Mommy moments

Now that Guinevere has been in our lives for over half a year (is it ridiculous that I’m already starting to plan her first birthday in my head?), I just wanted to share some of my favorite moments of being a mom.

1.     That moment first in the morning when I walk in Guinevere's room and she rubs her eyes and recognizes me. Her face breaks into a huge smile and her eyes say, "Oh it's you!!! I'm so glad you're here!"  It warms my heart every time.  I love that she now recognizes me and seems to prefer my presence (or Aaron’s) to anyone else (sometimes too much so - she can get very fussy if I leave the room for too long now, but I guess there are worse problems to have).

2.     That moment when Guinevere falls asleep during her last feed of the day.  She's so beautiful and peaceful.  And I know that moment will not last long.  My baby is not one that you can nurse to sleep.  She falls asleep while eating, yes.  But the moment you pick her up to move her, she wakes up.  Sometimes she remains drowsy enough to go back to sleep - most of the time, she wakes up wide awake, no matter how sleepy she was before, and does NOT want to go to bed.  This is one big reason why our bedtime routine involves story time after feeding and before bed, which brings me to my next favorite moment . . . 

Milk drunk.

3.     Bed time stories.  One of the things I've always looked forward to about being a mom was reading to my kid at bedtime.  I will admit that I was a little disappointed the first couple times I tried to read to Guinevere.  She squirmed and fussed and did not seem to enjoy it . . . granted, she was only about 3 weeks at the time.  Now she really seems to enjoy it. She smiles as I turn the pages – and even turns the pages herself sometimes.  She definitely has favorite books.  Right now, her favorites are "The Napping House" and "The Hungry Caterpillar."  She also seems to like it when I read some French nursery rhymes to her - she looks up and me and stares at my face while I'm reading.

Reading her favorite "The Napping House."

4.     Watching my baby learn to eat.  As you know from my last post, we are now introducing Guinevere to the world of food.  So far she's a pretty good eater.  She seems to prefer the finger foods to the purees, which is fine with me.  But probably the most magical moment thus far has been watching her eat and love veggies!  Her favorites are cucumber and broccoli.  One of the best moments was last week when I gave her banana for the first time.  She had a piece of banana in one hand and a piece of broccoli in the other. She tasted both, contemplated them for a bit and then starting voraciously gnawing on the broccoli and dropped the banana.

Eating broccoli.

5.     Listening to her "talk" to herself.  Her "vocabulary" now includes several consonants.  She loves to say, “dada.”  I’m sure she doesn’t know what it means yet, but it’s still really cute to hear, and of course, Aaron LOVES it.  No “m” sounds yet, though, which means no “mama” yet. Every time she says “dada,” I say “Very good!  Now can you say mama?  MmmmaMmmma.”  She’ll stare at my mouth with a slightly amused, incredulous look that seems to say, “Mommy, you’re silly, of course I can’t say that yet.  But I would like to figure out the mechanics of it.” She’ll get there eventually.

Starting Solids

I can’t believe we are almost done with January!  I’ve had this blog post in my head for the past month . . . but then all three of us got a wretched cold that knocked the entire house out for a couple weeks.  If you’ve never had to deal with trying to get a sick baby to go to sleep, you are very lucky.  It is not fun!  Finally all three of us are feeling better – we had lingering coughs and congestion for the longest time!

A couple days after Guinevere turned 6 months, we decided it was time to start “solids.”  I put that in quotation marks because somehow purees don’t really seem like solid solids.  Like most babies, Guinevere’s first taste of non-breast milk food was rice cereal.  She didn’t quite know what to make of it. She seemed really excited to put the spoon in her mouth, but then she tasted the cereal and I don’t think she understood that she was supposed to swallow the stuff that was on the spoon.  

Here is a video of Guinevere's first bite of food.

Her second food was peas.  I made the pea puree myself from real peas, which I thought would taste much better than the jarred stuff.  It tasted good to me, but Guinevere just thought they were “ok.”  But then again, she still didn’t totally understand that she was supposed to swallow them.  She would “eat” them off the spoon, but then they’d just come right back out and get all over her face and bib.  A couple days later I tried giving her peas from a jar, and she seemed to like that much better . . . or maybe it was just that she was finally starting to understand that she was supposed to consume them.

In addition to the purees, we are also incorporating some Baby Led Weaning techniques.  Baby Led Weaning is a method of introducing your baby to solids without any purees whatsoever.  You just give the baby finger foods from the beginning and let them feed themselves.  It’s kind of neat!  Since we are not fully doing BLW, our general schedule at home is that we feed her a puree while our dinner is cooking.  Then once dinner is ready, we pull her high chair up to the table so that she can join in.  Then we give her finger-length sticks of foods that are appropriate for her at this point in time.  Usually I will put them on my plate first and then give them to her so that she feels like she’s participating in the same dinner.  She’s had carrots, squash, bread, cucumbers, green peppers, green beans, chicken, etc.  So far her favorite finger foods are bread and cucumbers. So far it seems that she likes everything we’ve given her.  She loves carrots (pureed and cooked finger food) and cucumbers (finger food).  I think the cucumbers feel good on her gums because they are so cool.  The only thing she doesn’t seem to like is sweet potatoes – which isn’t that surprising considering neither Aaron nor I like sweet potatoes.

Now that we’ve been feeding her for a couple weeks, she seems like she’s finally getting the idea that she’s supposed to swallow the food on the spoon.  In fact today, she ate all of the oatmeal and pears that I prepared for her!  Last night she actually bit off a piece of bread and swallowed it!  It’s so amazing to watch this little person start to form opinions about food and begin to understand the technique of eating (who knew there even was a technique to eating?).

Guinevere's First Christmas

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Wow!  The holidays have come and gone.  Now that we are back to real life, I should probably get a post out about Ginny’s first Christmas.

I am very fortunate to get the entire week between Christmas and New Years off, so we were able to spend a lot of time with our families.  We spent the first weekend with Aaron’s mom and Aunt.  Then we went to my parents’ house in San Diego for one night.  Then we went to Orange County for my family’s traditional Christmas Eve get together.  I felt bad because she was tired and hungry by the time we arrived.  Instead of greeting everyone with her usual smile, she burst into tears the moment we stepped through the door.  Once I fed her, though, she returned to her usual happy self.

Christmas morning, we got up stupid early to cart ourselves down to the airport to fly to Oregon to visit my aunt.  My side of the family does this every year – getting up at a ridiculously early hour on Christmas morning, opening presents before dawn, stuffing some bagels and coffee in our faces before heading to the airport.  We’ve always flown out of San Diego, but this year Aaron and I decided to fly out of LAX and meet up with my parents for our connecting flight at the San Francisco airport.  This way Guinevere could sleep in her own crib Christmas Eve . . . and we could save a couple hundred dollars.  However, next time, I think it might be worth the extra money to fly out of San Diego.  In San Diego, it seems that most other people do their traveling before Christmas Day, so the airport is usually pretty calm when we leave.  I was shocked at how busy LAX was at 5am on Christmas morning!  There were lines everywhere!

One thing we learned - United Airlines does not let people with infants board early.  They are not a very family friendly airline.  Honestly, though, it’s probably for the best that we didn’t board early, since we had to sit on the plane for about an hour and a half after boarding before taking off.  Our flight was almost an hour late because they took too long loading our luggage.  Unfortunately, we had a really tight connection in San Francisco.  There is only one flight per day that goes to the tiny town in Oregon where my aunt lives and we almost missed it.  We ran (holding the baby and pushing the stroller) through the airport to the shuttle to a different terminal, and then we had to go up an elevator to run to our gate, just to go down another elevator.  The guy at the gate told us that had we been 2 minutes later, he would have had to close the door and we would have missed our flight.  If it hadn’t been for my parents standing there at the gate, assuring them that we were on the way, the airline probably would have closed the doors and left without us.

We finally got on the plane, and I pulled out my hooter hider (a special cover that lets me see the baby while feeding her, but no one else can see my business).  Feeding the baby on take off and landing is the advice every mom gets about how to help babies’ ears when flying.  The flight attendant came up to me and said, “I’m sorry, but we have a policy that baby’s can’t be attached to you on take off or landing.”  When I protested, she said, “It’s just for take off and landing.”  I said, “But that’s the whole point.  It’s supposed to help with their ears.”  I was a bit offended and thought to myself that perhaps it was the attendant’s way of telling me not to nurse in public.  Later in the flight, the attendant came up and asked if we had a Baby Bjorn (but she pronounced it “B-jhorn”).  Apparently, the policy is that the baby can’t be attached in a carrier, like a Baby Bjorn or Ergo, and she thought that’s what the hooter hider was.  She apologized for the confusion, but I was still irritated from the cumulative effect of everything.

When we finally arrived in Oregon, my aunt greeted me with arms outstretched.  Of course, they weren’t stretched for me.  Oh no, they were stretched out to hold the baby.  My aunt doesn’t have any children of her own, so Guinevere is like a granddaughter to her.  It was her first time meeting G, and it was love at first sight on both parts.  My aunt has always been good with children, and Guinevere seemed to warm immediately to her.

My sister and her fiancé came out to join us the day after Christmas.  Unfortunately, their flight was an hour and a half late leaving from New York and they did miss the one flight per day to my aunt’s tiny town.  My dad had to frantically call the airline and find a flight to the nearest town, which is 2 ½ hours away.  Then he and my mom drove the 5 hour round trip to go pick them up while Aaron and I stayed in with my aunt.  Of course, their luggage didn’t make the new flight, but it arrived the next day, so it wasn’t too bad.

We had a great time hanging out with family and doing a little relaxing.  Though we did learn the hard way that babies need routine!  I know I’ve read this in countless places, but never truly understood it until now.  Guinevere has never been a great napper.  Somehow at daycare they manage to get her to take 2 solid naps per day.  She was never consistent with us on the weekends at home – and then you add on top of that all the travel and new people and new things to see and you end up with one very over stimulated, over tired baby!  By the end of our travels, it was taking an hour or two just to get her to go to bed at night.  And it wasn’t just the little whimper/fussiness that she often does while trying to fall asleep.  I’m talking about an hour of full out screaming, leading up to what Aaron and I call the “scream of death.”  The scream of death is a particularly painful cry that she gives that makes you feel like the worst parent ever – like you are doing something wrong to her.  It is horrible!  One night Aaron and I looked at each other and said, “we can’t keep doing this.  There has to be something we can do.”  So we decided to ask our daycare person what her schedule is and then emulate that at home.  We’ve also come up with a bedtime routine that works for us and that we are sticking very strictly to for right now.  It is amazing the difference routine makes!  We have our happy baby back!  I’m not going to say that putting her to bed is always a breeze.  But it’s not an hour of screaming – so now I have a little energy left for cleaning, blogging, relaxing, or whatever else I want to do in the hour and a half that I can manage to stay awake after putting her down.

Some of my favorite images from the holidays:

Guinevere and Grandma Kathy

Learning how to open presents

With Aunt Peggy

We almost lost Guinevere amongst all the presents.

Decembering

 

Ok, now I can finally write a post about Christmas decorations in our household.  It actually took 2 weeks to get everything up this year.  The first weekend, I put Guinevere in her Mamaroo, turned on John Denver and the Muppets and assembled the Christmas tree.  Yes, we have a fake tree.  I grew up with real trees, and still love the smell and freshness of real trees, but I will admit that I love the ease of a fake tree.  I can just pull it out of the garage whenever I’m ready to get my decoration on.  I don’t need a strong man to help me put a tree in a stand and move it wherever I want it.  Aaron and I bought this tree the first year we were married using Target gift cards that were given to us as wedding gifts.  I like to think that buying Christmas decorations we will use year after year is exactly what people intended when they gave us those gift cards. 

Anyway, Guinevere was done by the time I got the tree assembled and finally got the lights on.  I had to re-do the lights 3 times.  The first time I got done and then realized I had them backwards (with the plug on top of the tree).  The second time, I got the lights all up on the tree, plugged them in and then realized that half of that string of lights didn’t work.  Third time, I finally got them all up, in the right direction, and they all worked – they’re not as evenly spaced as I would prefer, but oh well.  By the time I finished all that, G was super fussy, so I had to wait until the next weekend to put the ornaments on the tree.

Our tree 2012

We have a bunch of fun ornaments:

Our first joint ornament.

We are nerds.

 Aaron’s favorite part is the Han Solo “topper” (really it’s just a figurine that we have straddle the top of the tree) (funny story: I was at lunch telling some co-workers about our Han Solo Christmas tree topper and then they told me to “go tell him.”  I turned around, and there was Harrison Ford, eating lunch at the same restaurant as us!)

Yes, that is a Han Solo Xmas tree topper.

 And here's our mantle:

Our mantle 2012

 Because we got married in December, I like to use our cake topper as a Christmas decoration.  Those purple cloth napkins are also from our wedding.

Cake topper/Xmas decoration

 And of course, our newest stocking holder:

Guinevere at 2 weeks in the stocking holder - I plan on updating the picture every year.

For the first time ever, I'm jumping into the world of social blogging and participating in a link party.  I found out about this one from my friend, Danielle, who has a blog called Silver Pennies (you really should check out her blog if you like crafty home decoration stuff). 

December Sadness

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*** note: this post is pure stream of consciousness, with little to no editing***

Facebook is such an interesting beast – it can allow you to do something as inane as finding out what your friends are eating for lunch to something as deep as reconnecting with old friends (you know, the ones who you’ve thought “I wonder what ever happened to . . .”).  And then there is the downside to facebook – finding out information you would have rather not known.  This week I found out about two deaths via facebook in almost as many days, and I have to say, I might just be taking a little facebook break as a result.

Aaron is now in Chicago for one of his best friend’s mom’s funeral.  I didn’t know her that well, but we were facebook friends and she “liked” pictures of Guinevere and seemed like a very nice person.  I will never forget the kindness she and her husband showed to us when Aaron’s dad passed.  They made us dinner one night, and it felt like an extension of Aaron’s family.  When I learned of her passing, all the old memories of that horrible time when Aaron’s dad died came flooding back.  No one wants to lose their parents, and especially not suddenly.  Guinevere and I stayed home for several reasons: a) cost, b) baby + December in Chicago = no fun.  Fortunately, my mom was able to come up and help take care of Guinevere while Aaron is away.

Last night, I was scrolling through facebook and saw a post mentioning my childhood friend, Recenah.  I thought to myself, “Oh yay!  I haven’t heard anything from her in awhile, I wonder what she’s up to.”  Then I read the post.  It was an in memorium post.  She passed away on Saturday.  I just stared at my computer screen, jaw dropped, tears welling in my eyes.  I just kept thinking, “no no no, people my age aren’t supposed to die.”  I don’t know what happened.  I don’t know if she was sick or if it was sudden or anything like that.  Recenah was one of those friends who I had always wondered about throughout the years and was so glad to find her on facebook and reconnect.

Recenah and I had been best friends growing up.  We were inseparable.  Her family lived three doors down from mine.  We spent summers sleeping over at each other’s houses.  We would play Uno literally all night long – except, neither of us knew how to shuffle.  So we would ask my dad to shuffle for us, and then after he went to bed, our version of shuffling was to just spread the cards around all over the floor and swirl them together.  We swapped clothes and hair ideas.  One summer, my parents got a new refrigerator and we played in the boxes for about a month straight.  I’ll never forget watching Indiana Jones over and over while sitting in those boxes.  Recenah introduced me to my first video games.  She had Nintendo and we played the heck out of Super Mario Bros. and laughed at the dog from Duck Hunt. 

We went to Girl Scout camp together several summers in a row.  I was there to comfort Recenah when she was kicked in the shin by a horse, and when she got completely sunburnt in Catalina.  Her family took me camping with them in their RV, which I thought was cool because my family camped in tents.  It was fun to see how the “comfortable people” did it.  (for the record, I prefer tent camping now, I just liked the novelty of RV camping).  In addition to camping, my family took her skiing with us at Mammoth.  That was such a fun trip!  My parents rented a condo and there was a Jacuzzi outside in the snow!   Recenah and I also took several trips to Disneyland together – she loved Mr. Toad, I tolerated it, but we could both agree on Haunted Mansion and Pirates.

Her family moved out to Ramona (about 45 minutes to an hour away) when we were about 12, but she kept going to the local junior high with me.  Her mom would drop her off at my house in the morning and then we’d walk to school together.  Then we’d hang out after school until her mom came to get her.  We were both in drama together and loved being “theatrical.” (i.e. putting on shows for our families and recording made up “radio shows” on my tape recorder)

We went to separate high schools – mine in Mira Mesa, and hers in Ramona.  That’s when we started to drift apart.  It wasn’t as easy to stay in touch back then.  There was no email or texting or facebook.  You had to actually pick up a phone and call someone and have a real conversation, or write a letter, or visit.  We each got busy with our own lives and eventually lost touch.  I think the last time I saw her was at some point senior year in high school.  She came down to visit along with some of her Ramona friends.

I will forever be glad that we were able to reconnect before she passed.  I got to see pictures of her son and read posts about how excited she was to be going to school again.  We had exchanged a couple messages trying to get together at some point when I was in San Diego, but we never quite made it work.

I’ve had such a heavy heart this weekend.  So much of who I am today is because of our friendship so long ago.  I am sad that we weren’t in closer contact later in life, but I’m also glad that we were in at least some contact.  Her impact on my life will never be forgotten.

Recenah, me, and our friend Ava at my 16th birthday party.

And because I am such a musical theatre nerd, I'd like to leave you all with some of the lyrics of a song that has been running through my head. 

For Good (from Wicked):
(Glinda) I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

(Elphaba) It well may be
That we will never meet again
In this lifetime
So let me say before we part
So much of me
Is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me
Like a handprint on my heart
And now whatever way our stories end
I know you have re-written mine
By being my friend...

Like a ship blown from its mooring
By a wind off the sea
Like a seed dropped by a skybird
In a distant wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you

(Glinda) Because I knew you

(Both) I have been changed for good

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving

Before I get started on all my December activities, I wanted to take a moment to give thanks for all my family and talk about our Thanksgiving this year.  Thanksgiving will forever have a special place in my heart because it was a year ago Thanksgiving that I found out I was pregnant. 

I spent the majority of our travels last weekend reminiscing about how I felt a year ago and staring in wonderment at my beautiful Guinevere, who at the time was little more than a little bean in my belly and now, here she is, in the flesh, a fully living, breathing, cooing (and sometimes crying) baby.  A year ago I was trying to hide the fact that I wasn’t drinking because we weren’t even close to being ready to tell our family.  This year, I was able to have some wine with my dinner (spaced appropriately due to breast feeding, of course) and eat whatever I wanted without fear of nausea or heartburn.

We followed pretty much the same routine this year as last year.  Aaron and I spent Thanksgiving Day with his mom and aunt near Temecula.  My parents drove up to join us as well.  It’s so fun having both sets of parents be driving distance now. It was surprisingly warm for late November!  All of us were wearing shorts because it was too hot for long pants!  I brought a cute little dress for Guinevere to wear, which I cleverly did not put on her until we arrived.  And of course, she had to wear a bib all day.  My little Mount Vesuvius cannot be trusted with cute clothes.  (She usually goes through about 3-4 outfits per day due to spit up).

Guinevere on Thanksgiving Day

The next day, Guinevere and I went for a walk at Miramar Lake with my good friend, Corey and her daughter.  That night, my parents volunteered to babysit for us and Aaron and I were able to actually have a date night!  We drove through fog as thick as pea soup to the movie theatre, where we saw “Argo.”  As we walked past the crazy long lines for the new Bond movie, we both commented on how we were glad we chose to see something that’s been out for a bit instead. I am so thankful to my parents for watching Guinevere – our date night was a breath of fresh air.

At Miramar Lake

Saturday after Thanksgiving has always been my family’s traditional get together dinner.  My cousins, aunt and uncle and grandparents all came down to my parents’ house in San Diego for more turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, etc.  Everyone loved seeing Guinevere so much that I didn’t really hold her very much at all!  At one point, I looked around the table and had to ask, “Who has my baby?”  Turns out my cousin had taken her into the other room to play.  By the end of the night, all of us were really exhausted, but happy.

Saturday after Thanksgiving - her tummy time skills have vastly improved!

We had a great weekend, but it was also really nice to come home to our own house and have Guinevere in her familiar surroundings.

Ok - now I'm off to go dig out our Christmas stuff from the garage and start decorating!

An Unwelcome Visitor: the Flu

 

Sorry it’s been awhile since my last post – the flu decided to pay our household a visit.  It all started on Sunday night when we came home from a family gathering celebrating my grandfather’s 88^th birthday.  Aaron and I were both feeling a bit run down, but I sat down at my computer to type out a blog post and compose my thoughts for the coming week.  But then my head started spinning.  I rested my head on my cool desk and closed my eyes for a bit.  Next thing I knew it was five minutes later and my forehead had beads of sweat forming on it.  I took my temperature, and sure enough, I had a fever (as I mentioned in my post about Guinevere’s first fever, it takes a lot for me to even break 98 degrees).  So I went to bed without posting anything (for the record, that would-be post can be summed up like this: my grandpa is awesome and it was great seeing everyone).

The next morning I woke up not feeling great, but I thought maybe if I got dressed and went into work, I could power through the day.  By 9:30am, I realized that was not going to happen.  So I wrapped up everything that had to be done that day, said goodbye to my co-workers and headed home.  When I got home, Aaron was laying on the couch making groaning noises.  He, too, had a fever.  By that afternoon, we both realized we had the full-blown flu.  (I guess the one silver lining is that it helped me lose those last three pounds of baby-weight.)

Our biggest concern was Guinevere.  If we both had the flu, how would we take care of our baby?  Fortunately, Aaron’s mom recently moved to Southern California and was willing to make the drive to visit for a bit and help us with the baby. I am going to take a moment here to state how amazing my mother-in-law is!  She definitely does not fall into the stereotypical overbearing in-law category.  She came up here, exposed herself to our germs, disinfected our house, did laundry, made us soup, helped us with the baby, and kept a cheery disposition the entire time! 

This flu that is one of the most contagious bugs I have ever encountered!  It turns out that of about 12 people at my grandfather’s birthday gathering, at least 9 of us were sick in the next couple days.  You might be thinking food poisoning, which went through my head too, aside from the fact that I had other non-food poisoning symptoms (congestion, etc.).  But then, within 2 days of being here, Aaron’s mom came down with the flu too!  The craziest thing about this flu is that it ends almost as quickly as it starts.  Usually when I get sick, there’s a bunch of lingering symptoms (sore throat, congestion, cough, etc,) that last for days after the fever and icky symptoms are gone.  But aside from a bit of a stuffy, nose, I feel totally fine now.

So far, Guinevere seems ok.  She’s a little congested, but I don’t think that has anything to do with our illnesses.  She’s had a stuffy nose practically since birth.  I’m still being paranoid about making sure I wash my hands before touching her.  I’m also starting a new regimen of wiping down surfaces that we touch on a nightly basis, just to be safe.  The Lysol will definitely be getting more use, too, as I spray down fabric things like the couch every night.  Honestly, maybe I needed this illness to get me into some good cleaning habits before Guinevere starts crawling and getting into everything. 

In other news, it’s finally cooled down enough for us to use some of Guinevere’s “winter” clothes (I put “winter” in quotation marks because around here, anything colder than 65 is “winter”).  Other than that, I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing, rainy weekend.

Ready for a rainy day.

All snugly for a cool night.