forums. I had a really good labour/delivery, but my recovery took a bit longer then average due to a couple of issues, so by the time I was ready to CD, my little miss was 15lbs, and did not fit into the small size FBs very well. They say average built they are good to 18lbs, but apparently my 'little girl' is not average.

Anyway, now that she seems to have plateau'd in weight (she's now only gaining 1lb a month, not 2+, and everyone keeps telling me she should slow down now), and her poo is more solid due to being on solids, I want to try again. So this Tuesday, I'm having a woman come over that sells FBs, Swaddlebees and another type to let me try the Medium FBs and perhaps buy a few from her.

I was visiting a friend this afternoon and she let me try out her Bum Genius 2.0 (medium) and it fit nicely, it was also "trim". The difference between the two is that the BG is velcro, not snaps and goes up to 35lbs. So, when I got home I decided to order a couple from Diaper Divas.

I have to admit though, I'm pretty excited about these 2 limited edition prints in the FBs, and have added them to my wish list when N comes over next week to teach me the ins and outs of CDs. Of course they are pricer then the plain ones. I need to start stalking Diaper Swappers. I may have some problems though, since mediums are rarely up for sale.


The real bottom line is, I'm tired of using disposables. I hate the smell, I hate the cost, and other numerous things that I won't get into. We'll see how it goes next week.

Rolling Over, now on video!

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She did her first real Rollover a couple of weeks ago, but I was just able to catch her on video (bc everything needs video'd right?) this morning. Thankfully my bed was made, she did not roll off the bed, and for the first time in a bit, my husband is not sporting his pjs in the video. Him being at work probably had something to do with it. hah. Please ignore my high pitched excited squeals at the end.

That just might be........

our last Stars and Strollers movie. It sounds ominous, but it was not as bad as it sounds. Natasha was actually pretty good until near the end of it. I on the other hand am exhausted from holding her, and doing little things to amuse her. I also found that they did not dim the sound (this was at chinook), it was pitch black and the guys that came in after the movie to clean up, were rather rude in asking us to get out. Sure, I understand you need to clean up for the 4pm show, but you could be a little more polite about it.

I miss the days when she use to sleep through the whole movie.

A long long time ago

My daughter use to self sooth. I know there are now a new crowd of people out there who do not believe in self soothing and feel you are training your child to do something that is un-natural, but me personally? I liked it. N always had one of two ways that she used to get herself to sleep, she'd suck her tongue (quite an interesting sound) or her fingers. It was really nice to be able to bath, feed, read her a story and then put her in her crib and have her instantly start crying.

While we were in NB, we started the 'habit' of giving her a pacifier to sooth herself. I do not know quite why we started to do this, I think she was having a tough time adjusting the first few nights due to the time zone change and we used the pacifier to help her, and then we got into the habit of giving it to her nightly.

I really did not consider it a big deal, she's still little and the only time she ever gets it is at naps and bedtime, we did not give it to her during the day or to just suck on. We even went so far as to go back into her room once she was asleep and take it out. She never woke up, and it was definitely a habit we did not want, her to lose it out of her mouth and wake up crying for it at 2am. Up until the last couple of days, I saw nothing wrong at all with giving it to her for naps and bedtime. She was happy and asleep in 10-15mins which meant no crying and Owen and I could spend some time together, not tons of time soothing and trying to get her to sleep.

The problem now is that I've noticed in the last few days when we are out in her stroller, or in the car or what not and she gets tired, she whines and whimpers and and sort of cries a bit. I know she's tired, she knows she's tired, but unlike before, when she'd just fall to sleep, she now wants her pacifier. I'm not quite sure why it bothers me, but it does. I really can't pull the truck over on the deerfoot to get out her pacifier ( we keep 1 in the diaper bag for emergencies) and I don't want to give it to her at the mall.

Now, I could be totally off on this. Babies sleep habits/patterns change as they get older, more alert and more aware of stuff going on around them, but my gut tells me it's the pacifier. This afternoon I tried her afternoon nap w/o it and was semi successful. She only cried for a few minutes. For bedtime, not so much. She cried off and on (I kept going in to re-assure her and calm her down) for 30 minutes before she finally settled to go to sleep.

Maybe I should just let it be and let her have the pacifier? I think I'm expecting too much from my 8.5 month old.

Gah!

Natasha is starting to try and pull herself up on stuff! Last night while we were on the bed and I was stitching, she kept putting her hands on my thread box (picture those plastic cases that hold hot wheels) and would lift her bum up in the air. Later on, when Owen was reading her a bedtime story, she pulled herself up by using the arm of the glider.

She is no way doing it consistently, or trying to do it with chairs, low tables or such, but I fear this is just the start or her doing it more regularly. I'm soooo not ready for this.

Playing Airplane with Daddy

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This morning I was in the office scrapbooking when I heard Natasha giggling madly in the bedroom. I went in and there was my husband and her having a rousing game of 'Airplane'. I was actually surprised to catch them, Owen is very cautious of how he plays with Tash, for fear of hurting her, so it's usually me tossing her in the air or playing airplane. The sudden look to the right is her noticing the cat jumping up on the window sill.

Fun in the Sun

We had a busy day! The morning started out with a playgroup, and following that we went to a BBQ at one of Owen's friend's homes. I have to admit it was a bit daunting for me, and very hard for me not to stand there in awe when we went in. Their home is very nice, and their backyard is huge! You could probably fit our home (1500 sq ft 2-storey) and our backyard into their backyard. The only issue would be part of our home would been in a swimming pool. :-P

Even though we were totally unprepared (my wonderful husband neglected to tell me they had a pool (which is heated!) so I had no swimsuit for Natasha, but I did happen to have a little swimmer in her diaper bag from last weekend's BBQ at Renee's, we still went swimming. Well she and Owen did. She's still not all the excited about the water, but her reaction was a lot better then the mushroom pool experience.

And one final one, relaxing in the hammock:

A love for Shoes!

Personally, I own about 4 pairs of shoes, very practical - sneakers for running, 2 pairs of sandals (birks and prettier ones) and a pair of dress shoes. That's it. I wear them until they are about to fall apart before I go and get a new pair to replace the ones that are on death's door.


Tash on the other hand...well she has way too many shoes. There is just something so cute about tiny shoes I can't resist! Sneakers, sandals, dress shoes, boots, soft leather....I know Tash does not care, all she cares about is the laces and how they taste!

I was at the mall a couple of days ago, in my favourite haunt (BabyGap) and started chatting with another mom. She had 3 kids in tow, the youngest quite the crawler. We were looking at the shoes and she laughed after I commented on how cute the shoes where. She asked if Tash was my first, when I said yes, she said "Just you wait, by the 3rd one you'll have him/her walking around barefoot!"

I got the idea a couple of months ago out of a magazine to do a scrapbook page for her album about shoes, these photos are some of my favourites of the little photo session I did before her nap this morning.