Merry Christmas, Jocelyn

Sure, technically last Christmas was Jocelyn's first. And she even opened up a bunch of her gifts last year. But she was far more interested in the paper than the toys, especially when still in boxes. This year, however, she was a champ about the presents and loved playing with her toys and reading her new books.

I imagine that the whole Christmas thing is pretty confusing. We put the gifts under the tree as they got wrapped, which was probably weird for her. She got to open occasional gifts - like when we went home for pre-Christmas, and when her daycare teacher gave her a present. But she didn't get to open the ones under the tree when there were sitting right there. We told her that she had to wait for Christmas, but what does that mean to a 17 month old? Not much!

When she did open them, she enjoyed the opening process quite a lot. But then she immediately wanted to play with whatever it was that she opened. Her first gift was a book, and we had to read that book to her about half a dozen times before anybody opened anything else. Her second gift was a toy, which she played with for about 20 minutes while Mike and I opened some of our gifts. After that, she was kind of over unwrapping gifts for a while, but when we unwrapped something for her she was excited to play with it. We had a few of our gifts left at the end, and Jocelyn was very interested in helping open those, which was cute. It was like she finally got the hang of it!

We got to spend some time on Google video chat with Mike's family, so they got to see Jocelyn open some of her gifts. I think that Jocelyn kind of got what was happening. When we asked her to show something to Grandma she brought it over to the computer and held it up. It was really cute. And really cool.

Jocelyn loves Christmas stuff. She loves the tree, the lights, the lights in the neighborhood, etc. She points out the different ornaments on the tree. When she points to them, we tell them what they are. When we tell her Santa, she says, "ho ho." At one point she started pointing up at the tree and saying "um." It sounded like she was trying to say something, but we didn't know what. When we picked her up, she pointed at one of the M&M ornaments and repeated "um." She was trying to say M! That was so cool! After that, she got her little M&M Easter stuffed animal and called it "M" as well. I love watching her make connections and learn stuff.

She's getting really good at identifying body parts, too. A month ago she knew nose. Now she also knows eyes, mouth, ears, head, hair, belly, hands and feet. It's pretty amazing. She can't say the words, but she can point to them on command. And when we put on lotion (Jocelyn LOVES lotion), she knows what body parts to put it on, and whose I am directing her to put it on (rub it on Jocelyn's feet. Rub it on Mommy's belly. Etc.). Again, it's just so cool to watch her learn and grow.

Daycare is going really well, overall. She has stopped crying at drop offs, and no longer seems to be holding a grudge when we pick her up at night. She's just happy to see us. They say that she is a good helper, and that she is very compliant - they don't have to chase her down for diaper changes, for example. I believe that she is a good helper, she loves to help around here. But she is not really a very compliant baby. In fact, I would typically describe her as defiant when it comes to the necessary tasks of the day. But that's fine.

They did pay her a very nice compliment - she is evidently a very good influence on the other children in her class. Jocelyn likes to sort and gather things. She is good at making connections, and puts 'like with like,', so to speak. So all of the balls get gathered together. The ducks get gathered together. The cars get gathered together. You get the idea. The other children do that now as well. So that's really cute.

Daycare is also teaching Jocelyn a few lessons, some of which we wish she wasn't so strict about. I guess they don't get to walk around with drinks there (which is good, when the drink is milk or something else that spoils quickly). They need to be seated to drink. I agree with that most of the time, but not when it comes to water. Jocelyn is encouraged to drink water anywhere and everywhere, since it doesn't go bad or rot her teeth and stays securely in the sippy cup or sports bottle. But these past few days she only wants to drink in her high chair. Which is in the kitchen. And makes us stay in the kitchen and watch her drink. The cute thing is that she can climb into the high chair. This is a double-edge sword, of course. The kitchen floor is slate. Hard, cold slate. So if she were to fall she could get very hurt. But since I shouldn't be lifting a 25 lb. toddler up into a high chair, it's cute when she can do it herself. Today she climbed in while Mike and I were both in the living room. She disappeared into the kitchen for not even a minute, babbling the whole time, and when I turned to look to see what she was up to, she was sitting in her high chair trying to buckle in. We laughed so hard!

The biggest problem with daycare is that the poor baby is constantly sick! It's normal, germs pass around daycare, it's a fact of life. And after a year she should be totally clear and have an iron-clad immune system. But for now it's really rough. She hasn't even been there for a week since we had Christmas and I took this week off, and we are still having trouble getting her healthy. It gets better then worse again.

But I have gotten very far away from the original topic of Christmas. Jocelyn loves it. And I know there will be trouble when we decide to take down the tree. She really likes it. It was bad enough to take down the Halloween decorations, I can only imagine how much worse this will be.

35w3d - Hold on, Pecan!

I know I don't do much pregnancy blogging. I guess that since I have been through it before, it's sort of been there, done that. Which, of course, is the wrong attitude. We do take belly pictures (not nearly as many as we did with Jocelyn), and I do read the weekly iPhone app. But we don't read about it every night this time.

But things have taken a turn for the interesting. First of all, my allergies seem to be much more sensitive during this pregnancy. Not so much with my seasonal allergies, those actually were not as bad. But I had two ER-visit-worthy allergic reactions. One was when I was about 25 weeks and working in Fayetteville, TN. I probably could have gotten that one under control with a bunch of Benadryl, but I didn't have any on me (last time I make that mistake when traveling for work!). The other was Christmas night, while I was home, and I had access to Benadryl. Once I felt the symptoms start I quickly took two children's Benadryls (equivalent to one adult Benadryl), which did not act very quickly. The reaction seemd to be moving very quickly, so I didn't want to take any chances. There is a good hospital about 4 miles away, so Mike took me there. They injected some more Benadryl right into my blood stream, plus another medicine into my blood stream, and then I had to breathe in other medicines. About 2 hours later I went home, all safe and sound and super sleepy. Mike was sweet enough to let me sleep in the next morning while he cared for Jocelyn (of course, she also took the time to sleep in, which only happens when Mike grabs her).

Other than that, pregnancy is fine I guess. I'm a bit nervous about him coming along too early, though. I am already starting to have Braxton-Hicks contractions. I have also had quite a bit of pelvic floor sensation. My OB visit this morning (which was supposed to be last week, but my doctor couldn't make it due to a family emergency) indicated that I am 1 cm. dilated. Already. With about 5 weeks left. Luckily Pecan is still pretty high up in there, otherwise we might be having a New Year's baby. Actually, we still could, because you never know. But let's hope not! Let's get this boy fully cooked :-).

I have had some GI issues of late, so that kind of sucks. There are usually contractions that come with those, and I don't know the cause / effect order on that. I was up in the middle of the night last night having contractions and also tummy troubles. It was not a good combination :-(. I also had a contraction during yoga today. Oh, and I also get terrible reflux at bedtime. It's not a burny, acidic feeling, so I don't call it acid reflux. But there's bubbling, usually of the sips of water I recently drank, so there you go.

Anyway, we are super excited to meet this little guy. We are still evaluating names, and we are nowhere near ready. We have a bassinet, so he has a place to sleep. But we still don't have newborn size diapers. We have some clothes, and much of it is even washed. Unfortunately, it's sitting on the guest bed and not folded up and put into drawers. Oh well, one thing at a time, I guess. I had planned to do some of that today, but I took a 2.5 hour nap instead. I guess I was tired :-P.

Vroom!

One of the cutest things ever is Jocelyn saying "Vroom!" Whenever a loud car / truck / motorcycle goes by, she lets out a sweet, high-pitched "Vroom!" She also does it when she's pushing her toy trucks along the floor (yes, my daughter has toy trucks and toy purses - we keep things well-balanced around here), and when she's pushing herself along on her riding car thing. It's awesome. And adorable. Seriously, there is nothing better than a tiny little girl saying "Vroom!"

She also knows the word "money." She has play money (that came with her toy purse), and she also recognizes actual money, and sometimes thinks that coupons are money. When she sees all of them she squeals "MONEY!" It's total cuteness.

Speaking of money, Jocelyn recently made her first purchase. She went to Whole Foods with her grandmother, and she spotted a package of mini cinnamon rolls that she really wanted. When she grabbed them she clutched on and did not let go. Grandma gave her money and Jocelyn used it to pay for the cinnamon rolls. And then she couldn't wait to eat one. She loved it - who knows how she knew she would? But she did. She has eaten one after nearly ever meal since (until they were gone). It's too cute!

She is just getting so freakin' smart! I already told you about how she knows where our noses are. She is getting really good at following little commands. Yesterday Mike asked her to bring her shapes puzzle to her uncle Jeff. And what did she do? Just that! She totally understood all of the words and followed the instructions.

It's not all giggles, though. Jocelyn is being purposely defiant about various things. She loves getting into the bath. But she hates getting out of it. She also hates getting her pajamas on. And getting into her high chair. And getting dressed. All of these things make her mad. And I mean MAD. Like, temper tantrum, kicking, screaming, nightmare. It's as though we are torturing her. By trying to feed her. And clothe her. And dry her after a bath. Oh, changing diapers gets a similar response. Because, you know, putting on a clean diaper is also torture.

But it is mostly giggles and fun. We are happy :-).

Happy Halloween! And then some....

Jocelyn had her first Trick-or-Treat this year. And let me tell you, she was great at it! She was Winnie the Pooh for Halloween, which was seriously the cutest thing ever. I have mentioned before, she LOVES Winnie the Pooh. Since she wasn't super excited about picking a costume, we picked that one for her. It was that or a cow (she also loves cows). But the Pooh Bear was just too cute to pass up.

Anyway, we took her outside in her costume and handed her the pumpkin bucket. She was totally confused, and handed it back to us. Then we walked over to see our neighbor (the only one we really talk to) and she didn't understand why we were walking to her door. And then she wouldn't knock. But we gave her back the bucket and our neighbor put some candy and a little toy (special for Jocelyn) in it, and suddenly she was okay with carrying the bucket.

By the third house, she got it. She was running up to the door and knew just what to do. It was super adorable :-). But once we hit about 5 houses she had enough. She walked us home. She did get a huge kick out of handing out candy. She loved the kids who came by all dressed up. We let her eat a mini Kit Kat bar and take a few licks off of a lollipop. We ate the rest of her candy ourselves :-).

Other than that, our little bugaboo is just growing and learning so much. It's astounding. And wonderful. The other day she was saying Yum. It sounds more like zyum, but it was in the context of eating, and after we were saying yum. So I think that is what she was going for. When we watch sports she yells Go Go Go. It's also super cute.

She's been practicing her Mama and Dada again. She proved she can say them months ago, but she is back to practicing a whole bunch. And really demonstrating that she knows their meaning. She is also really cute about demonstrating that she knows her own name. We ask her where Jocelyn is and she taps her head. SO CUTE! The other really cute thing is that she is starting to connect that pictures are of people, and she knows those people. She points to pictures of us and then to us and says our names. So this is good because we show her pictures of her grandparents, aunts and uncles rather frequently so she can potentially recognize them when she sees them again. Oh, and she knows who her baby brother is - when we ask where baby brother is she points to his ultrasound picture on the fridge.

Another thing she does that is awesome is when somebody says the word 'cry' she pretends to cry. She wrinkles up her face and makes a whining sound. It's adorable.

Oh, and she knows where her nose is. And where our noses are. And she points to them when we ask her to. She's so freakin' smart!

She has some really awesome skills that she has worked on. Jocelyn can throw! And she loves doing it. Mostly she is good about sticking to throwing balls. Sometimes she throws her toys, which we try to stop but aren't too strict since most of them are stuffed animals. But when she throws her books or heavy toys, we need to intervene. It's really cool to watch her throw, and sometimes she can even catch.

Jocelyn has become quite the sharer lately. She shares toys at Gymboree. And it's not like a kid walks up to her and tries to take it. She walks over to other children and offers them toys. It's adorable! And at home she likes to share her food. And she doesn't want to just hand you her food, she wants to feed it to you. It's so sweet. Sure, it's a bit gross. I mean, when she's eating her fingers are all sorts of slimy. But how can you say no? So I eat a whole lot of slimy watermelon pieces and Rice Chex.

Speaking of watermelon and Rice Chex, they are Jocelyn's current favorite foods. It's going to get really tough here. Watermelons are hard to come by, and they are not that great right now. But Rice Chex are very readily available. She's sick right now, so we are not that concerned that she isn't eating much. She's drinking plenty, which is the most important thing right now. And since she eats fruit better than anything else, she's getting plenty of hydration. In addition to watermelon, she digs pineapple, grapefruit, pears and red grapes right now.

A recent favorite game, which I may have already mentioned but don't remember, is that when you sit on the floor she immediately runs over to you and jumps in her arms. It's pretty awesome. But beyond that, she likes to then bring you all sorts of stuff - shoes, stuffed animals, books, her toy barn - whatever she feels like and make you hold them. Once she is satisfied with the amount of stuff you are holding, she then climbs into your lap with it all. If something slips out then she climbs out, puts it back, and climbs back on. It's adorable.

She's a good girl. And such a fun baby. We have a whole lot of fun around here!

Fun Age!

Jocelyn has reached SUCH a fun age! Seriously, 15.5 months old is awesome. I would love to keep her at this age for months and months.

We have Jocelyn sleep trained again. Mostly. Tonight she's a bit cranky, and is crying a tiny bit. But only a tiny bit. On Friday we took her off the bottle for good. She was only on her night time bottle for the past month or so, so on Friday we decided it was time for her to give it up. And you know what? It was no problem! I really expected a fight. And a big fight at that! I thought we'd have to transition to a bottle of water instead of milk just for suction. But now? Nothing! She has her bath, then once she's in her PJ's we give her milk and and a cookie, then we brush her teeth. After that, Mike reads her two stories (How Do I Love You? and Goodnight Moon). Then she cuddles with me while I sing her a few songs and rock her in the rocking chair. Once she gives two or three good yawns, I put her down in her crib. Then it's usually 10 minutes of light crying and some talking and then she's quiet. If she fusses a whole lot, we check on her to make sure she didn't poop or something (which happens more frequently than we would like).

But on tot he cuteness. I don't even know where to start right now... Jocelyn has so many cute new games. She is great about just sitting on our laps while we are sitting on the floor. She just parks her butt down. She often brings us the books she wants us to read to her. But sometimes she also piles all kinds of crap onto us - sneakers, Pooh bear, her globe, etc. - and then climbs onto us. If we try to put something down, she climbs down, hands it back to us, and then climbs back on. It's really funny.

Tonight she was feeding us dinner. We usually let her just feed herself, but sometimes she is skeptical so we have to break off the pieces and feed them to her. Today she took a bite of some chicken and then held it out to me. She fed it right into my mouth! It was SO freakin' cute! She did the same with Grandma. It was really sweet. Of course, in that process, she dropped some on the floor. And when I bent down to pick it up (so Dakota couldn't get to it) she threw her water cup at my head. So that was pretty funny.

Then tonight we took a walk up to the local ice cream shop and each of the grown ups got an ice cream cone. We did not get Jocelyn her own, but she is may be old enough soon to be able to handle her own kids cup. She literally grabbed the hand I was holding my cone in and pulled my cone to her mouth. It was SO ADORABLE! She probably ate 1/4 to 1/3 of my pumpkin pie ice cream. She also tasted Mike's cookie dough and Grandma's chocolate ice cream / orange sorbet mix. And as we sat there, she would point to the ones she wanted other bites of.

I am sure I have mentioned it, but Jocelyn loves Loves LOVES her Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal. It's as big as she is, but it doesn't stop her from walking around with him. Since her last illness (she had about two weeks ago) she does not like to be apart from him. We have to convince her to leave him inside when we go out for walks, or that he is too big to fit in her crib so he has to sleep in the recliner.

Well, today Mike and I took advantage of nap time and drove out to Babies R Us (Grandma was kind enough to sit with the sleeping baby). We looked around for bedding themes for Pecan, but also bought Jocelyn a whole bunch of stuff that she needs - two pair of pajamas, some new sippy cups and some sneakers (since it's starting to get colder / wetter out, which she is afraid to try on). We also bought her some fun stuff - some really cheap Halloween T shirts, Winnie the Pooh slippers (which, again, she won't try on), a Pumpkin bucket for collecting her Halloween candy, and a new book. I thought she would LOVE the slippers, and she does... but not to wear. She wants to carry them around.

While Jocelyn has been running for a while, she seems to have fully mastered the skill. She can run without falling / tripping now, and she loves it. She ran some 8 laps around the house last night - she went from living room to sun room to breakfast nook to kitchen and back to the living room. Over and over again. And she grinned the entire time. And while she has enjoyed being chased by her grandma for a while now, she's super into it now. She loves to have grandma hide out and scare her. It's super cute.

Speaking of scary things being fun... our house is now decorated for Halloween. We have a witch and caged mummy hanging outside, some pumpkins, and some window decals in our dining room - a skeleton and a vampire. Jocelyn loves them. She points to them all the time and is so interested. We hang out in the living room and she points back and forth from one to the other. When we go outside she gestures to the witch and the mummy. And now that we have those, she loves her Halloween book. We read it over and over and over again.

I can't wait to take her Trick-or-Treating. I don't think we'll get very far - only a few houses in the neighborhood. But I think she will love it! She is going as Winnie the Pooh (of course). She didn't pick it out - she didn't pick anything out. She wasn't too interested in any of the costumes, so we picked one for her. Hopefully she enjoys wearing it. If not, then we'll put her into her skeleton shirt and call it a day.

There are just so many cure things, I can't possibly write them all down. But Jocelyn is seriously the funniest person I know. Of course, we need to be more careful around her. Jocelyn HATES having dirty hands. It used to be that she would hold her hands out to have them wiped. But now she wipes them on her shirt, pants, couch, our clothes... whatever. Probably because she sees us wiping our hands on our pants. And Grandma recently stubbed her toe and said "Oh Sh*t!" without thinking about it, and guess what Jocelyn said. Luckily she hasn't repeated it since!

She says lots of things. She can say "All Gone" when she is done with her food, she can also say pen, banana (bana), and she tried to say ridiculous. She also is practicing her "S" sound a lot, and knows how to say 'shh' while holding her finger up to her mouth. It's super adorable.

That's all I have to say for now... I know, I said a whole heck of a lot!

Chatter Box!

Jocelyn talks so much now, it's so awesome! She has a few new actual words. She can now also say 'pen', 'moon', 'shh' (finger at her lips and all) and 'chgachgachga' (like a train). I think she also tried to say 'chicken.' It's just so cool to watch her learn stuff.

She loves to 'read.' She has always loved to flip through her books, but now she reads the words out loud. Sure, it's in baby talk, but she inflects as though she is telling a story. It is adorable. She also seems to get emotionally involved with her stories - I think she gets sad at one of her stories where a baby is crying.

In addition to the words she can say, and words she tries to say, Jocelyn understand so many words it's unbelievable. She knows snack and hungry - when you offer her a snack she runs to her snack cabinet. And when you offer her a meal - she knows the words breakfast, lunch and dinner - she tries to climb into her high chair. She also knows outside, poopie, pee pee, diaper, burp (which she tries to say sometimes, which is cute), Winnie / Pooh Bear, lamb, milk, mommy's room, bathroom, kitchen, Jocelyn's room, lamb, blanket... so many words. It's so amazing.

Speaking of climbing onto / into things... Jocelyn is really trying to climb up onto the couch. It's super cute. She works so hard at her physical tasks. She has also been really into the climbing at Gymboree (and everything else) lately. It's great - usually she doesn't do the prescribed activities during free play, but lately she has been trying them. And she just owns 'air log' time :-P. We do need to take her to the park more often, though, because she does need more climbing practice.

It's so amazing to watch this gorgeous baby girl turn into a child. She just does so much, and learns so much, and it is so cool.

23W2D - Fat bottom girls make the rockin' world go round... but not the birthing world :-P

Okay, it's sort of an exaggeration. But I got scolded at my last doctor's appointment because, well, I gained 27 lbs. in 22 weeks of pregnancy. Yeah... that's TOO many! The doctor offered to refer me to a dietician. I politely declined. I mean, hello, I know the rules. I know more about health and nutrition than most people I know. But knowledge does not always translate to appropriate actions.

With pregnancy I get *hungry*. Of course, when pregnant with Jocelyn I ate really well, even though I ate a lot. With Pecan I have been eating crap. I know it. So I am not upset that my doctor said I am getting too fat. Because I am. Her heart is in the right place. Too much weight gain makes for a really big baby, and a really big baby is harder to deliver vaginally. And since I want to deliver vaginally, well... you get the idea. So it's less crap and more fruit for Mama!

But I feel good, though. Pecan moves great. He is growing at the right pace. His heart rate is always right where it needs to be. He is growing so perfectly.

Hhhi, SSsssilly Baby

Jocelyn is working on her H and S sounds. It's so super cute. When we say hi to her she will start practicing 'hhhaa' sounds. They are very breathy at this point, but they are distinct. She often practices her 'SSS', especially after we call her silly. It's a bit lispy, but that's normal. Her tongue sticks out of her mouth and she does a "Thssss." I love it!

We are working on sleep training right now. We just finished day 12 of the "Sleep Lady Shuffle." The first night took 66 minutes of crying the entire time. Tonight took 14 minutes of no crying. Since we started she has slept through the night every night. I SO wish we had done this sooner! All of the good nighttime sleeping has lead to great naps and a super happy baby!

She is putting herself to sleep at nap time as well. Grandma puts her down and walks away. I need to ask how long it takes, but I don't believe it's very long. She's also off of daytime bottles. She still takes a bedtime bottle, but her nap bottle is now gone. My baby isn't a baby anymore!!

Eating has been hit and miss lately. When Jocelyn likes something, she REALLY likes it. I made some roast chicken two weeks ago that she could not get enough of. I made an herb butter that I rubbed under the breast skin, which kept it super moist. And then I rubbed some on the outside of the skin, which made it crispy and delicious. Not that she at the skin, but she did great with the breast meat. She still loves fruit - pretty much all of it. And bread. Her favorite store is Central Market because they have samples of fruits and bread and all sorts of other things. She just eats her way through the store (according to Grandma, anyway). Tonight she did great at the Greek Food festival. She munched on a bunch of gyro meat, chicken kabob, roast chicken, souvlaki and of course the fruit we brought with us. Of course, her favorite thing was probably the honey ball. That kid loves her sweets :-).

She's just such a fun age. 14.5 months is great! A few days ago we were running through the sprinklers, which she thought was super cool. Today I held her by the hands and spun her around. She LOVED it. Gave these cute little giggles. And even though our pool days are probably over for this year, last weekend when we took Jocelyn in the pool she got the biggest grin on her face. It just lit up her entire face, which was so super adorable!

I love my kidaboo!

21w5 - Oh Boy!!!

Last Friday we had the anatomy ultrasound. Sadly, the new ultrasound tech doesn't know how to put the pictures onto a memory stick or CD, so I don't have any to put up. But no matter - we found out that Pecan is a BOY!

Of course, this comes as no surprise. I knew I was having a boy. This pregnancy was just so different, and my cravings were so, well, masculine. It just couldn't be a girl.

They did move his due date to January 28 - his daddy's birthday! Of course, a due date is just a due date, and not set in stone. So I will still tell people January 29 in conversation. It would be funny if he and Mike have the same birthday, though.

Pregnancy is so strange. I am having pretty serious cravings. Weird, serious cravings. This past week it has been cottage cheese. And that's very odd, because in real life I HATE cottage cheese. It's bland and has an awful texture. But in this particular pregnancy, I love it. At least right now. What is really odd about that is that my MIL craved cottage cheese while pregnant with Mike. So I suspect that we have a mini-Mike on the way :-).

20w0d - How did we get to the half-way point?

Seriously... this pregnancy is FLYING by! It probably helps that we know what we're doing this time around, so we're panicking less. Also, we're so busy chasing a toddler around that the days fly by. But this point last time we knew we were having a girl. This time we still don't know. We'll find out on Friday - which I am, of course, super excited about!

It is funny with this being the second time around. I'm certainly a bit more relaxed. With Jocelyn I didn't dare lick the spoon when making brownies. Now, well, I cheat a bit. But in other ways Pecan has such an advantage. Besides my obvious 'been there, done that' rather than 'holy crap' attitudes, I think that Pecan probably has some good developmental stuff happening because we read to Jocelyn so much. When J sits in my lap and I read to her, I am basically reading to my tummy. So that's cool :-).

We're going through the name book and trying to finish evaluating boy names we like, just in case. Boy names are AWFUL. Seriously. That's why every guy you know has like the same 10 names. Because those are the only reasonable ones! To be fair, we're eliminating anything too ethnic (could you imagine us naming a kid Sanjeev, Antonio, etc.?). But when you eliminate anybody in your life, it's MUCH harder with boy names than girl names. For that reason I am hoping for a girl :-P.

I kid, of course. I'll be happy either way. Sure, it would be nice to have one of each. But we already have SO MUCH girl clothes that are barely worn, so it would be convenient to have a girl. Plus Jocelyn would have a same-gender playmate, which would be easier. So there you go.

19w4d - Kicks!

About a week ago (18w4d, give or take) Pecan gave his (I'm guessing) first kicks! It was amazing! I am pretty sure that I didn't feel Jocelyn's kicks for quite a while after this point. She was a very still baby in the womb. Pecan is super active! Even at my last OB visit, we had trouble getting a heart rate because he kept on moving around. It was cute :-).

A week from tomorrow we have the ultrasound that will tell us if our suspicion is true or false - we will find out Pecan's gender! We are SO looking forward to it. In fact, we're taking the whole day off. Of course, we're not planning to rest and relax all day. We are touring 5 day care sites! The MIL is moving out in October, so we need to find a day care solution for Jocelyn (and eventually Pecan).

I'm still pretty exhausted, and I'm starting to get a few other symptoms. Namely, I am getting the increased snot and bed time acid reflux. No good! I'm also starting to have vivid dreams. I had one last night that was of a.. well.. sexual nature. And not completely with my husband (although, he swooped in at the end and wooed me back). But it was so vivid, and felt so real, that I felt guilty and was a bit nervous. It's funny. Obviously it was a dream, and doesn't mean anything, but it's still a bit weird.

It's part of why I think I'm having a boy. I'm having more sexual dreams, and a higher sex drive in general. So there must be more testosterone in my system. I also gained all my weight in my butt and I crave junk food - specifically fast food. The only common craving between this pregnancy and the last is veggie burritos and sour cream. And spicy food. Okay, the junk food is the only real difference. With Jocelyn I craved salads.

In this case I can feel my uterus already. I had trouble finding it with the first pregnancy - probably because things on top of it were still tight and held together. But now that everything is all loosey-goosey, so I can feel stuff better.

Jocelyn is also being super, crazy cute lately. Now that the weather is nice we are taking her outside a whole bunch more. Sunday we took her to two different parks. We went up the road to the duck park in the morning. That was really cute. There is a new playground there with two sections - one for bigger kids and one for smaller ones. The old playground is still there, but nobody used it because the new one is so nice. Even among the little kids Jocelyn was little, but it didn't stop her from climbing up the stairs and sliding down the slide. And then trying to climb back up the slide.

Once she seemed like she had enough of the playground we wandered over to creek path and walked over to see the ducks. There were a bunch of people with dogs, and she LOVES dogs! So that was really cute! When we got to the ducks, she watched those with wild wonder for a little while, until she appeared to get really tired. So we quickly scooped her up, got her home and put her to bed. Where she refused to nap. She was tired, but just wouldn't settle. It was hours before she finally slept.

That evening we took her to the park around the corner from us, which also was fairly well populated with children. And, again, Jocelyn was the little one. We swung, we ran around one jungle gym and down the big slide, she chased some older boys around. One was on a bike, the other was on a skateboard, and she was fascinated by both. She also just adores going down the slide. It's funny, though, because she climbs the stairs for the first slide, but once she goes down it she wants to climb back up it. It's adorable.

In other cute news, she tries to mimic animal sounds now, which is awesome and adorable. And she's really into hugging / snuggling. She does this hug where she hugs you tightly around the neck with one had and has the other had around your shoulder while patting the shoulder. It just melts the heart!

This is a long post, so it's time to publish. Hopefully I'll be able to update more regularly!

The airplane poop story

Since I teased Facebook with this story, I thought it best to share it.

First of all, Jocelyn does not travel well. Sure, she is well behaved. But her inexperienced immune system leaves her susceptible to all sorts of ailments. Put her on a germy airplane, in a germy hotel room, and near a bunch of new people, and her poor little system just can't take it.

Our last morning at our hotel poor Jocelyn had an explosive poopy diaper. I mean, I got one quick whiff before I looked down to see it leaking out of both sides of her pajamas. Since I knew we had to fly, this was a good thing that this happened so early in the day - it gave me the opportunity to know we needed to pack several extra outfits into the carry on.

Fast forward to the car ride, when within 10 miles of the airport the sounds started. Parents know what the sounds are. We knew more was on the way. Sure enough, another outfit was ruined. We pulled over, changed the diaper and outfit and went on our merry way.

Jocelyn was absolutely awesome at the airport. She ate some food, played in the waiting area, giggled a whole bunch and was generally a great baby. We got on the plane, she took her bottle and passed out in Mike's arms for some two hours. When she shifted from his lap to his shoulder, he noticed a wet spot on his leg. Jocelyn leaked pee out of her diaper. This is not a big deal, of course. As a parent sometimes you get baby pee on you. Inconvenient to be stuck on an airplane with no change of clothes, but whatever. When she woke up from her nap, Mike had to use the restroom himself, so I took the damp baby. After a few minutes we started to land so I offered Jocelyn a bottle. During the bottle Jocelyn farted audibly - impressive for a tiny baby on a landing plane (it's loud on there!). And it was stinky, too.

At that point Jocelyn had enough bottle, and reached back to daddy, and a cloud of stink follows her movement. Also, as she gets up, I realize that my lap is SOAKED. I mean drenched, both sides of my lap, wet stains, soaked. So Mike is holding her upright, not letting her sit back in his lap, and we tried to figure out if we should change her and how. We knew there had to be poop in there, because it still stunk. But we were landing and couldn't get up.

Well, as Mike moved Jocelyn a little bit, something fell out of her (very loose, kind of like bell bottoms) pant leg. Yup, it was poop! A piece fell on the floor, a piece fell onto Mike's lap, and we cracked up! I mean, what else can you do in such a situation? We obviously had to change her, but how? We couldn't get to the bathroom where the changing station is. We were landing. And besides, we might leave a breadcrumb trail of poop! So we had to change her right there in the seat!

It took three little trash baggies (one for the soiled pants, shirt was fine), one for the diaper and a third for all of the wipes. Because we didn't just have to wipe her clean, but we also had to clean the floor and Mike's pants. Luckily we were in the three-across seats and Nancy was sitting with us, because we needed the space and we needed to know our neighbor.

We cracked up the whole time. It was SO AWFUL, it was hilarious! This was, by far, the worst poop experience to date. And let's not forget that she pooped on me while nursing once and has also pooped in the tub!

The whole rest of the evening and day today were very poop-filled as well. Poor baby! She has a red tushie, and I am giving grandma strict orders for no dairy and lots of rice tomorrow (I should have done that for today, but I didn't know it would continue with such a vengeance). But at least after the whole poopy incident she (and Nancy and I) got to be on TV! So that was pretty cool :-).

More new stuff that Jocelyn is doing

Jocelyn is becoming such a big girl. Today, she picked out her outfit. I had her dressed in something else, and she went to her closet and picked out something different to wear. Sure, on one hand, that's a bit bratty. But good for her for expressing her opinions and asking for what she wants.

Actually, Jocelyn has been pointing and gesturing for what she wants for a little bit now. Again, it can get annoying. But at least we know what she wants (most of the time), even if we can't give it to her (no, Jocelyn, the faucet does not come out of the wall).

Jocelyn has a whole bunch of words now. She knows a whole lot when she hears them, but can even say a few. Obviously she knows Mama and Dada (although, she does not say them all that frequently, sadly). But she also knows "ball" (ba), "bear" (bao), "beep" (baah, in a high pitch), "banana" (nana). She no longer says "cat", but she does often 'discipline' Dakota by wagging her finger and saying 'dududu.'

In addition to the above words, she knows a whole bunch of words. The ones we need to be careful with are "outside" and "stroller" because she will want to go outside. Oh, and "bottle" because it will make her want her bottle. The phrase "___ is home" always solicits an excited response.

She is climbing stuff now. Sure, she was climbing the base of her high chair for a while, but she now climbs the bean bag chair in her room. She can also climb up onto the couch if she has something to sit on. And even at Gymboree today she climbed on the big mattress thing.

Jocelyn has become very interested in her toy box, often opening it and pulling everything out and putting things back in. She even put her daddy's huge, ugly fantasy baseball trophy into her toy box. It was really impressive, because she couldn't quite lift it high enough. She figured out that she could bend down and lift it from the bottom, and then she could get it high enough to put into the box. Brilliant!

Speaking of the toy box, she's really into the 'take it out / put it in' game. Sadly she doesn't always put things in where they are supposed to go. So when grandma was packing a suitcase, Jocelyn often took things out of it. And she will open a drawer, take stuff out, and then put it back into another drawer. It's bad when she puts things into the trash, because if we don't catch her we will lose things. It's a good thing we keep the toilets locked, or else we'd surely have cell phones and car keys end up there!

She loves her Winnie the Pooh doll, and also loves watching the movie trailer on-line. She sways to the Keane song that plays. Jocelyn still loves music so much. She has figured out how to turn on her sea horse and will often hold it and sway. Oh, and she has a tow with a key board, drum and microphone which she loves. When you press the buttons sometimes it plays full songs, and she will grab the mic and 'sing' along. It's way too cute!

Jocelyn also still loves to read. It is not uncommon for her to bring you a book, or when you offer to read to her go grab a book and get really excited as she runs over to you. Her favorite is probably still "Good Night Moon" but she also really likes "The Belly Button Book." Lately she is really into pictures, too. She flips through photo albums, mostly featuring pictures of herself, and points to the people. The other day she pointed to a picture of grandma and then pointed up at grandma, so that was cute. And she will often point to me and her dad and say 'mama' and 'dada.' It's cute.

I feel like there are 1000 stories to tell, but I don't get to them fast enough. It's too bad, because she's a funny little girl and it's just too bad that these are becoming lost. Hopefully I will remember to post them as they happen.

My Smart, Funny Baby Girl

Jocelyn is totally the funniest person I know. And she is just getting so flippin’ smart, I can’t stand it. Here are a few things she has done recently. I want to get them down before I forget….

This morning – she often falls back to sleep at her morning nurse, so I put her back into her crib. When I got back to the bedroom Mike was already in the shower. So instead of getting ready for work in some other fashion (making breakfast, picking out clothes, etc.), I climbed back into bed. Well, Mike got out of the shower, I didn’t move and then less than 10 minutes later little miss ‘just a few more minutes’ was up and at ‘em. Mike went to get the happy baby from her crib. She wandered into my bedroom, and placed next to me in bed a book that she likes me to read to her. She then grabbed my glasses off of my nightstand and handed them to me. She has figured out that I can’t read to her without my glasses on. Smarty pants. What makes this story even funnier is that she often steals the glasses off of my face. So for her to bring them to me is extra cute.

On Sunday my mother in law was drinking a bottle of water. Jocelyn took the water from her and put it into her toy box. So we asked Jocelyn to get that water back for her. We said, “Jocelyn, go get Grandma’s water. Do you know where Grandma’s water is?” What did she do? Well, she didn’t go into the toy box. Instead, she wandered into the kitchen and pointed to the counter, where Grandma’s empty beer bottle was sitting. Yup, mommy’s water is a big mug of water. Grandma’s is a beer bottle. Too funny!

She is really into reading lately, which is awesome. She now has the patience to sit through an entire book, most of the time. Her favorite story appears to be “Goodnight Moon”, which she wants to read any time but bed time. But she also enjoys “Hippos Go Berserk.” And then she has several books that just have objects in them, which she has taken to quite well. She points at objects and says, “ducko,” which is her catch-all word. So we respond by telling her what the word is. It’s very cute.

In just a general update, we finally had her birthday pictures done this weekend (only two weeks late, not too bad). We had some formals done, in which she wore a beautiful dress and sat at a table with a fake cake on it and had a ‘party’ with a teddy bear. It was very cute. And then we did cake-smasher pictures, in which we stripped her down to her diaper cover, sat her down with a cake, and let her go to town. We had a greasy, pink baby after the end of about 15 minutes. She ate quite a bit of icing, and of course wore way more than she was able to eat. It was way too cute!

And we're off!

Jocelyn is running. RUNNING. It’s very, very cute. Sure, she’s not very good at it. She falls down a whole lot. But she runs, and it’s awesome.

Her favorite place to run is toward one of us when she wants something. Is somebody slicing banana bread? Did she hear a truck run by and want somebody to take her outside to see it? But her second favorite place to run is away from us, namely when we catch her picking crud off of the floor and sticking it in her mouth.

She is also getting funnier and funnier. Her new game is to push us down. When one of us would sit on the floor with her, she used to ‘hide’ behind us and play peek-a-boo by sneaking her face around to the front of us. It was cute. She no longer finds this amusing. Now, when you sit on the floor, she pushes you. If you ‘fall’ and say ‘OOF!’ on your way down, well, that is just the funniest thing in the whole entire world! She cracks up at it.

Jocelyn had her first ‘real’ cake on her birthday. She had a nut-free, egg-free cupcake at her NJ birthday party, but she didn’t really seem to enjoy it much. But on her actual birthday we got a vanilla cake with white icing from Whole Foods. Yes, it was still nut-free. But it was just regular cake. Let me tell you – she liked that a whole lot. And she was HYPER after eating it. She buzzed around until about 10:30 p.m. But when she crashed she went down hard.

I am in the process of weaning her right now. We have introduced cow’s milk, and she likes it. She likes it better than formula, that’s for sure! She will take a bottle from me. I am still nursing morning and night, but I am no longer pumping during the day nor am I nursing her when I get home from work. Soon I will stop the bedtime nursing and only do the morning one. We should also wean from the bottle, but it seems like a lot of changes to do it all at once. So we will work on the boob first, then the bottle.

Then we need to do some formal sleep training. We tried twice, but I couldn’t get my MIL to commit to the system, so we were sending Jocelyn mixed messages. Mike wasn’t 100% behind it, either. And it was just easier at the time not to. Jocelyn liked to nurse to sleep. So it was fine. But she has enough teeth that we don’t want to have baby-bottle mouth issues. And she is old enough to give up the bottle. And clearly she is pretty fine without the boob. So we need a new sleep training method. It’s time to consult a few books. It also might be time for a tougher approach. Not a full cry-it-out or anything, but something tougher than Baby Whisperer (and easier on the back – yeeouch!).

I feel like there was more I wanted to share. But I can’t seem to remember it right now. I think I shared a lot in her birthday post – her mooing, her love of trucks, did I tell you how she loves dogs? Yes, she loves dogs. I mean LOVES them. When we were in Michigan she played with all sorts of dogs – she chased them, gave them pine cones, petted them, etc. It was adorable. It was like she had done it her whole life. And when we are out walking and somebody comes by with a dog, watch out! She shouts for it! It’s SO cute!

Oh, that reminds me, she is waving and pointing ALL THE TIME. It’s cute. And awesome. It’s a great means of communication – mostly. Sometimes it’s hard to know what she is pointing to, which frustrates her. And sometimes the answer is still no, you can’t have that, which pisses her off and makes her cry. She also requests inane things – like running the timer on the oven so it will beep. But it’s mostly cute :-P.

She is getting tricky, though. She is learning how to stall bedtime. It’s taking 45 minutes to get her to sleep. She reaches for her toys, she tries to wiggle out of our arms, she cries and carries on, she tries to steal the glasses off of my face, etc. The kid does NOT want to go to sleep. It’s not good. Mommy needs to get her butt to bed, thus Jocelyn needs to get her butt to bed :-P.

Happy Birthday Jocelyn!

My baby is a year old today. Holy crap. My baby is a year old. Where did the year go? I can’t believe it’s been that long. I am still in disbelief that I am a parent. And it has been a full year.

When I got home from work yesterday, Jocelyn walked to the back door to greet me all by herself. Nobody walked with her. Nobody carried her. And in her T-shirt and pants (not a onesie), she looked like a little girl. It was her last day of officially being an infant, and she already looked like a toddler. Scratch that, she looked like she was about to go outside and play with her friends. My baby is growing so fast.

This parenting thing is amazing in ways that I never imagined possible. The biggest surprise is the love. I had NO idea that I could love somebody so deeply, so intensely, so purely as I do Jocelyn. I always felt that the concept of unconditional love was stupid. Of course love comes with conditions – conditions that if I love you, you will treat me with respect and kindness and not break my heart. But the love you have for your child does come without conditions. I love her with all of my heart, even when she is up all night, even when she accidentally bites my nipples, even when she is cranky and difficult. I love her through it all. And I love her in ways that I can’t even articulate.

She amazes me every day. She went from being a ball of cute who pretty much only cried, slept and pooped, who only had 30 or so minutes of quiet alert time for good interaction, to an active, smart, funny, mischievous little girl. She is so smart – I love to watch her try to figure things out. She seems to have a bit of a mechanical bent – she grabs at the clips for the various straps (stroller, high chair, my backpack) and tries to figure out how they work. She works really hard at all of her skills, and is very determined to get them right. She knows the answer to “What does the cow say?” – she very proudly says “MMMmmm” and then claps and smiles. She knows that I am Mama and that Mike is Dada, even though she doesn’t call us that, and she knows the cats’ names and can sort of say “cat.” She loves to play peak-a-boo with us, and sometimes enjoys it when we play it with her. She has an infectious laugh. The funniest thing to her is anything grandma does. The second is when she pushes us and we pretend to fall down. The third is when we toss her in the air, hold her upside-down, and tickle her. She is a little dare devil. She is opinionated. When she likes something, she smiles, laughs, claps, etc. When she hates it she cries. There is no mystery about how she feels about things. At Gymboree she hates baby soccer and Charlie Chaplin. She loves bubble time, play time and parachute time. She can take or leave the air log. She usually makes up her own game rather than working on the skills in the curriculum. And she loves shakers.

She is already defiant and sneaky, which is hilarious. She is smart enough to know which cabinets she is allowed to go into and which she is not. But when she thinks that nobody is looking she gingerly wanders over to the cabinets that are off-limits, looks around to see if anybody is watching, and then smiles when she catches your eye (because of course somebody is always watching). When she is mad at us she opens the cabinet anyway. When I tell her no, she gives me a dirty look. Sometimes she laughs and does it anyway. When Mike tells her no, her whole face falls apart and she cries.

Jocelyn is also a climber. She is obsessed with stairs, and I am very glad we don’t have any in our house. But she routinely climbs her high chair, the dish washer and attempts to climb the back door (it has a big window in it, so she tries to step her tiny foot onto the tiny moulding around the window). She tries to climb up the couch, and is able to climb down it. She also tries to climb down my body when I am nursing her to sleep but she decides that it’s not bed time.

She has more toys than anybody I know, but would prefer to play with measuring cups, kitchen towels, cell phones, remote controls, and boxes that interesting toys came in. She loves her stuffed animals, especially her Wocket and Winnie the Pooh. She loves to copy the grown-ups – so she’s a great water drinker (can even drink out of a straw). But because she loves to copy the grown-ups she is very interested in Pepsi cans and beer bottles (thanks dad and grandma!). She is a pretty good eater, and will try anything – especially off of our plates. She likes hummus. When she expressed interest in my unsweet iced tea, I let her take a sip and she liked that, too. Due to the caffeine I didn’t let her drink much. She waited until she was 9 months to crawl, even though she cruised at 7 and then walked at 10. She loves music and loves to dance. When she was itty-bitty she loved to be held while you danced around and listened to music. That got really fun when she could hold herself up and bop along. Now that she can walk she prefers to just bop on her own. She often breaks into dancing when it’s not the time – like when a song comes on TV.

She is not interested in TV in the slightest, but she loves two commercials: the ASPCA ones with Sarah McLaughlin, and the Sherwin Williams one with the landscape all made up of brightly colored paint chips. She also likes the trailer for the new Winnie the Pooh movie, but I really think she just likes the Keane song. She loves to ‘help’ fold laundry – and by help I mean unfold the thing you just folded. She also likes to take the clothes and try to put them on. She has more clothes than any baby needs. But baby girl clothes are just SO cute that we can’t help ourselves but over-buy. She is a big girl – tall and heavy for her age, with a big head. They say big babies are smarter, so hopefully that is true. But we will still love her even if she is just normal.

She is also really, really pretty. I know that parents are supposed to say that, and that I am surely biased. But I really think that she is. With Mike and me as parents, it really could have gone either way. But she seems to have the best of both of us. She has his eyes and forehead shape and my cheekbones and smile. She appears to have my mom’s nose. She has gorgeous red hair that is getting really long, but that I don’t have the heart to cut because it’s just so pretty.

Over the past year I have lost sleep (so much sleep, she is a terrible sleeper), sanity and my figure. I will probably never look good naked again. But I have gained wisdom, perspective and a sense of purpose. I am so much stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. I am also so much weaker in some ways, and I have learned to ask for help when I need it. I am such a better person now than I was, all for having known this tiny person for the past year. Thank you for letting me be your mommy, Jocelyn. And thank you for loving me and needing me and making my life feel complete. And for letting me know that I was nowhere near my maximum capacity for love, and that it grows every day.

Poor sick baby

Jocelyn has been sick since Tuesday. We noticed that she was really warm super early Tuesday morning. But I didn't think much of it, because it was uber stuffy in the room we were staying in, and I was also roasting (Mike was even hot, and he's never hot). Then when we woke up for real, we packed up, said our goodbyes, and headed out from Aunt Mary's house in Grand Rapids, MI to O'Hare airport. Jocelyn was fussy and then sleepy on the ride, but she always gets fussy and then sleepy in the car.

Then we were at the airport, waiting in the terminal while Mike returned the rental car. Jocelyn went from being happy / playing / walking / talking to CRYING. She just burst into tears. I didn't know what had happened. She was just sitting on the chair next to me. So, of course, I picked her up and gave her a big hug. That's when I smelled it. She had a major poop. I was still confused about what she was crying about, but then I felt it - the wet spot where the very wet poop leaked out of her diaper and onesie. And Mike had the baby wipes in the lunch bag.

Luckily he showed up just a few minutes later and the three of us headed to the first class area ladies' room (luckily it's not a heavily-used one - airports should have family bathrooms!). Poor Jocelyn had a majorly full diaper, and the texture was just not, well, right. I also noticed she was a bit warm, but we didn't give her anything yet.

Once we got on the plane she wanted to nurse and she passed out. She slept basically the whole flight (she usually doesn't sleep on the plane, but looks around and plays the whole time). She woke up at the end and cried at landing, which is also not usual for her. She was also significantly warmer, and not just from cuddling with me. Once we landed in Newark we made our way to the Admiral's Club for more changing, and this time there was temperature-taking. 101.9 F! That was her highest fever to date, so we immediately called the doctor. The prescription - rest, fluids, the fever reducer of our choosing and temperature monitoring. This was not enough action for me, but we took the advice. Call back if there's vomiting, diarrhea, unstable or increasing temperature or anything else strange.

So we drove down to Spring Lake and Jocelyn was just sort of tired and cranky, which was very understandable. We skipped our stop at Babcia's altogether, we only popped in at Miss Amanda's to pick up the booster seat, and we headed down. She puked all over herself within the last 2 miles or so of the drive, but seemed a bit better after that. A bit more Tylenol, a later bed time than we liked, and a baby in our bed all night, but we hoped for the best.

By morning the fever did not go down, so we switched to ibuprofen. That was a great idea, as it allowed the fever to go down and also served as a good pain reliever. Jocelyn was much more herself during much of the day. We still didn't put her in the car at all, and she was lethargic and uninspired when we took her outside (she normally loves outside), but she was pretty good. Cranky at points, but fine overall. We dosed her with more ibuprofen before bed and called it a night. She made it half way in her own crib and then we had to bring her to bed, where she slept latched on to me, but whatever.

This morning, however, she was BURNING UP! 102.1! So I decided it was time to take her to the doctor (and give her another dose of ibuprofen). A call to a local pediatrician sent us to an urgent care clinic about 15-20 minutes away. They assessed her ears for infection and throat for strep - both came back negative. So the prescription was still the same - rest, fluids, love, and come back if things get crazy or worse or unstable. She slept the whole way back from the doctor, passed out half way through our lunch, and slept for a good 3.5-4 hours (I may have joined her for two of those hours!). I offered her some food, which she refused (even a teething biscuit that tastes like an animal cracker!), and then nursed her some more.

We were ready for dinner, and my BIL (Jocelyn's Uncle Jeff) was working as a waiter that night, so we had dinner at his restaurant. Poor Jocelyn fell asleep in the car. She was so conked out that actually unhooked the car seat and brought it into the restaurant with us so she could keep on sleeping in it. She slept until we were just about done eating - a good hour+! She woke up a bit fussy, but cheered up once we held her and gave her some water.

Once we brought her home she ate two small cubes of strawberry and about a bite of bread. It was something, but not great. She was a bit more herself - with some talking, playing, answering the questions of "What does the cow say?" with "MMMmmmmm" and giggles, etc. But she was weak. Walking was hard. Her poor legs were shaky under her and she was off balance. It was frustrating for her. And I think that she hurt, because she would suddenly burst into tears and become inconsolable. Despite being fever-free all day, we gave her some ibuprofen for the pain she was clearly feeling. Eventually she fell asleep, even though it was way past her bed time. She's been in her crib this whole time (knock on wood!) and hopefully she stays there for a while to come (like the rest of the night). Being the worry wart that I am, I look in on her every 30 or so minutes.

Poor kid, though. She was SUCH a champ in Michigan (which is its own blog post, if I ever get to it). This is a crappy reward for such amazing behavior. And it also sucks that she's sick on vacation, when she should be having fun. We wanted to take her to the ocean, and Grandpa kept his schedule open to play with her, and she hasn't wanted to play. Instead of having fun she's miserable. My only solace is that she won't remember having a crappy vacation where she was sick for half the time. At least she had a blast in MI, chasing dogs, watching birds, and having her crazy great-aunts fawn all over her. But my heart breaks for her.

8w2d – Tiny Heart Beating!

I have been SICK as a dog lately. I don’t want to get into the details, but suffice to say that food isn’t really staying with me very well. I must have picked up a bug in Canada when I was just there for work. I didn’t think much of it, until I looked in the books to see if I could take anything (I can’t). Then I looked up what it means to pregnancy. The book was very clear – if you’re having three bowel movements of a certain consistency a day, go to the doctor.

It was a mess trying to get to the OB – she didn’t want to see me. To be fair, my regular doc doesn’t work on Mondays. So I was going to a different doctor. She didn’t understand why I wanted the baby checked out. But she reluctantly made me an appointment anyway. I did not care for that attitude, but that’s a topic for a different post. The good news is that she was right – the baby was fine! But I needed that confirmation myself.

So I got to see and hear Pecan’s tiny heart beating! It was amazing! I know that this is the second time that I am going through this, but the miracle of life is still so awe inspiring! It seems such a rare, special thing to create life. I know that lots of people do it every day, but I am still so impressed by it.

It’s amazing how worried I became that there was something wrong. In fact, I became convinced that there was something wrong. It was so reassuring to get to see my tiny baby on the sonogram screen. I know I will have other worries and bumps along the way over the next 32 weeks – that’s a given. Hopefully I can handle them a bit better. I was a hysterical mess this time!

7w3d – I forgot how hard this pregnancy business was!

I shouldn’t complain – I am not feeling *that* sick. A quick look at my blog from when I was pregnant with Jocelyn indicates that morning sickness was almost immediate last time. This time, well, not so much. I am barely nauseous. I am very hungry. But I am also very, very tired! I could take a nap right now. Of course, I am not sleeping great. And, of course, I am still nursing Jocelyn, so I am waking up at 6:00 to pump every morning. That’s not helping.

I couldn’t be happier about Pecan being on his or her way. But I would definitely prefer this whole thing if I could take a nap :-P.

Jocelyn's first 5K - and her championship day

When Jocelyn instinctively woke up at 5:25 a.m. this morning, she did not know what was coming. I could tell she just wanted to nurse and go back to bed. But she got a big surprise! Instead of nuzzling on the boppy, she got put on her changing pad, stripped naked, diaper changed and dressed in a onesie. Yeah, that made her unhappy. But some nursing calmed her down.

So why were we up so early? Well, today Jocelyn did the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure! Yup, Jocelyn's first 5K. We walked it as a family. Even though it didn't start until 8, we had to meet at 6:45 for a group photo.

One of the highlights - seeing Chester Cheetah. I thought that she might be afraid of him, but she LOVED him. In her eyes, he was a giant toy. It was too flipping cute to see her get all smiley at him. I just LOVED it. She also got to meet a Chick-Fil-A cow (dude in a suit, loved it), the Borden Cow (actual cow - didn't know what to make of her), and Tom Thumb (dude in a suit, of a dude, which I thought was creepy but she seemed to like okay).

Once it got to be race time somebody was sleepy and had enough of the stroller. So I stuck her in the Ergo Baby and she very quickly dozed off on my chest. Of course, when I gingerly tried to put her into the reclined stroller she woke right up. And then she was AWAKE. This was before the One Mile, mind you, so we had another two full miles to go. She strolled for most of it, pulling herself forward and looking around for most of it, yelling at dogs and big children. It was super cute!

We left shortly after the race ended. We did not get in line for ice cream. We went home. And we all took naps (thank goodness Jocelyn slept).

But she still woke up in time for Gymboree - where she climbed up and down stairs! She did it on her hands and knees, and took a bit of help from mommy, but it still counts :-P. She also took the opportunity while there to assert her independence a bit more - she refused a few of the games and instead chose to play with shakers. It was cute.

As if she wasn't enough of a champ, I happened to know that some of my girlfriends were meeting up for lunch at Baker Bros. in the same plaza at Gymboree, right at the time when Gymboree ended. Since it would be rude not to stop in when my friends invited me and I was right there, we popped in. Jocelyn seemed in great spirits, so we stuck around and ate lunch! Jocelyn had a Mac 'n' Cheese and ate nearly all of it (to be fair, a bunch wound up on the floor because we let her feed herself a few noodles at a time). She was great at lunch and did not fuss until the very end. At that point she was exhausted. So we got her home and she basically passed right out.

And tonight, after spending the afternoon / evening playing, swimming, eating, peeing on the floor (because she was in her swim suit) and then running around the house naked (post-swim, pre-bath), she is sound asleep. Hopefully for the night. And hopefully she doesn't instinctively wake up at 5:30 again tomorrow morning - because we do NOT need to wake up early for a 5K :-).

I forgot something hillarious from May 14

I can't believe I forgot to blog this awesome thing! It was a month ago now, but I'll blog it anyway.

Some background - Mike and I always shower together on weekends. It's just what we do. It's not naughty or sexy or anything like that. It's just reality.

Usually during shower time Grandma watches Jocelyn. But on this particular day she was busy or something, so we had Jocelyn play on our bathroom floor. Well, as I was stepping into the shower, Jocelyn pulled up and was cruising around toward me. And then she CLIMBED IN! She was fully clothed in her footie pajamas and she climbed into the shower with us. It was SO SO SO funny! I could not stop laughing. The little stinker loved it, too! I couldn't believe it :-P. She laughed, splashed, stuck her head under. It was SO funny.

Of course, it WAY increased the length of our shower. Because I had to hold her hands and couldn't wash. Once Mike finished washing he took her hands and I got to.

Anyway, I just had to share that. It was too flippin' cute!

First kid's meal from the menu :-)

Okay, when did my daughter become old enough that I could order for her from the kid's menu at a restaurant? To be fair, it wasn't for her whole meal. I ordered her grilled chicken strips at Buffalo Wild Wings. They were supposed to come with fries, which I had subbed out for mandarin oranges (which I ate, although Jocelyn played with one). But still - I ordered her dinner off of a menu! My baby is growing up so fast!

She's such a good girl at restaurants. She sits so well in the high chair and she eats her meal that we pack and all her snacks so well. Sure, when we leave the whole area is surrounded by Cheerios, bits of bread, bits of chicken, bits of strawberry, etc. But she behaves, she feeds herself finger food, and she takes her other food from the spoon like a champ.

In walking news, my kidaboo is obsessed with carrying things. Seriously, she's no longer content to walk around. She has to pick things up and carry them. It's cute when it's DVD boxes, my cell phone, the remote, her small toys, etc. But that's not a challenge for her. No, she wants big things. She tries to carry her ball-popper toy, her Winnie the Pooh that is bigger than she is, the garbage can in my bedroom, etc. It's cute.

She took quite a fall yesterday with all of this walking, trying to carry heavy things and not avoiding obstacles. She dove into the entertainment center in my MIL's room. We didn't really baby proof that one because she shouldn't be spending much time in there, but she went in. We all followed her of course, but we couldn't stop the fall. So she hit her face then fell backward onto her butt / back.

Of course I scooped her up, gave her some hugs and kisses and comforted her. It wasn't but a few minutes later that she felt fine and pushed her way out of my arms to go run around some more. My kidaboo is TOUGH!

The other thing is that she is obsessed with water. LOVES it. I think I forgot to mention that she had her first dip in the pool at about 9 months old. It was a hot weekend, so we all put our feet in. She took to it like a baby duckie! She thought that splashing around was so cool. She has loved the bath for a while, so I'm not surprised. But now she's obsessed. When we walk in the backyard she makes a bee-line for the pool. When we had dinner at a restaurant with an indoor "outdoor" patio (painted to look like outside, like in Disney World or Las Vegas) that had a fountain, we had to walk to the fountain and put our fingers in the water. And now she even tries to draw her own baths during the day. She throws all of her toys in and then reaches over to the faucet to try to turn on the water (she can't) and also tries to lift the bath seat into the tub (also can't do that). It's cute.

Her other obsession is guys who mow the lawn. In Texas nobody cuts their own grass. They hire it out. Usually to a band of men of Mexican descent who rolls up with a pickup truck filled with lawn equipment. These crews can do in 30 minutes what it takes normal people half a day to accomplish. Anyway, she loves these guys. She has a thing for dark-haired men as it is, as well as a thing for mechanical things (more on that in another post), so this is the best of both worlds. This morning at around 8:00 we could hear some yard equipment being run outside. She gestured toward the part of the house where the sound was loudest - she wanted to go there and see! Now, we couldn't exit the house from that side, nor could we see it from the windows, so I took her outside. At first she protested because we were going the "wrong" way, but once she saw the man with the weed whacker all was right with the world!

Okay, Mama's sleepy. It's time for bed. I could write books about this kid, she just does such amazing things (to me, anyway). But I won't go on now.

4w3d – Hmm…. Surprise!

So, as you can guess from the title, I am pregnant again. Yes, I have a 10.5 month old at home who I run around after. Will life be hard? Yes! Will I be treading into uncharted territory? Not at all!

I found out for sure on Monday night, but I kind of knew for a few weeks now (I am guessing pretty much immediately). Without getting into the intimate details, Hubby-poo and I have only been using the FMC app on my iPhone to track my cycle. It’s only been back for a few months (since March), so I guess that there just wasn’t enough data for it to predict my cycle accurately. That, or I don’t ovulate on time.

Anyway, after a night of intimacy and passion, the next morning I turned to Hubby-poo and told him that we probably should have used back-up protection, because I wasn’t sure my cycles were being predicted accurately. But then we reasoned out that it had been days since my ‘fertile’ days, so I should really be fine. But, I don’t know, I just had a feeling. Like, I was WAY too into it for it to be during an infertile time or something.

The feeling haunted me on and off. It’s not like I dwelled on it. Even last Friday, I told Hubby-poo that my next cycle was due to start on Monday, and that if it doesn’t then we need to be concerned. Again, he used reason and logic to comfort my brain.

Monday rolled around, and no ‘presents’ when I woke up. But that doesn’t mean anything, necessarily. But then I started to eat my breakfast (oatmeal), and it was all I could do to choke it down. I felt really off. Nauseas. Just icky. That’s when I knew. I didn’t need a test to confirm anything. I knew in my heart that there was a baby in my belly.

The most surprising thing was my reaction to that realization. Since Hubby-poo and I had a PLAN (start trying on Jocelyn’s SECOND birthday), I expected anxiety. Instead I felt elated. I was instantly in love with this little Pecan in my womb – a pecan who is a fraction of an inch large and only a tiny ball of cells, that I didn’t even have a chemical confirmation of. Sure, in my brain I still wanted to stick with the plan, and my brain started turning and thinking and hoping that I was wrong. But in my heart I felt such joy, such hope that it wasn’t wrong, such love for this unborn little one.

I shared all of my thoughts with Hubby-poo, who was still in rational mode of ‘it just can’t be’ and ‘I hope it’s a false alarm.’ On the way home from work I picked up a few cheapo tests. I took all 3. The results were confusing (is that a faint second line, I think so, but it’s hard to read). We then took a walk up to the store to buy the kind of test that gave words. Of course, the first of those I took gave me a weird error message. But the second one only had one word on it – Pregnant.

So that’s it. It’s real. Intellectually and emotionally. I’m pregnant.
A funny aside – I bumped into a coworker at the pharmacy on my way home from work and a different coworker at the grocery store. Also, my MIL decided to also walk to the grocery store while out on her evening walk, so we bumped into her there. Since we aren’t telling any coworkers for another 8 weeks, and since we didn’t want to tell MIL until we knew for sure (and even then not right away), these were not people I wanted to bump into while buying pregnancy tests. It should have been another sign that I was right :-P.

Walking fool, and more eating stories!

Jocelyn-boo is a walking fool. Seriously, this child can get pretty much anywhere she wants. She can start in the living room, walk through the kitchen and dining room and back into the living room on the other side. She can turn on a dime. She can walk over obstacles (she hasn't figured out to walk around things that are low to the ground yet). There's no stopping her.

But what's super cute is that she can walk holding your hand. It's *awesome*. She's so happy to walk around the house while holding my finger. The fact that she doesn't *need* to hold it makes it that much more heart-warming. It's like she wants to spend time with us as she practices her new skill. It's so flippin' sweet!

In addition to the extra walking, there has been a bunch of extra eating. Strawberries are totally her favorite food. She likes them better than chicken. Better than bread. Better than Cheerios and Puffs. They are THE BEST. Given the option to eat strawberries and anything else, she chooses the strawberries. So if we want her to eat vegetables and protein, we better hide the strawberries at first. But we need to keep them in view enough that she knows she'll get them if she eats her food.

She's doing well with chicken, as long as it's not ground up chicken paste. She also did well with meatballs that were in my soup. And dumpling middles (which we only gave her a tiny bit of). She does okay with pork, although doesn't love it. What she does love is dairy. Cheese makes her incredibly happy. Grandma buys her Colby cheese and she could probably eat a whole slice if we let her. She also downs the yogurt. We buy some of the Yo Baby pre-blended stuff, but mostly i just blend it myself with full fat organic yogurt and fruit / veggies. Regarding grains, she really only likes whole wheat cereal so far, and likes the puffed rice and oats as finger foods. She also does well with the different grain crackers. She likes quinoa, but does not like the last batch of baby food quinoa I made for her because it had shredded zucchini and cumin.

Baby Steps - about 8 of them

So... Jocelyn is walking. She's been doing a step here, two there, the occasional three for a few weeks now. But yesterday she took some 8 steps from the coffee table to her play pen. These were not stumbly steps, mind you. They were solid, slow, deliberate steps. She stopped when she got over to where I was folding her laundry, reached out and grabbed the laundry basket. Then she very slowly and deliberately sat herself down on the floor.

So, yeah, my 10 month old daughter can walk. Which means that I am in BIG trouble. It's not a skill she has mastered yet, not by a long shot. But she can cover the whole house in the form of crawling and cruising (and gets around FAST at that), so I'm sure that mastery of the ultimate 'big people' way of getting around is just around the corner.

Because of all of this expert cruising (and now beginner walking), we have moved up to Gymboree Level 3. There are far less songs at this level, and far more activity. It's EXHAUSTING! I don't know how she didn't take a huge nap afterwards - I wanted one!

One other cute thing from yesterday - Jocelyn is one of the most sophisticated eaters I know. But only in the context of eating from big people's plates. When it's mush that comes from her bowl, she can take it or leave it. But when it comes from one of our plates, she's at least curious enough to try it.

For lunch yesterday, I had roasted red pepper soup with Gorgonzola in it. Not exactly a mild mix of flavors. Out of curiosity, I let Jocelyn taste some. She *loved* it! I mean LOVED it. I gave her several bites and she lapped them up! I didn't want to give her much, I try to limit her table food (especially when comes from restaurants, since you don't know what they put in there). Then at dinner she ate some guacamole off of my fingers, bits of yellow squash and zucchini from my plate, and chicken from Mike. Yeah, I totally gave birth to a foodie :-P.

I love it when we're cruisin' together

My little cruiser is still going strong. That kid LOVES to cruise. It's super cute. She has even less interest in lying down than ever (unless she's being tickled, then it's sort of a different story). She is getting really good at it. She can pull up against challenging surfaces, like the wall. She can purposefully sit down from a standing position with no help. She can go from crawling to cruising to crawling again with no effort. And she is getting FAST! I was sort of expecting walking after all of this cruising, but I'm glad we're not there yet. I'm not ready! She does take the occasional step or two. So I am guessing that she is close.

She is getting more and more interested in table food. She'll eat her food, sure, but she's not that into it. But cut up (into little cubes, not puree) bits of roasted sweet potato and she is all about it. Roasted chicken? Yes please! Strawberry cubes? You bet! It's cute. It's so amazing to watch her grow.

We are debating it, but I think that Jocelyn has been saying her first word for a few weeks now. Mike does not think so. To back up, of course she can baby babble. Lots of MAMAAMAMA one day, DADADADADA the next. Da-goo! is a good one. But she does look at me and say "Ma Ma" (except for that one time) and does not look at Mike to say "Da Da." What she DOES do is look at the cats and say, "Ca." She doesn't do it every time, but she does it often enough. Sometimes it is clear, other times it's more like a throat clearing, and sometimes there's even a 'c' or throat clearing sound at the end. So I think that her first word is cat. But we are disputing it. I, unfortunately, did not chronicle it the first time it happened. But it was within the past month. So April somewhere early.

She had her first real park sliding today. We tried it once before with us, but she wasn't ready. And she has slid at Gymboree, but again, she didn't really get into it. This time I took her down the small slide then Mike took her down the big spiral slide. Oh the big one she started out with a look of fear, but once she was safely at the bottom she got a HUGE grin on her face. We thought that was enough playing (because we had already swung for a while after all), but it wasn't. When I sat her in the stroller she burst into tears and gestured toward the slide. It was adorable. So we went back to the smaller slide and let her slide down 'alone' (one of us always held a hand and the other always caught her).

I'm glad we did it, because it seemed to tucker her out. My baby has once again become the sleepless wonder! Only minor naps in the day, and a HUGE fit at bed time. It bay be rooted in teething pain, but it's manifesting as bratty, tantrum activity. She cries, screams and carries on. The first day she did it I thought she had a tummy ache due to all of the squirming. So I lied her down on the floor to rub her belly. What did she do? She rolled over and crawled (in her sleep sack, mind you), to her gated door and pulled up on the gate and shook it like a prisoner. She then reached her hands out, as if to tell us that she wanted to be out in the living room playing and not in her bed sleeping like a good baby should.

There are more teeth coming, though. I could tell because of the gnawing and drooling. But no more Baby Orajel due to the benzocaine (grownups should not use it, either). So that's rough. Tonight we gave her some Gentle Naturals and so far it seems good (the running around the park also didn't hurt).

Anyway, this got long. Gonna go enjoy my sleeping baby and go to bed!

Definite crawling and stranger anxiety.

On April 8, Jocelyn turned 9 months old. To celebrate this momentous occasion, she had her first bona fide crawl. It wasn't a scoot / drag / roll / whatever. It was a hands and knees move across the room. The motivation? Her Dad's toast :-). She crawled to the coffee table, pulled up, and cruised around it (did I mention she's an expert cruiser now?). It was awesome!

She doesn't like it, though. She'll do it as a means of getting to somewhere that she can stand / cruise. She is not a crawler. I think it bothers her knees (which are now all red and rug burnt). And it's just not as great a vantage point as standing. But in the absence of something to hold on to and cruise along, it's what she has.

Stranger anxiety is also in full swing. A few weeks ago we had a family dinner at a sushi restaurant. The waitresses just ate Jocelyn up. One particularly friendly woman got face to face with my little J bird, who instantly burst into tears. It was just too close! That's been the extent of her stranger anxiety overall - strangers getting close. Until last week, that is...

Grandpa Karle came into town to visit our little bugaboo. And she took to him immediately. She woke up to 'meet' him Saturday morning (they have met on several occasions, of course, but we didn't think she'd remember). She went right into his arms and rested her head on his shoulder. She spent lots of time 'flirting' with him - lots of looks / look aways, coy smiles, giggles, etc. It was very, very cute. But then we went to dinner, when Grandpa needed to put on his reading glasses to see the menu (he is a grandpa, after all, they need reading glasses :-P). Well, Jocelyn looked at him, stared silently for a moment, and then burst into tears. It was SO SAD. Grandpa immediately took his glasses off, but it didn't help. Throughout the rest of the weekend she looked at him suspiciously, especially when his glasses hung on his shirt. He tried to avoid wearing them in her presence, but that wasn't always easy.

She still hasn't taken her first real walking steps yet, but I'm sure that they are coming any day now. She's SO ready. She wants to walk into the kitchen, sun room, dining room, everywhere! She is no longer interested in her toys. She is only interested in walking. It's cute, but it sure is exhausting.

Nursing and pumping

I may have mentioned, but I am not sure - I nurse Jocelyn. She got breast milk exclusively until she was nearly 5 months, until we started to give her cereal. We would make her cereal with formula sometimes. Overall, I would say that I have been successful at nursing.

The thing is, though, it's tough. Yes, my baby is HUGE and obviously eats well. But I can't keep up with her lately. This week we have burnt through the entire freezer stash. There wasn't much there, but what was there is gone. See, I am not one of those mothers who feels like she can feed the whole neighborhood (which is a good thing, since I have never had a problem with leakage). But it's tough because I don't have much to spare. So when I'm short, there's nothing I can do. It's getting to where I can't pump enough to have the milk to feed her the next day.

I am back on Fenugreek, and I am going to make a concerted effort to pump more frequently (every morning and evening if I can swing it, in addition to the at-work pumpings, of course). I only have a few events that I need to pump ahead for - a bachelorette party next weekend (so I really need to get on top of it now), a wedding at the end of April, and then a wedding out of town in the beginning of June. That's it! Every other event will be baby friendly until her first birthday, at which point I can give her cow's milk.

I do still plan to nurse past her first birthday, if she wants it and we can still work with it. So don't get all mommy-nazi on me :-P. But hopefully by then she will take more food and less milk anyway. I am hoping to keep the nursing to morning and bed time, and give her cow's milk during the day (although, I will probably still continue to pump for a while, at least through my SIL's wedding, that way I can pump a bottle for Jocelyn so we can leave her with the sitter).

Anyway, enough rembling on about my boobs. I know you don't want to read about those. :-P.

Could there be some crawls after all?

Today has been a major day for my J-bird. She seems to be well on her way to mastering the sitting up from tummy position thing. Sure, some babies do that much earlier, but my doodle bug did NOT like spending time on her tummy, so she never practiced it.

She demonstrated this trick a few nights ago (3/15, maybe?), when she started to cry in her crib. Mike went to grab her to find her sitting up on her butt! This evening she practiced it a whole bunch. And the little stinker was using this maneuver (butt to belly to butt to belly, etc.) to make her way all around the room! So this child is becoming mobile. Which means we are in trouble!

She has been making sort of a clicky, tsk sort of noise. It's cute. And she is so proud of it. She will click, we will click, she will click again. It might be code for 'I want that!' But either way, it's cute.

But the proudest moment in her recent life has been playing Peek-a-Boo! For months it has been one of the big people hiding behind a magazine, blanket, doorway, etc. and jumping out and saying 'boo!' Well, last weekend Jocelyn took a T shirt out of the clean laundry basket and put it over her face. She then revealed her face with a big smile on it. Then she hid again. And revealed again. We figured out she was playing Peek-a-Boo with us! It was so So SO freakin' adorable! We laughed so hard. And we would ask, "Where's Jocelyn?" when the shirt was over her face and then exclaim, "There she is!" when she moved it. And she would laugh and squeal and just have a great time. It was awesome :-).

She is better and better at walking, too. She's still holding on to our hands, of course, but she can get some real speed and distance. And she has some control over the direction that she walks in. Which means that she walks towards the front door.

Oh, did I not tell you that Jocelyn loves the front door? All doors, actually, although the front is her favorite. She will stare at it and whimper until you pick her up and start walking toward it. And when you are getting close, she gets a big goofy grin on her face. She then reaches out and touches it while making a satisfied 'aah' sort of sound. Hysterical! Sometimes she also wants to open the door. She loves outside. But if somebody goes out the front door without her, whoa nelly, she is not happy. Strangely, though, going out the door to the garage is just fine. In fact, if somebody is leaving through the garage, she better be there to say goodbye to them! The door to the backyard is good, she likes it back there, but it is not as interesting as the other doors.

Jocelyn also figured out recently that she can open cabinets. She opens the cabinets in her bathroom. Now, the only things in those cabinets are diapers, wipes and other safe things. But it's really, really cute to watch her with that huge look of wonder on her face. It's SO cute!

Beyond that, I know I need to write a post about her favorite things. But as a teaser, her favorite toy is her Wocket (of Pocket fame), her favorite foods are fruits and teething biscuits (pretty much all of them) and her favorite person is her mommy :-).

3-5-11 - So much for more regular posting

There has been so much going on that who has time to post?

Jocelyn is still practicing her pulling up / standing trick. She has only pulled up on inanimate objects a handful of times. But she's really great at setting our hands where she wants them and pulling up on our fingers. She is now doing a bit of cruising. Now that we have a coffee table in the living room again, it's her new favorite spot to stand. She can't quite turn a corner, but she can go along an entire side of it. She's also doing a whole bunch of assisted free-space walking. The kid wants to get around so badly!

There's still basically no activity on the crawling front! Who knows if she will ever crawl? Sometimes she lunges herself forward and winds up on her tummy, and then she might push herself forward an inch or two, but that's about it.

Jocelyn has started Gymboree classes, which is about the cutest thing ever. It's a 45 minute class where we sing songs, do different strength-building exercises, blow bubbles and have FUN! Plus Jocelyn gets to socialize with other babies and Hubby-poo and I get to socialize with other parents.

Besides that, she's also using the bucket swings at the park. She LOVES the swinging. Her first swing was hesitant. She just wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing. But after a few minutes she started to laugh and smile and have a great time with it. It was WAY too cute :-). Her first swing was on Monday, so February 28. We have pictures. No video yet, but we'll do that next time :-)

She also seems to be working on a few new teeth. They have not yet made an appearance, but I know she's uncomfortable when she nurses, her face seems to be in pain, and she randomly gets cranky as though she's hurting (when she's not hurting, she's all smiles and giggles... it's very Dr. Jeckyl / Mr. Hyde). I hope these teeth pop in soon, though. Because Mama's TIRED!

OH, I forgot to tell you the best part! Earlier this week (Tuesday, so March 1), I was on my way out the door to go to work and Jocelyn was on the living room floor. She looked up at me, put her hands up, and hesitantly and deliberately said "Ma-Me." She hasn't done it since (at least not as deliberately, there's plenty of mamamamama, just like there has been plenty of dadadada). I don't know if she really knew what she was saying or not, but part of me sure wants to think so.

In an unrelated story, she's eating lots more food. We just introduced turkey (her first meat!). She didn't seem too thrilled with it. But she LOVES blueberries, prunes and apricots, does okay with peas and is starting to do better with zucchini. From a jar she liked carrots (she didn't like them when I made them for her, but that was December). And apples and pears are still her absolute favorite. She also eats teething biscuits and Mum Mum crackers. And Whole Wheat is her cereal of choice.

I think that's all for now. I'm sure there's more, but I am too tired to think of it.

AAaaannnd... she's pulling up!

I have been working on J bird's ability to sit up from lying down. She doesn't quite have the ab strength, but I hold my hands out, she grabs my thumbs, and she can mostly pull herself up to sitting. I have to give a bit of a nudge, but she follows along. Then she chews on my thumb (with those two new teeth that have started to grow in).

Well, recently she has started to try to keep on going and pull herself up to standing. Again, I give her a nudge and she gets it started, but she always needed my help to seal the deal.

Until today, that is....

Now she can take my thumbs and just pull herself all the way up to standing. She doesn't even need a small nudge from me. She just grabs hold of my thumbs and pulls. And she is just SO proud of herself when she does it. She gets a HUGE smile on her face. It's SO freakin cute!

After standing for a bit she will then let go with her right hand. She's getting braver and braver! As we play on the floor I sometimes sit her in my lap (while I sit cross-legged, or with my legs out in a V). She has now started to try to stand up from that position. She usually winds up launching herself forward and accidentally winding in tummy time (which she still hates).

The good news is that she can't crawl yet, so it's not like she's crawling to the bookcase that we still haven't anchored to the wall and trying to pull up on that. Who knows if she will crawl, she might not. Like I said, she hates Hates HATES tummy time, so she may not hit that milestone until well after she's walking.

I don't remember if I told you she hates lying down now that she can sit (even on the changing table, her former favorite spot). Well, now that she can kind of stand she's not really too keen on sitting anymore. She wants to stand up a whole lot. It's cute, but man is it tiring! I can't believe how fast she's growing!

And another month goes by....

Yeah, I suck at blog posts now that I am back at work. But an ice day and a napping baby mean I might have 10 minutes to update!

We are working on a few skills these days. The biggest one is sleep-training. I know, she's nearly months old. We should have tackled this one months ago. Well, the truth is, I tried. We were going to do it over Thanksgiving so we had a few days off to get Jocelyn on a schedule. I researched sleep-training techniques, chose one and bought a book. But guess which other grown ups in the house read the book - if you guessed NONE of them, you are correct! So I was trying to implement these techniques in the book and had hubby-poo and MIL telling me all about the things I was doing wrong. So since I had no support, sleep-training never happened. I'm pretty sure that HP regrets not having my back before, because whenever he complains about our baby who won't sleep he has the knowledge that he wouldn't support the sleep-training.

Anyway, he's on board (MIL still isn't, and still kindly offers to do things to help Jocelyn sleep that are counter to the sleep-training protocol). So we have been trying again. We are using the Baby Whisperer technique, which is a bit gentler than some of the others. And we are being gentler with it even still. Because I don't see a reason to traumatize my baby any more than I have to. Some nights she wakes up every hour, others she sleeps for 3 or 4 hour stretches, and others still she gives us 7 or 8 hours in a row. She CAN do it. She will start to do it more consistently.

Which brings me to my next milestone. Jocelyn has 2 teeth popping in. This could explain (at least in part) why sleep has become so awful lately. Poor kid. She's being a champ, though, and only fussing about it at night. She hasn't bit me during nursing yet, either, although she has lost some interest in nursing (I suspect that the sucking doesn't help). I can't wait for them to finish coming in, though. The poor kid is just unhappy (relatively speaking, of course, because she's still not actually unhappy by baby standards, just Jocelyn standards).

We are also working on expanding her diet. I think I mentioned that rice was only barely passing, oatmeal was a total failure and carrots were pretty much a failure. Since then we have tried a few other things. She will tolerate butternut squash. She hated Hated HATED zucchini. Avocado might as well have been poison. Pears were the GREATEST thing ever. Whole wheat cereal is pretty good. And apples are about as good as pears. And bananas will do, but preferred when the bits come from Mommy's banana rather than a bowl of mashed up fresh bananas or pureed banana baby food. Sweet potato will also do in a pinch. Other than the cereals I am still making everything, which is hard but not that hard. Oh, and we have started her on those Gerber puffs. She identified them as food immediately, but can't quite get them into her mouth. She likes them (mostly) after we put one in her mouth. She tends to drop them a lot, so Dakota hovers around when Jocelyn is eating them. It's funny.

My girl is also a dancing fool. This child LOVES music. Her mode of going down for a daytime nap is to listen to music and have one of us dance her around. She gets the biggest smiles on her face and just giggles, kicks and bounces until she falls asleep. It's adorable.

Jocelyn is still sitting. She is working on her reaching range while seated. She's really stable now, and can reach pretty far to get what she wants. A few times she will fall and roll onto her tummy. I keep on waiting for that to turn into crawling, but it usually results in crying. I shouldn't rush the crawling, though, because it would mean we need to get on the horn with the whole baby-proofing thing. She has pretty much lost all interest in lying down. She even cries and fusses when getting dressed on her back. She wants to SIT UP!

She has also been into her reflection lately. Well, to be fair, she is just as interested in other babies. But we don't have many other babies around, at least not as readily as mirrors. so she will stare at herself for as long as we will hold her to the mirror. Her play mat has a mirror, and she will grab it and kiss it. It's about the cutest thing ever.

The vocabulary has grown significantly as well. She is now saying 'ba-ba', 'la-la' and a whole slew of other words. The things that make her laugh has also grown quite a bit. She is ticklish on her thighs now, which is fun. She is getting good at holding weight up on her legs (and loves to dance on the bar - just like her mommy!), and giggles at herself when she does that. She's big into grabbing glasses (the kind on your face, and the kind that hold water), and when she grabs water-glasses she brings it to her lips to drink (which she has gotten really good at).

Jocelyn is also getting very expressive. She is getting really good at asking for what she wants. Sometimes it's with moans and grunts accompanied by hands reaching towards it. But other times she does a charming little flirtatious thing involving giggles, coos and smiles as she reaches for what she wants. It's really, really hard to say no to that one. Flirting has been her new thing. She will stare and smile until she catches your eye, and then turn her face away, and then turn back. It's SO freakin' cute!

Well, my goal is to update this a bit more often, that way I can add actual content and not just a log of the things that Jocelyn does. Because while I find all of this stuff fascinating, I am sure that I am the only one (well, and Hubby poo, but he doesn't read my blog).