Swinging

Kaelyn had a big weekend. We went to visit my parents in Iowa. Friday night we gathered to celebrate my nephew's 4th birthday. We had supper, he opened presents, ate cake, played games, that sort of thing. Saturday was his big birthday party at a Rainbow Playstation indoor play place. There were a bunch of swing sets that kids could play on and swing and climb and slide. Kaelyn got to swing in a baby swing for the FIRST time. She LOVED it. She was in that swing most of the time we were there. She was either real calm and cool about it or grinning and squealing. Depending on how high she was going, I guess. We have a baby swing in our garage that now we just MUST get out and hang ASAP! I want to hang it under the deck where it's nice and shaded so we can swing the summer away! My husband has to get some hooks to hang it with, but I hope we can get it up soon because she was so calm in it and loved it so much and the weather is getting nicer so let's get to swinging!! Kaelyn also got to slide a few times. She wasn't impressed at this point. I think Sean took video of her swinging but no pictures, bummer!

Also in our weekend trip was plenty of Chick-Fil-A! I still can't believe we don't have one around here. I worked at Chick-Fil-A all through high school and part of college. Usually when a person works at a fast food place they NEVER want to eat there again but I actually want to eat there MORE. It's just SO good. So my parents try to take me there as much as possible when I'm visiting so I can get in as much as I can when I can! :) I don't protest. The nuggets, the fries, the lemonade...okay, now I'm hungry.

Today we went to the zoo again. It was a VERY successful trip. No complaints at all! Though I guess it was a little chilly. IT was supposed to be 50 and sunny, wonder what happened to that! We got there when the zoo opened at 9:30, met my friend Andrea and her son Logan. Both kids were perfect angels. Stayed in their strollers, enjoyed the ride, looked around. I was SO hoping that Kaelyn would take her morning nap in the stroller so we could keep going and I wouldn't have to leave so soon. Logan and Andrea went to the petting zoo part of the zoo so I kept Kaelyn moving in the stroller and it worked like a charm, she fell asleep nicely and slept for nearly 1/2 an hour. She was a happy camper when she got up. We saw pretty much all of the indoor parts of the zoo and a little outside. But like I said, it was a little cold, so we stuck mostly to the inside parts. Even the jungle worked this time! Kaelyn just looked around and cooed, not scared at all this time around, yeah! I can't wait to go back. Maybe later this week? :) The shorter nap and all the sights must have worn her out because she fell asleep nursing at 2. She hasn't done that in quite sometime.

The zoo trip and the semi nicer weather and the swing ride this weekend made us realize...WE'RE READY FOR SPRING! Can it be here already? My husband said there might be snow in store this weekend and all I can think/say is NOOO! Being stuck inside is the pits! And Kaelyn and I are BOTH happier when we can get out and do things. She's going to be hard to get INSIDE, I think, once the weather is nice!

I think we need to make a grocery run tomorrow and perhaps a trip to the library is in store. Though I may try to check out a lot of the same books we have because she likes them so much. Maybe another zoo trip later in the week? I think we'll have that place memorized in no time!

Within the last few days Kaelyn went from walking a few steps at a time alone to walking all the way across a room alone. She's walking just as often as she is crawling now. For some reason, when she's naked, she practically runs! Must be the freedom from the diaper. I definitely say she's officially walking pretty confidently. Though of course she flops down on occasion! She's still doing pretty well with nursing less. 3 times a day is all, down from 5. She's eating more baby food at mealtimes and snacks between. Though she still doesn't put anything in her mouth on her own. And she doesn't like REAL people food. She still gags on it and pushes my hand away after trying only one bite. I'll keep trying! She has to get used to it eventually! I doubt baby food can sustain her forever! Especially with spring (hopefully) on the way and her running around only mounting!

Perhaps later this week or at least over the weekend we can get the swing up so when we don't go anywhere and it's nice we can swing the day away. Options of things to do is a GOOD thing with a kid! Short attention spans, you know!

Things to take to bed

Some kids pick a toy, a stuffed animal, a blanket, to take to bed with them. Something to cuddle with. Something to hold on to. Something to keep them safe. Kaelyn hasn't chosen such a toy, but she has taken random things to bed with her. Mostly at nap time but occasionally overnight as well. Here are some of the things Kaelyn has chosen:

-Her large pink plastic diaper pin
-An iced tea spoon
-A 1/2 tablespoon measuring cup
-A Starburst candy wrapper
-A plastic painted sun catcher
-A small concrete Isabel bloom hugs statue
-A static cling St. Patrick's day window decoration
-A 2" square rubber piece meant to be a dart gun target
-The cat's toy jingle ball

I could probably go on. She doesn't take something every time, but when she does, it's always something strange like that that you would never dream of cuddling with! I wish she could find her special toy. I think the closest she has is that large pink plastic diaper pin. We take that with us a lot when we go places. When she gets scared or upset if I give her that it seems to help. It's a good size for her to clutch and she still loves putting her fingers in holes and the pin has a couple of nice sized holes for her to inspect. But not exactly a cuddle-worthy toy! What do you do! A friend of mine has a son and says he always wants to take a ball to bed. Also not something you'd think would be a good bed toy!

Kaelyn slept really well last night. IT was probably one of our better nights of sleep since she was born. She got up at 3:30am and my husband went in and was probably only gone 10-15 minutes. She then got up at 5am and I let her eat and she's still in bed now after 6am. I actually got up because I couldn't sleep anymore! I don't know if that's happened at all since she was born! Maybe I couldn't get back to sleep because I had some things I wanted to do for work. Because now that I think about it, I am getting tired again! Oh well, there's always naptime!

With any luck maybe sending my husband in to Kaelyn the last few nights instead of me has helped. She doesn't expect him to feed her so she stops screaming easier for him. With me she'll just scream till she gets it! I hope it's helping and not a fluke because boy we sure would enjoy sleeping a whole night again! It's been over 10 months! It's time, already!

Yesterday Kaelyn and I met some co-workers for lunch and sometimes I have trouble with her falling asleep on the drive home. It's a 30 minute drive and we usually get home between 1 and 1:30 but naptime isn't until 3 or so. So if she falls asleep on the drive home for 10-15 minutes sometimes she doesn't want to nap at her normal time and then is a major crab in the evening. Yesterday I took a light up, musical ball that activates on motion and I gave that to her for the drive home. She played with it for a little while but then put her head back in her cozy, sleeping position. But since we were bouncing down the road the ball kept going off. Lights. Music. She stayed awake the whole drive! I don't know if it was the ball or not but whatever it was, she was awake and took a nice nap later and was in a great mood all evening!

If we could just get this sleep thing more permanently worked out, she'd be a totally awesome kid. That's been the biggest issue. If she sleeps she's in a better mood all around, as am I. I did buy a book that a listener emailed me about to recommend. Called Sleep Easy or something like that. The book says it helps you customize a sleep plan and then teach it to your child and you should see results in less than a week. The problem? Kaelyn hardly allows me time to read. SO if I even get to READ the book, hopefully it'll give me some pointers as well!

We're looking forward to my nephew's birthday party this weekend. He'll be 4. He's having a party at a Rainbow Playstation type place. It's an indoor swing set sales place that they open in the winter time for parties. Kaelyn has never been on a swing set so it'll be fun to see if she likes to swing etc. I was hoping to build her a swing set in our yard this spring. In my mind, we'd spend hours out there swinging. We'll see if she agrees after the party!

We also need to install her new carseat. She's really overflowing the little baby one. The straps are supposed to be AT the shoulders and hers are well behind her shoulders so it's definitely past time. We have a convertible seat from my sister that can ride backwards and forwards. It had ice cream all over it from my nephew but my mom got it all cleaned up. I finally got ahold of someone at the company that manufactured it and they said its lifespan is good till October of 2011 so we'll put it in my car this weekend. I hope Kaelyn likes it! We've had it sitting in the kitchen for a few weeks now and she's crawled over to it to play with the straps quite a bit so hopefully that will acquaint her with it enough that she'll enjoy it when she actually gets in it.

I'll keep searching for the perfect little cozy toy for Kaelyn to take to bed. Until then, watch out ice tea spoons, measuring spoons, and candy wrappers!

Life with a Wiggly Toddler

Going places where you need to sit semi still is becoming more of a challenge. We used to go to church on Sunday and Kaelyn would sit happily on my lap and look at books or play with a few toys. No more! Now it's I want down down DOWN. I want to go go GO! I think she lasted 10 minutes this last week. So I took her to the back of the church where there's a big open area thinking she could crawl around. Did she want to crawl around back there? Of course not! She wanted to crawl right down the aisle of the church, where all the action is! Redirecting her just made her mad. But what do you do! We made quite a mess with toys back there. And breakfast time hit so we made a mess on my pants with banana yogurt too. I forgot to bring a bib. Why that means it ended up on my pants, I'm not sure.

Yesterday we went to the community center for a MOPS (Mothers of pre-schoolers) group playdate. I knew we wouldn't be there long because the meeting was at 10am and Kaelyn slept in that day meaning naptime would be at 10:30 or so. That place is really neat, though. It has a great pool with a baby side that even has a slide. I think we'll be going there someday and having a great time. Just as I thought, everyone arrived and we just started playing and chatting and Kaelyn was having fun, but then fell. And falling near naptime is super traumatic. She got screamy so we had to go. She napped in the car and was good to go after that. We didn't have anything else to do that day. I did try to take a walk after lunch since she seemed to like the stroller at the zoo the other day. However, the stroller was similar to a car ride, I think and she was looking VERY sleepy. Since I didn't want her to fall asleep and ruin the afternoon naptime, we headed home pretty fast and put away laundry instead. Kaelyn is very helpful, as you can imagine. She stands at the laundry basket and throws clothes out behind her. She's not much on sorting or folding, but what do you do! :)

Today I'm hoping to take her by work to see a fellow co-worker who I used to work with and is now back with us. I haven't seen him in years so it would be fun to catch up for a few minutes. We have a Culver's lunch date out that direction anyways. Which means if someone sits in a booth next to ours, they'll get poked. And lids will get played with. And tossed! :)

I'm still working on weaning a bit. I got her down from 5 feedings a day to 4 pretty easily. We're trying for 3 now but it's not as easy. For the most part it's going okay, but she's starting to sense that I'm trying to change things, I think.

Also, overnight, my husband has started going to her more so she won't eat as often. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. She's been up for longer at a time, but is sleeping in later as a result! I don't know which I prefer! She's hanging on my leg now so I guess I better go play!!!

Zoo Visit

Kaelyn and I had all day Saturday with no plans so we decided a trip to the zoo was in order. Rain was in the forecast but it stayed dry during the time we wanted to go. It worked out well, she napped in the car on the way there, nursed when we got there and then we headed in. It was still a little damp and chilly so we wanted to look at the inside stuff and not walk around much outside. We started with the aquarium because last time we went, which was MONTHS ago, Kaelyn really liked it in there. She liked it again. We watched the penguins for a long time. Not too many were swimming but when they did she was all eyes. She flailed her arms a bit but mostly sat there calmly in the stroller. Next came the fish. They were so bright and full of motion, she probably could have sat there all day watching them. But no, mama made her move on! :)

I was actually pleasantly surprised. When we decided to visit the zoo I expected to enter the aquarium and stay in there the whole time. I figured Kaelyn would want out of the stroller and we would just walk, crawl, and wander that one area. But she sat so nice and calm I decided to branch out farther. Not far from the aquarium is the elevator that takes you down to the level with the gorillas and monkeys. I thought they might be full of motion and enjoyable to watch for awhile. The gorilla part was cold and empty. We were disappointed walking through there. But then we got to a more indoor part of the gorilla area and there they were! One huge gorilla was even climbing ropes and swinging around. I'm pretty sure Kaelyn saw him (or her!) Otherwise, though, she more enjoyed watching the people around her and playing with her hat. Of all things! We came to the zoo to look at animals and you're looking at people!

We thought about strolling through the cat complex but time was starting to run short and I didn't want to get too far away from the entrance in case she wanted out of the stroller. So we went back up the elevator. I thought about going through the aquarium one more time before leaving but decided to give the jungle a shot. Last time we were at the zoo, Kaelyn was in the stroller for like 5 minutes of the jungle. Then we went through a dark cave and she freaked out. I had to put her in the tummy pack and carry her that way the rest of the time. Much to my back's dismay. Pushing the stroller at the same time wasn't easy either. So I was pretty brave, I thought, to try the jungle. MY glasses fogged up so badly upon entering I had to take them off for awhile. Boy it was warm in there! Kaelyn was so nice and calm in the stroller I thought we had it made. Then I bumped a wall. Startled her. The screaming began. I couldn't get her to calm down so I had to take her out and carry her. With NO tummy pack. AND try to steer the stroller. So we didn't much enjoy the jungle. We hightailed it through there and got back outside. She was okay going back in the stroller once we were out and we headed back to the car to get home for lunch. I wonder if she would have been okay in there had I not bumped the wall and scared her. Until then she was all eyes and enjoying the view. Such a bad driver, I am! :)

Since we got a zoo pass for Christmas from Sean's parents I really want to go every week or so. Especially if Kaelyn enjoys the stroller okay like she did this past weekend. And especially when the weather gets nicer. Or if she can walk better on her own, that'd be okay too, just as long as I don't have to carry her! AND push a stroller! :) We're busy all this week but I'm thinking another visit should be in store the week after. It's a great way to kill time. Fun for her to see all the action, and I sure enjoy it too!

Babies and Stairs

As you can see from this picture, Kaelyn has on shoes! They're called Robeez, I think. They're just little pieces of leather/canvas, there's not much to them. And she DID still protest in putting them on. My mom put them on her when she was nursing. Then we went and ran some errands and had lunch and Kaelyn was SO still and calm the whole time. But once we got home she had gotten used to them and I had them on her again today. It hinders her walking a little but she's adjusting.

Also, in this picture, she's on her favorite toy. The one grandma and grandpa (Sean's parents) left here last time they visited. I dread their return in case they take the toy back home with them! Kaelyn rides it ALL the time! We hooked up a felt pull on it so I can pull her around slowly instead of bending over all the time. She honks the horn when she wants to start up again if we stop for whatever reason. Yesterday I was stopping by the big back windows because there were a bunch of deer out there and she watched them for quite some time. But then honk honk, time to go mama!

From the title you may have guessed, Kaelyn climbed her first stairs today. We were playing in the playroom which is right next to the stairs that go to the upper level. Sometimes she'll crawl over to the stairs and pull herself up on the bottom one and pound on it or whatever. Today she did that. Sometimes I use that time to read a couple of sentences in a magazine I have nearby or whatever. Today I watched her and she put a knee up on the bottom step. Uh oh! So I got real close and sure enough she pulled that other knee up after it and away she went. She went up four steps before she herself started to wonder what she was doing. Then she turned around and tried to dive back down face first. That's where I came in! :)

Our event of the day was lunch with an old college friend of mine. He's not all THAT old...just a year older than me! ;) But I hadn't seen him in almost two years despite only living 30 minutes apart. We met during his break from work and got caught up. Kaelyn eyed him warily but never yelled at him. But then again, he never held her, touched her, or got all that close to her! :) I did end up with wet pants during the lunch. Kaelyn ate like a horse but when she wanted out of her seat, I had her sit with me. I gave her the lid to my water and she was happy with that for awhile. But proceeded to dump the water on my lap eventually. I had to change when we got home. And ride in VERY wet VERY cold jeans all the way home. It was ICE water, afterall.

We played for awhile after that then emptied the dishwasher. Kaelyn is a big help with this. I carry her and empty with the other hand. She pounds on whatever I get out as I put it away. It was right before naptime and she ended up with a big long ice tea spoon. The things she chooses to take to bed! Once she was relaxed and asleep I managed to pry the spoon from her fingers. I put it at the end of the bed far from her feet. When she got up, I went in and she was sitting up, spoon again in hand, happy as a lark, holding it up for me to see. She must not have been quite done napping, though, because I picked her up and she cuddled into my shoulder and fell back asleep for 10 minutes. Spoon still tightly clutched.

She's having fun with the tupperware at the moment. But I Think they're ALMOST all out of the cabinet so I better go see what I can do about rearranging them! :)

Tupperware

Kaelyn discovered the tupperware cupboard last night. I was trying to clean some dishes and put away supper stuff. I may have opened the cabinet. I may have set her in front of it. But I most certainly didn't help her pull things out of it! However, I DID let her! She was having a great time. She even took the cup that holds the measuring spoons with her when I was done cleaning and dropped a spoon here and there all about the house as I carried her upstairs to brush my teeth and then hers. We had quite a mess. And I'm sure we will have quite a mess again. And again. And again because she really enjoyed it! And why not, it was something safe to occupy her for awhile!

One of Kaelyn's favorite times of day is right before bedtime. Every night at about 7:45pm I strip all of her clothes off, diaper included and she runs free for awhile. Even if she's being crabby, once those clothes are off, she's a new girl! And a nude girl, huh! She just runs and plays and giggles. Sometimes she'll crawl into the kitchen to beat on a chair, sometimes she'll walk to her toy box and throw as many toys out as possible. Whatever it is, it's done in sheer joy. I'm not sure if it's beacuse she's naked or if she knows it's almost bedtime and is trying not to act tired! Either way, it's a great time for her and fun for us to watch too! Yes, things get tinkled on on occasion, but really not as much as you would think! She's must more apt to tinkle in the morning when she's running around nude in the bathroom as I get the bath ready. Must be the running water.

It's supposed to finally be nice this weekend! Though maybe rainy. My husband is busy on Saturday so I'm seriously considering a trip to the zoo. I don't know how much or for how long Kaelyn will ride in her stroller since it's been awhile since we've had much exposure to it. But the zoo has so many neat indoor areas. Last time we were there she just LOVED the aquarium. And the aquarium isn't far from the entrance so I thought maybe, just maybe, we could go to the zoo and get out of the stroller in the aquarium and she can crawl and walk around and explore for an hour or two. After her first nap, before lunch, it would help kill some time. I just hope since it's the weekend it's not too busy. I think this spring and summer we'll probably go to the zoo every week now that we have a membership!

Also this weekend we probably better look into getting Kaelyn's new bigger car seat installed in my car. She's overflowing the baby one. I remember reading the car seat straps are supposed to be AT the shoulders. Well, the ones in Kaelyn's car seat now are way BEHIND her shoulders. The carseat is supposed to be good up to 22 pounds and she's nearing that range as well. It's just time! Plus, getting that baby car seat in and out of the car with a heavy baby in it is getting to be quite a challenge! I've been taking just her out more and more because it's easier. I will miss keeping her contained in the car seat right before we go somewhere. It gives me a few seconds to go to the bathroom before we leave. And it was nice keeping her in there to run into the post office or somewhere fast rather than unbuckling her and taking her out then having to immediately put her back in. But what do you do! She's a big girl now! So hopefully we can get the new seat in and hopefully she likes it! She'll ride backwards for another couple of months before we flip her around to the front, I suppose. She has to be a year old AND 20 pounds to ride facing front. She's 20 pounds now but not quite a year old.

I think the tupperware are calling, I guess we better go see what kind of a mess we can make today! :)

Restless Sleeping and diaper incidents

Ever since Kaelyn was a baby she's been a restless sleeper. She would kick her legs up in the air and just SLAM them down. Repeatedly. Pretty annoying when you're trying to sleep just feet from her head. She still does that on occasion but now she's taken to rolling over. And that usually wakes her up and makes her mad. Here's a picture of her in her bed from her nap yesterday. She started off in the middle of the bed on her back. Then rolled to her side, then her back, then her side, then finally this. It looks like a mid-crawl position but she's still sound asleep. Which is unusual. Usually when she makes it to her stomach she wakes up and sits up. Guess she was really tired!

I've decided I really need to set a date and stick to it. A date to stop feeding Kaelyn in the middle of the night. Maybe even send my husband in to comfort her instead of my going so she CAN'T eat. She can't even EXPECT to eat. She's 10 months old, I know she doesn't NEED to. Two night ago she got up at 9:45 and my husband went in and she went back to sleep till 3. Last night she got up at 12:15 and I went in and patted her and she seemed to go back to sleep but was up again at 12:45 at which time I fed her because I SO wanted to go back to sleep. This kid is a problem sleeper, I tell you! She has me well trained, I guess.

I don't think I wrote about our two-bath-before-breakfast incident last week. When Kaelyn gets up in the morning I nurse her, then I put her in her stroller and she watches me get ready. Then I eat breakfast and give her a bath. She LOVES bathtime. I take her pjs off and she stands at the side of the tub while I fill it (sometimes tinkling on the floor, yes) just GIGGLING and squealing in anticipation. She splashes and plays and has a great time in the bath. After her bath I wrap her up in her towel and she just lays there SO still. It's the most still-time she has ALL day. Including sleep as you can see from the above example. I put lotion on her, diapered her, put on fresh clothes, combed her hair, we were good to go. We went downstairs and started our day of play. She grunted around a bit so I was pretty sure she had dirtied her diaper. Doesn't that figure! JUST after her bath, I thought. I had no idea what an ordeal it would be. I took her pants off, peaked in the diaper...uh oh. It was one of those "up the back and around the corner" diapers. It was on the onesie. So I had to completely change her. ONce I got the diaper off, though I realized how far up the onesie the nastiness went. Great, JUST after a bath! I took the onesie off VERY unsuccessfully. How so? Well, because she ended up with poop not only above the diaper line but all the way from the diaper line to her neck...and into her hair. I got out a wipe and started wiping and then thought, this is going to take a WHOLE package of wipes and she still won't be clean. It was THAT big of a mess. So I wrapped her in the blanket she was laying on so I didn't get it all over ME and we went back to the tub. I held her in the blanket while filling the tub so she didn't get it all over the bathroom as well. While the tub was filling, though, she tinkled all over me. What a morning. SO she got her second bath, her second pair of clothes (oh by the way, I put her in the bathtub with her socks still ON, the only things that were still clean!) her second diaper, the whole works. All BEFORE she even ate breakfast. Then after she was cleaned up I had to completely change my clothes because I was soaked from the tinkle incident. And then we started the laundry to wash all the nastiness off of all the clothes. The onesie I had to wash TWICE. And it's STILL stained. Good times good times! The good news in all that was that Kaelyn didn't yell at me throughout the whole thing! I think she kind of enjoyed the extra bath!

Back to sleeping, everyone tells me someday she'll sleep. I keep thinking I know I know, but WHEN?! I wonder if stopping the nursing at night will help. But I still think my husband will have to go to her if we want to try that because she just won't give up with me until she gets it. My fault, I'm sure. I've given it to her way too long, she expects it now. What do you do. I desperately want her to sleep at night. Not just because I want to sleep but because she's in SUCH a better mood the next day when she has a good night. Everything is SO much more fun. And I'm more fun too! I'm planning on setting a deadline. Maybe I need to set a deadline for myself. I will set a deadline by THIS date! :) I'll let you know how I do on that!