Two word sentences!

For the past week Eleanor has been making two word sentences.  At first it seemed like she was just copying what we were saying, so we weren’t sure.  She’s been saying things like “there it is ball”  or “there it is bowl” (there it is comes out as “theh-tis” and we think is one word to her).   But this morning she very clearly asked for “more bread”!  I know girls develop more quickly than boys in the language department, but I didn’t expect two word sentences for quite a while longer.

She was slow to start talking too, so I kind of expected her to end up being more of a physical toddler, but lately she’s really been focusing on language.  She’s been picking up a new word a day it seems.  It’s becoming much easier to figure out what she wants, since at least half the time she can tell you now.

She has also learned what the potty seat is for.  She doesn’t yet get that she shouldn’t go pee in her pants anymore, but she definitely gets that that’s what she’s supposed to do when we set her on the seat.  We haven’t really been pushing it, but maybe in the next month or so I’ll try putting underwear on her.

And, finally, she’s sleeping through the night on a regular basis.  All of a sudden she just started sleeping from ~8pm-6am.  Woo-hoo!

She’s just growing and changing so much right now!  I really love this age, when they start being able to communicate and really interract with their worlds.  So much fun!

Day with the family

We went down to see John’s mom today, and John and the other two kids (well, mid-20s adults), scattered Jim’s ashes finally.  The weather hadn’t been cooperating with a boat launch, but today was beautiful and calm.  The scattering went well.  The rest of us watched from the house, with a motley assortment of binoculars.  It was a little surreal for everyone, I think.  An important day, but not as sad as it would have been a month or so ago.  I hope it provided some closure for John’s mom and grandmother, and for the kids as well.   I have a feeling the tougher parts of this year will be the holidays.  Other than the scattering, it felt much like any other family gathering.  It’s odd how quickly life seems to become normal again, even if the normal isn’t what it was.

Eleanor warmed up to everyone right away this time, so her memory of people seems to be improving.  She hadn’t seen most of them in at least a month.  I keep hoping to hear a wedding and/or baby announcement every time I see them all, but I think it’ll be a while.  : )  We might just have to provide a playmate for Eleanor ourselves!

With all the budget cuts lately, my SIL the teacher may be losing her job.  Her husband is completing his master’s in teaching right now and would have gone on to teach next year, but it looks like he’s going to have to sub until the economy – and school budgets – improve.  My friend, also a new teacher, finds out next month if she loses her job.  I know all of these people will be ok financially should they lose their jobs (between subbing and/or their spouse’s jobs), but I worry about the other families who won’t.  This economy is just awful.  I hope it improves soon.  Fortunately it hasn’t hurt us yet, other than John’s work not giving out the usual cost-of-living and merit-based raises this year.  Tough to complain about a lack of a raise when you know people who are being laid off or having their pay cut.

And my last piece of news: Eleanor got her first head wound today.  : (  She fell down while walking toward a table and, you guessed it, bonked her face and gave herself a fat lip.  She even bled a little, though that stopped quickly.  We have her some ibuprofen to try to stem any swelling, and some soy ice cream ostensibly to get something cold on it.  (I tried an ice cube inside a towel, but she wouldn’t hold still for it.)  She loved the ice cream and calmed right down, haha!  I’ve been trying not to start a food as comfort habit, but I think this was a good exception.  She nursed well after that and took her pacifier to go to bed, so it must not be bugging her too much anymore.

Happy Birthday Baby!

Eleanor turned one year old yesterday!  We had a party for her on Saturday with about ten people, mostly family.  It was a good party and she got tons of new toys and clothes!  She spent all day yesterday playing with her new push toy (from mommy and daddy).  She loves to walk around behind it.  She is so close to taking her first step on her own, but isn’t there quite yet.  Hopefully soon!  For now she moves much more quickly crawling so she doesn’t have much incentive to walk.

She’s now saying dada and versions of mom (mama, ma, nen, even Jenn recently), as well as “hi” and “up”.  Her little voice is so sweet!  She learned those last two in just the last week or so, so she seems to be learning quickly now.  I’m looking forward to hearing the next word!

She doesn’t have another appt until the end of the month, so I weighed her (on our Wii Fit, haha) and measured her myself.  She’s now about 18.5 lbs (13%) and 29″ tall (59%).  So she’s still  skinny, but not as much as before (she was 16% weight and 87% height at 9mo).  We’ve been feeding her a ton but I guess she might need even more.  Yikes!

We gave her soy milk for the first time the other day and she loved it.  I’m hoping to swap out a couple nursing sessions a day for it, but so far she seems to be treating it as more of a supplement than a meal.  Now that I know her stats, maybe that’s a good thing.  I’m planning on continuing to breastfeed for the foreseeable future, hopefully until she’s about two, which is the WHO recommendation.  We’ll see how it goes.

She popped her first molar on the 12th, which brings her grand total up to nine teeth!  Her sleeping is still all over the board, largely from the constant teething.  Though apparently I was a horrible sleeper as a baby too, so it could just be that.  I am so thankful that I’m able to stay home with her!  Besides the fact that I love being here with her, I would be a zombie at work most days.

I can’t believe my baby is one, but I also look at her and see a one year old.  This year just went too fast.  I hope the next one is a little slower, and I can’t wait to see what it brings!

Mama finally gets some sleep + 10 mo BFing blinkie

I put up a ten month breastfeeding blinkie.  Wow, ten months!  Crazy!  The last few months of breastfeeding have been a breeze, especially compared to the first few.  Eleanor still has her moments of not being the nicest nurser – especially when she can’t breath because of a cold, poor thing – but for the most part she knows exactly what she’s doing now and how to do it without hurting me.  Even with her seven teeth, she very rarely does something that hurts me.  The only time she comes close to biting is when she gets distracted by a sudden noise or something.  I was so worried about breastfeeding a baby with teeth, and now I’m a little surprised that more moms don’t talk about how easy it really is!  I guess that’s probably partly because few women even breastfeed this long these days, and the majority of ten month olds don’t have seven teeth.  Haha!  Hopefully a few moms out there can learn from my experience.  I always enjoy learning from other people’s successes and mistakes before embarking on my own journeys!

Last night was the best night for sleeping that we’ve had in this house in I don’t know how long.  Eleanor was up only once to eat!  She gave us a six hour stretch of sleep.  To give you an idea of how rare that is: I woke up engorged and leaking! I never leak anymore, at night or during the day, unless I’m nursing her on the other side.  I hope my body gets the chance to adjust to this.  I know it will in a few days, if Eleanor just keeps this up!

As you can probably tell I’m in a very good mood today!  A little sleep can work wonders.  : )

Just another daddy’s girl!

In the last few days Eleanor has decided that John is her new favorite person, and she’s also saying dada appropriately!  It’s enough to break a mama’s heart, though at the same time I’m so proud of her for saying her first word.  Haha!  Being a mom is quite confusing at times…

I remember my siblings going through phases where they preferred one parent over the other, then switching back, so hopefully this is only temporary.  I’ve also read that babies usually say dada before mama because they understand at an earlier age that daddy is a separate being from them.  They think of mommy as being the same person as them (separation anxiety is a symbol of them starting to understand that mommy is a separate person after all, if I’m remembering this correctly.)  I just keep telling myself all of this so that I don’t get jealous!  It’s working.  Kinda.

I think she might be teething again, since she’s chewing and drooling and sleeping like crap.  Up every 1.5-2 hours all night long, and usually only nursing will console her back to sleep.  Ugh!  This is her typical teething pattern, though she tends to take a long time to pop the teeth.  She’s been doing this for three weeks now and I am running on empty.  John took her yesterday morning and let me sleep in and I slept until 11am!  I usually hate doing that – such a waste of a day – but I obviously needed it.

Nothing else new going on.  I’m already over winter and want spring to get here.  That’s one problem with going down to So Cal for the holidays: you get a taste of lovely weather and it makes winter seem interminable.  We went to the local nursery last week and bought some indoor plants, which helps.  I really want an indoor lime tree, but can’t really justify spending $50 on something that I will very likely kill!  I think I might just go buy a few limes and plant the seeds.  And maybe make maragaritas.  ; )

Dispatch from the road

I have internet access at my aunt and uncle’s, so figured I’d post a quick update on us.

The ride down was fine, though a bit hairy in parts.  We left a day earlier than we had wanted to because of the weather, and I’m glad we did.  The first day on the road was nasty.  I have a pic of the freeway as we were leaving the first hotel, which I’ll post later.  It was basically a pure white road with no lanes!  At least we were one of the only cars on the road.  Our car trucked through it just fine.  Eleanor did wonderfully in the car, sleeping the majority of the way.

At some point on the way down, all three of us and most of my family came down with a cold.  We’re all still fighting it.  Figures, but what can you do?  Just life.

Disneyland was fun, though quite a bit harder with Eleanor than I had hoped it would be.  She had a few major breakdowns on rides, which was not so fun, the worst one being on the Finding Nemo ride!  Ugh.  (For those who don’t know: it’s a submarine.  Yeah, imagine a baby screaming on a submarine!  It was awful.)  For the most part she was a trooper and slept quite a bit in her stroller.  Her favorite rides were Small World – she was enthralled! – and Dumbo.  Riding through Small World with her made my trip.  She was so excited and happy!

We got to my aunt and uncle’s – my uncle is my father’s brother -  in So Cal on the 26th, and had a great first evening here.  However we woke up to the news that my paternal grandfather had passed away in his sleep the night before.  : (  My grandpa successfully fought off lymphoma two years ago – it was Christmas time when he was diagnosed – but never truly recovered.  He’s been pretty ill ever since, and we’ve been worried several times that we were about to lose him.  So his death was not exactly shocking, but still felt a bit out of left field.  He had been doing pretty well lately.  My grandma seems to be coping well.  In a way it was the best possible timing: we would all have come down here for his funeral anyway of course, but this way my grandma also has help making arrangements, etc. and has all of her family around her for support.  One of my uncles lives with her still, so I’m sure he’ll keep her good company in the future.  (She lives about an hour and a half away from my other uncle, so I’m glad she has someone closer.)

Looks like the funeral is going to be this Saturday, and we’ll be staying for that.  We were originally going to leave on Friday.  John’s work is very generous and gives him three days of bereavement leave even for his spouse’s grandparents, so that’s great.  He has enough time saved anyway, but it’s a nice bonus.

We’re hoping for an uneventful conclusion to this trip.  The roads have cleared quite a bit, so at least there’s that.

New pics and 9 mo appt

I put up a few pics from this past Sunday.  She was so cute in her little red tutu!

We had her nine month appointment today.  John was able to come to this one, which was great!  I always forget half of what I wanted to ask and half of what she tells me, lol!

Eleanor’s weight has dropped to the 15th percentile, while her height has gone up to the 81st!  She’s long and lean.  A little too lean though, so her doc wants us to add more fat to her diet.  We’re also going to add in a second meal every day, which I’ve been doing occasionally but without any consistency.  Her doc wasn’t too concerned about it though, and said it could just be her body type since her daddy is tall and we’re both pretty thin.  Other than that she’s doing quite well, and meeting all of her milestones.

She had her second flu shot and first polio vacc (we’re still following Dr. Sears’ alternative schedule), and did well for both.  We picked up vitamin D drops at the pharmacy, since her doc wants her on those during the winter, but we haven’t tried giving them to her yet.  Her doc also wants us to cruch up one Tums twice a week and mix it in with some fruit puree to feed her, since she can’t have any dairy.  I need to go look that up and see if there’s something better to give her.  Her doc didn’t seem so sure about it, and I remember Tums making me sick as a kid.  I don’t want her to be calcium deficient though, so if that’s the only choice we’ll have to do it!  Mmm, Tums-apple sauce!

Sleep breakthrough!

I’m almost afraid to post this, for fear of jinxing it, but I think I’ll risk it.  Last night and tonight Eleanor went down for bed, in her crib, with no fussing whatsoever, and promptly conked out!  She also did it for a nap today.  I’m just floored.  I don’t know what happened to my screaming sleep fighter, but I kinda like this Eleanor better.  Now the test will be tomorrow when I’m home alone with her: John’s been the one to put her down every time so far.  We’ll see if she’s just as happy for me.  Only problem now is that she’s still eating about four times a night, I think because of the growth spurt.  Or the teething.  Or who the heck knows at this point.  At any rate, it’s exhausting.

Today was the Christmas celebration with John’s family.  We had a great time!  Yummy food, good presents, and of course great company.  It’s nice hanging out with John’s family since they’re all adults now (well, except for Eleanor now.)  I feel like everyone’s on the same page and the group is more cohesive.  It’s different for me since there are still actual kids in my family.  I’m still not quite used to family gatherings of all adults.  Not that I don’t like hanging out with my family, it’s just nice to experience something different.

Eleanor got a couple of awesome gifts, including these water blocks by Plan Toys that we had put on her Amazon list, a cool little outdoor pool (little cold now, but should be lots of fun come summer), and a knit bear that’s as big is she is that grandma made for her.  She didn’t care about the opening of the presents, though she liked the bows, but she really loved the blocks and the bear.  It was so cute to see her face light up!  It’s interesting to see her memory start to form.  Used to be that a toy was new to her if she hadn’t seen it for two minutes, if that.  Now she recognizes toys that she hasn’t seen before and gets very excited to play with them.  We can also very clearly tell when she’s truly interested in a toy or when she just wants to check it out because it’s new, but it’s not all that interesting.  I can’t wait to see how she reacts to the rest of her Christmas gifts.

New blinkies, sleep woes

I put up a nine month BFing blinkie, and two Christmas blinkies.  Cutting it close to the holiday, but better late than never.  : )

Tomorrow is John’s family’s Christmas.  Woo-hoo!  I’m so excited to put Eleanor in her little outfit, and to see how she reacts to presents.  She loves paper so I have a feeling she’s going to have a ball!  We’ll be getting a workout keeping her from eating all the wrapping everywhere.

Nora has been horribly fussy for a couple weeks now, first with the cold and now she’s teething (again), and I hit a wall last night.  She wouldn’t go to sleep no matter what we did, even after giving her Tylenol, so John finally just put her in her crib with her favorite blanket.  He checked on her after five minutes of crying and calmed her down a bit, then after another five minute stint she was out like a light!  I was shocked!  She’s been screaming bloody murder for 30 minutes to an hour every single night – and that’s with me holding her and attempting to console her – and some nights has refused to sleep until past midnight.  So for her to fall asleep after just ten minutes, and at a reasonable hour, was amazing.  I’m really hoping for a repeat tonight.  I *hate* leaving her alone to cry in her crib, but I have to think it’s the lesser of two evils here.  John wants to try putting her in her crib on her own for naps too, but I think we’ll tackle that when we get home from our trip.

Illness strikes! Her first cold

Poor baby is sick.  : (  I’ve thought a few times in the past that she might be coming down with something, but nothing ever came of those.  Now she is definitely sick.  I’m sick too, which is actually helpful: her symptoms aren’t easily diagnosed, but mine are definitely a cold.  It’s been a lot harder on her – fever, sleeping constantly but very poorly, just out of it.  I hate this!  We’ve been trying not to give her a ton of medicine so that her body can kill off the bugs, but I hate seeing her miserable.  I am very grateful that she didn’t get her first cold until she was over eight months old, but I wish she could have dodged that bullet entirely.

In other news, the shopping trip went well.  I’ve lost a ton of weight and am having trouble finding jeans/pants that fit me.  I seem to be stuck in between a four and a six (I know, nice problem to have and believe me, I’m very excited about this!  I’ve always been a 6-8, and four has been entirely out of reach since early high school.)  I did find a cute pair of jeans that fit pretty well, but they’re too long on me (as usual) and I still need to wear a belt.  Sigh.

The mall we went to had a shooting that night (we were gone already) and the next day!  It was a nice mall and had just been redone, which is why we chose that one, but I doubt we’ll be choosing it again.  Which is fine by me since it’s kind of a hike.